QC alumni Asia Stenzel is Artist-in-residence at 18TH STREET ARTS CENTER

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Press Contact:
Sue Bell Yank
310-308-7246
sbyank@18thstreet.org

18TH STREET ARTS CENTER CELEBRATES YOUTH ARTISTS AND EMPOWERING YOUTH VOICES THROUGH SANTA MONICA COMMUNITY FESTIVAL

SANTA MONICA (CA) – 18th Street Arts Center, a 30-year-old artist residency and contemporary arts center in the inland Pico Neighborhood of Santa Monica, holds its third major Pico Block Party community festival focused around youth artists and empowering youth voices on Saturday, May 19, 2018 from 3-6 PM. The free family-friendly artistic festival will feature youth-led art-making workshops, performances, open studios with resident artists, exhibitions, food trucks, and other creative activities.

The Pico Block Party series grew out of 18th Street Arts Center’s in-depth community outreach programs, including its bilingual neighborhood oral history project, CultureMapping90404.org. That project spurred the creation of a Neighborhood Advisory Council in 2018, who helped shaped the content for this Pico Block Party along the theme of “Empowering Youth Voices.”. With many Santa Monica high school and college-age youth deeply invested in political activism and organizing, but also facing challenges such as a school achievement gap and lack of youth services, focusing on youth artists and empowering youth voices became a priority for the Center’s community programming in 2018.

Past Block Parties have drawn upwards of 600 people to the Center’s large campus, and have provided a platform for the artistic and cultural vibrancy of our Pico Neighborhood to intermingle with LA-based exhibiting artists and international artists in our visiting artist residency program.

FEATURING:

Art Workshops

  • Create your own Pico Neighborhood Loterίa cards with the Santa Monica High School MEChA Student Group!
  • Work with exhibiting artist Mariángeles Soto-Díaz and area youth to screenprint slogans on fabric banners for your next protest march, and customize them with your own messages!
  • Paint your own tote bag and collaborate on a community map of your neighborhood with Visiting Artist in Residence Asia Sztencel.
  • Collage your own ‘zines with youth from Santa Monica High School, led by Isabelle D’Amico
  • Create LED electrical artworks with Camera Obscura artist in residence Brittany Ransom.
  • Participate in free movement classes with teachers from Continuum Movement Studio!
  • Grab your costumes and act out your favorite stories with Kids on Stage!
  • Activities and face-painting for the toddler set from Santa Monica Montessori School
  • Experience virtual reality art with Keith Tolch of Art Reality Studio

Performances (on the main stage)

  • Dance it up with the Hype Squad with Ebonicia Fischer
  • Groove to the stylings of Rondalla Sueño Romantico, a youth band from St Anne’s Church
  • Let your voice rise with the SMC Jazz Vocal Ensemble
  • Holla for the original rhymes and beats of the Pico Youth and Family Center youth MCs
  • In the Gallery, Artist Lab Resident Paul Pescador will perform with his signature costumes as part of his exhibition Going West, or 15 Years in Los Angeles

 

Art As Social Action Book Launch at The 8th Floor, May 11th

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Art as Social Action: An Introduction to the Principles and Practices
of Teaching Social Practice Art Book Launch with Social Practice Queens
Friday, May 11, 2018
6-8pm
*RSVP has reached its capacity for this event.  
If you’d like to be placed on the waitlist, please email media@sdrubin.org.  

ArtAsSocialAction

The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation will host a book launch for Art as Social Action: An Introduction to the Principles and Practices of Teaching Social Practice Art, edited by Gregory Sholette and Chloë Bass of Social Practice Queens (a 2018 Rubin Foundation grantee). Art as Social Action is both a general introduction to, and an illustrated, practical textbook for the field of social practice, an art medium that has been gaining popularity in the public sphere. With content arranged thematically around such topics as direct action, alternative organizing, urban imaginaries, anti-bias work, and collective learning, among others, Art as Social Action is a comprehensive manual for educators on how to teach art as social practice. Several of the book’s contributors, including Pedro Lasch, Sheryl Oring, and Daniel Tucker, will be present to facilitate discussion about social practice methodologies.

Vilcek Foundation showcases what’s new with SPQ this May!

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A Busy May for Social Practice Queens

A Fresh Civility at The Plaxall Gallery

Even though the school year is coming to an end, Social Practice Queens isn’t slowing down its efforts to share socially engaged art. In the next month, the collaborative graduate program (run by Queens College in partnership with the Queens Museum) will showcase MFA students’ art at its annual group exhibition, release a textbook on social practice, and share two students’ work at a major conference.

Social practice art can take many forms. The diversity of the work being done by the students at SPQ can be seen in the MFA program’s annual exhibition, which is currently on view at The Plaxall Gallery in Long Island City. Titled A Fresh Civility  and curated by acclaimed poet and critic John Yau, the show is an exploration of the question “What does it mean to be civil in a world in which name-calling and inflammatory positions have superseded dialog and debate?” The varied responses of the 16 featured artists include performance, video, painting, drawing, ceramics, and quiltmaking. Assistant Professor Chloë Bass, who served as a faculty advisor to the exhibition stated, ”I’ve been delighted by the responses from diverse audiences about how these creative works share poetic truths about the times we live in, demonstrating the beauty of social and aesthetic engagement.” The show will wrap up with a closing reception on May 10, and the last day to view the exhibition will be May 13.

Series: My Big Fat Catholic Tsunami by Ed Majkowski

Two SPQ students, Cody Herrmann and Julian Louis Phillips, in partnership with artist Margaretha Haughwout, will also present Trees of Tomorrow as part of Open Engagement, a three-day conference focused on socially engaged art which will take place at the Queens Museum from May 11 to May 13. The work, made in collaboration with the John Bowne High School agriculture department, is a tour of the trees in Flushing that “expos[es] the ways trees shape, and are shaped by, neighborhoods, economies, and soils.”

SPQ is one of a few programs in the country that offer an MFA in social practice, but it is working to increase prevalence of the medium in schools. To that end, SPQ is releasing Art as Social Action: An Introduction to the Principles and Practices of Teaching Social Practice Art. Edited by SPQ professors Gregory Sholette and Chloë Bass, the book explains the basics of the medium, as well as provides pedagogical projects to teach a variety of topics at the high school and college level. “Greg and I are incredibly excited to share the work of Social Practice Queens, and our engaged friends and collaborators throughout the United States and abroad, with a larger audience, in a way that we hope will be practical, exciting, and change-oriented for the classroom,” said Chloë. The launch of the book will be celebrated on May 11 with an event hosted by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation at The 8th Floor arts space, and the book will be available for purchase starting May 22. Pre-orders can be placed through Amazon.