For the last year, Cyrus has been traveling around America in a Volkwagen Vanagon, seeking friends, family, small towns, and artist residencies.  So far he has interviewed a beekeeper in Chicago, been bird-watching in rural Connecticut, learned how to make chicken wings in Washington DC, and worked for a hat-maker outside of Charlotte.  In addition he has completed two artist residencies.  The first was at Elsewhere Artist Collaborative, a living museum housed in a former thrift store.  The second was at Beton Salon, in Paris, France, where he joined the rest of the Social Practice program for a project called Parties Prenantes: Info Point.

Following are descriptions of projects completed at these residencies.

don’t tread on me

a photo essay for the “dead writer’s convention,” elsewhere collaborative, 2009
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This zine distills the history of Greensboro, North Carolina into just a few pages of image and text, based on the historical landmarks in the downtown area. The publication was produced for the “Dead Writer’s Convention” at Elsewhere collaborative, in October of 2009.
parties prenantes: info point

a neighborhood presentation series for BetonSalon, Paris, France, 2009
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As part of a residency at BetonSalon in Paris, I worked with the PSU Art and Social Practice Program students and faculty to create an exhibition similar to a science fair, with each display instead focusing on an individual or group from the neighborhood. For my contribution to the project, I ended up working with a hip-hop group from the neighborhood named Mafia Zeutrei. The group is a collective of musicians who grew up in the neighborhood, who are all 18 or younger. The group’s display featured photos by their photographer, Melody Odeimi, as well as a slide show of their fans who had posted images on facebook. For the opening of the exhibition, we invited the group to hold a sneak preview of a brand new video, followed by a brief live performance, which gathered a large group of neighborhood kids.  The group was incredibly professional, and brought a great deal of energy and excitement to the exhibition.

(project in collaboration with artist Sarah Roach)

Check out this article about Portland Stock, a project that involves former student Katy Asher and current student Ariana Jacob.

For more information on Stock and their upcoming dinner check out blog: www.portlandstock.blogspot.com

Photo: Katy Asher

Former student Eric Steen, Elysia Contreras and current student Zach Springer are going to have a show at La Esquina in Kansas City April/May 2011.

Building Together (If I could do just one near perfect thing I’d be happy)

March 15 – 28, 2010
Toronto Free Gallery (back space), 1277 Bloor Street West

Curated by Amber Landgraff
For more information contact: amber.landgraff@gmail.com

Please join us for an artist talk with Zach Springer on Saturday, March 20 from 4 – 6 pm where he will be discussing his ongoing Build Something Together project.

Building Together (If I could do just one near perfect thing I’d be happy), an artist residency featuring Zach Springer’s Build Something Together project, invites participants to take advantage of Zach’s skills as a handy man in order to learn how to build something.  Projects range from building bookshelves, end tables, chairs, audio speakers, a dancing rubber band machine, making a 5 year plan, dress patterns, a bicycle, a quilt, learning to screen print quilt, and website design. The goal of Building Together is to not only build an object, but to also be able to share the new skills that you’ve learned with others.  It’s about choosing to learn something that you don’t know how to do, but would like to know how to do.  It’s also about building a community of people through a shared interest in learning and building things together.

Participating Artists:

Shara Mohamed
Sam Silversides
Karen Darricades
Martin Zeilinger
Suzanne Morrissette
Gina Alderman
Philip Harrison
Aislinn Thomas
Amber Bond

Zach Springer is a currently working towards his Master’s degree in Fine Art at Portland State University. He has been offering his services to people for about four years now, through word of mouth and also through his website buildsomethingtogether.com.  He finds that people are much happier in their surroundings if they have taken the time to build it themselves, and he knows a lot of people just don’t have the time or the skills to build much of anything so that is why he shares his time and skills.

Amber Landgraff is completing her MFA in criticism and curatorial practice at the Ontario College of Art & Design.  She is interested in exploring the creative possibilities of the conjunction “and” between curatorial, artistic, and pedagogical practices. Building Together (If I could do just one near perfect thing I’d be happy) is the result of her research into shared teaching and learning as a way of building community.

Public Pedagogy:  Mining the Museum
University Studies Capstone Creative Industries Social Design

Instructor                Jen Delos Reyes, Art and Social Practice Faculty

Course Description:
For this Creative Industries Public Pedagogy Capstone students will explore the concept of the museum as a site of public knowledge. Over the 10 week course students will examine the structures of museums by engaging intensely with two community partners: The Portland Art Museum and The Museum Museum. By asking key question such as: what are museums for? what is a curator? what is an audience? we will prepare ourselves to be able to engage fully in a dialogue with our collaborators. Students will be asked to examine their learning and see the various ways they can connect to their community, contextualize their learning publicly and mobilize themselves and others to share information using the idea of the public museum as a starting point.  Students will also work directly with both partners to work on projects that address the institution and the public including audience research and mounting exhibitions.

image: Silver with slave chains in same display case from Fred Wilson’s  “Mining the Museum”-1992

A History of Art and Social Practice: Making Things, Making Things Better, Making Things Worse
Spring Quarter, 2010

Instructor: Jen Delos Reyes

Wednesdays 900-1150
ART 410, section 003
TOP: Hst of Art in Social Prac. CRN 44405

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course will trace a history of social practice in art and investigate as a group the current critiques, debates and issues surrounding its current state in relation to its historical context. The course will examine social practice from 1920 to present and touch on the key movements and artists including Dada, Neo-Concretism, Situationism, Fluxus, Happenings, Social Sculpture, New Genre Public Art, art and activism, network art, Social Aesthetics, post-studio practices, and Relational Aesthetics. This course will place a strong emphasis on contemporary examples of social practice art and the themes of making things, making things better, making things worse, as connected to the Open Engagement conference. Students will have a direct dialogue to the international conference on Art and Social Practice that will take place at PSU from May 14-17. The students in this class will generate writing that will comprise the conference catalogue, and have direct contact with the artists coming to the conference. Through group activities, discussions, student led seminars and participatory projects the class will work together to address the some of following questions, can socially engaged art do more harm than good? Are there ethical responsibilities for social art? Does socially engaged art have to do civic or public good? Can there be transdisciplinary approaches to contemporary art making that would contribute to issues such as sustainability?

As part of  The Incidental Person at Apex Art Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling created The Incidental Pancake, February 18-22, 2010, Bubby’s Pie Company, 120 Hudson Street in Tribeca, NY, NY.

We are looking forward to The Pancake Placement Group (PPG) presenting a version of The Incidental Pancake here in Portland Oregon as part of a pancake breakfast conversation with artist Mark Dion.

The Incidental Pancake, is a microbial enterprise designed to collaborate with multiple hosts.  The PPG will introduce their 111-year old Yukon Goldrush sourdough culture into pancake batter. This particular strain of sourdough developed in some of the most remote conditions in the world. In sub-zero temperatures this culture survived and sustained thousands of would-be gold miners, dreaming of striking it rich in the Klondike.  As The Incidental Pancake is consumed, so too is it’s social and cultural history in the Yukon.

Art and Social Practice faculty, Jen Delos Reyes and former student Eric Steen are both featured in Lateral Learning: A Book About Community, Pedagogy, Disaster and Art, Curated by Paul Butler and published by Vantage.

Current student Zach Springer just launched a new website for his project Build Something Together.

Check it out, pass it along, build something together!

http://buildsomethingtogether.com/

Congratulations to our recent graduate Eric Steen who just got a full-time teaching position at the University of Colorado Springs!

Please read our feature below on Eric to get a sense of all of the things he has been up to since graduation.

We are proud of you Eric!

1. Project residency at the Market Gallery in Scotland.
For my residency I am creating two main events: The Pub School and the Market Gallery Pub. The Pub School is a weekly class that will explore Glasgow’s beer culture through workshops, pub crawls, performances, tasting sessions, and more. The Market Gallery Pub is a one night pub in Glasgow that will serve homebrewed beers made by people from all over Scotland. The event will be open to the public and all homebrewers are welcome to participate. Unlike most beer fests that have booths, this event will transform the gallery into a pub where bartenders and servers will take orders and pour beers. This event is also part of the programming for the Glasgow International Festival for Visual Art.

2. Teaching Job
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Starts in the Fall, 2010
Info: Full-Time (but non-tenure track) position teaching Foundation and Upper Level Classes. Participation in the development of non-media specific foundation classes and an expansive approach to new media is essential. One of the classes I’ll be teaching, is one I’m building myself – New Media and Participatory Art

3. Teaching Job
Ox-Bow School of the Arts, Saugatuck Michigan
July 18-31
Title: Art in Social Contexts
In this class we will explore multiple facets of socially engaged art with the towns of Saugatuck and Douglas as our backdrop. Students will be asked to conduct multiple forms of field research in town that engage them with the town`s history, communities, and landscape. Assignments will ask students to use their research and interests to create socially engaged projects with themes that many social artists utilize such as: service, intervention, participation, and dialog among others. An emphasis will be placed on the process rather than product or outcome as many important questions arise from the process of working with other people. We will also discuss the shift of the role from maker to facilitator along with the aesthetics of social practices.

4. Group exhibition
The Mythical State of Jefferson
@ Schneider Art Museum at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, OR
Using the State of Jefferson secession movement as a point of departure for talking about democracy, regional politics, and “taking matters into your own hands.” I’m making a beer with one hell of a historical background that reminds me of the renewed regional political struggle of the State of Jefferson. A little info is on my blog now.