Video Documentation – Santa Ana Sites #4: wild Up at the Santora

SANTA ANA SITES #4:
WILD UP IN THE SANTORA
WITH LISA BIELAWA AND THE COLBURN CONSERVATORY

SANTA ANA SITES, AN INITIATIVE OF CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON’S GRAND CENTRAL ART CENTER. PRESENTING, IN COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP, CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACES THROUGHOUT DOWNTOWN SANTA ANA.

THE TRAVELING FORUM IS DESIGNED TO PROVIDE THE COMMUNITY SHARED ARTISTIC EXPERIENCES, ENCOURAGING THE DISCOVERY OF DIVERSE ENVIRONMENTS AND ARCHITECTURAL SPACE.

VIDEO DOCUMENTATION CREATED BY STEVE METCALF: http://stevemetcalf.com/

CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON PAST PROGRAMS OF SANTA ANA SITES

Grant / Residency Opportunity – A Social Practice Initiative of Living Resources and Grand Central Art Center

Living Resources & Grand Central Art Center Partnership

Developing Sustainable Practices within Affordable Housing Communities

A SOCIAL PRACTICE INITIATIVE

CALL TO CREATIVES

PROJECT SUMMARY

Living Resources, a program of a California-based nonprofit organization, has teamed up with Grand Central Art Center (GCAC), a unit of the College of the Arts at California State University, Fullerton, in enlisting community-driven “Creatives” (artists, architects, social activists) to respond to a “Call” for proposals.

Specifically, the Creatives selected will be awarded a one-year opportunity to engage the residents in one of two affordable housing communities in Southern California and Phoenix, AZ to ignite social change through sustainable practices and programs. The Creatives selected – individual and or collective groups, will be given housing (or a housing stipend), a working stipend, and a small budget to execute their projects.

THE COMMUNITIES

The communities in which applications will be accepted for are as follows:

Warwick Square Apartments, Santa Ana, Calif., a 500 unit family property where residents’ household income is less than 60% of median income adjusted for family size

Whispering Pines Apartments, Phoenix, AZ, a 325 unit family property whose residents’ household income is less than 80% of median income adjusted for family size

WHAT IS LIVING RESOURCES?

Living Resources is an outreach program developed and funded by a nonprofit organization founded to promote the preservation and/or rehabilitation of affordable housing for low-income households. Living Resources provides support – financial or otherwise, to underserved individuals or other nonprofit organizations serving those in need.

WHAT IS GRAND CENTRAL ART CENTER?

Grand Central Art Center, a unit of California State University, Fullerton’s College of the Arts, is the result of a unique partnership between the university and the city of Santa Ana. Located ten miles south of the main campus in the heart of downtown Santa Ana, the art center is a mixed residential, commercial and educational complex. Grand Central Art Center is dedicated to the investigation and promotion of contemporary art and visual culture: regionally, nationally, and internationally through unique collaborations among artists, students, and the community. The art center is a 45,000 square-foot, half-city block deep and full city-block long, three-level structure with apartments, live/studio spaces for college of the arts graduate students, the Grand Central Gallery, the Project room, the Grand Central Theater, the Gypsy Den Café, an Education Gallery, classrooms, and studio and living spaces dedicated to the center’s international artist-in-residence program.

More information on GCAC can be found at: https://grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/

HOW WE CAME TOGETHER

A partnership between Living Resources and the GCAC germinated from a collaboration in which Living Resources funded an artist in residency program at GCAC, as well as have seeded other community-based artistic efforts to stimulate social change in many Southern California communities.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

We are looking for Creatives who seek to bring low-income people together at two affordable housing communities, in which the nonprofit is part owner, to share ideas and experiences, and stimulate social change within their communities. The Creatives role is to live and/or spend significant amounts of time with the people living there, get to know them, listen and lead the effort to stimulate change using their specific skillset and Social Practice approaches. Living Resources and GCAC seek a similar outcome – the Creatives leave the community a better place to live, with people more active in assuring the continuation of this positive change.

WHAT IS SOCIAL CHANGE?

In sociology, the term social change refers to any significant alteration in behavior patterns and cultural values. This type of change may have a lasting effect on a society’s culture that has undergone transformation. We are looking for Creatives to live within the community in an affordable housing apartment complex and ignite change within that community making it a better place to live, getting people involved, and leaving a lasting impression for generations to come.

What exactly the Creative and that community are seeking to change and how this is accomplished is where we turn to you, the applicant, to lay out a framework for specific projects and approaches to accomplishing your goals over a one year period of time. This framework would also include methods for measuring this impact during your residency and once you have concluded your time.

WHAT DOES THE RESIDENCY INCLUDE?

This is a one-year residency in which the Creative is provided housing at no cost, a stipend of $10,000, and a small project budget of $2,000 for the year. The Creative may also choose to work part of the time from an onsite resource center, as well have access to the property management staff onsite and the resource center coordinator’s time.

DEMOGRAPHICS OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMMUNITIES
Information related to each affordable housing community is available upon request.  Send email to: grandcentral@fullerton.edu

WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO APPLY?

Creatives must be:
• Individual artists or artist collectives
• A U.S. citizen or a permanent legal resident
• At least 25 years old
• A working artist with at least five years of professional experience
• Undergo a background (and credit check for living in residence at one of the affordable housing communities*)
• And have never committed a felony.
*To be eligible to live at the Santa Ana site, artists must qualify for affordable housing.   Artists can still do a project at the Santa Ana and not qualify for affordable housing, as it is not a requirement of the grant to live on site. The Phoenix site doesn’t have the same affordable housing qualifying requirement for living on site.

AWARD CALENDAR
Tuesday, March 11, 2014 – The Call will be released.
Friday, May 23, 2014 – Applications due, 11:59 p.m. PST.
Friday, June 27, 2014 – Awards Made.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE SUBMITTED TO APPLY? 

Living Resources & Grand Central Art Center Partnership
Developing Sustainable Practices within Affordable Housing Communities
A SOCIAL PRACTICE INITIATIVE

Call to Creatives

APPLICATION

Full Name(s)
Collaborative Information (if relevant)

Address
Phone Alternative Phone
Email Address
Website
Other Contact Information

On a separate document, please provide responses to the following questions.

Please describe your creative interests.

1. Please select which community you would like to work with.

Warwick Square Apartments (Family Affordable Housing Community; 500 units)
780 Lyon Street; Santa Ana, CA 92705

Whispering Pines Apartments (Family Affordable Housing Community; 325 units)
2601 North 36th Street; Phoenix, AZ 85008

2. What type of social change do you hope to bring about in that respective community? And, what are your goals of the proposed project? (Please provide a minimum of one page description on this question.)

3. How do you plan to go about at engaging the community to foster their interest and participation?

4. What plan do you have to bring about this change?

5. How do you plan to measure your impact on the community during your residency and what tools might you suggest post-residency?

6. What makes you qualified and the right person to be selected to initiate social change in this community?

7. Please describe some of your past work engaging community and/or leading social change.

8. What sets you apart from other applicants for this project?

9. Please provide samples of your work, if relevant.

10. Please attach a copy of your resume or CV.

11. Please provide three professional references.

WHEN IS THE APPLICATION DUE AND WHERE SHOULD IT BE SENT?

Applications should be submitted to arrive no later than 11:59 p.m. PST on Friday, May 23, 2014.

Submissions will be accepted through email (.PDF format only):

grandcentral@fullerton.edu

or by mail to the following address:

Grand Central Art Center
Attn: John D. Spiak
125 N. Broadway
Santa Ana, CA 92701

STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?
Please feel free to email any questions you may still have to the ATTN OF: John D. Spiak / grandcentral@fullerton.edu

Joanna Klass, Wojtek Szaszor, Nadia Hironaka, Matthew Suib – Great Visitors to GCAC!

Joanna Klass and Wojtek Szaszor were visiting us from Warsaw, Poland.  They were GCAC creatives in residence for a first site visit, connecting with us and discussing possibilities for a future extended residency project.  While here, they presented an evening of live performance/ installation/ multimedia/ archives and conversation, Art of the Spectacle, part of their ongoing “artist in permanent utopia/permanent exile” project.  The program provided a round table dialogue about art objects, society, and exile, with a slight local focus toward Grotowski, Modjeska, Orange County and Santa Ana.  The gallery space was activated over the course of the evening for a gathering of several artists, curators and community friends who joined Klass and Szaszor as collaborators. A simple table with a circle of chairs was placed in the center of the space. A meal was served.  The goal was to engage the group in an interesting, initially outlined conversation concerning art, cultural politics, urgent issues that matter. Participation in the performance was open.   There were empty chairs for visitors who wished to join the conversation, allowing the public to enter freely and roam the gallery, listen to the conversation, join at the table or observe. The “discontextual installation” contained small traces of Deren, Cage, Modjeska’s godson Witkacy, Jerzy Grotowski, F-Space Gallery, Situationists and others.  It was an art event that one individual described as “Borscht, Bauhaus, and Bickering.”

*Joanna Klass is the founding director of Arden2, a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, facilitating exchanges between Polish and American artists.  She has brought a broad spectrum of contemporary Polish theatre to the U.S., including Gardzeniece Theatre Lab, Song of the Goat, Teatr Provisorium, the Modjeska Theatre Company, Kana Theatre, the Wroclaw Puppet Theatre, TR Warszawa and Teatr ZAR.   (*from the Library Foundation of Los Angeles website)

If you were around Downtown Los Angeles in the early to mid-90s, you might have run into Wojtek Szaszor, as he was one of the organizer of an incredibly important alternative space located on Traction Avenue by the name of Spanish Kitchen.  For the record, Downtown LA had a great scene in the 90s, with spaces like Deep River, POST, the activities of the Santa Fe Colony, artists studios and a bit later The Project, among much more.

Philadelphia based artists Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib also stopped by Grand Central Art Center for a visit.  Current GCAC Director/Chief Curator John D. Spiak presented Hironaka’s major multi-channel video installation with 16-channel sound, The Late Show, when Spiak was a curator at Arizona State University Art Museum.

GCAC always loves sharing our time and space with quality artists, creatives and the community, so come pay us a visit!

Borderblaster (SNA) Audio Paseo / Audio Promenade in Downtown Santa Ana!

Cog•nate is pleased to announce that recordings from Borderblaster (SNA) are now available as an Audio Paseo throughout downtown Santa Ana!

Borderblaster (SNA) collects the oral testimonies of local residents, artists, community leaders and 4th Street business owners, to reflect on the economic, social, and cultural dimensions of redevelopment in the Downtown core of Santa Ana. These narratives are dispersed through the physical fabric of 4th Street as an “Audio Paseo” or audio promenade. You can embark on this paseo by following the trail of “Borderblaster” markers in storefront windows along the route indicated by the map below. Scan the QR code on the front of the markers with your smartphone to listen to testimonies about the past, present and desired future of Downtown Santa Ana. Inside of participating shops, you will also find bilingual transcripts that give readers further historical and personal accounts about the heart of Downtown.

Visit the GCAC front desk to view a copy of the full transcripts or pick up a map of the paseo with more information about the intervention. 

 

 

Finding the Drop House – Video from Recordings of an Immigrant + $20,000 Project Support!

Vincent Goudreau (Maui, Hawaii – Fall 2013) was in residence to work on his project Recordings of an Immigrant.  Juan Aquino, the immigrant for which the project is based, actually had a connection to the Grand Central Art Center / Orange County, CA  area— as a youth Aquino, now a US citizen, was originally smuggled into the US from Mexico in the trunk of a car, delivered by coyotaje to a drop house in Fullerton, CA.  In examining the overall project, Goudreau felt bringing Aquino to join him for a portion of the residency would be beneficial, GCAC agreed. Goudreau and Aquino decided they would use their time in residence together to search for the original drop house, over 30 years later.

Vincent and Juan, along with filmmaker/videographer Randy Mills and GCAC Director John D. Spiak, spent a number of days searching for a specific house in Fullerton, CA.  The following is an excerpt from Recordings of an Immigrant (an ongoing multi-disciplinary project), that documents that search.

Recordings of an Immigrant: Finding the Drop House

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/87921835″>Recordings of an Immigrant – Finding the Drop House</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user6123405″>vincent goudreau</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

During his residency, Goudreau was introduced, through a Director’s tour, to California State University, Fullerton alum Jeffrey S. Van Harte ’80.  Mr. Van Harte now sits on the Cal State Fullerton Philanthropic Foundation Board of Governors as Vice Chair and serves on the Finance and Investment Committee.  The tour allowed the opportunity for the artist to share his project in development.  As a result of this connection, Mr. Van Harte has donated $20,000 to CSUF’s Grand Central Art Center directed to Goudreau’s project, helping to realize the artist’s vision at  expanded levels.  Recordings of an Immigrant is developing into a multi-disciplinary artistic project resulting in a collection of audio recorded memoirs, a book, video, limited edition prints, exhibition and a future website.

On sincere gratitude to Mr. Van Harte for his generous support of the project, and his continued support of Grand Central Art Center and California State University, Fullerton.

Here are additional audio excerpts from the Recordings of an Immigrant project to date:

Revenge, from Chapter 5, part 2, titled Family

Sacrifice, from Chapter 2, titled Mexico

Legal, Chapter 3, titled South Central

Read more online about Vincent and Juan’s search, and the public program presented while in residence:
https://grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/busy-end-to-2013-even-busier-beginning-to-2014-gcac/

Starting March Off Right @ GCAC!

We kicked off March with a powerful program this past Saturday night and the energy continues today!

GCAC artists in residence Ingrid Reeve, Barbara Milliorn and Evan Senn continued their dialogue with the public, through their project Life of An Artist , on what it means to be a feminist and a working female art professional.

The three organized the panel discussion Feminism Today: Art and Life, with artists and educators Micol Hebron, Arzu Arda Kosar, Dr. Joanna Roche and Carrie Yury.  The scheduled one-hour conversation extended itself into a two-hour lively conversation discussing past experiences with gender discrimination, how one defines “success” for oneself and in their practice, the demeaning word choices used in our society, and much more.

Grand Central Art Center thanks the panelists, the Life of An Artist team and the 80+ in attendance braving the rain that evening to join us.

Saturday evening also marked the opening of two new exhibitions, Heather Bowling and Amanda Patenaude: You Are What You Concede Curated by Kimberly McKinnis, CSUF MA in Exhibition and Design
, and Julia Haft-Candell: Fast and Slow,
 Curated by Yevgeniya Mikhailik, GCAC Curatorial Associate.  The exhibitions were received extremely well by the over 1,000 individuals in attendance throughout the evening.

You Are What You Concede was developed through a series of community trash collection days organized by the two artists, with assistance provided by Gerardo Mouet, Executive Director, Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Agency at the City of Santa Ana.  The artists worked with the wonderful team and volunteers associated with Back To Natives RESTORATION, and their Natives Nursery at Santa Ana’s Santiago Park.  The artists and volunteers worked together collecting trash from the riverbed of Santiago Creek.  The materials collected were used to create the installation, which includes opportunities for individuals to take an element of the work home, as well as participate in the “Recraft” workshop  space to create new objects.  The installation provided for great dialogue and a truly engaged experience throughout the evening.  More information and images from the project can be found on the You Are What You Concede Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/youarewhatyouconcedecollaboration

Along with the receptions for the two new exhibitions, Santa Ana Girl Scout Troop #2363 joined us at the openings to sell cookies and collect donations for the Southwest Community Center (homeless shelter) of Santa Ana.  During the evening, we were provided with some great facts as reported by a recent Girl Scouts of America impact study (2013) that we thought we would share: 92% of female astronauts were Girl Scouts; 68% of all Congresswomen were Girl Scouts; 80% of all female business owners were Girl Scouts.  Some impressive stats!  Thank you Karla Frizler for connecting with us and bring your troop to the art walk!

Today, artist Marisa Jahn and the NannyVan team visited, to discuss future residency possibilities with GCAC.  The NannyVan team are in town to begin their Los Angeles based residency at the 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica.  REV created the NannyVan through lead artist Marisa Jahn, a project working in collaboration with The National Domestic Workers Alliance.   The NannyVan is a bright mobile design lab and sound studio that “accelerates the movement for domestic workers’ rights nationwide.” With its pullout craft carts, colorful design and acoustic recording booth, the NannyVan convenes domestic workers and employers alike to produce and provide new fair care tools.

This Wednesday, March 5 from 9:30-10:45am, Marisa and her team will hold a press conference to launch the NannyVan’s CA Tour with California Coalition of Domestic Workers at Downtown Los Angeles, La Placita at Olvera Street.  They invite you to join them for the event.

The beginning of March also marks the last few days to help support the upcoming Wild Times project by artist Susan Robb.  GCAC is proud to be supporting the artist as a GCAC artist in residence and activation/exhibition site for Wild Times, occurring this spring through fall!  This is an extremely ambitious project, so Susan is reaching out through Kickstarter to generate additional funding support needed to realize this endeavor to its fullest potential.  There are only a few days left to support her project directly.  Every little bit helps to ensure the success of her journey, so please visit her Kickstarter page and pitch in!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1130079042/wild-times

We look forward to having you join us!