Fall Residency II: Welcome

Summercamp's ProjectProject in partnership with Side Street Projects invites you to Fall Residency II: Welcome an ongoing open door installation with works by resident artists May Jong, Kristi Lippire, Chris Oatey, Erin Payne, Yoshie Sakai, Alejandro Sanchez and Gabie Strong. In conjunction with the the outdoor exhibition, Fall Residency II: Welcome is punctuated by a series of events and workshops to reveal the evolving nature of the collaborative site-specific works. Organized by Fatima Hoang, Elonda Billera Norris & Janice Gomez.

Summercamp’s Side Street Fair with Full Moon Pickles and mEAT

by Steve Bankhead and Jen Smith

August 31st 5-9PM

Afternoon Enchantments- Rituals For Finding Your Way Home

with Nathan Bockelman and Amanda Yates

September 16th 5-8PM

Morning Exercises

with Anna Oxygen

September 29th 10:30-11:30AM

Artist Reception and ArtNight

with Eternal Telethon

October 12th 6-10PM

Additional workshops by: Steve Bankhead, Nathan Bockelman, Eternal Telethon, Janice Gomez, Fatima Hoang, Cindi Kusuda, Kristi Lippire, Elonda Billera Norris, Anna Oxygen and Jen Smith. For a full description of workshops please visit summercamprojectproject.org or sidestreet.org

Side Street Projects, 730 North Fair Oaks Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91103
August 31-October 12, 2012
M-F 10AM-5PM, Saturday 11AM-1PM

For Fall Residency II:Welcome, artists May Jong, Kristi Lippire, Chris Oatey, Erin Payne, Yoshie Sakai, Alejandro Sanchez and Gabie Strong strive to propel their energy into Side Street’s current lot in North Pasadena by creating a space that encourages hospitality. The building and installing process will be an active and interactive part of the exhibition for the community of Northwest Pasadena and the art community at large.

Erin Payne’s work considers the role that artifice and “transitional objects” play in piecing together an understanding of our place within nature. At Side Street, Payne’s painted canvas becomes an organic topiary archway for people entering through the front gates. Kristi Lippire makes large scale objects that reference the visual culture that surrounds her every day. The sculptures are explorations in scale and material, isolating moments in everyday life that are found to be interesting in a manner that emphasizes the humor of a complex social culture. In this exhibit, Lippire and Payne are building upon their ideas in the form of a lenticular sculpture resembling a billboard facing the street.

Further inside the Side Street lot, Alejandro Sanchez creates a small space that acts, but does not function as a backyard wedding reception. Playing on the idea of the wedding, traditionally considered to be one of the most elegant moments in one’s life, it becomes a place of transformation and familiarity when mixed with the space of the backyard. Sanchez will periodically display a 1950 Hudson that he is currently customizing acts as the “Just Married” car. The vehicle at this stage is not complete, but is in transition- gradually transforming throughout the exhibition.

May Jong’s recent work explores humankind's relationship to the natural environment, whether mutually beneficial, detrimental or neutral. Gabie Strong explores spaces of degeneration, drone and decay as a means to improvise new arrangements of self-reflexive meaning. Her work is a study of two arcs of research and the relationships that form between them: the history of the built environment and social culture of the West; and the radical, subversive resistance to convention. Together, Jong and Strong, navigate through the old barbershop foundation producing new paths using dirt, concrete and spray paint relating to a map under the nearby shade canopy.

Yoshie Sakai’s strung candy necklace umbrellas provide shade yet create an uneasy environment that embodies her love-hate relationship with consumerism and pop culture. Sakai’s work simultaneously perpetuates both ecstasy and extreme anxiety in quotidian life. Through concrete pavers, Chris Oatey utilizes processes that embrace randomness and continually reinvents them in order to create unexpected relationships between material and form. Oatey’s finished pieces are the result of performative methods that emphasize the handmade.

Events for Fall Residency II: Welcome

On August 31st from 5-9PM, Steve Bankhead and Jen Smith join forces to host Summercamp’s Side Street Fair with Full Moon Pickles and mEAT. This backyard bar-b-que, complete with a pork roast and fixins is open to all. Please pick some flowers to put on the table in exchange for a plate. Sounds by Lee Harding & Amy Radio.


On September 16th from 5-8PM Nathan Bockelman and Amanda Yates will cast a magical evening- Afternoon Enchantments- Rituals For Finding Your Way Home. Join us from 5-7:15PM to create your Los Angeles totem, then at 7:30PM Yates and Bockelman will lead a procession and ceremony to charge the totems with power.

Sweat it out on September 29th from 10:30-11:30AM with Anna Oxygen’s Morning Exercises. Be sure to bring some water and loose comfortable clothing.

During Pasadena ArtNight, October 12th 6-10PM, Eternal Telethon continues their series of webcast telethons raising funds to build an artist’s retirement community at the Salton Sea. For this event,  artists will perform for the live audience as well as those watching online at eternaltelethon.com

Ingredients for the backyard bar-b-que supported in part by Whole Foods Market Arroyo. This project is made possible through a grant from the Pasadena Art Alliance.

Let the installation begin!

Before...

trial run

our mobile office ;)

adding the gate

Woohoo! Done! Thanks Brenda, Yoshie, Alex and Tom for all your help!

Our new fence is up at Side Street Projects! Come check it out for yourself August 31st during Summercamp’s Side Street Fair with Full Moon Pickles and mEAT with Steve Bankhead and Jen Smith from 5-9PM! There will be delicious food to kick off a month and a half of art installations/ events/ workshops. More details soon!!

Coming Soon to a Side Street Near You!

 

Even in the heat of summer, May Jong, Kristi Lippire, Chris Oatey, Erin Payne, Yoshi Sakai, Alex Sanchez and Gabie Strong are busy planning and collaborating as a part of the visual component of our upcoming off-site Fall Residency 2012 at Side Street Projects in north Pasadena. We are excited to see how their collaborations take form.

From Last Sunday to Telling the Futures.

A very warm thanks to all the participating artists and those who came out to see what futures will bring.  Here are a few images from last Sunday.

Detail of Flag For A Future, Present by Tucker Neel

Hero by Chad Person (Courtesy of Mark Moore Gallery)

Hell Yeah! by Jean Robison

Tools For Remembering by Katie Bachler

Detail from Tools For Remembering by Katie Bachler

Detail from Tools For Remembering by Katie Bachler

Vase of Tulips, Rose, and Other Flowers with Worms (#1) by Michiko Yao 

That's Just How I Express My Love by Michiko Yao

It Must have Been years, Silent Study II, Your Are In My Vision, and Down In The Park by Josh Peters

THE FUTURE IS LASER TAG!!!11one by Ray Hsu

Christine Nguyen in Guestroom

Sea Moon and Friends (many, many friends)

Jamie Bechtold

TELLING THE FUTURES

Summercamp's ProjectProject 3119 Chadwick Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032

Opening Reception Sunday, June 3rd from 5—8PM
Sound Bath with Jamie Bechtold from 8:30—9:30PM (Spaces are limited, a sign up sheet will be available - the cost of the Sound Bath is $20)

Exhibition runs from June 3rd —June 17, 2012
Hours by appointment, please contact summercampprojectproject@gmail.com
Katie Bachler
Jamie Bechtold
Ray Hsu
Tucker Neel
Chad Person
Josh Peters
Jean Robison
Michiko Yao
and Christine Nguyen in Guestroom
Musical Performance by Sea Moon and Friends

Summercamp's ProjectProject presents TELLING THE FUTURES. An outdoor group exhibition placing many different future options into relation—a kind of choose your own adventure of apocryphal psychic visions of political election cycles for survival in a dystopian utopia. History+Present=Futures. Organized by Fatima Hoang, Elonda Billera & Janice Gomez.

Chad Person’s inflatable sculptures, dollar bill collages, and other highly conceptual works – reflect upon the confluence of money and power throughout history, and in particular considers current US attitudes that have filtered down from Westward Expansion and notions of Manifest Destiny. The result is a political and cultural critique that encompasses not only the shifting cultural changes that have taken place within his lifetime but also those throughout US history. Also mining her relationship to history, Michiko Yao investigates the psychology behind the unique social behaviors and fantasies of contemporary Japanese women, and the relationship of two imperialisms, Western and Japanese. Yao’s current body of video and photographic work depicting floral arrangements are inspired by the historical relationships between Dutch and Japanese cultures. During 250 years of Japanese national isolation in the Edo period, the Dutch were the only westerners permitted to come to Japan. These works expose Japanese social stereotypes in both Eastern and Western culture; confront the boundaries of socio-culturally constructed ideas of gender, race, and sexuality and their relation to power.

Canadian writer and artist, Ray Hsu will remotely organize The Future is Laser Tag, in which the bottom of the hill will become a military exercise: an obstacle course for four players. Four gallery-goers become avatars. They will strap cameras to themselves that transmit their first-person views to four remote players. These remote players can see from the first-person views of their avatars. But these remote players can also see in third-person: a camera at the top of the hill, a bird's-eye over the obstacle course. Also using the sky as the limit, Jean Robison traverses an adolescent desire for the end of the world in her group of large drawings, Hell Yeah!. Creating fantasies of apocalypse composed of gold coins, breasts, cola, pizza and weapons on large vinyl banners that can be seen from the sky. Tucker Neel explores the impulse to memorialize individual and collective experiences. Questioning how images, objects and events become memorable and shape nationalist allegiance and individual identity, Neel’s projects directly address the role design, decoration, and artifice, play in shaping political discourse and public opinion. Neel critically examines the way contingent and contested histories are made real by objects, events, and persistent narratives. Through these works he activates a larger discussion about how seemingly innocuous or overlooked objects or experiences contribute to individual and national memorial structures.
Interested in the map and the garden as symbols of being with the land and with ourselves, Katie Bachler deals with the complexities of the human/nature relationship and attempts to reconnect the two through tools for learning about place. By using an education model in her practice, each interaction is new and shifting. For TELLING THE FUTURES, Bachler will create new tools for survival after an apocalypse, and encourage people to use these tools in a special home-made structure. In another futures, Josh Peters’s physical and expressionistic paintings focus on psychologically charged groupings of figures, usually men and women living away from civilized society. The scenes are vaguely cult like- conjuring up a sense of impending violence or spiritual awakening lurking just under the surface.
And as a compliment to TELLING THE FUTURES, Christine Nguyen will be featured in Guestroom. Nguyen’s work draws upon the imagery of science, but it is not limited to technologies of the present. It imagines that the depths of the ocean reach into outer space, that through an organic prism, vision can fluctuate between the micro- and macroscopic. Nguyen’s personal cosmology in which commonalities among species, forms, and environment become visible and expressive, suggests past narratives and possible futures. The forms and environs in her work sometimes migrate into new pieces, establishing new systems. These systems imagine modes of transportation, communication, and regeneration. There are no waste materials in these worlds: vision is a renewable resource. As an extension to her practice, Nguyen will take part in collaborative musical performances as Sea Moon and Friends.
To close the evening (or extend and open...), Summercamp’s ProjectProject will host a Sound Bath with Jamie Bechtold. Bechtold orchestrates improvised concerts uses tuning forks, planetary gongs, crystal bowls, and other instruments, to apply sound directly on or over the body. Sound helps to re-tune the nervous system, which results in a significant decrease in stress, increase in immunity and nervous system functioning, and overall increase in general health and well being of the body and mind. Sound Baths are a great way to release sluggish energy, stress, and physical or emotional issues. The tones create harmony in your body...they assist in relaxation, meditation, and balance your energy. The term "Sound Bath" is used because you are "bathed" in the vibrations of all the instruments used. During a typical Sound Bath participants sit or lie on the floor, relax and allow the sounds to wash over them.
Please BYOB (Bring Your Own Blanket) to sit, lay on or keep you warm. The Sound Bath starts at 8:30 and spaces are limited. The cost is $20 at the door. 

Fresh, spring, clean, new, shiny, uh-huh!

Good morning! We are coming out of hibernation- excited to catch fish, eat honey, plan our first show of the summer season and beyond! We are thrilled to partner with Side Street Projects with the help of a grant from The Pasadena Art Alliance. Check back soon to hear about the future.

Something to write home about

Dedicated Summercamper, Janice, measures the spot for our soon to be booth at the LA Mart

It's back to school and back to work here at Summercamp. We are excited to be in the planning stages for the Co/Lab Alternative Art Fair in conjunction with Art Platform Los Angeles at the end of the month (more details to follow sooooon), but until then we cannot let a fabulous summer season end without sharing some exciting news...

Liza Wade Green, writer/director and performer of Hill House Mine and Janice Gomez were recently interviewed by Monica Hicks at GYST Radio. Take a listen here.

While you are following links, take a look at the amazing review by Carol Cheh of our last show Friday Night Lights & Sunday Afternoons in the LA Weekly.

symchronaut/ synchronot by Constantina Zavitsanos

Thank you for all of your support this summer. Please keep it coming and let us introduce you to our 2011 Fall Resident Artist, Constantina Zavitsanos. You may remember her holographic paint bucket and stopwatch and compass on headphones from Slick during our first summer. A New York based artist, we are very excited and preparing to have Tina in residence to build a site specific work for Home Sweet Away from Home at the the Co/Lab Alternative Art Fair.

conjuggle visit by Constanina Zavitsanos

 

with small fans (apart for the hole) by Constantina Zavitsanos