Please join us for a Cocktail Reception to support Edgar Arceneaux's Watts House Project
Part of LAXART's Public Art Initiatives
Wednesday, June 11th 2008
7 - 9 pm
at LAXART
2640 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, California 90034
rsvp: office@laxart.org
7:30pm presentation by Edgar Arceneaux and Oscar Madrigal of New Economics for Women - a resident of 107th St in Watts.
LIMITED EDITION
A limited edition by Edgar Arceneaux
to help support the project will be available for $1000
Edition details (image at top of email):
Edgar Arceneaux
Simon Rodia's Red Car, 2008
Graphite, chalk, dirt, and collaged photograph on paper
27 x 21.5 inches
There's a story that Rodia had a red car with a siren installed on it which he used to cut through traffic. When the police were coming to impound it he buried the car in his back yard. This was considered a myth until 1998 when, while excavating to build the amphitheater, the car was found.
Contact us now for Presale -- be the first to donate to this critical and ambitious endeavor!
Email editions@laxart.org
SUPPORTERS
Larry Mathews
Brian Saliman
INKIND SUPPORT
Trader Joe's, Culver City
Elements Kitchen, Pasadena
Grand Casino Bakery, Culver City
The Cheese Shop, Beverly Hills
Nattu Coleman
PROJECT PARTNERS
ForYourArt
Hammer Museum
Creative Capital
ABOUT WATTS HOUSE PROJECT
Watts House Project (WHP) is an artist-driven urban revitalization project centered around the historic Watts Towers in Watts, California. Directed by preeminent Los Angeles artist Edgar Arceneaux, WHP is a large-scale artwork-as-urban-development engaging art and architecture as a catalyst for expanding and enhancing community.
The neighborhood surrounding the Watts Towers presents a stark contrast to the well-maintained aesthetics of this national monument, and currently the residents have limited means to capitalize socially or economically on this cultural currency.
WHP operates with the understanding that social and economic challenges are tied to basic ecological problems and aims to develop an incremental, nuanced and sustainable model that marries ecological concerns and practice with social and cultural remedies. By creating a physical and social infrastructure for creativity, WHP will catalyze artistic production and community pride of place, forming partnerships that can lead to real solutions, hope, and change.
Already, the hope and change has formed into coalitions of supporters from a wide range of educational and cultural institutions in Los Angeles. In collaboration with the artist, architect Peter Zellner and his class at the USC School of Architecture proposed three distinct, over-arching master plans for the Watts Towers Cultural Crescent. The plans include green architectural projects for the location of an artist-in-residency program, exhibition spaces, a café, communal house, daycare, educational programming, WHP offices and residential housing.
In order to move towards these rigorous goals, the WHP needs to secure a foreclosed property on 107th street. This house will function to legitimize the WHP as a stakeholder in the neighborhood, ground it as a physical presence in the region, and serve as a community hub and base of operations for the future of the organization. In partnerships with Creative Capital, ForYourArt, the Hammer Museum and LAXART, the next phase of WHP is the renovation and façade improvement of the entire 107th street residential block facing the Watts Towers.
ABOUT EDGAR ARCENEAUX
Edgar Arceneaux is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles. His multivalent practice includes exquisite drawings, collaborative installations, community-based social sculpture initiatives and large-scale film projects. His recent solo shows include The Agitation of Expansion at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (2008), Snake River at the REDCAT Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2006), and The Alchemy of Comedy...Stupid at ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in (2006). He's participated in various group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in New York, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and MOCA in Los Angeles, CA. He is currently in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, and will be included in the upcoming 2008 California Biennial. Edgar Arceneaux received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2001, his BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1996, and also studied at Skowhegan School in Maine and the Fachholchschule Aachen, in Aachen in Germany.
