risd | public engagement

TONIGHT, Tonight, tonight!!! (as in, in three hours from now)

Education, Action & Social Change Discussions 7:00 PM in the Tap Room

These discussions, lectures and screenings focus on how education – whether in formal learning settings or through public interventions — can be a force for social change.

• Sebastian Ruth, Founder & Executive Director of Community MusicWorks, 19 January, 7PM in the Tap Room: Community MusicWorks creates cohesive urban community through music education and performance that transforms the lives of children, families, and musicians. At the center of this mission are the teaching, mentoring, program design, and performance activities of the Providence String Quartet. Sebastian Ruth founded Community MusicWorks in 1997 with the conviction that music and musicians have an important role to play in creating and transforming communities.

Public Art and Community Development

Tuesday, Nov. 10 6:30-7:30 PM | J. Walter Wilson Room 310 . Join us at this Community Hour for New Harvest Coffee and conversation about finding nonprofit jobs! Panelists include Rick Benjamin, faculty member at RISD and Brown and community activist, Emmy Bright, Artist Mentor Fellow at New Urban Arts, and Pete Hocking, Director RISD Office of Public Engagement. Co-sponsored by the Creative Arts Council and RISD’s Office of Public Engagement. Check the CCG website for information on Community Hour topics.

Soup Seminar:: a micro-investment grant Small investments make big change Fridays in November, 6:30 – 8:00pm in the Carr Haus Cafe

November 6th: NOAH ANACLETO of PAINT IT PINK

“Booking and hostessing the gayest shows you’ll ever know…” Aiming to create, facilitate, and/or foster a self-identifying queer ‘scene’ in providence. Focusing not solely on sexual orientation, gender expression, etc., but also a community-based environment where rigid labels or identifications, either self-applied or otherwise, are irrelevant

$3 Dinner + Dynamic Speaker = Grant Opportunities! Proceeds from dinner are put into a fund for participants to allocate to projects that connect RISD with other communities. Come to 3 seminars over the year and you will be eligible to join us on the selection committee.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a fund-raiser for Bradley Hospital, in which Melinda Bridgman’s course, Art as a Source of Healing, was recognized.  It was held at the Botanical Center in Roger Williams Park (pictured left).

I’ve had the opportunity to observe this course for a few years now, and I’m repeatedly struck by how transformational it is in the lives of students. My own theory is that the nature of the learning covenant between RISD /Brown students and the students at Bradley Hospital enable participants to see something fundamental about the way that human beings make meaning and communicate meaning. Like Freud said, it’s often in the breach of what we think is “the everyday” way of being that we see the true structures of our being.

This celebratory moment is also serendipidous in kicking off our year of programming focused on art and healing.  Through the generousity of the CVS Caremark Chartitable Foundation, the Office of Public Engagement will be supporting several new initiatives this year, including two student jobs focused on art and health, an upper-level section of Melinda’s course, new community service opportunities in the field of art and health, and a small conference of practitioners this spring.

Be in touch with us if you’re interested in participating in these programs!

Pete Hocking

I did some field work yesterday and was reminded of the old theory | practice debates I encountered early in my career. In those days, it was always university professors claiming the value of theory over practice and community colleagues claiming the value of practice over theory. Of course, from ancient times this debate always ends with an affirmation of praxis — the space of balance between theory and practice. Or, more directly, the way that effective people navigate problem solving and get things done.

Apparently not so at RISD.

It was bracing to hear so clearly the frustration of a long-time community partner about the inability of RISD students and faculty to embrace the balance. It’s been at least a decade (maybe closer to two) since this particular conversation has been brought to me with such precision — and that I’ve had to gently argue for my school’s future inclusion in the work of a community group because a recent troupe of students (led by faculty) were unable to be of value to an organization — and that the organization felt used and that resources had been stolen from them by the group.

Several weeks ago I found some writing I’d done 22-years ago when I was a RISd student. It outlines these very problems with the school at that time. It’s bracing to know that little has changed. I don’t offer this reflection as an indictment of the entire school, but rather as a reminder that there are many ways to do community work. Some are about our own acclaim and needs — and take from those we purport to serve. Some seek to be of utility, regardless of one’s own self interest. Of course, there’s a balance between these poles, too — in which everyone wins.

Pete Hocking

This weekend, I spent a warm wet Sunday afternoon on New York’s Governors Island, exploring the video and building installations in the Creative Time This World & Nearer Ones exhibition.  Governors Island is imminently urban, located only 800 yards from the lower tip of Manhattan, yet exudes a sense of quiet that is surreal and unsettling given its urban proximity. It  is a place where ghosts and tourists (on this particular weekend, art tourists) intertwine native, colonial, military, and capitalist histories  as they walk side by side down tree-lined paths.

Tue Greenfort's The Project for the New American Century installation at the Brick Village

Many of the exhibition’s installations occur inside the vacated homes of military personnel, reactivating these dormant spaces with infrasound, seances, and in one case carefully negotiated vandalism.  They reflect varying degrees of decay and rot;  chipping paint, crumbling walls, musty halls and sticky floors add subtle gestures to the narratives being told by the artworks. Having spent a lot of time thinking of how to creatively repurpose underutilized spaces, I appreciated the ways that the artists, and Creative Time curators, approached these sites, finding ways to challenge their spatial limitations while paying respect to their histories that extend far beyond the life of this exhibition.

At the same time, the future of these buildings is very much under negotiation between the city of New York, the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC). While many of the structures are protected under the national registry for historic buildings, others are slotted for demolition to make room for redevelopment and landscaping of the park. Tue Greenfort’s piece, The Project for the New American Century (which unfortunately was closed after one of the letters, built from salvaged materials from the interior spaces of soon-to-be demolished homes, fell off the side of the wall!,) creates a pointed commentary around the privileging of certain kinds of history over others.

This sends me thinking too about why we document – what compels us to record our experiences of particular moments in time? (on a tangential note, I’ve been excited by the obsessive documentation of what is being called “feral houses” in Detroit and our own experience of urban decay in Forgotten Providence.)

Feral Home in Detroit

An intervention like This World & Nearer Ones, though sanctioned by the same groups that are leading the redevelopment of our urban spaces,  create the opportunity to reflect upon and capture these particular moments in time, before the rewriting of spaces and histories has been complete.  Through documentation these efforts will extend their lifespans both formally through publications and press, but also informally through the photos and recountings by visitors to exhibitions, neighborhoods, cities. We document to remember but also to share with others so that these histories are not lost and that new futures can be imagined.

Although I am not overwhelmed by the examples included in this Community Arts Network article by San Francisco Public Health official Maria Martinez, it is great to see public officials making this connection between creative inquiry and many of today’s social, economic and environmental dilemmas. What if she pushed her argument just a little further in recognition that these creative inquiries do not necessarily always come from people who self-identify as artists, but are often the very same people working for social change within their communities? The more that people from a variety of backgrounds can feel ownership over words like “arts” and “creativity” the greater the potential of those tools for change.

A recent, not entirely unrelated, example of how creative minds can envision new ways of visualizing complex issues is this infographic in last week’s New York Times.

Federico Santi, *Peace Now*, 1969, Digital print from scanned negative, 11 X 14 in.

An announcement for an upcoming photography exhibition recently reached our offices. VISTA Redux features the black and white work of Rhode Island artist Federico Santi from back in his days as an VISTA volunteer back in 1969.

As a modern day AmeriCorps VISTA (AmeriCorps didn’t merge with the VISTA program until the early 1990s) on the close of her service with RISD | Public Engagement, this exhibit made me reflect on the relationships and personal learning that have been a huge part of my year of service. The nature of the work may be substantially different, but the spirit of open-eyed idealism persists.

I also think about some of the creative projects that I’ve taken on in these past 12 months – Caves of Comfort, The Broad Street Beats band, the Templot Space Garden/El Jardin Espacial Solar, and the Anhoek School – and can’t help imagining myself 40 years from now, looking back on these projects as fundamental to my development as a creative practioner and citizen.

………..

NEWPORT, RI: Youth, idealism, poverty and hope – all are evident in Federico Santi’s photographs documenting his time in South Florida with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) forty years ago. “VISTA Redux: Photographs, 1969, by Federico Santi,” opening at the Newport Art Museum in Newport, Rhode Island on August 29, recalls the volunteers, migrant laborers and their families, and at the same time captures a feeling for the late 1960s’ idealism and youth culture. “VISTA Redux” runs through October, 25, 2009. The Museum will host a preview reception for its late summer shows on Friday, August 28 from 5 – 7 pm. The reception is free for Newport Art Museum members; 10 for non-members. RSVP (401) 848-8200 x 104.

“VISTA Redux” features about three dozen large format images and many more shown in smaller proof format.  Santi used two cameras for his projects: a Leica M3 and a Hasselblad. He shot in black and white, explaining, “I really saw everything in black and white at that time in my life.” Asked whether he intended a double entendre, Santi pauses and says, “It’s an artistic statement but I can see that it could be a comment on youthful idealism. (Santi was 23 years old in 1969.)

Founded as Volunteers in Service to America in 1965 and incorporated into the AmeriCorps network of programs in 1993, AmeriCorps VISTA is a national service program designed specifically to fight poverty. Santi describes his fellow VISTA volunteers as “free-thinkers. It was the late 1960s and it was all about free love, rock music, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. I’m sure many of them thought of themselves as revolutionaries of a sort.”

Santi paints a vivid picture of himself at that time. “My standard attire was an air force jumpsuit. I had long blonde hair and gold-rimmed glasses. I wore black army boots with purple stars glued all over them. I looked like a freak!”

Images of the volunteers, the people they served and the notorious migrant labor camps in South Florida populate the gallery walls in “VISTA Redux.” A projected slide show of images runs continuously during the show and Santi has added a soundtrack of pop music from the 1960s.

Despite their poverty and appalling living conditions, many of the migrant workers in Santi’s images turn smiling faces towards the camera. The children especially, seem imbued with optimism or at least, unconcern about their circumstances. There is hope here and that strikes a familiar chord today.

———-

About Federico Santi: Federico Santi has lived in Newport for 25 years and co-owns with his life partner, John Gacher, “The Drawing Room Antiques” on Spring Street. He studied photography at Florida State University and his work has been featured in photo technique books and numerous regional trade publications. Santi co-authored or contributed to several books including Art Nouveau Ironwork of Austria Hungary, Zsolnay Ceramics: Collecting a Culture, and Newport Mansions: Postcards of the Gilded Age.

last week, Jori Ketten installed in our gallery some of what she heard and observed during her year-long documentation of Project Open Door.