DIRECTOR’S CORNER

November 2025

Dear friends,

As we approach the holiday season, please remember the Art League of Long Island in your annual giving.  We still have two months to celebrate our 70th anniversary, and your donations ensure that ALLI continues to be the community center for Long Island’s artists, with our beautiful Jeanie Tengelsen Gallery, our studios and our exceptional instructors and class offerings.  

We have so much to look forward to, and we can’t do it without you.  Our Pigments of Your Imagination exhibition is open, and our juror, Joshua Ruff, will be giving his talk on Thursday, November 13th.  Please join us.

We have new workshops and classes and another Try Night in store.  You can try your hand at wheel throwing, pastels, handbuilding or figure drawing, or any one of our painting, drawing, ceramics, metalsmithing, or youth or teen classes.  Our annual Holiday Fair will be held on December 6th and 7th here at ALLI.  Please save the date and make sure to give the gift of handmade artwork to a loved one this holiday season.  Or try your hand at one of our free workshops that weekend too!

Continue to renew your membership to receive discounts on classes, and a our renewed perk this season, a discount on holiday lighting for your home.  Thank you to Lumex Lighting for this amazing offer.

Says Anna (she/her),  “The community at ALLI offers a safe and inspiring space where artists can freely create and support one another. By contributing to the ALLI community, I feel a sense of fulfillment, knowing I might offer the same encouragement and connection to another artist who feels isolated, uncertain, or alone. ”

We are a community and there is space for you here.  You make that happen.   Support ALLI this year, ensure we are able to provide this space for future artists for another 70 years. 

Sincerely,

Marianne Della Croce

Executive Director

October 2025

Dear friends,

As we continue to celebrate the fall season, I want to take a moment to ask that you consider the Art League of Long Island in your annual seasonal giving.  We have three easy ways for you to give.

The first is to renew your membership.  Your membership helps the Art League with its general operating costs, while giving you added benefits of discounts on our workshops and classes, discounts on local art supply stores, and shared information on our website.

The second is to help support one of our upcoming events.  We have invited acclaimed potter Martha Grover for a practicum on her porcelain pottery techniques with a meet and greet on October 17th.  I would love for you to join us then, enjoy some light fare, spend time with fellow artists and learn something new.  You can purchase your tickets here.

Lastly, you can make a donation, which helps to ensure that we are continuing to inspire future artists, like CJ Escobar-Rodgers, another of our Resident Artists from the 2024-2025 year.  When asked how the Art League helped to shape his artistic practice, CJ said, “I struggled, undeniably, after leaving the structured, communal environment of an academic art setting. Transitioning into a more isolated context was jarring, but it also offered clarity—about what I need from my practice and what I had once taken for granted. The shift revealed that what had sustained my work wasn’t just the rigor of critique or access to resources, but a sense of shared momentum and mutual curiosity. In the wake of these personal shifts, The Art League and Resident Artist Membership program became anchors. They offered me a renewed sense of belonging within my immediate community—enough comfort and motivation to begin taking risks again. That support allowed me to explore entirely new directions in my work, including robotics, tufting, experimental surface treatments, and broader stylistic and conceptual departures.  Through the Art League, I’ve started to view my practice differently—not just as a pursuit of formal or conceptual resolution, but as a byproduct of the relationships I build here: grounded in shared interests, casual collaboration, and the occasional corny joke. That shift has been unexpectedly grounding. It reminded me that art-making is not just about ideas or aesthetics, but about the people and conditions that allow those things to take root.”

Help support the Art League for years to come, so future artists like CJ have a place to continue their artistic development.  Donate now. Click the button.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Marianne Della Croce

Executive Director

 Photo of CJ Escobar-Rodgers