Founded in 2016, Assembly offers system-impacted young people aged 18-26 an inroad to art and connections to working artists, while serving as an alternative to incarceration and its intersecting systems of oppression. The curriculum empowers young people to take charge of their own life story and envision a future through art. The program diverts both misdemeanor and felony charges and in 2020 expanded to include a peer-to-peer referral model, allowing us to broaden our reach.
Major funding for Assembly is provided by The Horace Goldsmith Foundation, The Salomon Foundation, Art for Justice Fund, Pinkerton Foundation. Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, Donald & Shelly Rubin Foundation, Prospect Hill Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The ELMA Philanthropies.
Banner image courtesy by Kaz Sakuma
Designed by and built in collaboration with Artist & Educator, Kristina Bivona, the print shop at Recess is a fully functional screen print operation that was hand-built by Recess participants. The shop includes a six-color press, a mobile two-color press, and six tabletop presses. We have a library of inks, a clean room for drawing and paper preparation, a washout room, and an exposure room.
The screen printers are trained in multiple print processes and throughout a peer-leaders tenure in the print shop, they will undertake multiple projects utilizing color separation, image design, print registration, fabric/textile/paper printing. The program regularly engages in collaborations with other arts programs as well as regular collaboration with Session artists. Additionally, each peer leader learns and evolves their printmaking skills by creating their own personal projects. The prints from the shop fold in sculpture, printmaking, book arts, graphic design, commercial, and arts printing to nurture entrepreneurial and professional initiatives through the arts.
