Los Invisibles

Local students and visiting Mexican artist create Los Invisibles, A Day of the Dead installation commemorating the lives of people murdered by storms, mosquitoes, disease, hunger and plain old human indifference.

As politicians of both parties condemn greed on Wall Street and compete for votes on Main Street, no one is speaking for the millions of Americans with no mortgage to lose. One group of student artists wants to change that.

For the past six weeks, 6 middle and high school students together with Mexican fabric artist Edith Pons have put their talents and hearts to work creating Los Invisibles, a Day of the Dead gallery installation commemorates the lives of those who lived and died without a home to lose or a bed to sleep in. The exhibit, says 12 year-old student artist Karen Padilla, is designed to remind viewers that “poor people shouldn’t be ignored.”

This very day, more than 2,000 local school kids have no home; in Hiait, over 2,000 impoverished people have perished in the wake of Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. Across the globe, a million people died last year from malaria – lives that could be saved for $10 each – the cost of a mosquito net, and in the next 24 hours 26,500 children across the globe will lose their lives to hunger and disease.

Working Classroom students and staff are inviting the commuity to celebrate Day of the Dead at Visiones Gallery, 212 Gold SW, on November 1 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. by sharing art, tradtional Mexican music by Lenore Armijo, Mexican desserts and drinks and contributing to Los Invisibles by bringing donations of non-perishable food, toiletries, backpacks, jackets and coats for kids and cash for the APS Homeless Student Project and Humanity for Haiti.

Tickets are $10/Adults; $6.00 for students & seniors and are available for purchase at the door. The exhibit continues through November 21, 2008. Visiones Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. and by appointment.

This exhibit is made possible by generous support from The Fund, Albuquerque Community Foundation; City of Albuquerque, Department Family & Community Services; County of Bernalillo; Surdna Foundation; McCune Foundation 

Currents of Change

THE BIG READ LAUNCHES SEPTEMBER 6 AT RIO GRANDE NATURE CENTER STATE PARK
Albuquerque Participates in Largest Nationwide Reading Event in History 

August 15, 2008

On Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 10:00 AM the people of Albuquerque will celebrate the beginning of a great adventure with Tom Sawyer on the banks of a great river. No, it’s not the Mississippi; this adventure begins along the great Rio Grande at the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park (2901 Candelaria Road NW) and marks the launch of Albuquerque’s participation in The Big Read, the largest nationwide reading event in history, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. All the citizens of Albuquerque are encouraged to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Throughout September and into November, there will be related book discussions, readings and events. Tom Sawyer will be available for FREE at various distribution centers throughout the city.

Surprises await families at the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park (RGNCSP) where they will be given free copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and greeted by a character from the book. Children are encouraged to dress up like Tom, Huck, or any character of the Tom Sawyer era and take part in the costume parade beginning at 10:45 AM. Visitors can participate in bug races or animal sounds workshops inspired by episodes in Tom Sawyer, or they can take ranger-led nature walks and partake in any of the other free activities offered throughout the day. The Big Read provides free parking for this event.

The event also marks the unveiling of renowned Mexico City eco-artist Yolanda Gutierrez’s installation “Currents of Change” at the RGNCSP, which will use found and natural materials to address the idea of migration/ immigration as expressed through the habits and challenges facing the migratory birds that pass through RGNCSP. Gutierrez will be collaborating on the project with Albuquerque public school students (ages 12 – 18) through Working Classroom, an organization which provides “professional development opportunities for talented young artists from historically ignored communities.”

The community-wide participation continues on Sunday, September 7 at 10:00 AM at the New Mexico State Fair’s Kids’ Pavilion where readings happen at 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM and book distribution will continue until 1:00 PM. Other related events continue throughout the Fall, such as “Talk Like a Pirate Day” at Tingley Beach in Albuquerque on September 19 where kids can participate in a treasure hunt, sword-fighting, raft-building, an art activity from the O’Keeffe museum, or choose to explore Tom’s Island.

The Santa Fe Opera, also inspired by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is using “Life Along the River” as the theme for this year’s Student Produced Opera program, which reaches over 6,000 students a year throughout the state. 

The Big Read was launched nationally in 2007 by the National Endowment for the Arts to address the decline in literary reading among all Americans, particularly youth, and to help to remedy the crisis by providing citizens in participating cities and towns with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities. Each community is responsible for organizing their own activities, events, and discussions around their book. The National Endowment for the Arts provides an extensive website with comprehensive information about Big Read authors and their works. By 2009, approximately 400 communities in the U.S. will have hosted a Big Read. More information can be found at www.neabigread.org <http://www.neabigread.org> . 

The Santa Fe Opera, the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park, the Albuquerque/ Bernalillo County Library System, Working Classroom, Bernalillo County, the City of Albuquerque, the Albuquerque Cultural Services Department, New Mexico State Parks, The New Mexico State Fair and the Georgia O’Keefe Museum are all partnering to support The Big Read. The Albuquerque Journal and Comcast are media sponsors. 

Campo Expandido XVIII

Very Special Arts Center Gets an Artistic Facelift, Courtesy of Renowned Mexican Artist Raymundo Sesma and 8 Students 

                                               

Day by day, the drab, concrete-gray facade of North Fourth is eclipsed by more and more bold blues, greens, yellows, blacks and whites in striking geometric patterns.

Eight young artists are up early every morning, collaborating with internationally prominent Mexican artist Raymundo Sesma, to create an artistic gift for the disabled artists and staff that make their home at the VSA North Fourth Art Center.

Sesma, a multidisciplinary artist who divides his time between Mexico City and Milan, Italy, believes that “Campo Expandido XVIII frees the mind of whomever observes and listens.”

 

His work includes painting, installation and video, along with a series of monumental and architecturally transforming public art projects. Raymundo Sesma’s second site-specific intervention in Albuquerque, Campo Expandido XVIII at the Very Special Arts center marks Sesma's second collaboration with Working Classroom. Last year, the artist, whose work is featured in numerous museum collections including - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Musée dÁrt, Paris; Museo de Monterrey, Mexico; and The Library of  Congress, Washington - collaborated with Working Classroom student apprentices to create Campo Expandido VIII, the city’s only 24/7 gallery in downtown Albuquerque. Campo Expandido VIII earned an Honors Award from the American Institute of Architects, New Mexico Chapter, as one of the five best new pieces of architecture in the entire state. 

 

Student apprentices Bianca Benavidez (Pacific Northwest College of Arts), Aron Kruchoski (Highland High), Jose Lopez (Albuquerque High), Michael Lopez (Evergreen University), Lauren Martinez-Burr (Valley High), Patricia Neddeau (UNM), Dylan Reames (Manzano High) and Project Manager Stephanie Zarrasola (Macalaster College) received the chance to work with a world-renowned artist, which Michael Lopez said working with Sesma “has inspired me to think big. It’s an area that needs to be recognized and noticed because the people of North Fourth are doing great things.” 

The project is possible, thanks to a capital outlay allocation from Senator Dede Feldman and the City of Albuquerque Public Art Program.  

  

The public is invited to check out the new façade at a public dedication of Campo Expandido XVIII on Friday, July 27, 2008 from 6:00-7:00 PM at VSA North Fourth Art Center, 4904 Fourth Street NW, Albuquerque, NM. 

20/20

20 Years 20 Artists 

Celebrating Twenty Years of Working Classroom 

January 19 - February 16, 2008 

Working Out 

by Lucy Lippard 

Twenty years ago Nan Elsasser founded Working Classroom, now moving into its own building in Albuquerque. During those two decades it has become a force for the arts and progressive action in New Mexico. The name Working Classroom is a good description of its unique function. Sure, all classrooms are supposed to be places where students (and teachers) work. But a classroom that works, in both senses, is sadly rare. 

Working Classroom also works out––gaining muscle as it moves beyond its center. It teaches its students skills few adults can boast––how to conduct oral history interviews and archival research on family and local history–– activities that bind people to place and commit them to responsibility for what happens there. It sends them out into the world (and into some arts worlds) where their examples will be doubly significant because of the art world’s biases toward white male artists. 

The artists in this exhibition prove that need not be so. They include several famous names and even a MacArthur awardee. They come from Haiti, China, Mexico, France and the Navajo Nation, as well as from our own African American and Hispano communities. Their visions are crucial to our futures. Artists are consciousness-raisers. They frame what people see. If they all came from the same places––geographically, and in life––the arts would be dull and monochrome. 

These artists have given support and strategic tools to young people who might never have considered a vocation for the arts, as well as to those who have been discouraged from even thinking about such a life (or even thinking). Best of all is the advice, contact and role models provided by these working artists (as well as actors, community activists and others) who (to quote the website) “promote peace, tolerance and respect for human rights at home and abroad.” 

So Working Classroom is not only a place where public art, performances, and educational projects are produced, but a place where idealism is taken for granted. Its bilingual phone-answering-machine message offers a clue to the organization’s emphasis on diversity. (They can be forgiven for not also translating into the area’s seven Native languages, though they serve these often “historically ignored” communities as well.) 

These ideals are central to the arts of the twenty-first century. They are the results of struggles that took at least half of the 20th century, struggles that are not yet won. 

These artists do not only make good art. They look at context, meaning, and effect. When the Working Classroom students go out into the world, they act in films, go to art school or law school, win awards and scholarships, attend national youth conferences. Hopefully, they will never forget where they came from and will in their own turn become community arts activists changing other lives as their own were changed by Working Classroom. 

Lucy Lippard is an internationally known writer, activist, and curator from the United States. 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, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants in criticism. She has written art criticism for Art in America, The Village Voice, In These Times, and Z Magazine.