Marisa Catalina Casey
On a recent Monday evening just before the after-school program concluded, Starting Artists was abuzz. Having completed that day’s lesson—visualizing poetry—a dozen or so students were now working collaboratively on their projects, or, like intern and LaGuardia High School student Duncan McInnes, helping others bring their ideas to life on one of the many computers in the room.
A three-year veteran of Starting Artists, McInnes, now 15, is very aware of the impact the program has had on his life. “When I was pre-Starting Artists, whenever somebody said, ‘artists,’ I really only thought of classic arts, like painting and selling artwork in galleries,” he said. “I didn’t think about the business side, or even running a company, or organization, or firm based around design or graphic arts.”
An attitude like that is music to founder Marisa Catalina Casey’s ears. “I think that’s a really important part of why we’re Starting Artists,” she said. “And not starving artists.”
Casey, 30, insists there’s room for all kinds of creativity at her nonprofit, which she founded in 2006. Her goal was not only to enhance artistic ability and nurture creative tendencies, but to incorporate a skill not normally associated with the arts: entrepreneurship.
“Our motto is, ‘Get Inspired, Get Creative, Get to Work,’” Casey, a Cobble Hill resident, said. “Some of our students are creative, but need the inspiration and need to learn how to get to work with it. Some students get to work, and just do it, and do it, and do it, and don’t think about the inspiration.”
Starting Artists offers numerous programs, like a popular three-hour after-school class for kids 10 to 19 years old; private night workshops; prep for entry to arts high schools; and a creative entrepreneurship club that offers its services to other non-profits.
Casey and Mark, a student
For Casey, the idea for Starting Artists always seemed like a fairly obvious one. “I knew that this is what I would have done or would have wanted when I was young,” she said.
An ACL injury her junior year of high school prevented Casey from playing soccer, but instead of wallowing, the Massachusetts native chose to focus on photography, which had always been a passion. It was in the darkroom that Casey, who is adopted, came up with the idea to take pictures of other adopted kids in the New England area, and to make and sell a calendar of these photographs.
She executed the project to near perfection, and donated the proceeds to orphanages around the world. A few years later, she repeated the exercise, enlisted a higher quality printer, and sold the calendar at Barnes & Noble, again donating the money to the orphanages.
Realizing she had found her calling—social entrepreneurship—Casey wondered why her creative friends weren’t acting on their own similar instincts. “Maybe they need more support, maybe they need an organization, or space where they feel comfortable to do it,” she remembered thinking at the time.
The fiery Casey has, she hopes, created that space. After enlisting her fellow graduate students at Columbia University to do a survey of the needs of students in underserved areas, Casey discovered that an extra-curricular arts program was just the thing.
By teaching a generation of computer literate learners how to combine their artistic nature with their technical skills, Starting Artists is showing students that being an artist can be a lucrative profession, despite the reputation to the contrary.
hard at work
Adobe Audition programs like InDesign, Photoshop, After Effects, and Flash give kids “a new sort of tool to take what they already have learned, or what they’re exploring with their drawing, with their painting, with their sculpture, to the next level,” Casey said. She added, “They’re going to be so far ahead of the curve, they’re going to be able to get those positions at ad firms, at creative agencies, graphic design firms.”
Though they won’t be resigning the lease on their brightly-decorated Cobble Hill space, Casey hopes to keep Starting Artists close to the “thriving community of artists, and students, and families” that she has called home for nearly ten years.
“If anybody has space they want to donate to us,” she said, leaning into the microphone for emphasis, “We do a great service, and we do it for little or no cost.”
And for the hundred or so kids who pass through its doors each week, Starting Artists has become more than just an extra-curricular activity. “Kids say all the time, ‘This is like my home, this is my community, this is my family,’” Casey said, unable to suppress a smile. “I love hearing that.”
Comments are closed.