Pasadena stories: Working with and in the community, we produced a series of experimental audio stories and portraits. Stories are an essential part of culture, they connect and create a sense of place and community. Contextualized stories can link communities. So by collecting personal experiences as audio and creating interactive spaces on public transport, with mobile devices, and through huge public wall drawings draped over public buildings the localized Art have connected and inspired while creating dialog, connecting disparate peoples, and exposing a commonality. The local coffee shop Perry’s Joint Cafe is now committed to having on-going artists in residence, students and teachers were exposed to alternate teaching methodologies that have been implemented, while Pasadena transit is open to further art experiences. Librarians and police were educated in the importance of art as process and dialog.

<amy thanks to Marco Schidelmann - audio and experimental sound

Sidestreeprojects - the best support mamaging me and my project https://www.sidestreet.org/

Perrys Joint Cafe - Perry, his workers, clientelle and family generously trusted me with their stroies and allowed me to draw them for over a year. https://perrysjoint.com/

Faustos boxing - Villa Park Boxing Padasdena and Datima. Gee they trained me hard! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Villa-Park-Boxing-Gym/101153396661319

Families Forward Learning Center - Generously opened their doors to me and the families and friends trusted me drawing, teaching and collecting stories. http://www.familiesforwardlc.org

Pasadena Transit - THe bus drivers were amazing as I got to know them travelling on the buses for hours on end.

Dido and Anius - Opera and animation

This performance in the backyard of a house under construction explores the concept of dislocation connecting mythical opera stories and contemporary issues of dislocation.

A collaboration with Marco Schindelmann and the University of Redlands string quartet and opera students. Still of performance open to local residents and businesses

Dimensions: Varied- vacant house - Long Beach

Medium - opera, chamber music, animations, spoken word

2018 Long Beach

PROCESS:
Sewadham Ashram is a lifetime shelter and rehabilitation center for the homeless, helpless, disabled and destitute where caring is for all without any discrimination of caste, creed, region, age and sex.

While working in Ujjain, India I was given the opportunity to volunteer and work with the women at Sewhadham, where I spent hours sitting and being with them. with them. Great as this might appear the women have limited access to the outside, any extra activities, let alone creativity. Originally I would simply chated and sat with the women communicating through an interpreter with minimal connection or understanding. As I sat with the women I realized my great connection is my art.and creative thinking. What is cheap, creative and doable anywhere. So I began bringing in colouring books for the bedridden elderly women and children and chalk for all the women. (Chalk has many benefits, cheap, can be washed away or simply erased.

During the weeks I was visiting I noticed the colouring books were full of pictures that the residents could not relate: ballons, rocketships, brick houses, cats basically images that had no relevence to the women and children at rural India.

While sitting and watching I started documenting the drawings before they disappeared. They were imaginative, culturally informed, playfull and relevant.

THE RESULT:
I simple series of colouring books drawn by the women.
Coloring books, made by the women for the women and children that are local and relevent.

The books bridged the 2 womens facilities.
The books became relevent coloring books for the children.
The books worked as a fund raiser for Sewadham Ashram.
The books are a a sense of pride and inspiration

Rural India, Ujjain a pilgrimage city.

The city of Ujjain, located on the banks of the Kshipra River in Madhya Pradesh, is one of the most ancient Indian cities, smack in the middle of rural lndia. Povery and religion dominate.

Working at a new Indian university I spent months in the main town of Ujjain and rural villages near Lekoda. I would walk and bike along the roads and paths in the early morning or evening..

As an outsider I assumed (rightly or wrongly) that life was pretty shitty for most of the street dwellers, transient workers and villagers. Many had little and I wondered what could I contribute without a colonialist, imperialist bias. I wondered if I could give them something small, portable and concrete, while making a beginning link between us. Photobombing.

Over a 6 months period I walked, ran and biked taking 100’s of photos. Each person photgraphed was given a printed copy. If I could not find them later I would leave the photos posted where I had taken them.

The results were engaging and diverse. People came and went. Some bought their families to bus stops to be photgraphed. Others connected me with friends and families. Some were just happy for a family photo.

“Act so the effects of your actions are compatible with the permance of human life, “ Hans Jonas

6021 Shopfront was an experimental space that exists today as a Latinx artspace and gallery. Art is not a luxury yet carries our cultural legacies. Overlaying a community Art can play a relevant and practical catalyst for change and 6021 evolved into such a space.

By immersing myself as a professional artist in the community I explored many different ways to address the communities concerns culturally economically and socially. 6021 became a place in the community without boundaries. It connected and created links between residents, businesses, transients, community leaders and those without a voice.

6021 put poetry into shop windows, created guerrilla public performances in the local buses. 6021 supported young artist professionals and businesses providing free residencies, classes, graphic dsign and mentoring for local talent. 6021 bought Art to the community, taking and making portraits, intiating video projects and simply acting as a space open for all. We explored alternate spaces such as barbershops, libraries and vacant lots to engage the public through projects such as animations placed on barbershops TV’s and unplugged performances on buses.

Unplugged Performances: was a collaboration with 6021 shopfront, Michele Obama Library and Long Beach Transit. Working with the local North Long Beach community I curated, promoted and organized 7 live performances on public buses. This project was developed in response to the communities desire for a platform to engage the public with poetry and performance. The artists were local as well as national, amateur, professional and all volunteered their time and talent performing and playing to a mobile audience on buses and at bus stops.

Deconstructing spaces through art, performance.& sound.

In collaboration with Marco SchindelmannGuerilla drawing, performance, posters and sound on the LA River.

Transformed into a drawing and dance collaboration. in participation with in "Flow and obstruction", an exhibition around process, Collaborative Gallery, Long Beach.

Exploring displacement around the Los Angeles river 2018 the charcoal and white primer painted repainted and redrawn, erased and redrawn over several days.

We started this project as guerrilla research. Spending hours walking, biking and existing on the LA river. We documented, interviewed and generally inhabited the spaces and environs of the LA River. - drawing, dance and audio through performance and QR codes.

A series of digital animations based on and in collaboration with the barbershop culture of Nth Long Beach. The animations were projected in various locations: on site specific barbershop TV’s, in cargo containers, as part of an art event activating disused spaces and implicated places.

This video shows one of the barbers “Quick” who participated in the process singing to the shop TV that shows his personal animation. 6 barbers, 6 individual animations.

This project was part of the ALOT Initiative, Long Beach CA, Long Beach Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts., Long Beach, CA. I rented a shopfront 6021 Atlantic Ave and worked as a professional artist having a studio that was open to the public and for the public.

Digital animations based on the life of street workers and walkers. For several months I embedded myself into the street worker and small business community. Documenting, participating & collaborating through analog art practices. As a result I created a series of animations about individual workers.

Each worker was given a copy of their own personal animations. The animationsd were projected in disused parking lots and implicated spaces in central Long Beach.

ALOT Initiative, Long Beach CA National Endowment for the Arts

2013

Precocious puberty: Guerrilla projections radio transmissions

Experimental and playful yet political. My objective was to take art to “Others”. By walking around urban streets, projecting images and sound on sidewalks, walls, inside malls and stores, essentially implicated spaces, I created a different place for Art and dialogue. Working with various communities: the medical, young children, parents, and scientists, I created alternate linkages that were interactive, playful and informed.

Important to this project was the use of Language, New Media and the forming of Technology, creating symbols and metaphors that can reconstruct our ideas about the disease, precocious puberty. How can a child with a disease be “precociously” sick? Who forms these references and allusions?

My portable mobile projections with radio transmission, creatively superimposes layers of information over people, places, and spaces, informing, the public, while re-mediating the space with public art, which is a typical example of the nature of my work.

A collaborative project with the visualy impaired. Working with a group of diverse visualy impaired individuals we explored the visual element of color to create a site specific multimedia installation. video, audio and braille.

Starting with ‘primary colors’ we examined the notion of stories and explored each individual interpretation using video and audio. The camera became the visually impaired eyes. The participants filmed and edited their own footage by sound and limited sight. Their stories were transcribed into Braille - line on the walls. While the videos were projected onto 3 walls (3 primary colors) in an enclosed space the video ideas were revealed through braille and sound.

Those who could see but could not read braile had to interpret the videos. While those who could read braille had access to the process ideas and artists intent.

While collaborating to produce the art for the installation we discovered several alternate results that was totally unexpected and varied. As a group we explored different ways to address art education, video as art and disability, (paper, Society for Disability Studies)

The use of video enable some to better understand their work environment spatially. Others learnt how to engage with and use technology for the first time creatively and practically. One participant simply gave her video to her grandchildren as an artifact.

Commissioning Agent: VSA for the Arts, Atlanta, GA. Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, VSA for the Arts

2002

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