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THIS SUNDAY from 2-4pm
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SWAP/MEET: 6.16.2013
We are working hard to prepare for the SWAP/MEET public art event at MacArthur Park. Everything is coming together beautifully!
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SWAP/MEET EXPERIMENTAL TV AD
Here is our completed ad from our film and video day with cinematographer Michelle Lawler! The footage was shot in class and the soundrack was made up from songs suggested by the students.
Its purpose (besides being an amazing piece of video art) is to lure you to our final event.
Sunday, June 16, 2013. 2-4pm at Levitt Pavilion in MacArthur Park!
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Final Swap/Meet Class!!!
Today was our last class before our final event!
We had a lot to get done and all pitched in to finish up projects we’d started over the last 9 weeks.
We collectively glazed the clay “currency” we made in week 4.
Our “guest artists” today were some cats from the neighborhood.
We also customized pages for our publication, which will be unveiled at our final event, June 16!
Some of us used India Ink…
Others used collage.
And some people collaborated!
Can’t wait til June 16th! Come trade art with us in the park!
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Mailart at HOLA with Ramak Fazel
In honor of Harvey Milk Day we looked at mailart and stamps today. Harvey Milk will be featured on a Commemorative US Postal Stamp and would have celebrated his 83 birthday today. Who was Harvey? He was the world’s first openly gay elected official that lived in San Francisco, CA.
HOLA students took photos and drew portraits that we will turn into actual $0.33 personalized postcard stamps!
Our visiting artist today was Ramak Fazel. About a month ago HOLA students wrote questions and mailed postcards to Ramak. The tricky thing is that our postcards were cut into strange shapes so we weren’t sure if Postal Service would accept our postcards with $0.33 domestic postcard stamps on them.
Ramak did receive our postcards and brought them in to class to respond to each question. We were surprised to discover that he created drawings on the front of each inspired by the unique shapes of our postcards!
Ramak showed us the catalog and postcards from a project that he did in 2006 called 49 US Capitols. His project was reviewed in the New York Times!
For this project he traveled in a van to 49 state capitols in 78 days. He mailed himself postcards along the way as he visited Capitol cities. He used old stamps from his own stamp collection to create images on the front of each giant 10”x15” postcard.
Thank you Ramak!
Next week is our last class before the Final Art Swap Meet event on June 16th (2-5pm). It’s going to be fun and we’ll have snacks too!
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Meet our talented Artists in Residence: Mariah Garnett & Onya Hogan-Finlay
This spring the HOLA youth and visual arts faculty have had the honor of working with two very talented artists living and working in Los Angeles, Mariah Garnett & Onya Hogan-Finlay. Their collaborative SWAP/MEET project has had a great impact on its participants and we are looking forward to the culminating event on Sunday, June 16th.
HOLA first met Mariah Garnett in 2012 when she filmed the We Are Talking Pyramids project. Mariah is an experimental filmmaker and artist. The boundaries of adaption, documentary and fiction are continually being drawn and re-drawn in her work. Mariah holds an MFA from CalArts in Film/Video and a BA from Brown University in American Civilization. Mariah’s work has been screened and exhibited internationally at venues such as the Hammer Museum, White Columns, SFMOMA, Venice Bienniale and Recontres Internationales.
Below are some examples of Mariah’s work:
Picaresques
Common Era
Pider Man
Onya Hogan-Finlay is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist. Her practice incorporates social sculpture, curatorial and participatory public interventions, as well as the production of artist multiples, silk screen prints, drawings and videos. Onya holds an MFA from USC and a BFA from Concordia University. She is the co-founder of the projet MOBILIVRE-BOOKMOBILE project, an exhibit that toured throughout North America in a 1959 Airstream trailer with a collection of artist books, zines and independent publications. Onya’s work has been exhibited in Canada, the USA and Europe. Her drawings have been published by the New Museum, C Magazine and Documenta Magazine.
Below are some examples of the projet MOBILIVRE-BOOKMOBILE project:
It has been a pleasure to welcome these two ambitious and inspiring artists to HOLA!
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Guest Artist Sonia Romero!
This week Sonia Romero, creator of the amazing Urban Oasis ceramic installation in the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station, presented her work in class.
She showed us her beautiful linocuts which served as the templates for the tiles in the Metro station.
Then she took us down into the Metro station to look at the final product!
The scenes on the tiles are all scenes from in or around the park.
Some of the scenes were captured from real life, like this image that was created from a photo of the owers at Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant where Sonia used to go with her family when she was growing up in Echo Park.
And some were imagined… Sonia showed us how she drew herself and her own mother (giving a “peace sign”) into the crowd of a protest scene in MacArthur Park!
Some images were based on different time periods in the neighborhood’s history and featured actual landmarks that we recognized from spending time in the Park.
The ceramicists who made the tiles replicated the texture implied by Sonia’s original linocuts. It was really cool to see them so huge!
For the rest of the class we headed out to the park and drew portraits of each other.
Thank you Sonia!
Stay tuned for next week when we welcome guest artist Ramak Fazel!
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SWAMP/MEET Public Art Class Film/Video day.
Today cinematographer Michelle Lawler came in and helped us shoot some film and video with the kids which will end up being an experimental commercial for our final event - An Art Swap Meet in MacArthur park this summer!
First students brainstormed ideas for a commercial while Michelle and Mariah built the camera and plotted out our shoot.
Michelle showed us all how to use the Canon 5D.
And I told the kids about 16mm film (I have a piece in my hands, and that is an Eclair NPR 16mm camera - France’s first handheld news camera). I explained this might be their first and last chance to shoot film!
Then we made our way through the park…
And split up into two groups.
Michelle handled digital….
And I took on film.
We had some great actors!
Said our goodbyes….
And shot all the way home.
Next week Onya returns and artist Sonia Romero will visit us and take us over to the Wilshire/Westlake Metro station to show us her ceramic murals!
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SLANGUAGE Visits SWAP/MEET Public Art Class
Karla Diaz and Mario Ybarra of Slanguage Studio in Wilmington came to visit this week for May day, also known as International Workers’ Day!
First we did some theater exercises led by Karla to warm up and get to know each other better.
Our first exercise sharpened our observational skills….
We observed and memorized what our partners were wearing, closed our eyes, changed something about our appearance, and then had to figure out what had changed…
For the second part of the workshop, we moved on to drawing…
Mario led us in collaborative drawing of Exquisite corpses!
Or, as Mario put it….
Zombie corpses!
We had one minute for our first drawing…
30 seconds for our second…
and 15 seconds for our third. After zombies we drew Exquisite corpses of working people in our neighborhoods, like the Paletero Man!
Needless to say, we produced a lot of drawings!
Ta-Da!
Check back next week for updates!
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LACMA Field Trip - Sunday, April 28
H.O.L.A. went to LACMA’s family day this past Sunday, and the Public Art Swap/Meet class designed our own tour which focused on art and the public sphere.
Not quite holding up the rock…..
There was also pizza involved.
Take our tour! Here are the artworks we visited:
Outdoor works (artworks in the public sphere): Donald Judd’s , Alexander Calder’s “Three Quintains (Hello Girls)”, Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” and Michael Heizler’s “Levitated Mass”.
Inside the galleries we looked at art that was inspired by, or made out of, things in the pubic sphere: Chris Burden’s “Metropolis II”, Stephen Prina’s “As He Remembered It”, Claes Oldenburg’s “Giant Pool Balls”, Roy Lichtenstein’s “Cold Shoulder” and Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Can”.
You can search for these works on LACMA’s website and map them if you want to take your very own H.O.L.A. Public Art Class tour!
If you are under 17, make sure you get your Nexgen Pass - you can visit the museum for free along with an accompanying adult.
