Art Classes for Teens in Manhattan, New York City

Oogie Art, Manhattan:
Oogie Art, located in midtown Manhattan, New York, is a private art academy, founded and directed by Wook Choi, that guides young artists, grades 7 through 12, in the words of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to “greater heights of artistic creation.” Our students find our Art Portfolio Preparatory Program™ so effective that they travel from around the world to develop and submit their portfolios under our guidance. We offer career building services you can’t find anywhere else. Our programs are designed to help maximize, in more ways than one, your end results, demystify art school-related application processes, debunk dogmatic art school-related misconceptions, and prepare you for the rigors of an undergraduate career. Since our school's inception our methods have yielded consistently high success rates. In fact, our students have been admitted into top programs at Cooper Union, Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, Columbia University, Princeton University and many others.

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* nationally recognized teaching methods
* individualized curriculums
* written evaluation reports
* award competition preparation
* alumni and slide lectures
* teacher-parent portfolio reviews

* Has helped close to a thousand students realize their dreams through hard work and creative thinking during her 25-year teaching career.
* Curated and directed art gallery operations in New York City for more than 12 years.
* Exhibited internationally across Europe, Asia, and US in 46 group and 8 solo exhibitions.
* Received numerous artists awards.
* Served as a professor of color theory for 3 years.
* Juried several art competitions.
* Conducted Creative Workshops at NYU.
* On average, 65% of her students achieve regional awards and an astonishing 88% end up winning scholarships each year.
* Published in newspapers and art magazines over 43 times and has appeared several times on television and radio broadcasts world-wide.
* Served as an art school admissions consultant at the 2008 Daily News Education Fair.

1) Identify Your Needs. To begin, we’ll set you up with an individualized curriculum tailored to address your weaknesses, time horizon, intended major, and goals.

Using our patented portfolioTrack™ system, we'll then keep track of what you’re doing and what you’ve yet to do, so you'll never waste time developing the same skill twice. At the end of each quarter, you’ll get a written evaluation that analyzes your performance, details your future assignments, and fleshes out the necessary actions you'll have to take in subsequent quarters to reach your goals.

2) Build A Strong Foundation. Once you've received your curriculum, we’ll move you through a set of foundational problems that'll not only familiarize you with the basics, but will give us a chance to help you unravel the technical minutiae associated with each exercise. Developing a firm understanding of fundamental concepts; experimenting with several wet and dry media, and practicing different methods of mark-making and art-making will play important roles in these beginning stages of your development.

3) Expand Your Sensibilities. After we feel that you've cemented a comprehensive understanding of foundational skills, we'll focus on developing your concepts and imbuing your artworks with intent. Through a series of workshops, lectures and seminars we'll 1) familiarize you with recurrent ideas in contemporary art; 2) sharpen your abilities of visual, as well as verbal, articulation and advocacy; and 3) prepare you for the rigors and realities of an undergraduate career in art.

Our director's creative teaching methods have been recognized by the following persons, foundations and associations:

* The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers
* The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts
* Mayor Michael Bloomberg
* President of the University of the State of New York, Richard P. Mills
* US Congress Member, Jerrold Nadler
* Former First Lady, Laura Bush
* Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation
* The Governor's Awards in Art Education

Art Programs for grades 7-12; Art Portfolio Preparatory Program.

Museum Seminars: These weekly summer seminars are designed to help you speak more confidently about your work and prepare you for college-level crits. Join us each week as we visit various art institutions around New York City and participate in group discussions that center on each week's covered artist, movement, or work to develop fluency in the critique of contemporary art and the ideas contained therein. Past museum and gallery visits have included trips to the Museum of Modern Art, Met, Guggenheim, Whitney, PS1, Brooklyn Museum, Gagosian, Paula Cooper, Matthew Marks, Reena Spaulings, and 303 Gallery, among others.

Alumni/Slide Lectures: Each quarter, we set up alumni lectures to help you learn more about the schools you're most interested in and the steps our alumni took to get there; in the summer, we offer slide lectures to give you an inside look at the portfolios of Oogie Art students who were awarded over $100k in scholarships or admitted into Ivy League Schools. Lectures in the past have included presentations on the Cooper Union, Columbia University, Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, Carnegie Mellon University, Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, Fashion Institute of Technology, and the School of Visual Arts.

Intro to Video/Computer Art: We also offer video and computer art classes that introduce students to digital art-making practices on 20-inch iMacs. Learn the ins-and-outs of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign CS4 to impress your college professors and lessen your college workload; covered topics include the digital canvas, CMYK vs. RGB, vector vs. raster, multi-page layouts, print vs. web vs. motion graphics, blending and effecting layers, optimizing resolution, stealing colors, masking, leveling, curves, filters, brushes, typography, stylization, application resources, and post-production processes.