Dear NYLS Community Members,
This week we celebrate Climate Week NYC—the largest annual climate event of its kind—with the rest of our New York community. Legal professionals, business leaders, advocates, and artists play an important role in driving change and powering solutions that have great environmental benefits for us all.
Art, much like law, is a reflection of community values, ideas, and aspirations. With NYLS’s new Tribeca Neighborhood Arts Initiative, I’m proud that we will host a series of temporary art exhibitions throughout the academic year. Our first exhibition “Tasha in Tribeca” features the work of 23-year-old environmental surrealist artist Anastasia (Tasha) Natrella, who grew up in Tribeca and Battery Park City. Her works, now on display in the Fifth Floor Lounge, are a reminder of how law and art can move climate action forward and create a better world not just for today but for future generations.
I hope you will stop by this new exhibition to be inspired.
Anthony W. Crowell
Dean and President
Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Center for New York City and State Law
“I like to push the aspects of art and put as much into my work as possible. In Tribeca, you see so many different qualities of life that you might not see in other parts of Manhattan. When you come to Tribeca, it feels like a home, and I aim to express that in my paintings.”
TASHA IN TRIBECA
Environmental surrealist artist Anastasia (Tasha) Natrella is a longtime resident of Tribeca. Adopted at age three from St. Petersburg, Russia, Natrella credits art as the overriding constant across her life. Early participation in Manhattan Youth’s Downtown Community Center and the Battery Park City Conservancy led the artist to Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, where she earned degrees in both Art and Education and was presented the 2024 Berman Museum of Art Award for Artistic Achievement. Natrella’s improvisational artistic approach reflects a desire to push technique and boundaries. Her art explores the dualities present throughout life in the natural and the spiritual worlds, and her use of vibrant colors and strong textures seeks to intrigue viewers and engage them in considering different perspectives.
The two exhibit companion pieces, The Duality of Water and Earth & Fire, forcibly intersect the four classical elements—water, air, earth, and fire—to question the tension caused by both their negative and positive impacts. Natrella urges viewers to “engage in understanding and action, knowing that, as much as we try to be in control of the elements, they can never be truly mastered.” Natrella completes this five-piece exhibit with Three Portals: Mountains, City, Ocean; Hudson River Esplanade Enchantress; and The Mountain Lake Tree Sees All. The pathways presented by Three Portals encompass the value of choice amidst beauty both natural and human-made; the cosmic stare of Enchantress greets sea creatures and skyscrapers alike; the branches of Mountain Lake Tree present a vision of nature’s onlookers and inhabitants.
