College Of Art And Design

H20 – Preview: Benjamin Lavender

This post comes to you from Green Public Art

On May 6, 2011, H20: The Art of Conservation, at the Water Conservation Garden, San Diego, CA, will open to the public. Green Public Art reviewed over 1100 artists portfolios before inviting 14 San Diego artists to participate in the exhibition which offers San Diego homeowners an artistic alternative to incorporate water conservation into their own garden spaces. Green Public Art awarded each artist a mini-grant to develop their site-specific sculptures. In the weeks leading up to the exhibition opening the artist’s concepts will be revealed on this site. Questions? Contact Rebecca Ansert, Curator, Green Public Art at rebecca@greenpublicart.com.

CONCEPT: The Drop (steel barrel rings, plexiglass, approx. 4′ x 4′ x 8′ ht.). When thinking about water conservation, words like recycle, and reuse are commonly associated with it.  The creation of “The Drop” is closely associated to this notion. Made primarily out of reclaimed wine barrel rings, “The Drop”  symbolizes the importance of our most precious resource, water, while emphasizing the importance of using recylcled materials whenever possible. After many years of holding a wine barrel together as the juice ferments, the wine barrel rings are reused again, taking the viewer back to where the whole process started, with water.

ABOUT: Benjamin Lavender returns this year to participate for a third time in SDFAS’ annual sculpture exhibition. He received his Associates of Fine Art from Watkins College of Art and Design and later a BA in sculpture from San Diego State University in 2003. The artist self-describes his work as Abstract Naturism and Industrially-Organic which he defines as the outcome of mimicking nature through intense hours of manipulating metal, concrete, paint and found or reclaimed objects into organically formed art. Lavender recently held a solo exhibition at the Oceanside Museum of Art and installed his largest permanent sculpture Kite of Paradise in the annual Kites over Vista, Vista, CA.

Rebecca Ansert, founder of Green Public Art, is an art consultant who specializes in artist solicitation, artist selection, and public art project management for both private and public agencies. She is a graduate of the master’s degree program in Public Art Studies at the University of Southern California and has a unique interest in how art can demonstrate green processes or utilize green design theories and techniques in LEED certified buildings.

Green Public Art is a Los Angeles-based consultancy that was founded in 2009 in an effort to advance the conversation of public art’s role in green building. The consultancy specializes in public art project development and management, artist solicitation and selection, creative community involvement and knowledge of LEED building requirements. Green Public Art also works with emerging and mid-career studio artists to demystify the public art process. The consultancy acts as a resource for artists to receive one-on-one consultation before, during, and after applying for a public art project.

Go to Green Public Art

utopia project 2010: info

“Utopia project” is an annual summer workshop organized by the Athens School of Fine Arts in Rethymno Crete.”

Athens School of Fine Arts

Organizers-Facilitators:

V. Vlastaras, artist, Lecturer, ASFA and M. Glyka, visual artist, teacher BA & MA Vakalo college of Art and Design.

Basic timetable:

4 July: arrivals

5 July – 7 July: artists presentations

8 – 20 July: preparation of the work

21-23 July: show and presentations of final works

24 July: end of show – departures

Number of participants: 14

In collaboration with:

Mr. Gary Woodley, artist and lecturer at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.

Mr. Klaas Hoek, artist, head of the postgraduate department of University of Utrecht and head of the printmaking of the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.

This year project:

UTOPIA & NATURE

Based on H.D. Thoreau’s “Walden

EXPERIMENTATION AND RESEARCH IN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC PRACTICES

General Information

Program

Athens School of Fine Arts offers an annual summer residency program under the title Utopia Project for postgraduate or recent graduates artists who intend to collaborate with experienced artists, theorists and political scientists in order to explore, under a different every year theme, artistic practices and theoretical approaches in the contemporary society.

Participants join the project in workshops, lectures, group and individual tutorials and critiques and leave the residency with input on new project plans organized accordingly each year’s theme. Artists attend the program to get a creative surge, get a fresh perspective on their work, revitalize their practice, take their work in a new direction, make plans for a focused praxis and to become part of an international community of artists, theorists and curators.

History

Utopia Project has started by the initiative of two artists. Vassilis Vlastaras, visual artist and lecturer in the Athens School of Fine Arts and Maria Glyka, visual artist and teacher in the Ba and Ma Program of Vakalo College of Art and Design. The workshop is organized by the Athens School of Fine Arts and it is taking part every July in the Asfa annex in Rethymno Crete. The first Utopia Project was held in 2006 in Rethymno under the title “Utopia as an Island” with an international body of 15 participants, guests and faculty. That was followed by “Utopia and Violence” in 2007, “Utopia and Praxis: May68-May08” in 2008, “Utopia and Youth” in 2009. This year it runs under the title “Utopia and Nature, based on H.D. Thoreau’s “Walden”. By now the whole body of participants guests artists, theorists counts over the number of eighty people.

Goals

In this a-disciplinary program, students are free to pursue work in any art-related genre and to create their own course of study, working independently and with the support of the the coordinating and guest artists and theorists.

Purpose

The workshop is intended to lift the boundaries between fine arts, traditional and new media, artists and theorists. It aims to create a space for participants of all disciplines to interact with a wide range of artists, scientists, theorists, media practitioners and visionaries and provoke them to investigate their work independently and transdisciplinarily in both a cultural and studio context according to the year’s subject.

Location

Utopia Project is an international program organized by Asfa. The residencies take place in the annex of Asfa in Rethyno Crete every July for about 20 days. Asfa provides a range of accommodation listings and arranges a special group rate at a student hotel each summer as well as student travel and city guides.

Participants make their own arrangements for travel from their country of origin to Crete. Nevertheless accommodation in shared rooms, basic meals and basic materials are provided by Asfa. The annex is uniquely placed on the top of Evligias Hill in Rethymno, 15 min walk from the center of the old historical town. Daily bus schedule links Rethymno to the airports of Chania and Heraklio.

Language

The whole part of the workshop takes place in English. Many languages are spoken but talks, critiques and lectures all take place in English. Participants must have a good command of spoken English.

Facilities, Equipment and Resources

Inside and outside working spaces for making or install art work, workshop and computer stations with scanner and printer and WiFi access fulfill the residency needs.

Achievement

Each year, artists create art projects (paintings, film or videos, installations, performances, photographs, etc. Participants’ exhibit or present documentation of their final art and research projects in the exhibition space inside the site.  Through discussions they gain the critical, technological, and aesthetic experiences from the guest artists and theorists. The last week beside concluding their final personal work they are expected to take part on the organization and realization of a small publication that presents the group’s idea of each year’s subject.

Community Alumni

Past years’ participants continue to take part in residencies by giving and receiving critiques, exhibiting, as program advisors, and as guests of the Utopia Project.

via utopia project 2010: info.

Otis College of Art and Design, Graduate Public Practice and Graduate Fine Arts present author and public intellectual critic Lucy Lippard

To kick off Street Smart, three events on public art, Graduate Public Practice and Graduate Fine Arts present author and public intellectual critic Lucy Lippard, whose interests and writing include tourism, archaeology, anthropology, and small New Mexico towns.

Seating limited, reservations suggested at publicpractice@otis.edu or (310) 846-2610. Free to the public.

Since 1966, Lippard has published 20 books on feminism, art, politics and place and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations. In her lecture, “Farther Afield,”she will speak on landscape, history, place-making and tourism from an interdisciplinary perspective. In the hands of many artists, her writing has inspired research and production on the relationship between visual art, space, activism, research, publics, and the social and political uses of art.

In a long history of key publications in the visual arts, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society and On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place have particular relevance for public artists. Her most recent book Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250-1782 is yet another relevant departure.

The informal studio setting of the MFA Public Practice program in the The 18th Street Arts Center –formerly home to the historic production of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party – will set the stage for an intimate and informal engagement with Lippard.

Graduate Public Practice Studios, 1657 18th St, Santa Monica CA 90404

Otis College of Art and Design.

MAKE:CRAFT at the Ben Maltz Gallery opens Oct. 2nd

Ben Maltz Gallery

Otis College of Art and Design

October 2 – December 4, 2010

Kim Abeles, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Frau Fiber, Garnet Hertz, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Seth Kinmont, Liza Lou, David Prince, Mark Newport, Alyce Santoro, Shada/Jahn (Steve Shada and Marisa Jahn), Eddo Stern.

Inspired by the cultural currents represented in the popular magazines MAKE and CRAFT published out of Northern California, MAKE:CRAFT includes contemporary artists who combine handmaking and building techniques to create, engineer and hack unique, mostly functional devices, objects, machines and accessories; making either a sociopolitical statement, creating new markets for individual styled products, or creating inventive ways to experience the tactile world, non-virtual, the “real.”

The exhibition is guest curated by Patricia Watts, founder and west coast curator of ecoartspace, who feels that recent trends in the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) movement of making and crafting have empowered contemporary artists and designers to create more socially relevant work that supports sustainable communities.

Go to the Maker blog HERE

Go to MAKE:CRAFT Facebook page HERE

Go to EcoLOGIC LA