Painter of the Month

Danielle Kaitlin Urso

This month's Painter of the Month is the remarkable Dani. Danielle Kaitlin Urso.

Dani is non-verbal, and uses a wheelchair, and yes, you'd be making a big mistake if you were to underestimate her. As her dad Vinnie reported, A.R.T. has created a monster. I'm sure Dani was a pistol from Day 1, but it's pretty clear A.R.T. sent her rockets into ballistic mode.

Dani is the coolest, most bold kid. She delights, and I mean delights in pushing the painting envelope... directing gallons of tinted acrylic gel be poured from ceiling height onto her small canvas. Like one of those high dive stunt guys. Look at it this way: The hobby painter might dip into a one ounce, a four ounce container of acrylic gel, daintily dipping into it, stirring it into their color in order to create viscous slightly textural effects, but because of our alliance with Golden Artist Colors, A.R.T. painters can operate on a vastly bolder scale, the gallons and gallons and gallons of acrylic gel at their beck and call, there as their ammo, empowering them to be hundreds of times more physical than the dainty hobby painter. What I'm saying is that the A.R.T. painters are bolder than the hobby painter, bolder by far, in most cases, than the art school student artist. The A.R.T. artistshave ALL this pent up energy that explodes with creative power.

In the studio Dani gets pumped, and though non-verbal, she makes it more than clear that she is the maestro. And you, as her Tracker, really need to do what she's directing you to do. Sometimes it's just too much. Dani is the first painter in A.R.T. history we had to say no to. We never say no. We go with it when a painter wants to paint a 12'x 25' mural. We say yes when they want to create an insanely funky hip 3D Eiffel tower seven feet tall.

They're the artists. They're in charge. But we had to say no to Dani. She was making vaster and vaster batches of expensive acrylic gel and color and having them bombed from dangerous heights onto her small canvases, the little canvas as it were, lying on its back on the Princeton University art studio floor, looking up, awaiting the deluge.

She was after drama. She was after danger... the poor Tracker clambering up atop a ladder above Dani's canvas, the unwieldy not one gallon, but five gallon pail, full of color, Dani gesturing for them to keep climbing, higher, higher, to the ceiling.

SPLAT!

Oh, this was good. Oh, this was excellent. And please don't dismiss Dani's approach as child's play. Play, yes, as all great art-making is largely, 'play'. Dani is going for it. Grabbing the physical gusto, same as the famed painter Larry Poons, his super thick acrylics in all the great art museums. Dani's going after what Poons went after... materiality, physicality, a spontaneous melding of the random guided by the intuitive, resulting in a level of freedom and physical power the timid painter will never experience, much less capture. To those who would see Dani's devilishly delighted directing of the massive pourings, as, meaningless? When in reality her paintings, like those of Larry Poons, are part of a higher life the timid person has lost the link to, long ago.

Think of it this way. Dani is still young so still small. The canvas she chooses is small. But the color she chooses, representing the life she senses? It's big. It's so big. Vast. Not able to be expressed in ounces of acrylic gel, dibby-dabbing. But in a gallon, then two then five, the whole world her color beckoned by her to storm down onto her canvas. Yes. Yeah. This is how artists feel: Overflowing, overwhelmed, in this wonderfully cool, exciting way.

Working on one of her purely hip, wildly alive abstractions, the canvas on the wall, Dani used the point system, very quickly, to demarcate two dots then a curve. Oh no, the Tracker moans, "A happy face?" Dani cracks up than blows the happy face away.

And there is a very serious, very determined side to Dani. I told you she was a pistol. She had A.R.T. She was in the groove. She had it made, working each work with us at Princeton University. But was this enough? Nope. Dani was thinking of her many chums at the light-filled Lakeview School. They should have A.R.T. too. But how was Dani to get this across to the school? They already had one of her paintings displayed, but how could she get, like, specific? Through the A.R.T. music program, working with Cam Ferrara, Dani wrote lyrics using an alphabet board, created notes, for what is clearly a rap song... the little white rapper grand master MC Dani.

Here are the lyrics I heard stepping into the studio above Nassau Street. "A R T is cool in my school. A R T is cool in my school."

We've learned Dani and our other superstar: Lee, both students at Lakeview, have ignited a sort of underground revolution among their buddies at the school. Yes. buddies, fired up by Dani and our other super superstar, Lee, who also goes to Lakeview, are ALLLL fired up. They all chat. And in time, in the face of some initial hang-ups, A.R.T. entered the school, ready with the support of their awesome principal Lynn Sikorsky.

We've completed a six week pilot there, and will find out within the next few days if the program will start up this Fall.