art® is the catalog for the Robert Cenedella Class Show at The Art Students League of New York.

I set up the art® website, www.artregistrata.com to help with the production of the printed catalog that we created and distributed in 2008 and 2009. The main participants in the catalog projects were:

• Jeff Tocci (who did and does the graphic design for Bob’s class show invites when he isn’t peeling red dots off of his canvases and drawings)
• Sean Riley (Jeff’s buddy from SUNY Plattsburgh who laid out the books using Adobe InDesign)
• T.R. Lundquist (who was the muscle behind the infamous “White Trash” trash can)
• Antonia Walker
• Mary Li
• Julie Forgione
• Catriona Herd
• Monica Lynch
• Anne Quigley (Bob’s assistant in 2009; she helped me update the website)
• Serafina Brown (Bob’s assistant in 2008; she helped with stuff)
• Chris Concannon (Network Financial Printers; he manufactured the books at cost)

Of course Bob made an outsize contribution as well but insisted on being listed simply as “Consultant” on the credits page. Yuko Ueda gave me a picture of Anthony Palumbo for the dedication of the first book; Stephanie Cassidy gave me background on league history.

About the card

“Free Instruction in Drawing & Painting” is a reproduction of a Works Progress Administration poster advertising a program at the Federal Art Gallery, 225 West 57th Street, New York City. I selected this image to promote the art® website shortly after we published “The Greatest Depression Ever!!!” issue in March of 2009. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t the best choice – I was going to go with the “Plan A Farm Garden Now” but the image was damaged and there wasn’t enough margin to print properly, so I went with “Free Instruction” instead. I’ve had many people ask me about the program and I have to admit that I don’t know anything about it. I paid to have the postcard printed to promote www.artregistrata.com web, not to challenge the league to lower the class fee or announce my new school for painting and drawing. The best I can tell from the poster collection in the Library of Congress is that the federal stimulus program paid artists to provide instruction to anyone that wanted it – for free. The WPA also bought artworks, held exhibitions, and sponsored free concerts and recreational programs throughout the city, as the city and corporate sponsors still do today with programs like Summer Stage in Central Park.

Scott Higgins, March 2, 2010
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