Share OWS

[NOTE]: Occupy with Art is a proud participant in the new NYCGA Arts & Culture initiative Share OWS! Share OWS has been developed by Antonio Serna and refined/approved by consensus in the A&C Working Group meetings. Antonio sent this message today:

SHARE OWS is a new program from OWS Arts Network that facilitates the sharing of content being produced within the OWS movement. What does that mean? Anyone working within OWS/NYCGA is free to re-circulate art, writing, photography, poetry, and other content produced within the OWS movement and for the movement. Read more about it here: http://artsandculture.nycga.net/share-ows/

We need your help: If you are a member of a working group, collective, affinity group, or thematic group within OWS/NYCGA, please contact us so we can add you the SHARE OWS list: nycga-arts-and-culture-org@googlegroups.com or reach out to Arts & Culture on the A&C Forum (nycga) or here, at the 917 Wall Street Arts Google Group. You can also help by spreading the word about this program and asking other groups to participate!

[From the SHARE OWS PAGE]:

SHARE OWS IS AN ARTS & CULTURE PROGRAM TO CREATE SOLIDARITY WITHIN THE OWS
COMMUNITY THROUGH THE SHARING OF ART, WRITING, and ALL OTHER CONTENT FREELY AMONG WORKING GROUPS AND MEMBERS IN THE NYCGA/OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT.

Click to read more ...

Wall Street to Main Street: Call for Proposals/Entries

WALL STREET TO MAIN STREET

Call for Proposals/Entries

Wall Street to Main Street is a collaborative art project linking Occupy Wall Street and the rest of America, via the small town of Catskill, NY.  The Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS)  has focused its energy on the need for justice for the 99%. This project, Wall Street to Main Street, offers a platform for creative expression and dialogue focusing attention on an economically depressed community through inventive art exhibitions and cultural events.

Invitation to submit Proposals/Entries: Open to all artists nationally and internationally, including Hudson Valley artists.

The project goals of Wall Street to Main Street are:

1. To explore art as a way to understand the issues of the Occupy Movement with opportunities for education, communication, and a showcase of wildly creative artistic expressions;
2. To highlight the vanguard role of artists in this and past movements, as well as the role communities play in nurturing their vision;
3. To model a peaceful partnership between the cultural organizations, educational institutions, protesters, artists and the citizens who make up our communities;
4. To explore ideas in art works that call attention to real-world economic problems, fundamental democratic processes, and an urgent need for systemic reform.

People/Contacts- Presented by the Greene County Council on the Arts, this project is co-organized by Occupy With Art, an affinity group of the OWS Arts and Culture Committee, Fawn Potash (Project Director, Masters on Main Street) and Geno Rodriquez (co-founder/former Director of The Alternative Museum). Submit proposals to fawn@greenearts.org.  518-943-3400.

Exhibitions may include art work by/for/about the Occupy Movement in any media, utilizing interior space and/or windows.  A dozen vacant storefronts are anticipated with additional display area in active shop windows.  There  is no fee/rent, but interior exhibits require staffing and utility payments.  A signed agreement is required promising to return the space to its original condition.  Grant funding is pending to cover utility expenses, and a network is in process offering  local hosts with overnight accomodations and gallery sitters.   Events may include workshops, hands-on activities, forums, panel discussions, tours, performance, radio broadcasts, story telling, projections and readings, cross-pollinated subjects/genres combining political science/economics/art taking place in exhibition spaces or surrounding venues.

Photo-Documentary Exhibit Call for Entries: Curated by Geno Rodriguez, this exhibit serves as a descriptive introduction of the events of the global Occupy Movement as seen through the kaleidoscopic  lens of contemporary photographers, as well as the portal leading to the dynamic array of exhibits and events taking place down Main Street. 

Area resources: Catskill's Main Street is nestled between the Hudson River and the Catskill Creek with clear views of the Catskill Mountains at sunset.  It offers several architecturally intact 19th century facades, a vaudeville-era movie theater, two small pocket parks and a Community Center.  There is a Carnegie Library nearby, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and a bridge leading to Hudson, NY.  Catskill is at the center of a circle of educational institutions- Columbia-Greene Community College (Hudson, NY), Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY), Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), and the State Universities of New York at Albany and New Paltz .  Local radio station, WGXC 90.7-FM (WGXC.org) broadcasts from Catskill's Main Street on Wednesday afternoons and 24/7 from their Hudson and Acra studios.

Deadline for Proposals             February 1

Notification to Artists               February 7

Installations                            February 7-March 15

Opening Reception                   March 17

Project dates                           March 17 - May 31

Audiences for this project range from sophisticated, intentional viewers to curious pedestrians. In the last year, Masters on Main Street exhibitors have discovered that scale, night lighting and a descriptive statement in the window are very important features to engage this diverse crowd.

For Exhibit/Space/Event Proposals submit 1 page (max) project description and up to 10 low res jpegs with image list.  For Photo Documentary Exhibit entries, submit up to 10 low res jpegs with image list to:

Fawn Potash, Masters on Main Street, Project Director

Attn: WS2MS Space Proposal and/or WS2MS Photo-Doc Entries

Greene County Council on the Arts

398 Main Street, PO Box 463

Catskill, NY 12414

fawn@greenearts.org

 

Questions?  Call Fawn Potash, Greene County Council on the Arts 518-943-3400. 

Wall Street to Main Street

OCCUPY WITH ART

IN COLLABORATION WITH NEW MASTERS ON MAIN STREET

Presents
WALL STREET TO MAIN STREET

[INTRODUCTION]

Wall Street to Main Street is a collaborative art project linking Occupy Wall Street and the rest of America, via the classic small town of Catskill, NY.  Just as the Occupy Wall Street Movement has sought to focus attention on the wide needs of the 99 percent, Wall Street to Main Street illustrates the ways in which re-use of vacant storefronts can revitalize a local economy, and reconnect a battered community’s dreams and aspirations.
 
Focusing on art as a vocabulary of ideas, exhibitions sites are planned for 8-15 vacant storefronts along the town's Main Street, as well as nearby cultural and educational venues. Catskill is central to the historic home of our nation’s first environmental vision, several pioneering new agricultural projects, and one of the nation’s most heralded new community radio stations. The proposed project, co-organized by the OWS Arts and Culture Working Group, Fawn Potash (Project Director, Masters on Main Street) and Geno Rodriquez (former Director of The Alternative Museum), will include panel discussions, projections, radio programming, performances, and installations of the art of OWS. Nearby Bard College, Vassar College, SUNY New Paltz and Albany will be invited to organize panel discussions combining political science, economics and art experts. Tentatively scheduled for March, April and May of 2012, the project will culminate in a summer celebration in the historically influential Hudson Valley, home to both America’s first great entrepreneurial efforts and the Woodstock Festivals, with details TBA.

The project goals of Wall Street to Main Street are:
 

• To explore art as a vocabulary for understanding the economic issues at the heart of the Occupy Movement with visual, intellectual and dynamic opportunities for education, dialogue-building, and a showcase of wildly creative artistic expressions pioneering every medium;
• To show the significant role of artists in this and past movements as the vanguard of social and political change, as well as the role communities play in nurturing and legitimizing such vision;
• To model a peaceful partnership between cultural organizations, educational institutions, protestors, artists and the citizens who make up our home communities;  
• To explore ideas expressed in the art works calling attention to real-world economic problems, fundamental democratic processes, and an urgent need for systematic reform.  

 
The unforgettable photographs, videos, signs, puppets, interventions, posters and graphics of the OWS phenomenon will be augmented for this first Wall Street to Main Street event through invitations to local artists, students and recent alumni from studio art programs that have participated in Catskill’s groundbreaking Masters on Main Street program over the past year. The organization of Wall Street to Main Street will be collaborative, fostering creative exchange between OWS artists, the local community and the 99% everywhere.
 
Wall Street to Main Street represents an opportunity for Catskill to be at the forefront of an international art movement, with attendant opportunities for the entire community; just as the town once benefited as the starting point for our nation’s pioneering growth westward, as the center for its first internationally-recognized art movement, and as the home to some of its leading inventors and thinkers.

[See the OwA Active Project Proposal Section for more information and regular updates on Wall Street to Main Street.]