Living as Pedagogy: a four-part meditation on an ongoing, collaborative artwork among apartment neighbors

By Amanda Leigh Evans

The Living School of Art (LSA) is an ongoing, intergenerational living art
project that takes the form of an alternative art school and artist collective.
It is located within a 120-unit affordable housing apartment complex in
East Portland, OR. Neighbors of all ages teach and contribute to activities such as cooking workshops, garden building and planting, performance games, crafts-based practices, and artmaking. Founded in 2016, the project includes exhibitions in 8 laundry rooms, a visiting artist residency program (with artists chosen by a youth committee), a community garden, a medicinal herb garden, and field trips. The project is Co-Founded and Directed by artist Amanda Leigh Evans, who lives in a basement apartment next door to a shared art studio space used for classes and gatherings. The project is funded by Community Engagement Org, a nonprofi t supporting artist projects in affordable housing buildings.

The Social Forms of Art (SoFA) Journal is a publication dedicated to supporting, documenting and contextualising social forms of art and its related fields and disciplines. Each issue of the Journal takes an eclectic look at the ways in which artists are engaging with communities, institutions and the public. The Journal supports and discusses projects that offer critique, commentary and context for a field that is active and expanding.

Created within the Portland State University Art & Social Practice Masters In Fine Arts. Program, SoFA Journal is now fully online.

Conversations on Everything is an expanding collection of interviews produced as part of SoFA Journal. Through the potent format of casual interviews as artistic research, insight is harvested from artists, curators, people of other fields and everyday humans. These conversations study social forms of art as a field that lives between and within both art and life.

SoFA Journal
c/o PSU Art & Social Practice
PO Box 751
Portland, OR 97207
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