happy 2009!
resolution #1...not have a stale blog. my posts might be wack one-liners but they WILL be daily in 2009.
if i can be addicted to facebook, i can get blog-a-licious too.
anyhoo, the watts house project was recently featured in an issue of art forum and while it has been going on for almost a decade, in my ongoing quest to find intersections of art, architecture and community i thought it was interesting thing to jumpstart things.
Watts House Project (WHP) is an artist-driven urban revitalization project centered around the historic Watts Towers in Watts, California. Directed by preeminent Los Angeles artist Edgar Arceneaux, WHP is a large-scale artwork-as-urban-development engaging art and architecture as a catalyst for expanding and enhancing community.
from the LA Times
article:
"The effort was first conceived by Rick Lowe, the mastermind behind Project Row Houses, a still-flourishing, public art project that grew up in Houston's once-crumbling Third Ward. Lowe's idea there was to rehab 22 former tenant shacks, and convert them into living -- and live-in -- works of art for the residents. It transformed the neighborhood from blemish to jewel. "These projects are a way of challenging the notion that low-income neighborhoods have to be poor neighborhoods," says Lowe."
i meant to end the year by giving props to this
project which combines youth work, art work and public work. pinata factory which is all at once guerilla public art, a statement about the privatization/policing of public space, and distribution of emergency warming blankets for the homeless.
they are located here:
1...North ave under the kennedy
2...Sacramento ave under the kennedy
3...the kennedy under Grand ave
4...under the kennedy at Logan Blvd
upcoming:
january 13th at the
MCA: Global Neighborhoods: Rick Lowe and Kyong Park in Conversation Moderated by Theaster Gates.
"How are cities and neighborhoods reconstituted, and how do the poetics of art and ritual both propel and complicate urban rebirth? In a conversation moderated by artist Theaster Gates, experimental architect and activist Kyong Park and artist and community organizer Rick Lowe engage in dialogue about urban transformation, contemporary art and the global ramifications of highly localized and conflicted processes of change."
here's to a great year!