Marney Schorr

Studios #5, #13 and #25

Opening soon! Marney Schorr Gallery at NUarts…stay tuned!

Upcoming Classes, Groups & Workshops:

These Adult classes and groups below are $35 per 2 hour session and are held either online on Zoom or in person at the art studio, or both. If there is bad weather, we will meet on Zoom. Student and advanced payment discounts are available, as well as income based sliding scale fees. To find out more, contact Marney Schorr at marn73@hotmail.com

Creativity Workshop Series with Marney Schorr

Ten Fridays 930-1130 am on Zoom starting January 26, 2024

What do you love about making art? Want to explore new directions in art-making on a budget? Need some inspiration to get started?If you are feeling a creative block lately this is the art class to help! We will experiment with out-of-the-box and random art materials to recharge our creative batteries and bring back our playful spirits. We will read passages together about creativity, creative procrastination, cultivating more aliveness and making our dreams real.

Whether you are needing to just have some fun, heal through art, connect with others, or try new things to start developing ideas for your next professional art series, this class is designed to help you loosen up, get inspired and reinvigorate your love of art-making.

Join Teaching Artist and Art Therapist, Marney Schorr for a ten week creative arts class on Zoom with a variety of materials that may already be lying around your house. In this class we will “paint” with everything – craft paints and soap, inks, scribbles, palette knives, tissue paper, found objects, paper mache masks and more.

We will check in and read some excerpts from creative artist SARK to remind us about why we create and what support we need to get going or to go further in our creative practices. The art projects for this class include:

Ink paintings on yupo paper with rubbing alcohol
Inside/outside me paper mache mask making – 2 weeks
Drip pour paintings of aliveness
Pulp painting trees with tissue paper – 2 weeks
Intentional scribble paintings that ask the universe a question – 2 weeks
Three dimensional found object paintings using recycled materials – 2 weeks

Fees: $50 materials deposit is included in the total cost of $350.00 for ten two hours sessions.

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Some of my new works 2023

ABOUT MARNEY SCHORR

Marney Schorr is an Art Therapist, Author, and Teaching Artist at NUarts Gallery & Studios where she provides individual, family and group art therapy, workshops and classes. She earned her Master’s in Clinical Art Therapy from Long Island University and and her Bachelor’s in Visual Art from Empire State College. She has taught art therapy at Springfield College, Annamaria College, Berkshire Community College, Empire State College and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. She has presented regionally for the NJ Art Therapy Association, and nationally for the American Art Therapy Association and the Expressive Therapies Summit, including her role as Chair of the Suicide Prevention Track in 2018.

ARTS IN RECOVERY FOR YOUTH (AIRY)

Marney is the Founding Director of the nationally recognized arts-based youth suicide prevention program, Arts in Recovery for Youth (AIRY) and Author of the first book about art therapy and youth suicide prevention, DBT and Art For Youth Suicide Prevention : When Art Saves Lives (2022) with Jessica Kingsley Publishers. She has won the MA Statehouse Award for Excellence in Leadership in Suicide Prevention (2018), the Top 25 Most Influential People in Berkshire County Award (2018), Official Citations from Senator Hinds (2019) and State Rep Tricia Farley Bouvier (2020). Since 2016, she has received numerous grant awards for her work in art therapy for youth suicide prevention. For more info about this program. please visit the AIRY website at www.airyedu.com

IN THE COMMUNITY

Marney is committed to making the arts accessible through community work. She facilitates art therapy groups, workshops and arts events for adults, children, teens and families including:

Arts in Recovery for Youth (AIRY)
Art & Emotions
Artist Identity
Holistic Healing with Touch Drawing
The Development of Art Therapy
Art Making and Radical Self Care
Arts in Recovery for Women
Self Soothing with Art & DBT
Transforming Depression with Art
Art & Legacy
Women & The Creative Self at OLLI
The family art therapy project at the Christian Center

ABOUT MY ART

Marney is a frequent exhibiting fine artist in New York, New England, and the Berkshires. Her studio practice includes painting, drawing, mixed media, assemblage, sand tray and collage. She creates abstracts and personal narratives with a focus on the therapeutic use of art materials. Her works are currently available for purchase at NU Arts Gallery & Studios in Pittsfield, MA.

In 2020, Marney developed a series of gouache works on paper and canvas that are tributes to legendary jazz masters such as Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Her series, Take Five and all that Jazz has been exhibited throughout Berkshire County. See more of Marney’s work on her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/marneysarthouse

All works are for sale and prices typically range from between $100-300. Artwork can be shipped anywhere in the U.S.

Contact Marney at:

e-mail: airyberkshires@gmail.com / phone: (631) 697-8291

Artist Statement

I make art because it is what I know, and I´ve been making art for as long as I can remember. I make art because it grounds me like nothing else in my life. I make art as a way of exploring my emotions, of processing and coming to terms with them. It gives me the feeling of release. It is my favorite pastime. It is a language that I understand and resonate with.

In art, I find freedom, wonder, exploration. Art breaks through the confines of life, and makes the hardships easier to tolerate. Art is both an adventure and a grounding force, like a tree rooting me to the earth. Art heals me. It is easy for me to be an artist, because it feels more right than anything else I´ve ever experienced. I relate to artists. Art is a safe space for me, a container where I can put my entire human experience. In my art, I get to play, be curious, stay young at heart, and investigate things. Art is authentic for me, the most authentic part of me.

When I make art, I become quietly energized. I become free from the distractions of the world. I create imaginary worlds, expressions of what I experience in life – whether joyful or painful, ethereal or filled with deep reflections. I am drawn into what I create and it holds me and sustains me. I am more myself when I make art than at any other time, except perhaps when I am making art with others.

I generally don’t talk to myself at all until I am near the end of a piece. In art making, I actually give my thinking brain a rest. But sometimes I do think about composition or what I want to say or deliver on the art piece. It is an instinctual voice that responds to the art and is engulfed in the art, rather than outside of the art.

I feel that my identity as an artist and as an art therapist are intertwined. I make art from a therapeutic lens. I generally tend to disregard academic principles of art, but there are times I want to change this, and become more thoughtful about what I make. I am not sure what ¨kind¨ of artist I am per se. I probably would label myself an expressionist painter but also a mixed media artist because I love exploring new materials, even if they are in a primitive form. My artist identity has to do with raw expression. Very raw, focused more on what I’m discharging into the art, than the aesthetic. However in the past two years, my art has been the most aesthetic of my life. I think perhaps because I turned to art as a true escape and a place to build harmony and peace. And that came forward in my art. When I began successfully selling my art in my Take Five jazz series, it was a wonderful experience because I realized my art made others happy, and this in turn, made me happy.

Being an artist is natural for me and yet there is an inherent insecurity about it that never really goes away. In more recent years as my art has developed, I wonder more how my art will be perceived. When I am making art, I am not in control. So when I come back out of my artistic immersion, it feels like I must catch up with the rest of my world, like I must regain control again. There is an uncertainty that comes with being an artist. Every time it is both new and familiar. I often feel that I don’t know what will come forth and I don’t know what the life of the art will be. It sort of just exists in a timeless space. It is unconventional. It is mysterious. It is one of the most pure things I know.

I value how my art captures parts of me, parts of my life. It is like my experience is preserved in my art forever. As if moments of time are never lost. I value that my art contributes something to the world, and in some cases makes a difference in the world. I value the newness of each piece of art. I value having a platform for exploration. I value the authenticity it provides, a place for personal growth and the meaning I can find in the art. I am surprised by my art each time, as if I never know what will come out of me.

I believe that my creative qualities include being very open to the process, trusting my intuition, allowing myself to be vulnerable and to pour out my deepest being. I am very open to sharing my art with others and making art with others and serving as a guide or channel to help others access their creative selves – somewhere in the middle of my being a teaching artist and an art therapist. I am open, spontaneous, intuitive, and dedicated to my art.

I would like to become more intentional with my art. I would like to explore deeper directions with my art, and move more into making art to say something important to the world.

Being an artist has opened a door for me to know and collaborate and share ideas with other artists. This feels very ´right´ to me, like a comfortable slipper or sweatshirt. I feel at home, I feel like myself. I feel like there is a whole community with me on my journey. So even though there is the idea that the artist is a loner, or spends a great deal of time alone, there is a whole aspect that is community-building. I am very grateful for this.