Sound Shore

There’s an interesting exhibit up at the Museum of Arts and Culture at New Rochelle High School. CJ Senerchia, a senior at the school, has been studying sculpture for four years. Now he’s showing his stuff. The exhibit, which he planned and curated, is a collection of his work and his work only. A solo show before graduating from high school? Not bad, Mr. Senerchia. The exhibit is open through the end of the month.

(A sculpture by New Rochelle High School senior CJ Senerchia. Photo provided.)

The Picture House in Pelham will launch its Family Flicks series on Jan. 6, 2012. Every Friday through Sunday, plus whenever school is closed, the theater will show family-friendly films ranging from classics to cult favorites.

The series opens with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” which will run Jan. 6 through Jan. 8. After that, “A Town Called Panic.” Later in the month, the Picture House will show Jim Henson’s “The Dark Crystal.”

For more information and a full schedule, go online to thepicturehouse.org.

There’s a free mosaic workshop at the Pelham Art Center this Saturday, Oct. 1. People of all ages are invited to participate in what the Art Center describes as “an underwater-themed group mosaic.” It’s intended to celebrate the organization’s current exhibition, “The Ocean Reglitterized.”

Mosaic-ers will use tiles and bits of broken ceramics to help bring to fruition a large mural designed by artist and Pelham Art Center faculty member Lisa Vassolatti.

No need to register; tools and protective wear will be provided. Bring in old pottery to break up and use in the mural if you like.

For more information, contact the Pelham Art Center at info@pelhamcenter.org or 914.738.2525.

The Knickerbocker Art Show 2011 in New Rochelle begins with a private showing on Thursday, June 9, and then opens to the public Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Gallery hours are from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The show, at the M&H Building at 55 Webster Avenue, will feature works by Calvalho, Ingantino, Bancel, Zambrano, Burgos, Maxwell, De Villemejane, Lebreton, Furuta and other contemporary artists.

For more information, click here.

New Rochelle High School’s art students—scores of them, anyway—spent most of Wednesday outside, painting en plein air around the grounds in front of the high school. The school’s art teachers, one of whom, Scott Seaboldt, is pictured below, say painting outside, rather than from a photograph, is important for artists at all levels, but especially for students. They learn more about depth, color, lighting, composition and perspective than they would indoors, under artificial light. A full story about the school’s en plein air day will appear in next week’s Express. Meantime, enjoy the photos, most of which appear after the jump.

(Scott Seaboldt and a group of freshmen discuss the finer points of landscape painting.)

A pair of paintings that spent decades out of sight and shared a basement wall with paint-by-numbers canvases, sold at auction Sunday for a combined $840,000.

The pieces, by Hudson River School painter Jasper Cropsey, were discovered in March, when a man from Cortlandt brought them to the Clarke Auction House, in Larchmont, for an appraisal.

(A self-portrait of Jasper Cropsey. Photo by Carmen Troesser/The Journal News)

Nelia Moore, an auctioneer at Clarke, said the man, whose identity the auction house is protecting, paid $20 for the appraisal. The paintings had been in his family for three generations and had hung in the basement of his parents’ house in West Hartford, Conn.

One of the paintings, depicting Niagara Falls, sold for $552,000. The other, an autumn scene set in New Hampshire, sold for $288,000.

Two men, one a prominent dealer, the other a private collector, led a brisk bidding war for the pieces. Each man ended up with one of the paintings.

“They’re both gorgeous and striking” — if a bit dirty from years in the basement, Moore said of the artworks.

(“Winter Scene, Ramapo Valley,” By Cropsey. This is not one of the paintings that just sold at auction.)

According to the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, in Hastings-on-Hudson, Cropsey was born on his family farm on Staten Island in 1823. He made thousands of paintings, achieved significant fame and met Queen Victoria. He died in 1900 in Hastings-on-Hudson.

Moore said the two paintings sold for such high prices in part because of the story behind them.

“It’s one of those rare finds: untouched and undiscovered for so many years,” she said.

Cropsey experts had been aware of one of the paintings, they just didn’t know where it was. The other was a complete surprise.

“That’s what this job is all about,” Moore said. “To know that there are still things out there to be discovered.”

Westchester Community College Visual Arts Program student Vladimira Pipova of Mamaroneck was awarded a $1,000 scholarship as part of the SUNY Student Art Show in Albany recently.  She was acknowledged for “Crimes Against Art” (above), a “three-part drawing about the Nazi confiscation of art during World War II.”

Looking for something to look at? Students in the Advanced Placement Studio Art program at New Rochelle High School are displaying their work at the Museum of Arts and Culture, at the school. The show opened Feb. 14 and runs through March 4. According to a news release from the school, environmental concerns “figure prominently” in many of the pieces. In others, perhaps not so much. Pictured here is “Woven Collar,” by Sarah Bedrick.

For more information, check the museum’s website, here.

MAMARONECK — Mamaroneck High School is hosting an “AP Student Art Show,” open during school hours through March 11, in the Palmer Gallery, 1000 W. Boston Post Rd., Mamaroneck.

Railroad bridges as artistic canvas?

Apparently that’s the concept behind a $60,000 state grant to create art displays on the five train bridges that run through Port Chester. Mayor Dennis Pilla said the public art project would involve Port Chester, the MTA and SUNY Purchase. The idea is to build trusses that would attach sculpture or other displays onto each bridge.

Art students could compete over the design, and invite public participation, the mayor said. The displays would change periodically. Thoughts? Leave a comment below.

For now though, the big question at the train station is whether Port Chester commuters will have to pay higher fares to the city than their farther-afield neighbors in Greenwich. See our earlier post on that, and check out the comment from the CT Rail Commuter Council.