Sharon Louden in conversation with artist-contributor Steve Lambert from The Artist as Culture Producer at 21c Museum Hotel Lexington, KY. Book signing to follow. Organized by Alice Gray Stites and Amethyst Rey Beaver.
Yearly Archives: 2017
The 8 Most Powerful Works of Public Art in the World – Architectural Digest
Architectural Digest has called Capitalism Works for Me! True/False one of “The 8 Most Powerful Works of Public Art in the World.”
Other artists included on their list are Banksy, Pussy Riot, Olafur Eliasson, The Guerrilla Girls, Ai Weiwei, Imran Quereshi, and Aaron Bell.
Lonely U.S. Flags Want Company
The U.S. Flag looked so lonely on the overpass, so we added some more.
These flags are not costly or difficult to find. I encourage you to consider doing this yourself.
3 Workshops in April/May
I’m doing three free or low cost workshops in the next few weeks.
#1 How to get press
On May 5 Marisa Mazria Katz (Creative Time Reports) and I will be doing the next free Center for Artistic Activism webinar.
Why should you do it?
We’ve all been there: you’ve done a brilliant, funny, creative action but no one except some passersby and a handful of your Facebook friends have any idea it happened. Or maybe worse yet, you get some press coverage but the journalist completely missed the point. Well, we’re here to help. We’re bringing in the press expert Marisa Mazria Katz who will help us all understand how and when to connect with the press, how to communicate yourself and your campaign, how to write a great pitch or op-ed, and, very importantly, what NOT to do. Join us!
#2 & #3 Putting Your Skills to Work for Social Change
C4AA Board Chair, Patricia Jerido, Stephen Duncombe and I will be running a two part workshop for national arts organization, Creative Capital. You’re welcome to sign up for the first part or both.
Part A: FREE Webinar: Putting Your Skills to Work for Social Change, with Steve Lambert & Patricia Jerido
Wednesday, April 26, 7:00-8:30pm EST
Online
“This free webinar gives practical guidelines on how to be an effective and resilient creative agent for social change. The webinar leaders, who have over 25 years of combined experience training people to plan and implement actions, will show how artists can best lend their expertise and perspectives to campaigns and movements that create real change in the world.”
Part B: Artistic Activism: Making Art Work
Thursday, May 4, 6:30-9:15 pm
$35
Creative Capital Offices in Lower Manhattan
“Discover how you can use your creative practice to organize communities, and make more engaging and impactful artworks. Through a series of local and international grass-roots case studies, you will learn the basics of cultural, cognitive, and behavioral theory that will help you move audiences from exposure to action. With hands-on exercises designed to give the necessary experience to make more affective and effective artwork, you will feel more confident in applying creative powers to reach social-change goals and more connected to local and global traditions of socially engaged art.”
Fight Back Pack #2: Defend U.S. Democracy Print
17in x 11in
Risograph on 80# French Paper
Buy One Get Five
I want to get these out in the world and don’t want cost to be a factor, so I’m letting you decide the price at “pay what you can” & I’ll send you all this:
Fight Back Pack #2 includes:
- At least 1 “nice” print on #80 French Paper
- At least 4 prints on standard paper (thin typing paper) to distribute as you see fit
- A few Respect and/or LIES stickers
- Instructions for how to find the phone numbers of local reps and ideas for places to hang the print
- Priority Mail shipping in a big sturdy mailer via our US Postal Service (usually $6-$10 for postage within the US)
I’m not making these to make money or further my art career. If this print is something you want to help share in your communities, I want you to have them. If you can help offset the costs of making and mailing them, it helps. All the money I get from you I’ll use to make more.
Send what you can via Paypal or Dwolla or Venmo or Square Cash or just send me a check or whatever. Be sure to include a mailing address.
About the Print
Each layer is printed separately – blue, then red, then an overlay of black. All soy and pigment based inks.
The Riso has it’s own aesthetic. It’s inherently imperfect. Having everything align perfectly can be tricky (even when you’re as highly skilled as I am!) so sometimes you get these nice, slight, misalignments and smudges. Each print is different and prints also get their own patterns of ink texture and halftone.
Download a full size PNG and print your own.
Design Drafts
The design went through many iterations, both on paper and digitally. You can see about 40 of those iterations here.
Contributed to workshop at the United Nations
I was invited back to the United Nations for a workshop envisioning UN LIVE the Museum for the United Nations on Monday. The ambition of the project is a reflection of the United Nations itself; “connecting people everywhere to the work and values of the United Nations and to catalyze global effort towards accomplishing its goals.”
I just had a small advisory role made smaller because the group they brought together was excellent. I didn’t have to say many things I often bring up in other gatherings; raising awareness is not enough, people need a sense of agency, cultural change and political change are intertwined, etc.
The project is epic in scale and will take years to complete. I’m glad to have contributed.
I’m a fan of not-boring business cards
I’m a fan of not-boring business cards. This is back of the business card of Maher Nasser, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Department of Public Information. Part of his job is communicating what the United Nations does. So why not tackle that on the back of a 3.5 by 2 inch card you give to everyone you meet?
Planet-B: Ideas for a New World
Proud to be include in the NRW Forum publication, Planet-B: Ideas for a New World.
Planet B: 100 Ideas for a New World
Planet B has been curated by Alain Bieber, Nicola Funk and Joanna Szlauderbach in cooperation with Vasco Bontje (Sustainica) and Darija Å imunović (project Hörner/Antlfinger). An accompanying publication by Lukas Feireiss and Matthias Hübner presents many other utopias — from Steward Brand, through Chus MartÃnez and right up to Raymond Kurzweil (not a fan of Kurzweil by the way –SL) — that serve as an inspiration and encourage action.
SelfControl mentioned in Guardian
SelfControl was mentioned in “How to finish a novel: tracking a book’s progress from idea to completion” in the Guardian on Monday, March 20th.
Menmuir freely admits that social media and other online temptations were a constant distraction: “Twitter, Facebook, Guardian crosswords … I’ll pretty much do anything other than write because most things are easier than writing,” he says.
Such was the pull of online distractions that he used technology to fight technology: an app called SelfControl blocked him from using social media on his laptop when he was supposed to be working.
2 Beers In Podcast
I did two shows on the Charlie Todd & Cody Lindquist’s (UCB Theater & Improv Everywhere) podcast. We did one very timely episode about the news of the week, but I am a lightweight drinker so what we covered is a bit hazy at this point.
Capitalism illustration + Bernie
Capitalism Works For Me! True/False was used as an illustration in a CommonDreams.org story, “How 90% of American Households Lost an Average of $17,000 in Wealth to the Plutocrats in 2016”. That story was then posted on Bernie Sanders facebook page – a nice surprise.