Making plaster casts

First year students have been spending a lot of time with these feature casts - practicing drawing, modeling, block-ins & sculpture from them. Last week we took our clay sculptures we've been working on & learned how to make our own plaster molds & casts. It's more complicated than we thought! It takes some patience & precision to mix the plaster just right and make the mold before the plaster solidifies.


Carla Crawford's clay eye, with the plaster cast we've been working from next to it.


Lauren Salm making a plaster mold of her ear


Sarah Hodges plastering up her nose


Instructor Chris Waddell working with Victoria Herrera


Ashley Howell cleaning out her ear mold


Remi Cardenas & Neal Esplin removing a finished plaster mold from the armature


Me & Carla bringing back the art of knitting

Work in progress

Here are some photos I took around the studio today of work in progress:

Elisabeth Ehmann

Amelia Landes

Carol Broman

Instructor Edward Minoff working with figure painting students

Instructor Jacob Collins working with a sculpture class

Instructor Sam Wisneski working on a cast painting demo


Brendan Johnson and his intimidating weaponry of meticulously sharpened HB pencils, ready for action

Studio Talk Alert!

Studio Talks: Artists on Artists

Please join us for informal, afternoon studio talks by artists about artists.
GCA's South Studio
4:00pm - 5:30pm
Refreshments will be served

Richard Cameron talks about THE NEOCLASSICAL DIVIDE
Tuesday, November 18, 2008

rsvp: grandcentralacademy@gmail.com

*Next in December: Patrick Connors on Eakins: Philadelphia School of Painting

Noted architect Richard Cameron will discuss the legacy of Stuart & Revett's seminal work, Antiquities of Athens and its important place in the debate over the 'neo-classical divide'-a debate that continues to influence classical work today.


About Richard Cameron
Richard Cameron is principal at Ariel - The Art of Building, LLC and co-founder of the ICA&CA. Mr. Cameron has taught drawing and the history of architectural theory at the Institute since its founding, and currently serves on the Board of Directors as its Vice-Chairman. He was awarded first prize in the Royal Oak Foundation's Annual Architecture Competition in 1993. His work has appeared in numerous publications including House and Garden, The New York Times, Period Homes, New Old House, and Traditional Building. For more information, please visit www.ariel-llc.com


*A recent reprint of Antiquities of Athens was published by Princeton Architectural Press in association with the ICA&CA's "Series in Art and Architecture."

photos from the studio

Finny working hard in a drawing class.

All students are required to study ecorche sculpture, in which they learn human anatomy by sculpting the human body showing the muscles and bones without skin. This class meets once a week all year long, and is taught by Jiwoong Cheh. Here are some photos of the current ecorche group working on the skeleton.

Hyeseung Marriage-Song

Rebecca Gray

Colleen Barry & Phillip Salamone

Angela Cunningham, Philip Salamone, & Colleen Barry

First year students are learning sculpture by working from the plaster feature casts. Here are some photos of their first sculptures being finished up.

Ken Salaz

Lauren Sansariq

Carla Crawford

Here is Ken Salaz astonishing everybody with a magic trick on a model break. (this guy is the best magician any of us have ever seen)

Repin Minoff, welcome to planet earth!

Early on Sunday, November 2nd, as daylight savings time came to an end, an hour was repeated and Repin Meyer Minoff* was born. He weighed 8 lbs., 6 oz. at birth. Congratulations Ted & Noa!

* - Repin is named after the russian painter, Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930).

Nelson Shanks

Last night Nelson Shanks gave a portrait painting demonstration downstairs at the Institute of Classical Architechture & Classical America. Mr. Shanks is a well respected painter and teacher who has played a significant role in keeping realism alive over the past 40 years.

summer announcements

Two announcements for 2009 summer action:
June 8 - 12, 2009 The second annual Classical Figure Sculpture Competition. This exciting event was just covered in an article called "A Little Competition Is a Good Thing" in the nov/dec '08 issue of Fine Art Connoisseur.

June 1-26, 2009 cast & figure drawing intensive with Camie Davis, Nick Hiltner, Sam Wisneski, & Jacob Collins.

Atlanta Art Gallery group show

October 17th was the opening for a group show at the Atlanta Art Gallery: "Jacob Collins and the Water Street Atelier" featuring Jacob's work alongside that of alumni and current students of Water street and Grand Central Academy. Below is a link to an online gallery of some of the work included in the show.

Atlanta Art Gallery group show

Photos from the opening night are posted on the Portrait Society of America blog.

This review of the show came from Jerry Cullum's blog:

"The portraits in particular make one realize the importance of scale in this tradition; the photographs in the little catalogue produced by the gallery sometimes look embarrassingly inconsequential when the paintings themselves are emotion-provoking near-masterworks. When personal style is suppressed in favor of realist representational conventions, small details become crucial and the size of the image even more so. Lacking the metaphysical vigor of the Dutch precursors, these artists present a world as it might yet be, an implicit utopia that might have delighted Ernst Bloch: a sense of reverie that creates space for dreaming and thus, according to Bloch's heretical philosophic vision, for hope.

And these days we can use all the hope we can get, not to mention imaginative space in a world crowded, as Bahouth's show reveals, with conventional images. Sometimes a re-imagining of an unfashionable tradition is the most revolutionary act of all."

Student work

Here are some photos from around the studio. Now that the students from Water Street Atelier have joined the GCA community, we have people working at a range of experience levels - from beginner cast drawing to full color figure painting. Starting this week, second year students take a break from drawing to begin a new element of the curriculum spending 5 hours a day in the sculpture studio for a 2 month block.


Instructor Chris Waddell giving a portrait sculpture demo


Jason Boudreau


Colleen Barry

intro to figure sculpture with Mason Sullivan (night class)


Carol Broman


Arturo Garcia


Gregory Mortenson

Hyeseung Marriage-Song


Nancy Fletcher

Joshua LaRock

Joshua LaRock

Elisabeth Ehmann

Halloween at GCA

Yesterday we had some great costumes for Halloween, and a party with our friends downstairs at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America.