PUBLIC INTEREST Residency

LACE  invited Portable City Projects to stage a series of interactions with Hollywood community members throughout the year.Please check out the website for more info Portable City at LACE. 

Artist Reflection on the residency:

During my residency at LACE I have been challenged to "grow my practice". This archive and installation is about research and models of discovery. The hidden work of a community engaged artist. In order to explore and to develop through this stage of my development as an artist, I needed the support of an organization to help me locate the next stage of growth in my socially engaged creative practice.

LACE as an organization took a risk on helping me as an artist to locate the next pathway in my residency. Admittedly much of the research done in the public space of the gallery has been hard to represent and a challenge for LACE to present because exploration and research have been my focus not presentation. 

My residency at LACE has been about trying to find out if there is a “there” there. Through all of these exercises in creating various forms of community engagement I was trying to locate a long term project that would engage both the art world and other aspects of the community. I thought that I would find that community close to the physical locus or space of the building that represents LACE. The archive of conversations represents community research and community activation through The Networks and Hubs Series, The Community Dance Series,  and The 45 minute dialogue. These actions were all ways for me as an artist to conduct action based research. This archive and installation is about research and models of discovery. The hidden work of a community engaged artist. In order to explore and to develop through this stage of my development as an artist, I needed the support of an organization to help me locate the next stage of growth in my socially engaged practice. practice. Lace took a risk on helping me as an artist to locate the next pathway in my residency. Admittedly much of the research done in the public space of the gallery has been hard to represent and a challenge for LACE to present. Exploration has been my focus not presentation. In terms of locating a project that I could sink my teeth into and move from action based research to a model of collaboration and project development, LACE helped me to connect to another more expansive network through helping to establish my collaboration with Robert Ransick. 

As a result of being provided with the space to explore a range of possibilities through my residency, Robert and I have started to launch and enter a research and development phase 

for Voice of The People.

Thank you LACE.