Posted on

Central Valley Business Journal features Building Imagination Center

Video arts center to open in downtown Modesto storefront

MODESTO – A vacant downtown Modesto storefront is the home of a future video arts center that will be used to create documentary films about the area and draw crowds to the downtown area.

The Building Imagination Gallery and Cinema, or BIG Cinema, will be possible due to several grants, including a “significant grant” from ArtPlace announced earlier this week….

The center will be located across from the Gallo Center for the Arts and will focus on the creation of new and original documentary films about the local community, and involving community members in the production. Training in video editing and production will keep the center going at all hours, and indoor and outdoor video screenings will attract new attention and new crowds to the half-vacant 10th Street.

“Across the country, cities and towns are using the arts to help shape their social, physical and economic characters,” National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman. “The arts are a part of everyday life, and I am thrilled to see yet another example of an arts organization working with city, state, and federal offices to help strengthen and revitalize their communities through the arts. It is wonderful that ArtPlace and its funders have recognized this work and invested in it so generously.”

Read the article HERE

Posted on

New Art Center to Open in Downtown Modesto

New Art Center to open in downtown Modesto thanks to a grant from ArtPlace and the //Building Imagination Initiative, CSU Stanislaus, and the Modesto Art Museum.

 

“Building Imagination Gallery and Cinema” to Bring Video Arts and New Vibrancy to Downtown Modesto, Thanks to ArtPlace Grant ArtPlace releases 47 grants supporting creative placemaking initiatives in 33 communities nationwide (Modesto, CA, June 12, 2012) A vacant storefront in downtown Modesto will soon be transformed into a center for video arts, thanks to a significant grant from ArtPlace announced today.

The Building Imagination Gallery and Cinema (BIG Cinema) is the brainchild of Professor Jessica Gomula-Kruzic of California State University, Stanislaus, and will be in partnership with the university. The center, to be located across from the Gallo Center for the Arts, will focus on the creation of new and original documentary films about the local community, and involving them in the production. Training in video editing and production will keep the center going at all hours, and indoor and outdoor video screenings will attract new attention – and new crowds – to the half-vacant 10th Street.

ArtPlace is a new national collaboration of 11 major national and regional foundations, six of the nation’s largest banks, and eight federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, to accelerate creative placemaking across the U.S. To date, ArtPlace has raised almost $50 million to work alongside federal and local governments to transform communities with strategic investments in the arts. “Across the country, cities and towns are using the arts to help shape their social, physical, and economic characters,” said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. “The arts are a part of everyday life, and I am thrilled to see yet another example of an arts organization working with city, state, and federal offices to help strengthen and revitalize their communities through the arts. It is wonderful that ArtPlace and its funders have recognized this work and invested in it so generously.”

A recent article in the Modesto Bee announced that the future of Modesto’s downtown is looking up, with new loft developments planned for the El Viejo post office on I Street. BIG Cinema uses the arts as a catalyst for attracting more people downtown, and could increase the likelihood that new developments such as this will find success. “I am hoping this project will create an empowering cycle,” Prof. Gomula-Kruzic said, “with video artists bringing publicity to community groups and an opportunity for those community members to learn marketable videography skills, an understanding of contemporary art, and an awareness of other community groups. The center will be ideally situated downtown alongside several other art venues.”

ArtPlace received almost 2200 letters of inquiry from organizations seeking a portion of the $15.4 million available for grants in this cycle. Inquiries came from 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands. The 47 projects selected each take a unique and locally focused approach to creative placemaking, from the creation of a Jazz and Heritage Center in New Orleans’ historic Tremé neighborhood to generate vibrancy and economic growth for the local community to ARTSIPELAGO, a comprehensive revitalization strategy that combines a number of unconnected arts and cultural initiatives in Eastport, Maine for greater effect. “These projects all exemplify the best in creative placemaking,” explained ArtPlace’s Carol Coletta. “They demonstrate a deep understanding of how smart investments in art, design and culture as part of a larger portfolio of revitalization strategies can change the trajectory of communities and increase economic opportunities for people.”

In September, ArtPlace will release a new set of metrics to measure changes over time in the people, activity and real estate value in the communities where ArtPlace has invested with its grants. Participating foundations include Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Ford Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Rasmuson Foundation, The Robina Foundation, The William Penn Foundation and an anonymous donor. In addition to the NEA, federal partners are the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education and Transportation, along with leadership from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Domestic Policy Council. ArtPlace is also supported by a $12 million loan fund capitalized by six major financial institutions and managed by the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Participating institutions are Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Chase, MetLife and Morgan Stanley. A complete list of this year’s ArtPlace awards can be found at artplaceamerica.org.

 

 

Posted on

Gasoline Puddles

[youtube]FAquTzCMrbs[/youtube]

The gasoline puddle creates rainbows because the oil and water interface reflects. The thickness of the oil layer is less than the wave lengths of the different colours of light and reflects the different frequencies at different phases causing interference cancelling and also different angles of refraction.

In this project, a silhouetted dancer performs an interpretative dance of eloquent movements, grand swooshes and cutting arm gestures. Live video captures and mirrors the viewer, embeds them below the interpretative dancer, just as in the gasoline puddle, the water floats the gasoline atop of it. Her energetic dance is slowed to a meditative study of gracefulness. Further video manipulations shift and fragment her silhouette, as the light is refracted between the gasoline and the water, stretching out time before the viewer, inviting reflection by the viewer as they see mirrored glimpses of themselves beneath the distortions.

This project allows the viewers to become the subjects as well as co-creators, providing another path for viewers to re-contextualize environment and re-imagine themselves, like the rainbow transforms the gasoline puddle into something momentarily wonderful.

Participate in this transformation at:

SSSHHHH!! Quiet Music at the Alameda Library
May 5, 8PM-10PM 
1550 Oak Street
Alameda, CA

www.ubuibi.org/ssshhhh.html

Posted on

LOVE Modesto: Dream Garden

Love Modesto started with two questions back in 2007 – Why is our city on some of the “worst cities in America” lists? What if our churches were to suddenly disappear from the Modesto area, would anyone even care or notice? With a lot of dreaming and planning came March 7, 2009. Over 1,200 people showed up to love our city in practical ways. We’ve done this six more times since adding Love Ceres, Love Escalon and Love Riverbank in 2011. Over 11,000 people have been a part…  young, old, abled, disabled, people from a church or no church at all. Over 38,500 volunteer hours have been donated – at minimum wage, this is over $308,000! At these community wide service days, volunteers engage in a variety of projects such as offering food to the hungry, visiting convalescent homes, donating blood, building a house with Habitat for Humanity and working with the city parks, among other opportunities.

The Dream Garden project allows the public to create fabric flowers from used clothing, and then write their personal dream in the flower’s center, transforming a craft piece into a collective statement about the dreams of residents in the community. The April 28, 2012 event has over 70 volunteers contributing to the project. Strolling through the completed garden gives viewers personal insight into the goals and desires of their own neighbors. The final project is created through the direct participation of Modesto residents, and most importantly, the art gives residents the opportunity to see how they could transform their community. The Dream Garden will be on display at various locations around our community.

 

Instructions to create your own Dream Garden Flower

Posted on

Guest Speaker for Pen Women

Guest Speaker for Pen Women

10 am, March 28. Saletta Studios, Oakdale, CA.

Come and join us at the March meeting of the Modesto Pen Women where JGomula will be presenting her talk Art, ARGs, and Social Activism. Digital games are widely used and played to address pressing social issues, producing sustainable and positive impacts within our society. In the //Building Imagination Initiative’s Alternate Reality Game, each participant chooses a Mission to participate in. Missions revolve around creating imaginative art based solutions to Modesto’s livability issues: Education, Employment, Crime, Health Care, Housing, Transportation, Leisure, Arts & Culture, Quality of Life.

 

 

Posted on

Reception for the Meet Your Neighbor project

Reception for the Meet Your Neighbor project

at Crow Trading Co., Modesto, August 17th, 2011.

tumblr_lpb82kCV0T1r0wjemo1_500 tumblr_lpb82kCV0T1r0wjemo2_500 tumblr_lpaeojkidN1r0wjemo1_500 tumblr_lpb82kCV0T1r0wjemo2_500 tumblr_lpf06bFCeQ1r0wjemo2_500 tumblr_lpp4cwa8Eb1r0wjemo1_500 tumblr_lpj1jyUEXd1r0wjemo1_500 meet-neighbor tumblr_lpf08qeWMq1r0wjemo1_500 tumblr_lpf06bFCeQ1r0wjemo1_500 tumblr_lpdug40bhN1r0wjemo1_500 tumblr_lpsuqdon7a1r0wjemo1_500

 


In the In the In the Summer of 2011, the residents of Modesto were greeted with the smiling faces of their neighbors. In shop windows and vacant offices throughout downtown, larger than life sized portraits appeared. Who were these people? Why were they there?

The portraits of over 125 visitors, residents, and local business people were displayed between 10th and 11th street down I street as part of a new public art project, Meet Your Neighbor. The idea behind the project was to allow people who work or visit downtown Modesto a chance to get to know others that they worked and shopped alongside. The project was a collaborative project from the Modesto Art Museum’s Building a Better Modesto program, and artist Jessica Gomula’s Building Imagination Initiative.

The Modesto Art Museum’s program, Building a Better Modesto, explores the place of the visual arts in creating a more livable Modesto.

The //Building Imagination Initiative also fosters an artistic response to Modesto’s ranking as the most unlivable city in the country. Its goal is to confront a poverty of imagination by using art –  videos, architecture,  design, and game­play — to inspire creative solutions to the California Central Valley’s many quality of life problems.

The resulting Meet Your Neighbor public art project was designed to help draw people downtown, and allow residents to see the people who help make up our diverse community, and to give residents an example of how public art can enhance their community.

To make the project possible, artist Jessica Gomula partnered with the Modesto Art Museum. Going from business to business, Gomula collected the smiling portraits of over 50 local business owners and employees. 75 more portraits were garnered during the July Third Thursday Arts Walk, as passers-by were asked if they would like to be part of a public art project.

Then, on August 4th, the black and white, larger than life sized posters of Modesto residents went up.

The buzz created by the project was immediately supportive, with several articles featured in the local Modesto Bee, an interview from the online Modesto News, as well as on the local cable channel. The images were on display from August 4 through the Modesto International Architecture Festival,  in mid-September.

Several business and property owners have kept the art project as an ongoing display in vacant offices. The final project allowed the art to be available for viewing by the public, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The experience itself was created through the direct participation of Modesto residents, and most importantly, the art gave residents the opportunity to see their community differently.

The project was funded in part through grants from the Teichert Foundation, and California State University Stanislaus. The project would not have been possible without the support of the Downtown Improvement District, or the support of the more than 35 downtown shops and businesses.

Posted on

Local Art Project Strives To Liven Up Modesto’s Image

Local Art Project Strives To Liven Up Modesto’s Image

The poster-size black and white visages will peer out from businesses and offices on J Street between 10th and 14th streets. They are the project of artist Jessica Gomula, whose goal is stated in the exhibit’s title: Meet Your Neighbor.

“We thought it was something to liven the place up,” said Bob Barzan, executive director of the Modesto Art Museum, which is sponsoring the project through a grant from the Teichert Foundation. More than that, it was an opportunity to showcase the diverse people who inhabit downtown.

Photographs posted at participating businesses depict owners and employees. Gomula shot photos of attendees at a Third Thursday Art Walk for use in some of the vacant offices and storefronts.

 

Modesto Bee Article

Posted on

Architecture Graffiti Event

Architecture Graffiti Event

Architecture Graffiti event   Untitled 0 00 03-02Be sure to stop by the Chartreuse Muse September 17th, 2011 to check out our first Architecture Graffiti video event, just one part of the Modesto International Architecture Festival. See you at dusk!