18th Street Arts Center

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By rlopez, September 14, 2011 5:33 pm

Tianguis Outdoor Art Market

Saturday, September 24, 6–10pm 

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Ana Guajardo’s Tianguis-the Nahuatl word for open air markets dating from the Mesoamerican period and still in existence today-is a project examining a contemporary community of vendor-artists in Los Angeles that participate in and innovate the urban, public market culture. It is a collaborative project utilizing the participation of a special community of artists and entrepreneurs that are relationally connected through Latino cultural events and venues in East Los Angeles. While this neighborhood has served as a hub to unite them annually at specific events, their work and residencies are by no means confined here.

The Tianguis Project aims to illuminate the complex network of art, commodity, politics and culture that are activated in the temporal and spatial constructs of these markets.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Ana Guajardo is an independent curator, UCLA World Arts and Culture graduate student, and professional artisan and creator of Los Switcheros a  line of handmade home décor products.  Her line is sold in over two dozen stores nation wide as well as weekly events, festivals and conferences in the Los Angeles area and beyond. She has worked in a curatorial assistant capacity at the New Mexico Hispanic Cultural Center, the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, and has recently curated exhibitions in Los Angeles.  She’s Crafty was her first exhibit presented at Imix Books in Eagle Rock, which showcased the work of Los Angeles artesanas including clothing and jewelry designers, urban healers, altar makers, paper mache and other media. MaquiL.A., presented at SPARC similarly incorporated these artists and considered the interventions their works staged by creating alternative modes of production and consumption in a city with the most sweat shops in the US.  Guajardo organized a group of artisans as part of Suzanne Lacy’s performance project Stories of Work and Survival, presented as part of MOCA’s WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution.  Her commitment as a curator is to exhibit cultural histories in which art plays a vital role to incite dialogue and action.

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By rlopez, October 6, 2010 3:38 pm

October 23-December 17, 2010

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 23, 6-10 pm (18th Street Gallery)

Artist Present at FabLab:

Tuesday- 12 pm-5pm

Wednesday-2 pm-8pm

Thursday-12 pm-6pm

Friday-by appointment

Saturday-by appointment

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY/ESSAY

Cypis’ project, “FabLab (looking for patterns)”: towards an economy of inner and inter action, is a 3-month art laboratory of discovery and experimentation that will consist of research, performative events and interactive workshops to actively explore new participatory and collective models of engagement. This project will be an investigation of her 30 years of work, which integrates meditation and aesthetics to build engagement among individuals and groups with different cultural and personal values. Cypis plans to make visible overlapping aesthetic, conceptual, somatic, and social patterns as gestures, movements, texts and ellipses that may provide the public with tools and models for reflection and social engagement. Cypis will also host a variety of forums among centralized artists to produce a large dialogue for a local Los Angeles public about social engagement.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Dorit Cypis received her MFA from the California Institute for the Arts and has a Masters of Dispute Resolution, from Pepperdine University. Since the 1980′s Dorit Cypis has employed strategies of photography, performance, installation, social sculpture to explore relationships between personal and social identity, questioning subjectivity inrelation to corporeal, social, political and psychological spaces. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, International Center of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Orange County Museum, Walker Art Center, Musee d’Art Contemporain at Montreal, Musee des Beaux Arts @ Bruxelles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cypis has taught on identity, representation and social relations at universities and colleges across the USA as well as in Canada, Holland, France and Israel.

Cypis has generated extensive cultural programming including FAR (Foundation for Art Resources), 1979-1982, LosAngeles, questioning the production of art,the role of artists and the ability of art andartists to penetrate cultural domains. FAR developed partnerships between artists and public, private and educational organizations throughout Los Angeles. She founded Kulture Klub Collaborative (KKC), Twin Cities, 1992-1999, within a large social service agency, Minneapolis Youth Link, to challenge social workers to accept art as a viable discipline for crisis intervention with homeless teens. KKC developed strategies to bridge survival and inspiration, networking between homeless youth, artists and arts organizations across the Twin Cities.

Cypis’ recent study of mediation and conflict transformation pro actively addresses difference, the negotiation of power and reciprocity. Her work today mines aesthetics and ethics. Cypis’ museum exhibitions are immersive laboratories abstracting forms, positions, gestures, and meanings to shed light on the paradoxes of identity. Her public works and actions are social/political extensions, mediating aesthetic abstractions into living life. Founded by Cypis in 2006, Foreign Exchanges offers strategies of engagement bridging personal and cultural differences through aesthetics, conflict resolution and somatic arts, for the arts, culture, education, social service, social activism and innovative business. Foreign Exchanges represents the strengths of Cypis’ work as an artist, a mediator, and an educator. Dorit Cypis has received numerous awards including the National Endowment for the Arts, Japan Foundation, Bush, McKnight, Jerome, Ordway, Durfee Foundations, City of Los Angeles Cultural Arts Department and the Fellows of Contemporary Art. She is a founding member of Mediators Beyond Borders, Chair of Mediation and the Arts Committee, Southern California Mediation Association and is on the Advisory Board for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

ARTIST ESSAY

We may see in the other parts of ourselves that we do not recognize and so separate them from ourselves as foreign. This separation silently transforms itself to a bias against others. Foreignness, shaped by both political and psychological forces, is a highly charged contemporary axiom, my sister, the stranger next door, the undocumented worker, the unidentified terrorist. Who is the foreigner? I can hold up a mirror to reality, both outer and inner, but can I see how the two realities end up co-mingling in the reflection? When I look, am I seeing? If I scan, taking in the reflection without commitment. I am consuming, gliding, shopping, desiring, inhaling without exhaling. When I see, I am engaged in an intimate act, recognizing that the one reflecting me is different and at the same time very like myself. How to see?

To witness the simultaneous sameness and difference of “you” requires a commitment from “me” of extra-ordinary proportions, a self inquiry into interior places without which there can be no recognition of difference, only an infinite return to a disguised projection,an mirrored blindness that restrict the possibility of empathy. Seeing is a complex act, somatic, psychological, emotional, social, historical, and political. Our cultural beliefs, held somatically as experience, memory and emotion, are evident in how we see.

I will be looking for patterns over the span of my work the last 30 years to make visible patterns that are driven aesthetically, conceptually, somatically, and socially towards tools of inner reflection and social engagement. The process is a laboratory of discovery and experimentation through performative events, workshops and labs.

1.Research my personal archives of the past 30 years in search of patterns, glimmers and tested tools for reflection and social engagement.

2. Reveal these patterns in a variety of ways, material and digital, textual and visual, dimensional, somatic and inter-active.

3. Invite individuals and groups: artists, activists, educators, mediators, creative leaders in my local communities to inter-act with my patterns, to tease out, to re-form and to apply to their needs.

4.Record these interactions for publication.

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By rlopez, October 6, 2010 2:23 pm

October 23-December 17, 2010

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 23, 6-10 pm (Project Room)

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Visual Artist Elena Siff will address how the Internet plays a major role in this new artistic economy by setting up an actual and virtual marketplace that will allow participating artists, whose work focus on political and environmental art, an opportunity to sell their creations in person and online. For three months 18th Street’s Project Room will be transformed into an enlightened and socially conscious marketplace flourishing with novel artists from all over Los Angeles who have come to showcase their designs or utilize the space to work on new creations.

Siff’s blog: http://artofmakingchange.blogspot.com/

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Elene Siff has been a mixed media artist for the last 30 years (collage, assemblage, installation, unique book objects) and has also curated several large exhibitions such as The Magic Show, an exhibition of international mail art in 1983, Southern California Assemblage: Past and Present for the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum and the Museum of Santa Cruz in 1986.  In 2004 Siff curated Radiant Spaces: Private Domain, an exhibition of the work of 80 artists from all over California who are challenged with developmental differences. This exhibition was presented in three venues in Southern California. She also is the co-founder of Women/Beyond Borders, an international exhibition which has been traveling around the world for the last 13 years and which started modestly in Santa Barbara, Ca. in 1995 with 12 women. There are currently 1000 pieces in the exhibition by women from nearly 30 different countries.

Since 1993 Siff has been awarded 4 small grants (under $5000)  through the NEA, William Keck Foundation and the Santa Monica Arts Commission to create temporary interactive public art installations. Several of these had to do with the public perception of  people with developmental differences. Siff created a large interactive structure in a shopping mall (Santa Monica Place) where she was given an empty storefront where  the public could create art to place in the installation and dialogue with her about the issues she presented.

Elena Siff also is an active book maker and creates unique book objects  which have been in many international exhibitions and are sold through Vamp and Tramp Booksellers. In 2008 she curated an exhibition of book objects in Santa Barbara having to do with books made from recycled non-traditional materials. She has also taught workshops in book arts in various venues in Southern California.

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By rlopez, July 30, 2010 5:42 pm

The core team conducting planning and research consists of a project leader, an art historian, and a project curator. They will be assisted by an archivist consultant, a graduate student research assistant, a web site technician and a small group of  advisors who have specialized knowledge related to the case studies in the project and to alternative/artist spaces.

Curator/Alex Donis

Alex Donis is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist and curator whose work examines and redefines the boundaries set within religion, politics, race, and sexuality. He has worked extensively in a variety of media including performance, installation, video, and works on paper. He received his undergraduate degree in Graphic Design at California State University, Long Beach and his graduate degree in New Media from Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles.

His curatorial practice includes developing the interactive and video component for the seminal exhibition at the Getty Villa “Carrie Mae Weems Reacts to Hidden Witness” on African Americans in early photography. He was also the art director and exhibition curator for “Chicano Expressions” the first exhibition of prints from Self Help Graphics in East L.A. to tour nine countries in Africa. Donis also co-curated “Modarte” a series of exhibitions on wearable art, which were exhibited at Otis College of Art & Design, the Foundation for Art Resources and F.I.D.M. He was also the curator for “The Leopard Spots: Between Art, Performance & Club Culture”, which included a film series and the recreation of past site-specific performances at the 18th Street Arts Center.

Donis has worked in the Education Departments at both the Getty Museum and MOCA and currently teaches photography at the Brentwood School. As a practicing artist, he has an extensive exhibition history, as both a visual and performance artist.  He has been a guest lecturer at numerous universities & institutions and is currently represented by Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Santa Monica.

Project Art Historian/ Julia Bryan-Wilson

Julia Bryan-Wilson joined the UC Irvine faculty in fall 2007 after teaching for three years at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her research focuses on the intersection of art and politics since the 1960s; she has published on topics such as the visual culture of the nuclear age, the impact of AIDS on contemporary art, and the professionalization of institutional critique. In her forthcoming book Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, she explores the politicization of artistic labor in the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Through case studies of Carl Andre, Lucy Lippard, Robert Morris, and Hans Haacke, this book investigates how artists and writers embraced a polemical identification of themselves as workers in relation to the social movements of the New Left.

As a frequent contributor to Artforum, she is especially committed to feminist, queer, and collaborative art, and has written on Sadie Benning, Carrie Moyer, and Sharon Hayes, among others. Her writing has also appeared in Art Bulletin, Art Journal, ArtUS, Bookforum, Cabinet, Camera Obscura, Frieze, Modern Painters, Oxford Art Journal, and Technology & Culture. Her current project examines queer craft and debates about the gendering of handmade art since 1970.

Bryan-Wilson is affiliated with women’s studies and queer studies at UCI. She has taught classes on methodology, historiography, authenticity and fraudulence in the digital era, and public art since 1965.

Project Leader/ Clayton Campbell, 18th Street Artistic Director

Clayton Campbell has worked as an artist, curator and arts administrator in the not profit arts field for 35 years, and since 1995 has been the Co-Executive Director and now Artistic Director of 18th Street Arts Center. In 1976 he co-founded ‘The Performing Space’, the first not for profit performance art space in the Southwestern United States in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1985 he designed the programs and building of New York based Kampo Cultural Center, a 50,000 square foot facility specializing in new media production and cultural exchange projects between New York and Japan. At 18^th Street  he has curated and organized over 30 exhibitions and 250 international artist residencies from 26 countries. A widely published  arts writer, Mr. Campbell articles, essays, reviews and features have appeared in Flash Art Magazine, Contemporary Magazine Afterimage Magazine and ArtPresse.  In 2002 Mr. Campbell was awarded the distinction of Chevalier, in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government for his work in the field of arts and culture.

Exhibition Designer/Sebastian Clough

Exhibition designer Sebastian Clough is currently the Director of Exhibitions at the UCLA fowler museum. Between 2003-2009 he was Exhibition Designer at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and between 1995-2003 a principal partner in Metric Design and Fabrication. He was a member of a movement called “Funk o’ Metric”, also known as FOM or FOAM, including Jason Rhoades Peter Warren, Bill Becchio, Laurie Steelink, and Marshall Weber, among others.

Catalog Designer/Jessica Fleischmann

Prior to establishing her design firm “still room”, principal and designer Jessica Fleischmann was Art Director of Western Interiors and Design magazine and design associate at Lorraine Wild Design (now Green Dragon Office). She received an MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts in 2001, after obtaining 2 liberal arts degrees and working in non-profit arts management as well as a chef and an art instructor. She teaches graphic design and typography at Otis College of Art and Design.

Her work has been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Communication Arts, Graphis, the Maggie Awards, Mohawk, Print Magazine, Rockport Press, and the UCDA; and exhibited by the AIGA, CalArts, the Smithsonian/Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Everyday Design, and the A+D Museum.

Videographer/Michael W. Barnard

Michael W. Barnard has produced, directed and/or photographed many film projects, including the features “Nights In White Satin”, “Cries of Silence”, “The Invisible Kid”, and “Chasing Robert”. He also has made numerous commercials, music videos, TV shows, documentaries and various promotional films for a wide range of clients and on a wide range of subjects. Recent examples include Garden State Life Insurance, Trilogy Capital Partners, 2nd Unit for the Disney Channel film “Tiger Cruise”, and 2nd Unit for the Jackie Chan film”The Medallion”. His award-winning feature-length documentary “Chihuly River of Glass” has been broadcast most recently on the Sundance Channel. He recently completed “90404 Vanishing”, a documentary about the changing demographics of Santa Monica.

Advisors and Essayists

Linda Frye Burnham is a writer who is co-director of Art in the Public Interest and the Community Arts Network. She is the editor of APInews and edited “Performing Communities” for the Web. She founded High Performance magazine and, with Steven Durland, was its editor (1978-1998). She co-founded the 18th Street Arts Complex and Highways Performance Space in California. She is the editor, with Steven Durland, of “The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena,” an anthology from High Performance (1998). She has served as contributing editor to the Drama Review and staff writer for Artforum. Her writing has appeared in numerous art magazines in the U.S. and U.K.

Dorit Cypis is an artist, MFA, California Institute for the Arts and a mediator, Masters of Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine University. Since the 1980’s Dorit Cypis has employed strategies of photography, performance, installation, social sculpture to explore relationships between personal and social identity, questioning subjectivity in relation to corporeal, social, political and psychological spaces. Cypis has generated extensive cultural programming including FAR (Foundation for Art Resources), 1979-1982, Los Angeles, questioning the production of art, the role of artists and the ability of art and artists to penetrate cultural domains. FAR developed partnerships between artists and public, private and educational organizations throughout Los Angeles. She was an early member in the 1970’s of the National Association of Artists Organizations.

Researcher/Cole Akers

Cole Akers is currently enrolled in the PH.D. Program in Visual Studies at University of CA, Irvine. He was recently accepted into an emerging curators project as part of the Gwangju Bienniale, and has worked as program Assistant at the UCLA Hammer Museum and as Volunteer manager for American Film Institute and Outfest.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A COLLECTIBLE COLLABORATION LABS CATALOG

Pacific Standard Time is an unprecedented collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. Initiated through grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time will take place for six months beginning October 2011. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

CLICK HERE to view all additional Pacific Standard Time Sponsors

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By rlopez, July 6, 2010 2:16 pm

July 6 – September 24, 2010

“NIAP”, Neon Sign, Plexiglass, Dimensions Variable, 2010 (Photo by Jay Oligny)

Martin Durazo’s project entitled Pain Management 100 is what he calls a three-month “hands on” laboratory meant to investigate and expose the connection between the illegal drug trade economy and the “legal” pharmaceutical drug economy. In Durazo’s installation, he will arouse the sensation of the popularized rave and drug culture and challenge society’s desensitized attitude toward the drug phenomenon by inspiring dialogue among the public on a local, national and global level. The laboratory’s run will also consist of a series of video interviews with the community along with installations concerned with images of the allure of drugs and other artistic aspects of the project.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Martin Durazo is a multi-media artist and curator whose work is concerned with the intersection between elements of high-design and the grittiness of social subcultures. He is best known for creating large scale installations combining video, sound, light, works on paper, ready made objects and performance. A sense of harmony emerges as the slick technical savvy of video and sound gadgetry is balanced by the raw energy of industrial materials such as clamps and martial arts weapons like thrown ninja stars. The dense web of shifting structural poetry created by his works invites and mesmerizes. He received his M.F.A. from UCLA and B.A. from Pitzer College. Recent exhibitions have included solo shows at the Mark Moore Gallery, Galería MDF in Mexico City, Harris Art Gallery at the University of LaVerne, Bank Gallery in LA, and at Jail Gallery in LA.   From 1995 to 2003 Durazo co-owned and directed Miller-Durazo Contemporary Artists Projects and in 2007 created Empathy Design Company as a temporary curatorial/artist project. He has also been a producer for KPFK radio, where he is regularly featured in discussion about art and social issues.