Amplify Action: Sustainability through the Arts Opening Reception Saturday, April 21st | 4-6 PM

Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation | Skylight Gallery

1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216

Artists, community members, and friends will join in celebrating the official opening of the Amplify Action: Sustainability through the Arts exhibition at Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation's Skylight Gallery. All are welcome to view the works, engage with the themes of the exhibition, and to be part of a positive moment for community sustainability in Central Brooklyn.

This is a free event. Please RSVP here. (Eventbrite page: http://amplifyaction2012reception.eventbrite.com/)

Exhibition Overview:

The Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (BSRC), the Pratt Center for Community Development, and the Pratt Initiative for Arts, Community, and Social Change (IACSC) are pleased to celebrate the presentation of “Amplify Action: Sustainability through the Arts”, a juried exhibition of works presented by the Skylight Gallery, a department of BSRC’s Center for Arts and Culture, created both by local artists and artists abroad that promote a dialogue about sustainable communities. The exhibition includes paintings, photography, sculptures, mixed media, installations and innovative approaches to re-purpose waste into useful art materials and activism toward sustainable practices in the Bedford Stuyvesant community. This exhibit is made possible by the generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund.

This exhibition demonstrates how arts, culture, and media are powerful catalysts for social change, and aims to engage neighborhoods in a dialogue about sustainable living, making healthy consumer choices, and taking environmental action. Works in the exhibit will directly and indirectly examine the different components of sustainability, such as, but not limited to: ecology, economy, equity, environmental consciousness, resource conservation and efficiency, agriculture, architecture, infrastructure, environmental justice, and health.


Participating artists:

Elaine Angelopoulos
Artcodex
Jean Brennan
Adam Brent
Roberto deJesus
Wolfgang Ryan
Barbara Ekström
Carrie Grubb
Michael “TTK” Harris
Christopher Ho
YK Hong
Clarisa James
Bernard Klevickas
Michael Konrad
Mary Mattingly
Kristyna & Marek Milde
Michael Millspaugh
Simonetta Moro
Antonia Perez
Kevin William Reed
Aya Rodriguez-Izumi
Vincent Romaniello
Andrew Scott
Robert Stephenson
TRUE
Means & Ways
Kioka Williams

ALSO:

Amplify Action Evening for Educators:


Thursday, April 26, 2012 | 5:30-8:00 PM
Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation Skylight Gallery
1368 Fulton Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY
Free

Two artists whose work is featured in the exhibition, Aya Rodriguez-Izumi and Ryan Doberstein, will present teachers of all levels and content areas with a variety of tools for making meaningful and relevant curriculum connections to the Amplify Action Exhibition.

The agenda for the event is as follows:

5:00 PM - Registration and sign-in. Refreshments provided.
5:30 PM - Seminar in which featured artist will show images of their work and discuss materials, concepts, and artistic influences.
6:45 - Workshop in which participants will explore materials and concepts inspired by sustainable art methods and practices
7:45 - Closing remarks

Space is limited for this event, and reservations will be honored on a first-come, first-served basis. You can register for this free event online. (Eventbrite page: http://amplifyaction2012workshop.eventbrite.com/)


Important Sites:
Website/blogger: www.amplifyaction.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AmplifyAction
Twitter: @amplifyaction
Eventbrite (reception): http://amplifyaction2012reception.eventbrite.com
Eventbrite (Workshop): http://amplifyaction2012workshop.eventbrite.com

HI,

Just wanted to update you on the installation. The curators reserved this tri-wall just for my piece which was perfect, and allowed me to really spread out and concentrated into one site.  Although I have received very few items from my flyer distribution process, I made the best of it at the moment. I distributed 200 flyers (that were then also reproduced by others) throughout various locations in Crown Heights, Clinton Hill, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Administrators from the Skylight Gallery, the Amplify Action team, the Student Government Association at Megdar Evers College and various cafes were among the places that distributed my flyer to their contacts. I realized after a few conversations with those whom I approached the following:

1. I am an unfamiliar face to those whom I approached even though I had names, references, and credentials to my project. People liked the idea and the project very much as they read the flyer and spoke with me further about it.

2. It seems to me that people saw the flyer more as an announcement even though I am clearly asking for participation. In a way this proved to me that people can't just go by an idea that is also unfamiliar to them unless they have already come across something similar to it already. So in essence, they need physical proof. When and if they come to the show and see the piece exists, and if they like what they see, then perhaps they will participate.

3. Much of the means that I produced this piece has alot to do with applying what I do as a gallery preparator.  In some respect, I have transferred these performatives into a work that serves to individuals who are moved to participate. The piece in a sense becomes a shrine or a reliquary in the attempt to answer the quest if objects can reveal the feeling of being in these communities.

4. The significance of walking through and around these three neighborhoods apply to my personal experience of having lived in Brooklyn since 1983.  My relationship to Bedford-Stuyvesant and to Clinton Hill go back to my undergraduate experience while attending Pratt Institute from 1983 to 1987.  As vibrant as the locales were, students integrating into the cultural mix of central Brooklyn, there was also some intense violent moments. My connection to Crown Heights has been the least, with exception to visiting friends living there, and the conflicts that arose in the late 90's between the Carribean and Orthodox Jewish communities.  This project gave me permission to overcome my experiences of past and to connect with people on a local direct conversation about our differences and commonalities. 

5. One significant point I am trying to make here is that for some  who live in the city, our relationship to the local life is to be transient and temporary. But in fact we rely on this local network significantly to get through our day and to meet our goals.  Taking a stab at non-virtual and low tech attempts to connect to local life, and making a connection for social engagement with my art installation identifies the complexity behind the utopia in the "unity" of community. I do not expect to create one truth in this work, but that with the presence and absence of objects will visualize the series of performative practices that I have spelled out for you here. It is a portrait, a snapshot, a moment of time, a series of maps, journeys, objects and conversations of how locality and temporality is mutually shaped by one another in our urban surroundings. In tandem or congruent to an authoritative system that controls our traffic, our methods of exchange, what happens when we cross over our daily pattern to see what is next door.

So thanks to you, I was able to do the following things:

Enlarge three captions of street maps from the three neighborhoods: Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Crown Heights; They become the backdrop to what is installed in front of them while also providing a piece of the urban tale.

I built these shelves from a wood pile at work. I bought some moulding and paint to finish them up.  The shelves were cut and assembled in a very basic way, to suggest the immediacy of making something quick and necessary.

I had several car service rides to pick up material, and to transfer all of my equipment and items to Skylight Gallery.

I had to buy some of the items in the installation from locals. This was out of choice.
But to note, not all of the items were bought, some were definitely loaned to me. 

Note that one of the photos is of a printed book from the i-photo/mac service. It is a selection of images from my "Walkabout" series around the Atlantic Yards, and images of my first "When the Ground Breaks" installation at Soapbox Gallery last June. There are over 100 photos in the book with only a few text pages of information.

You would be amazed how little details add up into massive expenses. Without you I couldn't have produced this.

I will be on site with the work, ideally every Saturday for a couple hours so that people can engage with me further about the piece, and perhaps encourage some people to loan/contribute to the piece. I am thinking that I might do a Walkabout in the early afternoon the same day, or else postpone it for the following Saturday.

A  few major things I have left to do:

Send the announcement out via email;

Produce labels, descriptions, and explanations for the public;

A few tech installation details for the audio device;

Post-produce the audio recordings of the Walkabouts (or as many as I can before the opening on Saturday) and burn them on to cd's for the audio console in my installation "kiosk".

The show opens to the public on Saturday.  I will post a separate update for the evite. The Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, the Skylight Gallery, and the Amplify Action team are comprised of great people to work with. The show looks terrific so I hope you will get a chance to see it.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask here.

Thank you again! 

Hello friends,

Thank you so much for your contribution, it means alot to me.  Jacqui Woods, director of Skylight Gallery, reviewed and edited the text on my flyer with me. She also recommended some businesses where I could possibly leave my flyer in Bedford Stuyvesant. I have taken several excursions to cafes, restaurants, and some service stores in Bedford Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill, and Crown Heights.  I also visited the main campus of Megdar Evers College and left flyers at their Student Government Association. Thus far, this fund has helped me print up a little over 200 copies. Now that I have distributed these flyers, I can hope for the best for those interested in loaning me material.

Next, I plan to print up 3 large 48" x 96" black and white copies of street maps of each neighborhood; Bedford Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill, and Crown Heights. They will become the backdrop to the shelves of items that I hope to  have loaned to me.

I also want to plan out how visitors will be listening to my prior walkabouts.  I might be able to borrow a 5 CD changer.  Otherwise perhaps 5 or 6 CD players, battery operated, with headphones. I would also like to print up some apple books of my walkabouts.  I'm on the fence on this, but I might do it in time for the show.

I have many ideas of how to identify my walks on these maps, that I may or may not add in once the items have been installed.  I like the idea of tagging, but I'm not sure as yet if it will work for this piece. 

For now,

Elaine A.