Monday, January 15, 2018
Spotlight on Education: Cobalt Studios
Guild of Scenic Artists: Located in White Lake, New York two hours northwest of NYC, Cobalt Studios is situated on 28 acres of fields and woods. Having opened their doors more than 25 years ago, Cobalt Studios was founded by Rachel Keebler and Howard Jones, with the intent of training future scenics in the mold of the guilds from the Renaissance. For example, their Artist in Resident Program combines classroom projects, lectures and demos with real world job experience as apprentices on professional projects.
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3 comments:
I clicked on this article hoping for an awesome opportunity to learn and create through an internship but was only disappointed to find that Cobalt Studios, is a program where you gain experience by spending money. Although it sounds like a really great program, it’s not really what anyone who is in college for theater would look into, because chances are the skills that you would learn there, you are already learning here. The type of audience they may be looking for would be people interested in studying theater in college, particularly high school students, or people that want to spend their summer having fun, but not making money. Although this specific link and program, were a waste of my time to learn about, the guild of scenic artists looks like it has quite a bunch of good information and maybe sometime soon it will have a program that I am looking for applying to for summer 2018.
One of my teachers in high school recently came back from the summer program at Cobalt Studios and had nothing but praise for them. Prior, our program had a heavy focus on construction and carpentry while relying on the few fine art students that would trickle in to paint all of our sets. My teacher never saw himself as a painter and gets grumpy every time he had to paint during our work days. After taking classes at Cobalt Studios, he was able to teach students scenic painting techniques that they would have otherwise not known. Now, he has dedicated a whole unit to scenic painting. This organization seems to create a community amongst its students and, though it is pricey, seems worth it especially if you did not get prior formal training in painting. I do see Hannah's argument where college students may not be interested in this because of the price but, to me, most of the programs offered are geared towards those who want to focus on scenic painting - even after getting a college degree in theatre. We pay for a college education so I do not see a problem in paying to further learning.
Although disappointed by this article; I am not entirely displeased by it. Being a “Spotlight on Education” I was hoping for more of an explanation in sorts on education and a place that would exemplify it. Instead I found that this article is more like a review or an advertisement for Cobalt Studios and although with much information on them, I didn’t get any information on education per say. I’m glad I can learn and even sign up for what Cobalt Studios offers but I wasn’t really interested in learning about what this group offers in this particular article. The article, as understood by its title, had caught my eye because I was interested in learning about education. Where is education right now? What makes education worthwhile? Why would I want to learn a specific way, specific thing, or attend a specific place? These are questions I have for education and so; in a spotlight on education I would hope that they would at least talk about current education and why education is heading in a certain direction. Instead I got an understanding of what Cobalt Studios offers and what felt like an advertisement of a reason to consider it at the very least.
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