New World School of the Arts has selected exhibiting professional artist and educator John Slepian as Dean of Visual Arts to lead the high school and college visual arts programs. "We are excited to welcome our new colleague, John Slepian, to the New World School of the Arts family where his artistic and administrative talents will support the important work of our talented young visual arts students and their faculty," said Dr. Jeffrey Hodgson, Provost of New World School of the Arts. "I encourage the arts community and our alumni to get to know John and welcome him to South Florida and NWSA."
 
"I'm thrilled to be joining NWSA. I have met fantastic NWSA students, staff and faculty, and seen some really amazing student artwork. I'm looking forward to working with everyone and becoming part of the community at NWSA and the art scene in Miami. I'm passionate about art and art education, and I'm excited to be bringing my experience as a multimedia artist, educator and administrator to the position of Dean of Visual Arts!"
 
Slepian's artwork has been shown nationally and internationally at venues including P.S.1/MoMA and Hunter College Art Galleries in New York, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Axiom Gallery, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, and the Boston Center for the Arts in Boston, and the Re-New Digital Art Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark and 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art in Vancouver, Canada. Slepian exhibits with the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and exhibited with COLLISIONCollective in Boston. He was a resident in the P.S.1 National Studio Program in 2002-2003, and in 2005-2006 was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts grant in Computer Arts. In 2014, he was awarded a Connecticut State Artist Fellowship for his work with Adele Myers and Dancers. Slepian graduated from New York University with a BFA in Film and Television and the San Francisco Art Institute with an MFA in New Genres. He was an Associate Professor of Art and Technology at Hampshire and Smith Colleges in Western Massachusetts and served as the Dean of the School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Dean of Academic Support and Advising at Hampshire College.  

Miami – New World School of the Arts, together with the NWSA founding classes, will present a round-table discussion featuring seven panelists to launch this year’s Make Art Work (MAW) series. The panelists, all NWSA alumni, will recount how they embarked on careers that create platforms for stars to shine.

“While so many arts programs focus on future successes individually – theatre students as actors, dance students as dancers, etc. – we recognized the numerous incredible careers our alumni have enjoyed where they were not in the spotlight, but helped others thrive there,” mentioned Jonathan Tavss, class of 1988. “Our hope is to convey that there are so many forms of successful creative careers in supporting roles – many of which are yet to be defined, especially in this ever-changing world with ever-increasing opportunities.”

Titled “Out of the Spotlight – Creatively Impactful Careers From Just Beyond The Frame” – MAW will be presented on Friday, October 11; 1:15 PM – 2:25 PM. Louise O. Gerrits Theater. 25 NE 2nd Street, 8th Floor, downtown Miami. Free and open to the public. Information at 305-742-6932.

Launching the theater season at New World School of the Arts, 32 college students, under the direction of NWSA faculty member and Artistic Director of Zoetic Stage, Stuart Meltzer, will present the world premiere WOKE / SPRING, an adaptation by Meltzer of the of Frank Wedekind's expressionist play Spring Awakening. “I have loved Frank Wedekind's play Spring Awakening for years, explained director Meltzer, “I believe the play needed to be told again with an American backdrop in the Bible Belt where modernity moves at a slower pace. I also wanted to explore the magic and ghosts that live in the Appalachian Mountains.” Woke/Spring is a play with music co-composed by New World School of the Arts theater alumnus, Nate Promkul and Stuart Meltzer.
 
Opening performance – WOKE / SPRING opens on Friday, October 11 at 7:30 PM. Additional presentations on October 12, 18, and 19; 7:30 PM and Sunday, October 13 and 20; 2:00 PM. Louise O. Gerrits Theater. 25 NE 2nd Street, 8th floor, Miami. General admission is $12; Students and seniors $5. Tickets available at http://nwsa.mdc.edu. Information at 305-237-3541.
 
“Our cast is very diverse, and that fabric is a beautiful springboard into bringing new perspectives into these staple characters. Also, by New World School of the Arts doing a world premiere production, the students and I have the opportunity to have on-hand collaboration in the rehearsal room. We work together in creating the moments that will come alive in front of an audience. The students take ownership of these characters and connect to their stories on a much more personal and poignant level,” noted Stuart who received the Carbonell Award for Best New Work in 2018 for The Goldberg Variations

Under the guidance of NWSA graphic design professor Rosario Martinez-Cañas, 13 New World School of the Arts college students and alumni open to the season's scheduled exhibitions with Six Words - Stories, a story-telling exploration through typography exhibition. The show borrows its concept from legendary American writer Ernest Hemingway's lore that claims the prolific writer challenged himself to write a story in just six words. The result: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Hemingway's six-word story and self-critique have never been verified but what is irrefutable is that great stories can be told in 60,000 words or just six. The students were tasked with each developing 14 story executions in just 14 days, utilizing the typography of their choice.

Directed by NWSA theater faculty member Stuart Meltzer, Artistic Director of Zoetic Stage, New World School of the Arts wraps-up the theater season with Hamletmachine, by Heiner Muller, a German dramatist, poet and theatre director whose writings became recognized throughout Europe despite him being a resident in Soviet controlled East Germany after WWII and throughout the rest of the 20th Century. “As the director for our production, what speaks to me most clearly from the text is the historic oppressive and opportunistic nature of Russia and Soviet Russia. I also fell in love with Muller’s examination of man’s relationship with death throughout war, genocides, suicides and capital punishment,” explained Meltzer.
 

Hamletmachine opens on Thursday, May 9, 7:00 PM. Performances on May 10 and 11 at 7:00 PM, with a Sunday, May 12 matinee at 2:00 PM. Louise O. Gerrits Theater. 25 NE 2nd Street, 8th floor, Miami. General admission is $12; Students and seniors $5. Tickets available at http://nwsa.mdc.edu/ For more information please call 305-237-3541.

Rising Stars, a professionally staged, energy packed, one-of-a-kind showcase, presented the extraordinary talent of high school and college students from New World School of the Arts (NWSA), Florida’s premier arts institution. Comprised of a cutting-edge visual arts exhibition and an evening of performing arts excerpts, Rising Stars has become the signature event of the school and a highly anticipated evening of the arts for the South Florida community.

With a color palette transformation, The Rising Stars Exhibition offered guests an unprecedented experience as the gallery was converted into an urban-chic black and white space. Angular white shelving symmetrically placed along the full stretch of the black walls allowed the audience to immediately appreciate the bold vibrant colors of the more than two dozen artworks, allowing them to fully explore the intricacies of each piece. From photography to video, and from painting to sculptural work, to installations, the exhibition offered a wide range of artistic expression, all focused on the central theme: Objects. Bag, a colossal metallic scarlet duffle, with seamlessly suspended handles, by Ashley Mendoza, seduced the viewer to uncover the treasures it might grip within its black confines, while Alian Martinez Rives’ Waking Dream, intentionally placed in a secluded room off the gallery, allowed the audience to imagine the world of the artist in the unconscious sleep state. The miniscule architectural details of Aryal Novak’s Landscape in the Dark 1&2 encouraged the viewer to inspect the oil-painted panel in search of elements hidden within, while at the opposite side of the gallery, a much larger architectural piece – Out There – by Carl Mathis, became one of the favorite photo backdrops of the evening. The illustration series, Personal Encounters, lured the viewer with its monochromatic illustrations of personal care objects, as artist Amanda Linares skillfully created the tetra pack drypoint work. Amanda, a 2020 BFA student, also designed this year’s Rising Stars promotional collateral, which loosely weaved a tapestry of nature icons with Salvador Dali-influenced illustrations to depict each of the four New World School of the Arts divisions: dance, music, theater and visual arts.