6/10/12

Artist Bailout at the Last Bookstore

The Artist Bailout at the Last Bookstore on May 26th was a success! All the participating artists gave incredible presentations and were all deserving of mini grants. We raised enough to give away two grants for $308.50 each. A tremendous thank you to everyone who helped make it happen from making soup to cleaning to planning.See photos from the event here.

The two artists who received the most votes were Idea Truck and Homo Economicus. Check out this video of Homo Economicus taking the cardboard check to Bank of America.


Artist Bailout (Gyges) from billy mark on Vimeo.

5/17/12

May 26, 2012 Artist Bailout Project Summaries

Artist/s:
Josh Atlas
www.joshatlas.com


Project Title:
Pool Girls, Lady Parts



Description:
Over the past year, I began a body of work based on figurative characters called Pool Girls. These drawings and sculptures are amalgamations of food, lust, and intimacy, cobbled together from a variety of materials that includes donuts, icing, and pool toys.

Through the Pool Girls, Lady Parts project, I aim to investigate the sculptural possibilities of their body (arms, torsos, and legs) as individual sites of comfort, lust, delight, and vulnerability. By using individual body parts, I want to shift the work from characters (which implies narrative) to objects (which emphasizes tone and function).

How an Artist Bailout grant will help make this project happen:
In order to realize this project, I want to expand my tool-set to be able to bend and stretch PVC pipes (for the limbs) and stretch vinyl (for the pools). This will allow for a more playful and gestural approach to generating sculptural forms. The funds will be used to purchase tools and safety equipment.

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Artist/s:
Ayers Baxter

Project Title:
Hopestreet



Description:
I am Ayers Baxter. I have a musical, Hopestreet. The script and songs are written by me and an assembly of Grammy, Academy & Country Award winning writers. Herb Alpert and Derick Alpert at Almo Erving helped in the initial steps. I started working on this project in 1988 and have finally got it ready for the next step—workshop production and showcase performances.

Hope runs away from a single parent mom and lands on the streets of Hollywood. Meets a young up and coming rock star, falls in love, gets pregnant and finds herself alone when he leaves her on a rock tour.

Hot music and a story that makes us laugh and cry.

We’re on Hopestreet
It’s no journey’s end
Nor last retreat
Wherever fate may send
We’re on Hopestreet
And broken hearts will mend,
So don’t give up
Living on Hopestreet.


How an Artist Bailout grant will help make this project happen:
Audition space for one (1) day, unless a multitude of actors and singers show up
A place to rehearse (4) weeks
A place to perform shows example: Pursing Square, Old Theatre or on a street or theatre in the Arts District
CD copies of the music for performers to use for practice
20 copies of the script for cast and crew
Miscellaneous stuff: grocery cart, trash can, plastic grocery bags, kite, furniture, construction paper and props
PA system (rent or loaned)
We may need money for a musical director

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Artist/s:
Elizabeth Liang

Project Title:
UNPACKED: a story of growing up among worlds


Description:
Who are you when you’re from everywhere and nowhere? UNPACKED is a one-woman multi-character comedy-drama about growing up as a girl of mixed heritage in Central America, North Africa, and New England. Alienation and the search for identity, as well as the sometime refusal to search and learn, weave thematically through the narration. The piece depicts how a young girl copes as a culture/language/religion straddler (“other”) in country after country. My intention is to bring many disparate cultures together onstage and hopefully in the audience—to at least create dialogue about identity, home, culture (shock), and how to bridge the gaps.

How an Artist Bailout grant will help make this project happen:
An Artist Bailout grant would go toward paying the sound designer and director for my workshop performance at Beyond Baroque in late June. Excellent sound design would help to establish "place" in the most immediate way (for example, the call of the muezzin in Morocco). The piece also needs a director to polish and tighten it.

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Artist/s:
Tehani Sarreal
www.DancingTehani.com

Project Title:
AFA (Artists for Action)

Description:
Artists for Action is a concert that gives artists of different media (from dance theater to oil painting) and walks of life an opportunity to voice community issues and promote safe dialogue towards positive and peaceful approaches—if not resolutions—to these themes as a community. The concert first started in 2007, and this fall 2012 I will expand the event with an artist panel to discuss their particular pieces with the audience as well as their personal connection to/work with the subject matter (from LGBT themes to Police Brutality to the 99%). This event will be open and free to the general public, cover a diverse and balanced presentation of themes and ultimately aim to inspire everyday citizens to get involved and become advocates of understanding and acceptance of our diversity that makes our community so unique. By virtue of offering these concerts for free to the general public, the community impact is more tangible. It will be a one day event held on September 22, 2012.

How an Artist Bailout grant will help make this project happen:
The micro-grant will be primarily used for the venue rental (if not donated), artist stipends and everything else not covered by a similar micro-grant I am also applying for. The other micro -grant (maximum of $1,000) has the requirement of a matching grant/in-kind funds. This micro-grant (with Artist Bailout) will supplement the costs as well as meet the requirements of a matching grant to support the event.

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Artist/s:
Billy Mark (billymark.biz), Miranda Wright (sustainablepractice.org), Poordog group (poordoggroup.com), Christine Marie (cimimarie.com) & Jon Armstrong

Project Title:
Homo Economicus



Description:
Nearly twenty artists have gathered together to collaborate on a performance that attempts to answer the question: "How can we live creative lives, and still put food on the table?" Through six public events, and four weekends of performance, our team will bring to life one of the most challengingly complex characters of all time: Homo Economicus. And, in the process, we look to uncover the theatrical dimensions of our economy.
In order to fully represent the pervasiveness of this socially realized, fictional character called Homo Economicus, we will pay all the "actors" of H.E., everyone who puts on or comes to a fundraiser that lives in our culture, $1 an hour. Meanwhile, we will explore alternative value systems at play in our country: political, religious, familial, moral, and prestige.

The performance will involve ten musicians, ten actors, an immersive shadow environment. Our public events & fundraisers leading up to the performances will include:

1. A proposal at the Artist Bailout
2. A self-published magazine
3. A tithing party
4. An award ceremony
5. An interactive Kickstarter campaign
6. A yard sale surrounding a foreclosure

How an Artist Bailout grant will help make this project happen:
We will use the funds to purchase a few small items for the performance (old overhead projectors & screens), pay each actors $1 an hour, and to put food on our tables at home during our rehearsal process.

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Artist/s:
Eva Montealegre
www.evamontealegre.com

Project Title:
Cave Art Research and Community Presentation



Description:
I will go to spend time in ancient shamanic caves where I have been invited to work with a respected American artist in the south of France and stay at a barn/studio near the caves and work on my painting technique using limestone pigments and immersing myself in my artistic process—eventually inviting the neighboring village to an open studio presentation.

Then I will come home to Los Angeles and create a community event using imagery and techniques acquired providing mask/head-dress structures for participants, children and adults, to decorate and perform in under my simple direction using original music and simple home made costumes. This will serve as an opening night presentation for the reception exhibiting my paintings utilizing the techniques learned.

I have a gallery interested in this presentation who will invite a neighboring performing art school to participate.

How an Artist Bailout grant will help make this project happen:
Bailout $ for mask & head-dress "foundations" which are first made by me in ceramic form then I utilize various materials & molding techniques for creation & duplication so multiple foundations can be decorated by as many participants as needed for each event. I’d add horses, bees & bird foundations (already have bear & deer.) Plus costume materials & art supplies.

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Artist/s:
Lorri Deyer

Project Title:
Idea Truck



Description:
Idea Truck is a food truck with only IDEAS on the menu. Order a Half-baked Idea or Worst Nightmare from the service window but first you must pay with your own idea.

Half price for reciting it out loud...we’ll even ring the bell.

Idea Truck will travel L.A. for 6 months—a wandering venue for conversation, inspiration, and engagement. This is an opportunity to learn and enlarge our potential as humans and neighbors. In a world increasingly isolating, let's have ideas amaze us with the creative spark in all of us. Awarding Idea Truck says people everywhere have worthy ideas.

How an Artist Bailout grant will help make this project happen:
Laminated imagery: photos of the idea creators on the truck (a la ice cream stickers) as a visual representation of their participation.
Streaming video: record passersby reaction for the blog and verbal explanations of ideas (for those who can’t write, want to elaborate, to sing…)

Maintenance: radiator repair, speedometer cable, gas gauge, windshield replacement, gas ($20/week).

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Artist/s:
Concord (an artist-run-space based in L.A.'s Cypress Park whose members include: Andy Robert, Arjuna Neuman, Marco Domenico, Car Martin & Michelle Kurta)
www.concordspace.com

Project Title:
Spaghetti Sessions



Description:
Spaghetti Sessions, is an ongoing lecture series, panel discussion and experiment. Our first installment, December 9th, 2011, invited David Ross and Allan Sekula to discuss 70s video art. The convention we played with, was in having them cook spaghetti for the audience, a light-hearted formality that helped break the lecture/artist, audience dynamic—addressing the authoritative concerns of Fluxus, Paik, Kaprow and others of that generation; while they discussed 70's art and the plurality built around this new and intentional medium.

David provided the recipe he learned from an abstract expressionist—a roommate of his youth. And we purchased the ingredients. Thus, Spaghetti Sessions was born: "You'll cook for us and at the end we'll eat and chat together over red wine and pasta. How does that sound?!"

How an Artist Bailout grant will help make this project happen:
An Artist Bailout grant would help with overall project cost and a budget—which would help us provide and cover speaker fees, and the price of cooking a collective meal. That night, in December, we estimated $60 was spent gathering ingredients, with another $50 on wine; with a $200 speaker fee and $140 covering David's rental car; to total roughly $500.

In continuing with our collective research our next visitors will be the L.A.-based members of Ultra-red who will discuss their School of Echoes and their initiative to have high schools teach a class on community, we’re excited to see what they’ll cook up.

5/4/12

Artist Bailout @ The Last Bookstore





















Calling all lovers of art and food... and books! The long-anticipated next Artist Bailout event will take place on Saturday, May 26th from 6-9pm @ The Last Bookstore: 453 S. Spring Street in Downtown, Los Angeles.

Presenting artists will include: Josh Atlas, Ayers Baxter, Elizabeth Liang, Tehani, Eva Montealegre, Lorri Deyer, Concord (Arjuna Neuman, Andy Robert, Marco Domenico, Car Martin & Michelle Kurta) and the collaborative team of Billy Mark, Miranda Wright, Poordog group, Christine Marie & Jon Armstrong. Summaries of their projects will be posted soon...

Sliding-scale, suggested donation for dinner and a ballot ranges from $10 to $10M (so invite your billionaire friends!) All proceeds raised will go towards funding (at least) two of the amazing projects being presented that evening.

In the interest in keeping costs low and sustainability high, we'll be giving out special prizes for all Artist Bailout patrons who show up with their own soup bowls and spoons! Also, everyone is strongly encouraged to take the bus, light rail, bike, walk or carpool to The Last Bookstore. Instead, you can use those dollars you saved on gas and parking to beef-up your donation for our artists. Win-win!


Thanks for supporting the Artist Bailout and we look forward to eating with you!

4/7/12

Open Call for Artists / Artist Groups to Participate in the Next Artist Bailout

This is an open call for applications to the fourth iteration of the Los Angeles- based project Artist Bailout! If your application is chosen, you will have the opportunity to present a proposal to a live, voting audience for the chance to win an instant micro-grant to help turn your idea into a reality.

What is the Artist Bailout? The Artist Bailout is a public meal designed to solicit community-driven financial support and democratically fund new work by emerging artists in Los Angeles. This experimental philanthropic model literally brings together artists and patrons around the table. During the course of a meal, artists present proposals for projects in need of funding to members of the community who have each made a small donation to attend the dinner. The dinner-goers then vote for their favorite ideas and at the end of the night, two (or more) participating artists win cash grants for their projects comprised of the donations raised at the door. Remember, even if your project isn’t chosen for a grant, presenting at the Artist Bailout is a great way to share your project with a large and diverse community.

When & where does the next Artist Bailout happen? The next Artist Bailout takes place on Saturday, May 26, 2012 at The Last Bookstore in Downtown L.A.

How do I qualify? If you are an artist, part of an artistic collaboration or collective, or you just have a great idea for a project that you would love to get funding for, please apply!

Submit a proposal! To participate as a presenting artist / artist group at the upcoming Artist Bailout please send us your proposal no later than Saturday, April 28th. We will notify selected participants by Monday, May 7th. Selected artists will be asked to prepare and deliver presentations at the May 26th Artist Bailout! For your proposal, please email the Artist Bailout team at renegadebountyexchange@gmail.com with the following information:

1. Name of artist/s or artist group (first and last names / groups, please indicate a main contact person)
2. Project title & description (100 words or less)
3. Breakdown of how you’ll use an Artist Bailout grant to realize your project (60 words or less)
4. Please attach up to 6 images, a video that helps illustrate your idea and a website if you have one.

Note: Text and images from your proposal will be reproduced and made available at the Artist Bailout event as well as published on our website.

Where can I find out more about the Artist Bailout? You can read all about the Artist Bailout project as well as check out photos and view an archive of past events, participants and grantees on our website. For the latest news and updates, join the Artist Bailout community page on facebook.

3/29/12

Downtown Artist Bailout Community Planning Meeting #1


The Artist Bailout Collective is holding a Community Planning Meeting to organize the next Artist Bailout event (which is taking place in May @ the Last Bookstore). Please come join us if you are interested in helping to plan the upcoming event, want to volunteer at the next Bailout, or are just interested in finding out more about this project. We will also give you tools to help you learn how to start a similar fundraising project in your own community. DTLA residents are particularly encouraged to come out as May's event will take place in your own back yard (errr... bookstore).

Date: Tuesday, April 3rd
Time: 7pm–8:30pm
Place: The Last Bookstore (453 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013) lastbookstorela.com

We look forward to seeing you there and hearing your awesome ideas for the next Artist Bailout!

(For you facebooky-types, check out the event info and rsvp here!)

12/27/11

Some Pics from the December 10th Artist Bailout

The third Artist Bailout took place on December 10, 2011 at Human Resources. All told, we collectively raised over $2,500 and awarded $1,000 grants to the two participants whose presentations received the most votes: Knowledges and the Mobile Pinhole Project. Congratulations! All of the other participants received a $100 prize. 

Thanks to everyone who attended and to all our sponsors and volunteers who helped make this Artist Bailout a success! 

Below is a selection of photos from the evening. You can view more pictures  on our facebook page and picasa

Enjoy!


12/5/11

December 10, 2011 Artist Bailout Participants

Slanguage Studio www.slanguagestudio.com



Slanguage Studio is an artist-run space and art collective founded in 2002, operating from a storefront in the industrial/harbor neighborhood of Los Angeles in Wilmington, California. Originally intended to be a studio for poet/artists, Karla Diaz and artist Mario Ybarra Jr., Slanguage Studio became an art project and public space in response to a need for art by the community. Slanguage Studio is dedicated to art, education, art workshops, performances, music, residencies, and curating of events and exhibitions all over the world. The work of Slanguage artists operates as examinations of conflated and excluded social norms, often examining complete environments, identity, neighborhoods, invisible histories and marginalized cultural, street narratives. Slanguage’s most recent projects include “Police and Thieves” at Chicago Hyde Park Art Center (2011), “Landscapes” for MDE 2011 in Medellin, Colombia (2011) “Defiant Chronicles: Women and Graff” at MOLAA (2011) CA, “Possible Worlds” at LACMA (2010-11), “Slanguage” (2009) at ICA Boston; and Engagement Party MOCA Los Angeles (2009).

In accordance to Slanguage’s mission of arts education and mentorship, for the Bailout Project, we’d like to propose that you fund a project for SLANGAIR (Artist in Residency). This is part of Slanguage’s art residency program which annually invites local artists from Los Angeles, from California, including one from Los Angeles, a national artist, and an international artist to make a new piece of work. As part of this residency we have a literacy component that invites poets/organizers/activists to do events that will promote literacy at the studio/community. We have a green residency program that invites artists to also work with the community but also with our Teen Art Council. During their time at Slanguage, each artist builds a body of work to show at the studio’s gallery space and may include teaching a workshop, leading a lecture or panel discussion.

Please visit one of our latest project “Slanguage TV” working with El Paso Texas and Ciudad Juarez to make the first bi-national project since the most recent violent attacks in Mexico.

http://vimeo.com/asltt

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Mobile Museum of Riverside Chinatown



Part activist architecture, part education station, wit
h a hint of playfulness, the Mobile Museum of Riverside Chinatown is a transportable kiosk that will engage the public about the history of Riverside’s Chinatown and the current political struggle to preserve the historic site. The project aims to share untold stories and document an important piece of Asian American history, and larger US history.

In Riverside, one of the most well preserved archaeology sites containing invaluable artifacts documenting one of the oldest Chinatowns in the country is under attack. Private development is attempting to purchase the site, and the community is organizing.

Partnering with Save Our Chinatown Committee, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, we plan to construct a mobile museum that will serve multiple functions. The Mobile Museum will display photographs of artifacts that are in storage at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, hidden from public view. Additionally, it will be a roving information booth that will provide important information about the political campaign to save the site to the community and serve as a mobile volunteer station. It will also be an interactive art workshop station for the community to create their own vision for a public park on the site, NOT a medical building.

The Mobile Museum will be deployed in Los Angeles, Riverside and other locations, to support interactive learning, political awareness, and cultural exchange. It’s portable nature is a comment on the ability to reclaim space for our history, not confined to a brick and mortar structure. We CAN build our own cultural institutions!

Think silkscreened canopy, collapsable modular architecture, community art, and political message—that is the Mobile Museum of Riverside Chinatown.

This will be a collaboration between DreamLA (Melissa Guerrero) and FrameShiftDesign (Theresa Hwang), both LA based art and design studios.

About Save our Chinatown Committee: www.saveourchinatown.org


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Actual Size Los Angeles
www.actualsizela.com



Guy de Cointet
ACR CIT, 1973
Offset on newspaper
22 x 17 inches
001-75-GC


Actual Size Los Angeles is collaboratively run by Lee Foley, Justin John Greene, Samia Mirza and Corrie Siegel. The current Actual Size location at 741 New High Street in Chinatown, Los Angeles opened in April 2010. Actual Size has hosted over 20 exhibitions/ curatorial interventions and worked with over 90 artists. Actual Size collaborates with established and emerging artists to encourage situations that activate the exhibition and engage the public. Projects curated by Actual Size have been profiled in the L.A Times, Mousse Magazine, and Flash Art International.


PRINT IMPRINT
Take a book, and you will find it offering, opening itself. It is the openness of this book that I find so moving. A book is not shut in by its contours, is not walled up as in a fortress. It asks for nothing better than to exist outside itself, or to let you exist in it.
                                                                    - Georges Poulet, Interiority and Criticism,1970

Print Imprint is a satellite exhibition in partnership with Once Emerging Now Emerging, Cirrus Gallery’s year-long exhibition project in conjunction with Pacific Standard Time. Print Imprint seeks to develop an intimate relationship and conversation between artworks from the 1970’s and 80’s, and current artworks works produced by emerging and mid-career Los Angeles artists. Participating Artists include Ali Bailey, Scott Benzel, Gui de Cointet and Larry Bell, Cayetano Ferrer, Katie Herzog, Laura Owens, Ed Ruscha, and Barbara T. Smith. The artists’ responses to the concept and form of the book will take many physical forms, including prints, paintings, slide projections, musical composition, and custom vitrines and pedestals. Actual Size will produce a limited edition book in conjunction with the exhibition.

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Outpost for Contemporary Art



Outpost for Contemporary art has a six-year history of promoting community-based projects with international influence. Through Outpost's residency program, artists from Mexico, Canada, Eastern Europe and South America have operated for extended residency periods from Outpost's Highland Park headquarters and embarked on projects that have engaged the community in a part of the city historically underserved by the region's major cultural institutions. Outpost also serves as an important satellite for members of Los Angeles' vibrant artist community whose practices manifest largely outside the realms of galleries and institutions.

Outpost for Contemporary Art seeks to engage and enrich diverse Los Angeles communities through cross-cultural exchanges and interdisciplinary projects that blur the boundaries between art, social practice, and public life. Programs support the work of innovative, socially-engaged artists who utilize public spaces, temporary venues, and collaborative methods of production to foster intimate contact and genuine connection with their audiences.

Outpost has been connecting people to art and artists through a wide variety of events, exchange programs and residencies since 2004. Alive to the specificity of its location in heterogeneous Northeast Los Angeles, Outpost’s programming actively creates community and intellectual exchange on local and global levels.

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Knowledges



Knowledges is an emerging, artist run curatorial organization that seeks to broaden the context of contemporary art production and reception. Our mission is to create dialogue between contemporary art and geographic sites of historic, scientific or cultural influence
by organizing site-specific explorations and events.

Our first major project is an event that will take place at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Located in the San Gabriel Mountains, just outside Pasadena, Mount Wilson is an astronomical observatory and site of historic scientific discovery, contemporary research, and sweeping views above Los Angeles. Art and science communities thrive in Los Angeles, but seldom have occasion to converge. We are initiating a dialog by inviting contemporary Los Angeles artists to create and exhibit works in response to the location, history and influence of Mount Wilson. This weekend-long, experimental event, scheduled for June 2012, will incorporate exhibitions, performances, film/video screenings, and other forms of temporary installations on the observatory grounds, as well as night viewing through the telescope. The observatory has granted us unprecedented access to the facilities and grounds, including the historic auditorium, astronomical museum and the observation decks inside the 60-inch and 100-inch telescope domes.

We have an overwhelmingly positive response so far, with the following artists and organizations confirmed: Lita Albuquerque, Jennifer Boysen, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Claude Collins-Stracensky, Cloud Eye Control (Anna “Oxygen” Huff, Miwa Matreyek, Chi-wang Yang), Zoe Crosher, Russell Crotty, Katie Grinnan, Mark Hagen, Emilie Halpern, Norman Klein, Emily Lacy, Museum of Jurassic Technology, Laura Riboli, Kim Schoen, Sneaky Snake (Ian James & George Jensen), April Totten & Donnie Stroud, Kara Tanaka, Mungo Thomson, Cody Trepte, Viralnet.net (Tom Leeser) and more to be announced...

Funding from an Artist Bailout grant will help cover our project’s organizational costs, including the development of a comprehensive research website, the creation of a companion publication, printed event maps or promotional materials, and a possible park permit fee. Additionally, we need to raise funds to rent the 60” telescope.

Christina Ondrus, Founder/Director, Co-Curator

Elleni Sclavenitis, Associate Director, Co-Curator

Information about the Mount Wilson Observatory:
www.mtwilson.edu

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Signify, Sanctify, Believe

www.signifysanctifybelieve.org



Signify, Sanctify, Believe—facilitated by Claire Cronin, Adam Overton, and Tanya Rubbak, and featuring the sacred gifts of dozens of contemporary artists, performers, and visionaries—is invested in the temporary, playful exploration of [semi-]fictional religious technologies.

Over 2 weeks last Spring 2011, we opened our storefront revival center doors – within the Free Church of Public Fiction – to the Highland Park public. We provided a venue for over 70 semi-secular artists to present over a dozen inspirational services, sermons, and workshops, and oversaw the publication of nearly 20 pamphlets, consisting of creative articles of faith and other religious ephemera. (Our fu
ll schedule, and the complete Library of Sacred Technologies, can be found online at http://signifysanctifybelieve.org.)

This year we hope to travel our two very special branches – The Saints and Servants of the Order of [Con]Temporary Religious Observance, and The Library of Sacred Technologies – up, down, and around the West Coast and Southwest, spreading the good word and creative gospel currently infusing the sanctified work of our Los Angeles experimental art and performance community. In addition, we hope to meet and collaborate with artists in these locales as well, as we continue to produce creative, gentle, temporary religious services, sermons, healing dens, and so forth.

Money earned through the Artist Bailout will potentially help us visit Portland, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Salt Lake City. It will also help us print and distribute more copies of our Library of Sacred Technologies.

a video advertising the first iteration of Signify, Sanctify, Believe:

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Mobile Pinhole Project
www.mobilepinholeproject.tumblr.com



This past summer, I founded the Mobile Pinhole Project, a new community arts organization in Los Angeles. The Mobile Pinhole Project brings hands-on photography workshops to youth in neighborhoods across Los Angeles using the VanCam, a giant pinhole camera on wheels. The Mobile Pinhole Project is having a huge impact for kids across Los Angeles, guiding them to re-examine their neighborhood community through a visual lens. The “oohs” and “ahhs” from the kids when they go INSIDE the camera makes all the hard work worth it. Unfortunately, we can’t continue our programming unless we raise funds to support our materials and maintenance costs. The Artist Bailout micro-grant would support the paper, developing, snacks and gas for 5 workshops, allowing us to continue to inspire the creative leaders of tomorrow by making arts education available to youth who otherwise don’t have access to creative outlets.

WHAT WE DO
In half-day mobile workshops guided by professional local artists, young people experience photography as a powerful tool for exploring their communities. Our workshops makes visual arts geographically and technologically accessible by allowing youth in neighborhoods across Los Angeles inside the mechanism of photography, empowering a collective visual exploration of identity, culture, and place.

WHY WE DO IT
Funding for arts and education has been cut deeply across the United States, and California is no exception. Twenty-nine percent of California's public schools offer no study in any arts discipline. Los Angeles has lost 25% of its full-time elementary art teachers in the past three years. Yet, we know that artistic expression is fundamental to youth development – as a tool for self-expression, communication, and critical thinking. Personally, founding the Mobile Pinhole Project has been a personal milestone for me, furthering my goal to improve accessibility to arts education for all youth.