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Inspiring U | Jun 26, 2025

What's New With U? June 2025

Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts student in the McKinley Amphitheater

Dear Friends,

In three short days we begin Usdan’s 58th (and my 11th!) summer! As our mission says, "when we welcome the diverse group of passionate young artists here each summer the heart of Usdan comes alive."

Our community often describes summer at Usdan as magical. To me, it is not just our esteemed faculty and programs that make Usdan magical, but also Usdan’s ability to immediately transport anyone who enters our gates into a creative oasis. In our increasingly complicated world, we invite you to join us in creating a space where students, parents, and guests can step away from the tensions of everyday life, reset, and feel at ease in our welcoming and inclusive environment.

I hope to see you all this summer!

Lauren Brandt Schloss

P.S. Read on to meet our new chairs of the Art Department, for a teaser of the alum and vocalist on The Voice opening our 2025 Festival season, and more. :) 

 


Love is...

Community Days 2025

 

Community Days are some of the best to visit campus! Join us on Wednesday, July 23 for a day filled with art, performances, raffles, and the magic of Usdan. Registration is required to attend the event, RSVP today! Donations are strongly encouraged.

 


New Faculty Spotlight: Krista & Safia

Long Island visual arts educators & artists Krista Biedenbach & Dr. Safia Fatimi join Usdan Leadership Team 

     

(L – R) Usdan's newly appointed Art Department Co-Chairs Krista Biedenbach & Dr. Safia Fatimi

Usdan is pleased to introduce Krista Biedenbach and Dr. Safia Fatimi as the acclaimed summer program’s new co-chairs of the Art Department. Biedenbach and Fatimi draw on their extensive experiences as Long Island public school visual arts educators as well as practicing artists to continue to provide creative youth top-tier arts instruction in a welcoming, nature-filled environment.

Krista and Safia took time to speak with us about their work, their love of art, and how they found themselves in the field of education. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 

What has your relationship to Usdan been prior to taking this position?

Krista Biedenbach: This is my 10th year at Usdan, which I’m very excited about. I started back in 2021 as Chris Vivas’ assistant. I’ve been friends with Chris for quite a while, and he was the one who told me to go apply, so I was excited to be his assistant. Later I started teaching as a Painting and Drawing Lead Teacher.    

Safia Fatimi: Both of my children attended Usdan — I am sad that I never attended. My girls had a lovely and enriching experience being in nature, making connections, and building their artistic practice, in both Visual Art and Music. As a parent, I felt great about sending my children into a space where they would be accepted to explore, be who they are, and get to learn and create with other artists. I remember being impressed with the daily Festival Performances, the facilities, and the high-caliber staff.

Krista Biedenbach with her Painting & Drawing students at Usdan. 

What keeps you coming back to Usdan?  

KB: Usdan is truly magical, and I think it’s even more exciting to see the students experiencing the same feeling as soon as they come to campus. Usdan is so unique, so different, so welcoming, so warm, and everybody really cares about growing together.  

It’s also different from a traditional school setting in the sense that it really feels like a collaboration between the teachers and the students. I especially love how this shows up on Community Days at the Open Studios. Oh my gosh, everything that the students can come up with is just incredible.  

Could you speak a bit about your personal practice as an artist?  

SF: I started out as a commercial photographer and now I’m working towards bridging analog and digital in my art practice. So, I’m doing both hands-on and digital montage. My current work deals with self-portraiture, the media, consumerism, and beauty standards for women.  

My goal for this year was to show my work more. And it seems like it’s just kind of working out. I have been showing my work quite a bit around Long Island. I’m also on the board of the Art Guild, and they honored me in a ceremony earlier this month.  

KB: When I was studying in undergrad, I focused on printmaking and sculpture. After graduating, it shifted. I still do some printmaking here and there, but I was attracted to using mixed media, particularly on a larger scale. So, then I started incorporating spray paint collage and continually experimenting with different materials to come up with more interesting imagery. 

Then in my teaching at Usdan, I’ve found a lot of inspiration in working with the students to generate different ideas. Flip things over, cut things apart, see it in a different way, that’s something I value in my own art making, and also something I highly encourage when I work with students.  

Visit Dr. Safia Fatimi's show "Double Exposure: A Survey of Works by NY arts educators" at Memorial Art Gallery at Farmingdale State College through August 15, 2025.

I saw that you researched smartphones and adolescents when getting your PhD at the Teaching College. How has that research influenced your style of teaching?  

SF: I think having hands-on experience is a lot more rewarding than only working in digital. With my teaching, I try to bring in as much hands-on stuff as possible. In my teaching, I work with sun prints, cyanotypes, and collages. I try to incorporate old media such as pictures found in books to create new images.  

What are you most excited about taking on the role as Co-Chairs of the Art Department?  

KB: I'm so excited to be able to work with such a warm, happy, positive person such as Safia. I’m getting my doctorate right now, and Safia also attended the same school, the Teacher’s College at Columbia University and had the same advisor. Even before I met Safia, there was that connection. It’s a small world in that sense. A lot of things that are valued at the Teacher’s College — such as the idea of exploration, experimentation, and giving students the agency to create their own work — also aligns with what Usdan does well.   

I'm also really excited to be able to assist with everything that's going on and not spend so much time in one specific studio, but to embrace all of it. 

SF: I am excited to learn from both the students and my fellow colleagues. I recently received my leadership certification, and I am looking forward to using what I learned in my role at Usdan. I'm also looking forward to being in nature, slowing down, and getting my steps in. 

Lastly, regarding our summer theme, how does love show up in your work as a teacher and artist?  

SF: That’s a good question. I love all of my students. I put a lot of love in my teaching and my own artistic practice. I also think love can be connected to attention, right? And so, those two areas for me are the amount of attention, detail, and fine-tuning that I bring to my artistic and teaching practice.  

KB: First, we’re all at Usdan for the love of it. We’re there for the students, the teachers, everyone. We’re there for the arts, and for the experience. There must be love in it, because otherwise you wouldn’t do it.  

I think it will be really interesting to see how the children interpret the idea of love, especially with what challenging times we are living through right now. I’m really excited to facilitate how the students apply the theme to their artwork.

For information on Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts’ Art Department and 2025 class offerings, including information on how to enroll for this summer, visit usdan.org/art. 


Volunteer at Usdan

 

This summer, our theme is LOVE — and we truly mean it when we say: we love our volunteers! You are the heart of our events, and we are so grateful when you offer up your time to support our campus and our young artists. Fill out our quick Volunteer Interest Form to sign up. 

 


Alum Spotlight: Dan Kiernan

'Every day as a student, you’re itching to get on that stage'

Dan Kiernan performing on the 27th season of "The Voice." 

This time last year, alum Dan Kiernan was two months into competing in NBC’s Season 27 of “The Voice.” This year, he will open Usdan’s 2025 Festival Season, a full-circle moment for a kid who saw Broadway actors performing on the amphitheater stage and decided he too could make a living as a professional artist.  

On “The Voice” Dan advanced through early rounds, becoming a member of Team Kelsea Ballerini, and reached the knockout rounds where he performed Shontelle’s “Impossible” in a head-to-head matchup against a teammate. In choosing him to be on her team, Kelsea famously said: ‘I’m on the Dan Train.’  

“It was probably the most nerve wracking, most terrifying, greatest experience of my life,” Dan shared. “The full circle of coming back to Usdan now is that it was like summer camp because it was 100 musically inclined, talented, creative, passionate people living in a hotel for a summer filming a TV show. Everyone kept saying ‘Is this what summer camp was like?’ and I was like yes, ‘I went to this exact summer camp.’” 

Dan went to Usdan in 2006 and 2007 after his freshman and sophomore year of high school, participating in Musical Theater Rep, now called Usdan Troupe, his second year. Dan remembers crying after his first day of camp. When his mom asked what was wrong, he said: “Everyone was like me. We talked about our favorite Elphaba in “Wicked” at lunch.” “The Voice” offered a similar sense of belonging.  

Alum & pop singer Dan Kiernan as a Musical Theater student at Usdan. Dan will open the 2025 Festival Season on Monday, June 30. He remembers daydreaming: "I’m going to come back on day and perform on this stage." 

Dan says his Festival on Monday, June 30 will be a “montage-medley” of everything he got to sing on “The Voice” (which may or may not involve Chappel Roan). He also says he may do a little musical theater to wink back at young Dan who decided one day he wanted to be like the artists he saw perform at Usdan.  

“My best teaser is that I’m probably going to cry because going to Assembly, [now Festival], every day when you’re a student, you’re itching to get on that stage,” Dan said. “I remember daydreaming: ‘I’m going to come back on day and perform on this stage.’ So, I’m very, very excited. Also, my mom’s coming, and she will also cry.”  

Crying after his first day at Usdan, crying on the amphitheater stage, and turning chairs and heads on “The Voice” — it is safe to say Dan brings emotion to his work. Many tweets about Dan’s performances on the show reflect this, one reading: "Dan actually got up there and sang a real song, poured his heart out.”  

For Dan, this comes from a place of self-love, giving the audience the opportunity to really “feel everything.”  

“The beauty in believing in yourself, in your own choices, and your own art expression is where love manifests most for me,” Dan said, reflecting on how his upcoming performance will relate to the summer theme of love.  

     

Photos courtesy of Dan Kiernan

As many students turned professional artists attest, the journey to a true and honest expression of self is a windy one.  

After doing theater in high school and going to college for theater at University of Arts in Philadelphia, he started working professional theater jobs, leading him to work on cruise ships. While doing that, he started to participate in music shows, eventually finding himself as a solo act.  

“I stepped into this solo artist persona almost by accident but then realized that it was really honoring my inner child,” Dan shared. “That’s what I always did in the shower, in my bedroom, I was always putting on shows and it was always ‘Dan Kiernan in Concert.’”  

Dan started pursuing music full time in 2018, making a living as a singer in New York City, performing at The Bitter End, Sony Hall, the Bowery Electric, and other well-known NYC venues. His singles include “Cutting Ties,” “Running with Scissors,” and “The Other Side” and have amassed over 100,000 streams.   

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“Usdan really taught me the idea of community and collaboration and the importance of having others around you. I think the difference in doing music versus theater is you end up working alone a lot because you know, it’s just you.” 

In the spirit of balancing his need for community and his love for singing, Dan started producing a music festival, originally called “Queer-cella” before Coachella attempted to sue the festival in 2024 for referencing their name. “Now it’s just: name pending.”   

Throughout Dan’s journey in the theater and music world, his community from Usdan has been there to support.  

“There’s a different level of rooting for each other. We went to each other’s high school shows and then went into professional worlds, and you know we’re rooting each other’s professional lives on too. It’s a really special part of the Usdan family.” 

Catch Dan Kiernan in Concert on The McKinley Amphitheater Stage Monday, June 30 at 12:05 and 12:35! Can’t make it Monday? Guests are invited to join Monday through Friday until August 22 at the same time. Check out this year’s Festival Schedule here. Festival Live Streaming is also available daily on our YouTube channel.  

A world away close to home

Enrollment for 4B open through July 28

 

Still need to finalize your summer plans? It's not too late to join the creative oasis of Usdan! Our second session runs July 28 through August 22

 


Usdan Out & About Town

(L – R) COO Victoria Ellerbe, Executive Director Lauren Brandt Schloss, Music Co-Chair Eric Huckins, Music Co-Chair Nicole Davidson, Art Co-Chair Safia Fatimi & Art Co-Chair Krista Biedenbach at Kumo in Plainview.

 

The Dance Department poses at this year's Staff Orientation on May 31. 

 

(L - R) Lauren Brandt SchlossEd Joseph attend a reading of the 1999 Broadway hit "The Smell of the Kill," written by Usdan board member, alum & playwright Michele Lowe

 

 


 

 

Calendar


 

 

Monday, June 30

Festival Performance: Dan Kiernan

12:10 p.m. & 12:35 p.m. | McKinley Amphitheater | Usdan Campus

 

Tuesday, July 1

Festival Performance: AIM by Kyle Abraham

12:10 p.m. & 12:35 p.m. | McKinley Amphitheater | Usdan Campus

 

Wednesday, July 2

Festival Performance: IMGE Dance

12:10 p.m. & 12:35 p.m. | McKinley Amphitheater | Usdan Campus

 

Thursday, July 3

Spirit Day: Crazy Sock Day

All Day | Usdan Campus

 

Thursday, July 3

Festival Performance: Zach & Zak

12:10 p.m. & 12:35 p.m. | McKinley Amphitheater | Usdan Campus

 

Friday, July 4

Usdan closed for the holiday.

All day

 

Wednesday, July 23

July Community Day (AKA U Benefit)

10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. | Usdan Campus

 

Saturday, August 9

Hip-Hop Pool Party

12:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. | Usdan Campus