StoryLine and SECCA Partner to Collect Arts-Based Community Stories

Check out SECCA's blog for more information.

Littoral: Redefining Art

While trying to decipher the meaning of a Lockheed Martin ad I read about in the Washington Post this morning, (It reads, "The shape of littoral dominance has a familiar look." Hmm...) I found a United Kingdom organization, Littoral, whose mission has very little to do with seashores and coasts but everything to do with community arts.

Littoral is "a nonprofit arts trust which promotes new creative partnerships, critical art practices and cultural strategies in response to issues about social, environmental and economic change."

Most of their work, collected under the title New Fields, examines and promotes the relationship between arts and agriculture.

Image from Littoral website.

A particularly unique project involves a collaboration between trade unions and artists called Routes. Littoral puts it best: "Invoking the historical links between the arts and the trade union movement, the project was framed to encourage the unions to rethink their cultural role as promoters of cross community unity in post-settlement Ireland."

In 2003, Littoral learned that "Transport House" (image below) , the trade union headquarters building, would be sold. Transport House was very important both historically and architecturally. Littoral led two artists to document the history of the building and propose future uses (such as a cultural and community arts center for working people) Again with Arts Council funding, two artists were employed to document the history of the building, and its possible future use as a cultural and community arts centre for working people. Visit Littoral's website for an extensive and captivating explanation of what has followed the initial proposal.

Photo of Transport House by Frankie Quinn.

StoryLine Turned 1!

StoryLine recently had its first anniversary on June 4. The celebration featured several moving moments by local artists and storytellers, including an especially well-received performance by Cara and Mackenzie Hagan. The two sisters joined StoryLine conversations with dance for a short performance that can only be experienced and not described.

Check out Cara's story at http://www.storylineproject.org/stories/listen/family?page=2, and listen to all the other special stories collected over the past year.

Picture from StoryLine facebook page

Art Can! Feed the Hungry...Fun Fourth Public Art Project

Temporary Public Art Project to Feed the Hungry at Fun Fourth Art Can! is a new Fun Fourth attraction, sponsored by the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro, to create a temporary public art installation made of canned foods items. Architects Shermin Ata of Shermin Ata Architects with Micah Martin and Emily Hinton of Moser Mayer Phoenix Architects have joined forces to design a U.S. Flag public art installation constructed out of Campbell Soup cans. Fun Fourth attendees will be able to watch the installation as well as construct their own designs made out of donated canned goods. "We're pleased to bring our creative community together to help stock and replenish the Greensboro Urban Ministry Food Bank at a time when folks generally aren't thinking about feeding the hungry. It's a wonderful example of how Art Can! make a difference," said UAC Interim President and CEO Altina Layman. Want to help? Canned food donations will be accepted for the project at the Freedom Run and Walk on June 26th, 1776 performances at the Carolina Theatre on July 1 and 2nd and Kickoff Block Party on July 2nd. Donations will also be accepted at the Parade and Street Festival on Saturday, July 3rd in designated areas marked by balloon columns. Construction will take place on July 3rd mid-morning to early afternoon in the parking lot off of Davie Street, near Summit Station Eatery. Prior to June 26th, donations may be dropped off at the following downtown locations: Carolina Theatre, Action Greensboro and the Greensboro Cultural Center between 11am - 5pm Monday-Friday. On July 4th, donations may be made at the News & Record Pops Concert and Gate City Fireworks Spectacular at Grimlsely High School Stadium. For more information, please contact Altina Layman at the United Arts Council at 336-373-7523 or by email at alayman@uacarts.org.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Altina Layman 336.373.7523, extension 242 alayman@uacARTS.org

Great Article in The Chronicle about Art & Racial Identity

Here is the article from The Chronicle bit by bit. It was too large to scan in as one image. My apologies! Click each image to enlarge.

A Women’s Weaving Group

• Supporting refugee and immigrant women to preserve traditional weaving
• First organizational meeting held at the Greensboro Central Library on June 10
• Efforts to create viable model
• Meeting attracts Nepali and Montagnard weavers; others welcome!

Pastor Y Hin Nie hosted the meeting and invited Betsy Renfrew, a Greensboro artist who has been working with Montagnard weavers intensively for the past two years, to discuss with several women who attended the possibilities in forming a cooperative or other group to preserve and promote backstrap weaving, a practice known among many Southeast Asian refugee women who live in the Piedmont. Such a group could also purchase hard to find thread and other materials, hold classes, sell work and keep technical and traditional skills alive.

A second meeting is planned for July at the Greensboro Historical Museum, details to come. 

• See videos of Montagnard backstrap weavers in Greensboro on YouTube.
• Read about the Montagnard weaver whose work was prominently featured at the Green Hill's 2009 Winter Show
• See related work on a women's sewing and English conversation class.

For more information, please contact Betsy Renfrew at betsyrenfrew@triad.rr.com

Somebody Visit The EnergyXChange!

About 2.5 hours west of the Piedmont, the EnergyXChange is a center that uses landfill gas (methane and other gases that escape from landfills) as an energy source for a clay studio and a glass studio. Artists can do residencies at the EnergyXChange. The complex includes four greenhouses, three cold frames, a retail craft gallery, a visitor center, along with the two aforementioned studios.

And EnergyXChange encourages group visits, which is why I am emploring you to visit and tell me about it, so that I can post your journal entry here.

Image from EnergyXChange website.

Graffiti: Public Menace and Public Art?

Last night, the Winston-Salem City Council held a public hearing on the possibility of making tighter restrictions to discourage graffiti artists. Graffiti has its obvious destructive qualities, but it's also a form of public art.

Work by artist/photographer, JR.

And in the instance below, discovered at inhabitat.org, graffiti can mobilize a community. Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn work with youth to paint humongous murals in favelas (large squatter settlements) in Brazil.

Images from favelapainting.com.

City of W-S Human Relations Department and WFU Art Department Collaborate on Art Project as Part of Kenan Institute for the Arts' ACCORD Initiative

As part of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts’ ACCORD Initiative, the City of Winston-Salem Human Relations Department and the Wake Forest University (WFU) Art Department are collaborating on a visual art project entitled Transforming Race.

The Transforming Race project will culminate in the presentation of visual art pieces by five public high school students and five WFU art students that address issues relating to racial identity and diversity at a gallery opening on Thursday, June 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Liberty Arts Center at 526 North Liberty Street in downtown Winston-Salem. The opening is free and open to the public. The art will remain on display at the Liberty Arts Center for just one evening before traveling to high schools throughout the county during the next academic year.

Photo credit: Paul Marley, WFU Art Department.

The ACCORD initiative, which stands for Artists Contributing to Civic-Oriented and Responsive Democracy, is a project of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts dedicated to sparking dialogue about the essential role of the arts and civic-minded artists within a thriving democracy. Through this initiative, the Institute is partnering local nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies with area college students to create arts-based projects that address community needs and/or social issues.

The high school and college students participating in the Transforming Race project are working together in pairs to examine racial attitudes, personal experiences, and the overall relevance of diversity. The goals of Transforming Race are to: create a dialogue among participants about racial identity that leads to insights about those different from themselves; have participants work together to find words, images and metaphors that can communicate the problems and joys of being a person raised in a multiracial, post-segregation society; use the content developed in the workshop to create art objects that convey the feelings, attitudes and conclusions of the participants; and use the art to communicate issues of racial identity beyond the participants to the high school community and further.Participants in the project include five artists from WFU: Becky Bowers, senior; Courtney Whicker, junior; Mary Alice McCullough, freshman; Katie Wolf, freshman; and Lauren Arrington, junior; as well as a videographer, Courteney Morris, senior. Participating high school artists are Rae-Yao Lee, a junior at Reagan High School; Victor Mendoza, a junior at Parkland High School; Elizabeth Rosales, , a junior at Parkland High School; Brandon Wilkins, a junior at Parkland High School; and Jonathan Cunningham, a sophomore at Mt. Tabor High School.

Transforming Race is the second project of the ACCORD Initiative. This partnership project is a strong example of such community outreach. For more information, contact the Kenan Institute at 722-0030.

My Art Generates Power. What Can Your Art Do?

Via the highly informative green design blog, inhabitat.org, I learned of a call for artists for the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI). LAGI describes itself as a program that brings together...

artists, architects, scientists, landscape architects, and engineers in a
first of its kind collaboration. The goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative
is to design and construct a series of land art installations across the United
Arab Emirates that uniquely combine aesthetics with clean energy generation.

LAGI hopes to create a tourist destination around the ability to view these sculptural projects that also generate energy.

LAGI is currently holding an international design competition in which design teams can choose between three different sites, one of which is shown below. LAGI intends to see winning concepts through to construction with the artist team that proposed the design. Want to create a permanent land art structure in Abu Dhabi? Get drawing!

Image from www.landartgenerator.org.