Contents for December 17, 2018
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1. Tei Blow, FF Alumn, receives Cage-Cunningham Fellowship
2. David Antonio Cruz, Doreen Garner, Nyugen Smith, Juana Valdes, FF Alumns, receive Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant 2018
3. Dotty Attie, Patty Chang, Beverly Fishman, Kate Gilmore, Betty Tompkins, FF Alumns, receive Anonymous Was a Woman Grants 2018
4. George Ferrandi, FF Alumn, received 2018 Makers Muse Artist Award
5. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/305505475
6. Ron Athey, FF Alumn, receives 2018 Art Matters Fellowship
7. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, FF Alumn, at Transart Institute, Manhattan, January 10, 2019
8. Paul Lamarre, Melissa Wolf, FF Alumns, at EIDIA House, Brooklyn, thru Dec. 31
9. Tamar Ettun, FF Alumn, December news
10. Mary Beth Edelson, FF Alumn, at Kunstalle Münster, Germany, thru March 10, 2019
11. Eileen Myles, FF Alumn, in The New York Times, December 11
12. Jay Critchley, FF Alum, now online at www.jaycritchley.com
13. Doug Skinner, FF Alumn, new publication
14. LAPD, FF Alumn, at Skid Row History Museum & Archive, Los Angeles, CA, December 22, and more
14. LAPD, FF Alumn, at Skid Row History Museum & Archive, Los Angeles, CA, December 22, and more
15. Sonya Rapoport, FF Alumn, at Casemore Kirkeby Gallery, San Francisco, CA, opening Jan. 12
16. Harley Spiller, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/305560163
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1. Tei Blow, FF Alumn, receives Cage-Cunningham Fellowship
The New York Times
DANCE
Baryshnikov Arts Center Announces 5 New Fellows
by Peter Libbey
Dec. 6, 2018
To celebrate the centennial of the choreographer Merce Cunningham, the Baryshnikov Arts Center will support five artists this year rather than one as Cage-Cunningham fellows. The organization announced Thursday that Charles Atlas, Tei Blow, Phyllis Chen, Liz Gerring and Silas Riener are to be awarded fellowships.
“On this special occasion in 2019 we honor the collaborative spirit that Merce Cunningham epitomized by giving fellowships to five artists,” Mikhail Baryshnikov, the Baryshnikov Arts Center’s founder and artistic director, said in a statement. “It’s our way of celebrating Merce’s 100th birthday: with a diverse group of innovative artists and their collaborators in the studio experimenting, creating and sharing art.”
Baryshnikov Arts Center received several designated gifts to make a financial increase possible; this year it has $100,000 to award, up from $50,000.
Mr. Atlas, a filmmaker; Mr. Blow, a multimedia artist; Ms. Chen, a composer and musician; and Ms. Gerring, a dancer and choreographer, will also receive 40 studio hours spread throughout the fellowship period and an additional residency week. At the end of their weeks, each will present a studio show open to the public.
As a part of his fellowship, Mr. Riener, an alumnus of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and a dancer and choreographer, will conduct workshops on Cunningham’s technique and choreography for students at New York University, the Ailey School, the Juilliard School and Harvard University. These will culminate in a lecture-demonstration by Mr. Reiner and the students on Feb. 16 at the Howard Gilman Performance Space.
(c) 2018 The New York Times Company
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2. David Antonio Cruz, Doreen Garner, Nyugen Smith, Juana Valdes, FF Alumns, receive Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant 2018
The Joan Mitchell Foundation is pleased to announce the 2018 recipients of our annual Painters & Sculptors Grants, which provide 25 artists with $25,000 each in unrestricted funds. The recipients are:
Felipe Baeza, Brooklyn, NY
Cindy Cheng, Baltimore, MD
Yanira Collado, North Miami, FL
Elisabeth Condon, New York, NY
David Antonio Cruz, Brooklyn, NY
Elliot Doughtie, Baltimore, MD
Addoley Dzegede, Portland, OR
Krista Franklin, Chicago, IL
Doreen Garner, Brooklyn, NY
EJ Hill, Los Angeles, CA
Lisa Jarrett, Portland, OR
Elizabeth Malaska, Portland, OR
Joiri Minaya, Bronx, NY
Maia Cruz Palileo, Brooklyn, NY
Wendy Red Star, Portland, OR
Naomi Reis, Brooklyn, NY
Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Silver Spring, MD
Kenny Rivero, New York, NY
Lauren Roche, Minneapolis, MN
Evelyn Rydz, Boston, MA
Blair Saxon-Hill, Portland, OR
Nyugen E. Smith, Jersey City, NJ
Juana Valdes, Miami, FL and Amherst, MA
Jose Villalobos, San Antonio, TX
Brittney Leeanne Williams, Chicago, IL
The unrestricted nature of the grants aligns with artist Joan Mitchell’s recognition that having the time and freedom to create is as important to the development of one’s practice as support for specific endeavors. As such, the Foundation, whose mission was set forth in Mitchell’s will, remains committed to providing artists with the flexibility to determine how best to use the grants to advance their careers. In addition to the financial support, recipients of the Painters & Sculptors Grants become eligible to apply for residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans and gain access to a network of arts professionals, who can provide consultations on career development and financial management.
To be eligible for a grant, artists are nominated by artist peers and arts professionals selected from throughout the US, and are then chosen through an anonymous multi-phase jurying process. Over the last several years, the Foundation has increased its attention to equity and access in the selection process, expanding the pool of nominators and jurors to include more geographic, ethnic, and experiential diversity and ensure that the nominees reflect a spectrum of backgrounds and approaches to their work. Among this year’s class of Painters & Sculptors grantees, more than 70% of the grantees identify as female and approximately 80% as non-white, with those identifying as Black, African, African-American, and Caribbean comprising 36% of that number and Hispanic, Latinx, and Chicanx individuals 20%. The artists also range in age from 28 to 59 and hail from 10 states across the US.
The grant recipients’ work represents a wide range of artistic techniques, approaches, and concerns, and engages with such pressing issues as migration, identity, notions of belonging, and representation within the art historical canon and in social and political spheres, among other important subjects. The final selections for the grants are made with a particular eye toward artists whose work has contributed to important artistic and cultural discourse, but who have nonetheless remained under-recognized on a national level.
“Joan Mitchell recognized the essential need to support artists in the process of creating. We at the Foundation hear regularly from artists, at all career stages, that many of the challenges they face stem from a lack of support structures for visual artists, and a belief that support for art can be separated from support for artists. We remain dedicated to providing unrestricted funding through our Painters & Sculptors Grants, as a way to acknowledge that each artist knows what is best for them and what will best serve the next phase of their practice,” said Christa Blatchford, CEO of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. “We are delighted to announce and welcome our 2018 recipients. Their work is exciting and compelling, and certainly deserving of greater recognition.”
The announcement of the 2018 grantees coincides with the launch of Widening Circles: Portraits from the Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Community at 25 Years, a project developed by the Foundation to examine the impact and importance of ongoing support for artists. Widening Circles is comprised of a book and companion exhibition, which opened on December 6, and features testimonials and studio portraits by 25 artists. The project captures the real-life experiences of working artists and highlights the realities and business of being an artist, underscoring the importance of financial stability to artistic innovation and the need for and nature of meaningful funding. The exhibition will remain open through May 31, 2019 at the Foundation’s offices at 137 W. 25th Street, 2nd Floor, with public hours Tuesdays through Fridays from 12:00 to 3:00 pm.
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3. Dotty Attie, Patty Chang, Beverly Fishman, Kate Gilmore, Betty Tompkins, FF Alumns, receive Anonymous Was a Woman Grants 2018
Long-Running ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ Grants Awarded for 2018, With Betty Tompkins and Deborah Roberts Among 10 Winners
BY Alex Greenberger POSTED 12/11/18
The once-secretive Anonymous Was a Woman program has named the 10 winners of its 2018 grants, which recognize women artists over the age of 40. Each winner receives $25,000.
Started in 1996 as a response to the National Endowment for the Arts’s decision to stop funding individual artists, the grants had long been awarded by a donor who chose to remain anonymous. But earlier this year, the New York-based artist Susan Unterberg revealed herself as the funder in an article in the New York Times. Winners of the awards, now in their 23rd edition, are selected by a group of female art historians, curators, writers, and past winners.
In an interview, Unterberg said the awards highlight artists who have established themselves in the field. “They have to have a substantial body of work,” Unterberg told ARTnews. “They’re not novices.”
Among this year’s winners are Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, who is organizing the forthcoming 2019 edition of the Havana Biennial, and Patty Chang, whose video The Wandering Lake, which has previously been shown at the 2016 Shanghai Biennale and the Queens Museum in New York, will be exhibited next year at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
The full list of 2018 Anonymous Was a Woman grantees follows below.
Dotty Attie
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Patty Chang
Beverly Fishman
Kate Gilmore
Heather Hart
Deborah Roberts
Rocío Rodríguez
Michèle Stephenson
Betty Tompkins
Copyright 2018, Art Media ARTNEWS, llc. 110 Greene Street, 2nd Fl., New York, N.Y. 10012. All rights reserved.
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4. George Ferrandi, FF Alumn, received 2018 Makers Muse Artist Award
Announcing the 2018 Makers Muse Artist Awardees!
Every year, we pleasantly shock a small handful of remarkable individuals with an unsolicited cash gift. We strive to find people who are making an extraordinary creative contribution to the world, but are not “the usual suspects” when it comes to arts funding.
This year we broke the good news to:
An activist, physician, muralist, impresario of public art, and community builder who has been working on Navajo lands to organize collaborative public art works since 1987.
A die-hard photographer who has tenaciously brought images of hope and grief from Afghanistan to the world.
A printmaker and painter who tinkers with rainbows, ancestral magic, and the femme myth.
Two proprietresses of a hedonist survivalist enclave who create story, taxidermy, and ritual about justice, psychedelics, and the wild.
The co-founder of a global multi-disciplinary artist collective whose work poetically and subversively takes a deep dive into Middle East politics and culture.
A multimedia artist, restorer of religious icons, and orchestrator of public spectacle who is co-creating a tradition to mark the transition of the North Star 13,000 years in the future.
We congratulate this year’s crew who join the legacy of 57 other Makers Muse Artists from the past decade. The legacy lives on!
George Ferrandi
www.georgeferrandi.com/
www.jumpstar.love/
George Ferrandi is an American artist originally from Baltimore, Maryland whose performance, installation and participatory projects address issues of vulnerability, impermanence, fallibility and spectacle, often through experimental approaches to narrative. Employing a unique humor and a deep sense of humanity, her work stimulates a rethinking of cultural assumptions. Her long-term project Jump!Star unites artists, musicians and scientists with communities to invent cultural traditions now that can be celebrated when our current North Star rotates out of position and our next pole star moves into place.
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5. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/305505475
EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE8
The theory that all knowledge is derived from sense experience.
FOR THE FULL SET:
http://greatblankness.com/portfolio-gallery/empirical-knowledge/
PZ, December 2018
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6. Ron Athey, FF Alumn, receives 2018 Art Matters Fellowship
Art Matters is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2018 grants to individual artists. The foundation awarded 24 fellowships of 7,500 USD each for ongoing work that breaks ground aesthetically and socially.
In announcing the grants, Art Matters Director Abbey Williams said, “These incredible artists both experiment with form and address issues of justice and liberation in ways that we believe have the potential to catalyze change. Excited by how they bring their lived experiences within various geographic and cultural contexts to their practice, we hope our no-strings-attached funding can help amplify their important voices.”
2018 Grantees:
Leila Abdelrazaq (Detroit, MI)
Ron Athey (Los Angeles, CA)
Natalie Ball (Chiloquin, OR)
Chloë Bass (Brooklyn, NY)
Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik (Oakland, CA)
Lenka Clayton (Pittsburgh, PA)
Colectivo Moriviví (San Juan, PR)
Lauren Halsey (Los Angeles, CA)
Teresa Hernández (San Juan, PR)
James T. Hong (Baldwin Park, CA)
Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick (New Orleans, LA)
Baseera Khan (Brooklyn, NY)
Autumn Knight (New York, NY)
El Franco Lee II (Houston, TX)
Mev Luna (Cicero, IL)
Charles Preston (Chicago, IL)
Reginald Dwayne Betts and Titus Kaphar (New Haven, CT)
Gisela Rosario Ramos (San Juan, PR)
Jordan Seaberry (Riverside, RI)
Ahya Simone (Detroit, MI)
Jennifer Taylor (San Francisco, CA)
Texas Isaiah (Los Angeles, CA)
Dani Tirrell (Seattle, WA)
Rory Wakemup (Morton, MN)
We would also like to congratulate Art Matters co-founder and donor Laura Donnelley on receiving a 2018 Montblanc Cultural Foundation Arts Patronage Award. At the award ceremony earlier this fall, Art Matters Advisor Sacha Yanow spoke to the nature of Laura’s philanthropy, “Art Matters is not a family foundation but it certainly is a family in the best sense of family. We are now three generations of artists, board and staff, working together to put forward liberation, beauty and justice in the world through art. We thank you, Laura, for the love and trust that has built this.”
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7. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, FF Alumn, at Transart Institute, Manhattan, January 10, 2019
The Body I Call Home
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, Instructor
For more information: https://www.transartinstitute.org/residencies/
Participants travel by foot to several locations within the area of 14th Street in Manhattan while paying close attention to their bodies in relationship to street life, indoor spaces, crowds, as well as some of the specific bodies that they may come across with. Walking and writing are the main tools to be deployed during this workshop, hence combining movement with pause. During each stop on the route, the group will devote time to engage in what I refer to in my own work as writing as performance. This is a creative effort that envisions writing as an embodied process and reading as an invitation to enact the text. Some of the bodily concepts to be investigated include expansion, contraction, porosity, bilocation and invisibility. With the exception of the final group share of the writings, most of this workshop will observe silence.
This is a highly experiential workshop that unfolds as an unscripted performance. The instructor will guide participants from three to four places where they will engage in writing as performance: a space considered sacred (a shrine), a room at a public library, a former bathroom at a community center, and a diner or a café. These sites might change depending on their availability.
The Body I Call Home (c) 2018 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo
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8. Paul Lamarre, Melissa Wolf, FF Alumns, at EIDIA House, Brooklyn, thru Dec. 31
Plato’s Cave Presents
A very special Holiday Salon
“Bob Witz: An Orbit All By Himself”
December 12 to 31, 2018
Opening Reception to be announced soon!
Hours 11- 6pm, Tuesday – Sunday (or by appointment)
@ EIDIA House
14 Dunham Place, Brooklyn 11249
EIDIA House announces the 29th initiative of its ongoing PLATO’S CAVE exhibition, started in 2009. This special holiday salon will feature works from Bob Witz’s wry and witty “Milk Carton” series as well as painting portraits of characters conjured from the artist’s deeply esoteric imagination.
The result of a meditation inspired originally by the lunches Witz’s mother prepared for him as a child in Tomah, Wisconsin, “Milk Cartons” – we dare to propose – is a more subversive twin to Warhol’s Soup Cans.
It is an honor for EIDIA House to curate and install Bob Witz’s work in the Plato’s Cave vault space. While many of the sculptures exist in private and public collections, it will be the first ever exhibit of the near total compilation of Witz’s “Milk Carton” series, dating back to the 1980’s and including a number of works created in 2018.
Bob recounts the origin story in his characteristic wry terms:
“One day, I had this milk carton and an orange juice container and I thought I’d make some art of it.”
To further commemorate this often overlooked artist, EIDIA is also in the process of making a documentary film on Witz, a mainstay of New York’s downtown scene in the 1970’s and 80’s. The film (Bob Witz Untitled) will feature Witz’s paintings and sculptures, and the literary arts publication “APPEARANCES” to capture the artist’s – still at work in his modest one room studio loft – compelling and ever-unfolding story. Including interviews with fellow artists, colleagues, scholars and friends, the film is also a portrait of the artistic circle that spanned the 60 years of Witz’s enduring art practice.
Like us at EIDIA House, they have plenty of good things to say:
“I immediately fell in love and was enamored with his works the “Milk Cartons”. The work is very much of its time using non-traditional art materials and the process. In the Art World Bob is an orbit all by himself…somebody identified Bob as an outsider artist-no way…he was very much an insider but, as an insider he was an outsider.”
– Jean-Noël Herlin, an artist, curator, archivist and bookseller
“I love it [Bob’s work] – so quirky and eccentric. He really gets involved with strange materials.
He has a really good ‘I don’t care attitude.'”
– Betty Tompkins, painter
“I really don’t like categories, but Bob is an outsider / insider because he’s lived in New York all these years.”
– Bill Jensen, painter
“Bob is kind of like the last bohemian.”
– Phong Bui, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail
“Bob’s a trip!”
– Joe Lewis, visual artist, photographer, musician, art critic, former co-director of FASHION MODA, 1978-1993
Bob Witz was born in Tomah, Wisconsin in 1934. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1959. His correspondence with Artforum magazine in 1973 was published by the editor Robert Pincus-Witten as “Robert Witz: Selections from the Tomah Letters”. He is founder and editor of the literary arts magazine, APPEARANCES 1976 – 2000. Witz had a retrospective at the New York Studio School, curated by Phong Bui in 2012 and numerous one person and group shows over the years. His works are in many private and public collections.
For PLATO’S CAVE, EIDIA House Inc. co-directors Melissa P. Wolf and Paul Lamarre (aka EIDIA) curate invited fellow artists to create an installation with (in some cases) an accompanying limited edition. EIDIA House functions as an art gallery and meeting place, collaborating with artists to create “socially radical” art forms framed within the discipline of aesthetic research.
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9. Tamar Ettun, FF Alumn, December news
Dear friends,
Four yrs of work and a few days before jubilation closes at the Barrick Museum, thank you those who made it out there and for recommending it to your traveling friends! It was so nice to receive notes and pics from Las Vegas. Thank you to the museum staff for taking such good care of the works, first time all the inflatables are shown next to each other, continuously inflated.
For those of you who didn’t get the chance to see in person, attached some pics and press:
Brooklyn Rail by Nicole Miller
Las Vegas Weekly by Dawn-Michelle Baude
Interview with Andreana Donahue for Settlers and Nomads
I made a new video for the exhibition to tie my abstracted inflatable shapes into army parachutes. it consists of found footage I devoured from the internet of almost every paratroopers unit listed on wikipedia, including a female jumper from Bangladesh, and Russian PR. (lots of army pr actually) you can watch a 5 mins excerpt of the 30 mins vid here — https://vimeo.com/304481375
I started working on the very very last performance segment ORANGE which will premiere at Pioneer Works in July 11 and 12, 2019. This piece will take a darker tone than the saturated tetralogy – in an end of the world beach setting – and a deeply personal one. even tho its months away im already equally terrified and excited.
After five yrs of work with the precious moving company im passing the torch to Rebecca Pristoop who will lead the group. it’ll go back to the original shape of a research group, and im excited to be part of the collective as a mover, much anticipation to this next chapter.
The zine from our last social project with Crown Heights teens with pictures from their Brooklyn Museum performance and story-interviews by Carlos Jimenez Cahua, Amy Zion, and Christina Olivares is out! Beautifully designed by Other Means, you can see here https://issuu.com/themovingcompany/docs/tmc01_orange-zine.180731_ebee1a7da31aaa
love and joy and all the good wishes, Jupiter in Sagittarius after 12 yrs and you must be feeling good. if you don’t, force yourself!
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10. Mary Beth Edelson, FF Alumn, at Kunstalle Münster, Germany, thru March 10, 2019
Mary Beth Edelson
Nobody Messes with Her
A Retrospective
Kunsthalle Münster, Germany
December 15, 2018 – March 10, 2019
Mary Beth Edelson (born 1933 in East Chicago, lives in New York) is one of the most important figures of feminist art of the 1970s. In her career, the American artist has pursued a continuing exploration of female identity. Humorous, ironic, subtle and provocative, she deconstructs the traditional iconography of femininity in her photographs, paintings, collages and performances, questions societal constructions of femininity and challenges hegemonic patriarchal values.
In the first solo exhibition by Edelson in a German institution, the Kunsthalle Münster presents works from almost five decades of the pioneering artist’s work, which plays an important role in the history of the feminist art movement and whose works are still very topical. The extensive presentation offers the opportunity to get to know the work of a hitherto little-known artist in Germany who must be named in the same breath as artists such as Nancy Spero, Ana Mendieta, Miriam Schapiro and Carolee Schneemann. The encounter with her writings, letters and notes beyond her art provides insights into the feminist movement and creates an awareness of the cultural significance and diversity of feminist art.
– Merle Radtke, Curator and Director, Kunsthalle Münster
David Lewis, 88 Eldridge Street, Fifth Floor, New York, NY 10002
+1 212 966 7990 | www.davidlewisgallery.com | info@davidlewisgallery.com
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11. Eileen Myles, FF Alumn, in The New York Times, December 11
Please visit this link:
thank you.
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12. Jay Critchley, FF Alum, now online at www.jaycritchley.com
Greetings,
Please check out my TEDx Talk: Portrait of the Artist as corporation
I ask, If a corporation is an individual, why cant’s an individual be a corporation (great tax breaks and bankruptcy protection)? Thanks, Jay
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13. Doug Skinner, FF Alumn, new publication
“The Alphonse Allais Reader” is now available from Black Scat Books!
Drawn from Black Scat’s eight editions of the master French absurdist, this compendium is a sublime introduction to the wordplay and black humor that shocked and dazzled Bohemian Paris in the raucous “Banquet Years.” It includes the celebrated pataphysical text “A Thoroughly Parisian Drama”–a favorite of both André Breton and the Oulipians–as well as stories, plays, an excerpt from his only novel, and the classic exploits of Captain Cap and Francisque Sarcey. The translator, Doug Skinner, has added notes and an illuminating introduction.
Available on Amazon; more info at blackscatbooks(dot)com.
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14. LAPD, FF Alumn, at Skid Row History Museum & Archive, Los Angeles, CA, December 22, and more
LAPD is having a Holiday Party – with Street Symphony at Skid Row History Museum & Archive on Saturday, Dec. 22 from 5 to 8pm. Food, music and conversation.
We are using the occasion of the current exhibition STATE OF THE ART: SKID ROW, which features 9 years of festival performer photos and comprehensive calendars of current arts activity in Skid Row, to have a conversation about the state of the arts in Skid Row — past, present, FUTURE. The conversation will feature artists Crushow Herring, Hayk Makhmuryan and John Malpede. Come hear their thoughts, imaginings, perspectives and ideazzzz— and throw in your your own.
We’ll present the publication of the tabloid newspaper reporting on the 9th Festival For All Skid Row Artists, which we produced on November 3 and 4, 2018 in San Julian Park.
With performances by Lyrical Storm, Sir Oliver and Street Symphony.
We’ll have food and soft drinks and make our own favorite dishes, please join us and add your own!
Calendar exhibit / projects / talks / movies
Exhibit
State of the ART: Skid Row
October 12 through December 29, 2018
Skid Row History Museum and Archive
Open: Thu. Fri. Sat. 2-5pm
HOLIDAY PARTY & CONVERSATION
Saturday, December 22 from 5 – 8pm
Join LAPD and Street Symphony to close out 2018!
Free Movie Nights at The Museum
Friday, December 21, 7pm
Life – directed by Ted Demme
With Eddie Murphy
This hysterical comedy gives a whole new meaning to friends for life.
Friday, January 18, 7pm
RELEASED – documentary – directed by Philip F. Messina
Q&A with Philip F. Messina
‘Released’ tells the story of four ex-offenders who changed their lives around with the help of a reentry program called The Fortune Society and broke the recidivism loop.
Friday, February 1, 7pm
Young Turks – directed by Stephen Seemayer
Q & A with Stephen Seemayer
Seemayer filmed some of the artists and denizens of downtown L.A. at work and at play, discussing art and the experience of living amid the gritty alleys and deserted industrial buildings at the city’s urban core.
Friday, March 15, 7pm
On The Bride’s Side – documentary by Antonio Augugliaro, Gabriele Del Grande and Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry.
Five Syrians and Palestinians fleeing the war, a bride and their special smugglers, on a thrilling journey at the discovery of a transnational, supportive and joyful Europe.
Year-end letter 2018
Dear Friends of Los Angeles Poverty Department,
2018 is wrapping up and I’m still checking daily to see whether our Constitution will bend or break.
At LAPD, we believe our job is about surprise. When we imagine ourselves as Public Radio Underwriters, we include in our verbal logo design, the fast spoken line “confusing the categories since 1985”.
The mantra of a wise friend of mine is that “policy follows perception”, and the sad reality is that misrepresentations of the Skid Row community abound.
Art interventions can be the unpredictable element that results in changing perception and then policy. In 2018 LAPD’s energies have continued to focus on the preservation of the Skid Row neighborhood and building an understanding of the community that exists in Skid Row.
Over many years Skid Row has emerged as a neighborhood with a number of profound and important values including: empathy, looking out for each other, sharing, second chances, recovery, inclusion, tolerance, and embracing difference.
A donation to LA Poverty Department helps us to celebrate and further imagine these values in our neighborhood manifestations of arts and culture.
Super Best wishes for a transformative 2019,
John Malpede,
Director
Donate on our secure website: https://www.lapovertydept.org/donate/
Or send a check to: Los Angeles Poverty Department, POB 26190, Los Angeles CA 90026
*Los Angeles Poverty Department is a 501(c)3 charitable organization.
*Donations to Los Angeles Poverty Department are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law. The “Zillionaires against Humanity” exhibition at our Skid Row History Museum & Archive helped keep the controversy in the news as The Skid Row Neighborhood Council Formation Committee filed suit against the city.
Our playful 2017 “The Back 9” performance / installation project in collaboration with Rosten Woo, lives on and contributed to the formation of the community coalition Skid Row Now & 2040.
Our Public Safety FOR REAL, performance project is nearing completion with performances coming up at REDCAT during the first week of April, 2019.
Our 9th Annual Festival for All Skid Row Artists, this year at San Julian Park on Nov. 3 and 4.
In May we produced our 4th biennial “Walk the Talk” parade, generated through a community nominating process that acknowledges people living and working in Skid Row whose work and vision have benefited and helped to transform the community.
The Museum has become a go-to source for a number of journalists reporting on housing and homelessness policy.
In all it’s a circular process in which public conversations, etc. initiated for LAPD projects become material in the archive and then are used by others as well as a resource for their projects.
State of the ART: Skid Row, an inventory of current artistic activity in L.A.’s Skid Row neighborhood.
Thu, Fri, Sat 2-5pm through Dec. 29, 2018
Ten years ago Americans for the Arts partnered with Los Angeles Poverty Department to do the first inventory of arts in Skid Row. We convened the neighborhood and asked: who makes art, where do they make it, what supports do they have in making art, and what are the obstacles that artists confront in Skid Row. The findings were released in a study, Making the Case for Skid Row Culture, co-authored by Maria Rosario Jackson of The Urban Institute and John Malpede of the L.A. Poverty Department.
This exhibition checks in on the state of the arts in Skid Row ten years later.
While arts activity continues to flourish in Skid Row, some of the obstacles sited in the 2009 study persist.
A convening of the neighborhood to reconsider current conditions will take place during the run of the exhibition. LA Poverty Department maintains a registry of participating artists at the festival For All Skid Row Artists. The registry has recorded the participation of over 800 artists, a 130 of whom are identified in photos and posters on the gallery wall and in video’s in this exhibition.
Activities of all Skid Row Artists and groups taking place in October and November are listed on our gallery-wall-sized-calendar and adjacent to it is a map of Skid Row murals.
About Free Movie Nights at The Museum
Every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month, at 7pm, we screen movies about issues that are important to our Skid Row and downtown community at the #skidrowmuseum.
Free movie screenings, free popcorn, free coffee & free conversations.
Friday, December 21, 7pm
Life – directed by Ted Demme
Running time 1:48:39
With Eddie Murphy Martin Lawrence Obba Babatunde Ned Beatty Bernie Mac Miguel A. Núñez Jr. Clarence Williams III Bokeem Woodbine Guy Torry Lisa Nicole Carson
Eddie Murphy is the fast-talking con artist Rayford Gibson and Martin Lawrence is the conservative bank teller Claude Banks. The two are accidentally teamed up to become the funniest “odd couple” east of the Mississippi. In an effort to pay off Ray’s debt and restore Claude’s reputation, they travel south on a bootlegging run for some quick cash. There is no limit to their comical misfortune as they are placed at the scene of a crime and their mistaken identity lands them right in front of the judge. This hysterical comedy gives a whole new meaning to friends for life.
Special thanks to NBC Universal for giving us permission to screen the movie.
January 18, 2019 at 7pm
RELEASED – directed by Philip F. Messina
Q&A following the film with Philip F. Messina.
‘Released’ is a feature length documentary that tells the story of four ex-offenders who changed their lives around with the help of a reentry program called The Fortune Society and broke the recidivism loop. As part of their rehabilitation, they worked developing their life stories into a spoken word play that ran Off-Broadway for 14 months. In the play, each of them bares their souls in a painfully honest retelling of their personal stories — from childhood and their crimes, to life in prison and the forces that helped them change. The film features scenes from the play being presented to prisoners and to a theater audience, along with other filmed scenes.
Friday, February 1, 7pm
Young Turks – directed by Stephen Seemayer
Running time: 1:35:03
Q&A following the film with Stephen Seemayer
From 1977 to 1981, multimedia artist Stephen Seemayer took a Super-8mm movie camera and captured some of the artists and denizens of downtown L.A. in their unnatural habitat. He filmed them at work and at play, discussing art and the experience of living amid the gritty alleys and deserted industrial buildings at the city’s urban core. A rough cut of the resulting documentary, “Young Turks,” was screened at a 1981 event called the Downtown Drive-In. The film was projected onto the wall of a warehouse that had been converted into artist studios. Then it was put into storage and never seen again.
Newly digitized and fully reedited with additional footage, “Young Turks” has been re-envisioned by Seemayer, along with film editor Pamela Wilson, with an eye to sharing it with a new generation. In 1981, rents were cheap and life was edgy in downtown L.A. The artists featured in “Young Turks” discussed their reasons for moving there and how it affected their work. Seemayer also turned his camera on those less fortunate who made the streets their home. He managed to capture an intimate snapshot of downtown at a crossroads, before skyscrapers and the Museum of Contemporary Art, when “loft living” was more than just an advertising slogan.
Friday, March 15, 7pm
On The Bride’s Side – A documentary film by Antonio Augugliaro, Gabriele Del Grande and Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry.
Escaping Syria’s conflict has provoked thousands to flee, and hundreds of thousands are seeking asylum in Europe.
When a poet and journalist meet five Palestinians and Syrians in Milan who entered Europe via the Italian island of Lampedusa after fleeing the war in Syria, they decide to help them complete their journey to Sweden – and hopefully avoid getting themselves arrested as traffickers – by faking a wedding party. With a Palestinian friend dressed up as the bride and a dozen or so Italian and Syrian friends as wedding “guests”, they race across the face of Europe on a four-day journey of 3,000km.
This emotionally-charged expedition not only brings out stories but also the emotional expressions of hopes and dreams of the five Palestinians and Syrians and their rather special traffickers.
It also reveals an unknown side of Europe – a transnational, supportive and irreverent Europe that ridicules the laws and restrictions of the so-called “Fortress Europe” in a kind of farcical masquerade.
About Los Angeles Poverty Department
Based in the Skid Row neighborhood since 1985, Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is the first ongoing arts initiative on Skid Row, a non-profit arts organization that connects lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. LAPD creates performances and multidisciplinary artworks which express the realities, hopes, dreams, and rights of people who live and work in L.A.’s Skid Row. LAPD has created projects with communities throughout the US and in The Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Bolivia.
LAPD’s Skid Row History Museum and Archive is an exhibition /performing arts space curated by LAPD. It foregrounds the distinctive artistic and historical consciousness of Skid Row and functions as a means for exploring the mechanics of displacement in an age of immense income inequality, by mining a neighborhood’s activist history and amplifying effective community strategies.
Skid Row History Museum & Archive programming, including the exhibitions, is made possible with the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Support the work of the LAPD! Your donation helps us to continue our group devised performances, our annual Festival for All Skid Row Artists, our biennial Walk the Talk parade and the Skid Row History Museum and Archive – for creating social change.
Phone / Fax:
213-413-1077
Email: Info@lapovertydept.org
Skid Row History Museum & Archive
250 South Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90012 – 3605
Mailing Address Los Angeles Poverty Department
PO Box 26190, Los Angeles, CA 90026
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15. Sonya Rapoport, FF Alumn, at Casemore Kirkeby Gallery, San Francisco, CA, opening Jan. 12
The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust and Casemore Kirkeby Gallery are pleased to announce an exhibition of Sonya Rapoport’s rarely-seen major works from the 1970s.
Sonya Rapoport
An Aesthetic Response
Painting and Computer Art from the 1970s
Saturday, January 12th – Saturday, January 26th, 2019
Casemore Kirkeby Gallery, 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm
Opening Reception: 6 – 8pm, January 12th, 2019
Sonya Rapoport, Right-On (Yarn Drawing No. 19), 1976. Pencil, colored pencil, stamp and thread on found continuous-feed computer paper, 44.5″ x 55″.
In 1970, Berkeley, California based artist Sonya Rapoport was using traditional media to produce paintings on canvas. By the end of the decade she was programming computers to analyze and plot data, creating works on paper that function as portraits of her data body.
This wide ranging exhibition of paintings and works on paper reveals the rapid evolution of this prescient artist, one which reflects the transformation of high modernist culture into our present information society.
Please join us for an Opening Reception: 6 – 8pm, Saturday, January 12th, 2019!
Sincerely,
Farley Gwazda
Director, Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust
sonyarapoport.org @sonya.rapoport
Copyright (c) 2018 Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust, All rights reserved.
Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust
1201 6th St.
Berkeley, CA 94710
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16. Harley Spiller, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/305560163
Please visit this link to a 7 minute video made by Pratt Institute film student William Bermudez:
thank you.
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For subscriptions, un-subscriptions, queries and comments, please email mail@franklinfurnace.org
Please join Franklin Furnace today:
http://franklinfurnace.org/support/membership2018-19/
After email versions are sent, Goings On announcements are posted online at http://franklinfurnace.org/goings_on/recent_goings_on/goings_on_2018.php
Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
