Young artists will get the chance to work in studios such as these at the National Academy.

The National Academy Museum & School of the Upper East Side, located at 5 E. 89th St. off 5th Avenue, is celebrating 20 years of children’s summer programs. The school itself has been instilling the intricacies of fine and classical arts into fledgling artists since 1826.

“Our young people’s program is one of the best-kept secrets in the Upper East Side,” said Lotus do Brooks, one of the instructors in the program.

This summer, the school will continue its tradition of offering a full day art camp for youngsters and intensive art workshops for high school students who wish to live their summer through the artistic eye.

“This is a small environment,” said Maurizio Pellegrin, the director and one of the instructors of the Academy. “It is very well organized, with a dynamic structure that offers classes to professionals and to people who come for the love and passion.”

The program is separated into three classes that are available for six weeks starting June 11, though the students have the choice to stay for one week or all six, according to Brooks. Tuition for the summer camps is $450 per week, and the workshop will run for $250 per week.

The National Academy will host Martha Bloom, a professional who has over 30 years’ art experience under her belt. She will preside over the Art and Drama program, which is open to kids ages 6 to 10 and prompts them to explore the multiple avenues of creativity housed within their developing minds as painters and performers. This class serves as an introduction to several art styles such as drawing, painting, collage, printmaking and drama. The students will have an opportunity to work outside and they will also host miniature exhibitions of their work. The classes run June 11–29 and July 9–27 from 9 a.m. through 4 p.m.

The second class being offered is suited for children 9 to 13 years old and discusses the finer points of painting and drawing, such as lighting, shading and perspective. Hannah Frassinelli, an established teacher and award-winning printmaker, will guide her students through the Painting and Drawing camp with self portraits and a clothed model to give the fledgling artists an introduction to the human figure.  The students will also work in printmaking and study the concept of the still life and landscape painting. This set of classes will begin June 18 and continue until the 29th. The second set of classes begins July 9 and ends on the 20th.

The final class to be offered for the summer will be a Watercolors Workshop taught by Brooks, who is part of the teaching staff at the Dalton School and has been training and teaching the fine arts for well over 20 years. This class acts as a foundation for high school students to build their portfolios, which will prepare them for college, when they must submit samples of their current work. Students will delve into watercolors to create landscapes of nature and the city. The students will also be given the chance to visit several art galleries and museums in the area. The class will be begin July 30 and continue through Aug. 3 from 3 p.m. until 6 p.m. Tuition for this class will be $250 per week.

The school is surrounded by museums and art galleries, such as the Guggenheim, which is but a stroke of a paintbrush from the school. The teachers utilize this to the fullest extent, taking its students out of the studios and into the galleries to marvel at the works of great artists.

“We are in the center of New York City, one of the major art cities of the world,” said Pellegrin.

By John Goodrich

Susanna Coffey, “The Mill and Dipper,” 1998.

Most gallery-goers will be familiar with Susanna Coffey’s self-portraits—those upward-turning faces, small and closely modeled, set beneath panoramic views. One such painting greets visitors to Coffey’s current exhibition at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects. The rest of the show, however, concentrates on another, little-known facet of her work: the tiny, nocturnal cityscapes and landscapes—rarely larger than 8 inches across—that the artist has been producing for at least 15 years now.

Like the self-portraits, they convince in plastic terms: trees, buildings and streets settle believably into their own spaces. Painted invariably in a single session, their looser, brushier strokes evince a greater urgency of technique.

Occasionally the paintings’ colors don’t live up to this promise; the darks feel immobile in hue or studied in their designs. But more often than not, colors have a vitality equal to their brisk facture. In “Back Road” (1995), for instance, the rich glint of an ochre-green field, simmering next to a more absorbent, darker green, perfectly captures the lightfall from a small moon above. In “Grant Park 3/27/10” (2010), a view from an upper floor of a Chicago high-rise, pathways wind evocatively into the distance, dimly lit by a scattering of orange and yellow street lamps.

Best of all is “The Mill and Dipper” (1998). Within its tiny dimensions, swirls of tawny greens—trees—climb up one side, becoming bluer and straighter as they gather height. A single stroke of a barely lighter green, the denseness of a damp lawn, stretches across the panel’s bottom edge, anchoring the trees’ rise. A building’s retiring red answers across an interval of space, above which purple clouds slowly curl. An inverse arc is traced by a final series of delicate white specks—the Big Dipper, as the title tells us. But we really don’t need to know this; as marks and colors, it captures the mysterious dance between the large and the small, the light and the dark.
Susanna Coffey Nocturnes

Through April 22, Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, 208 Forsyth St., 917-861-7312, www.shfap.com.