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Family & Leisure
Best Art Class
Hi Art!
310 West End Avenue
212-362-8190
On a beautiful recent Saturday morning, Sean Sutton was meandering though
the galleries of the "Painters in Paris" exhibition at the Met. Settling
down in front of a Picasso, he took out his well-worn sketch pad and newly
sharpened pencils, and went to work. On his daddy's lap: Sean is 2. He's
enrolled in an extraordinary class on the visual and performing arts for
preschool kids called Hi Art! It's not that her students are any different
from any other children, explains Hi Art! founder Cyndie Bellen-Berthezene,
a professional opera singer and former modern dancer. It's the early,
intensive exposure they get that makes the difference. The 45-minute classes
alternate between a West 54th Street studio one week, where kids delve into
dance and music as well as art projects, and a gallery or museum the next.
Each ten-week course ($425) centers around one piece of music; Sean's
class heard Ravel's L'enfant et les Sortileges, interpreted for the toddlers
as a story about a boy who got punished for not doing his homework. On that
particular museum Saturday, the students (and their parents) were sent
looking for things within the music, including the boy's broken toys in Juan
Gris's 1913 Violin and Playing Cards. Then they chose any piece in the
exhibit to draw. "They end up with a sense of art as ongoing,"
Bellen-Berthezene adds. "This is an anti-arts-and-crafts program." The
program extends to more sophisticated classes for older children, as well as
summer-camp workshops.
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