Welcome to the Coast Art Zone! #ArtSaMo Get creative and build a connection with your fellow festival-goers. Join an artist-led tour, a group karaoke, add your mark to a collaborative drawing, write something for a stranger and more!
INSIDE Sign is a group live action experience by Thorny Games. Players begin without Camera Obscura Tower a shared language and develop the Climb 15 steps to enter the body tools to communicate. An experience of a camera and view the historic in empathy, Sign affords players a brief mechanism’s 360 view. glimpse at how life changes when Printmaking with Zeina Baltagi barriers are broken and what it means Zeina Baltagi has created two postcard for a community to come together. templates inspired by the vintage “Wish thornygames.com You Were Here” design. Pick a design & OUTSIDE color, and come away with original art to commemorate your visit. Santa Monica Community Portraits Sit with your fellow humans and pose for Shannon Freshwater Collab Drawing a family picture, and see if we’re more Help create a group drawing based on different than we know... or more alike the literary “exquisite corpse”. Parts of a than we seem. With City of Santa Monica long paper scroll are unfurled and parts Office of Civic Wellbeing #SaMoWellbeing are hidden. Base your drawing off of the @santamonicafamily parts you can see to make a glorious mashup! Sing-along lounge 11am-1pm: Lounge singer Robby Roberto Benavidez, pinata artist at work Fontana takes requests and leads See a sculpture take shape! On display participatory singing karaoke style is a completed Northern Lapwing and a with a repertoire of favorite oldies and cat from Roberto’s Hieronymous Bosch contemporary pop songs. Garden of Earthly Delights series.
Indiecade Game Tasting A Flock of Plein Air Painters + Ron Try out two games - Virtual, Virtual Squared Live Painting Reality and Sign: A Game About Being Peek over the shoulder of a working Understood. VVR is a Google Daydream painter, working as part of a group moving experience that uses humor and around Palisades Park. The day will be surrealism to explore a near future with punctuated by a 2-hr live painting session ubiquitous automation. tenderclaws.com streetside with Ron Libbrecht & Ron Hust. Twenty Minute Treks 11am-4pm: Car-free streets change your perception of who you are in space. Take your new self for a spin in these small group experiences, with tour guides including poets, a public art expert, historians and members of the local community. Tours every fifteen minutes throughout the day.
11am: Arcadia’s Gaze with Maryam 1:15pm: Poetry Activism Tour with Carolina Gamero Carolina Gamero brings Santa Monica into conversation with Hosseinzadeh national issues of immigration and healthcare with heartfelt and Maryam takes participants on an almost funny poems in a tour that promises change is possible. stationary tour, starting with a little time travel back to when Arcadia Bandini sat 1:30pm: Growing up in Santa Monica with Robbie Jones on her porch on Ocean Avenue to take in the view, up to the Camera Obscura’s 360 1:45pm: Spontaneous Poetry Tour with Brian Sonia-Wallace overlook and down to the park to explore 2pm: Down to the Inkwell monument seeing, vision and perspective. (15 steps up to the Camera view) with Alison R. Jefferson & Maryam Hosseinzadeh 11:15am: Native Santa Monica Poetry Tour A walk and overview of history of African- with Linda Ravenswood American beach culture in Santa Monica, Linda brings us back in time through her poetry to the earliest including the historical congregating place inhabitants of Santa Monica in a tour that’s as informative as it is of African Americans during the Jim Crow lyrical, placing us in a contiuum with the past. era (1900s-1965). 11:30am: Growing up in Santa Monica with Robbie Jones 2:15pm: Poetics of Location with Mike Sonksen Downtown from the perspective of a longtime resident. 2:30pm: Native Santa Monica Poetry Tour with Linda Ravenswood 11:45am: Synesthesia Poetry Tour with Nicelle Davis 2:30pm: Poetry Activism Tour with Carolina Gamero Experience Santa Monica in new ways by crossing your senses in an exploration 2:45pm: Spontaneous Poetry Tour with Brian Sonia-Wallace with poet Nicelle Davis that combines 3pm: Poetics of Location with Mike Sonksen a scavenger hunt and poetry writing workshop, with plenty of oceans to taste 3:15pm: Synesthesia Poetry Tour with Nicelle Davis and hearts to touch. 3:30pm: Native Santa Monica Poetry Tour w/ Linda Ravenswood 12pm: Poetics of Location with Mike Sonksen Veteran tour guide and poet Mike the Poet leads a walk in 3:45pm: Poetry Puppet Show Tour with Bobby Gordon Palisades Park up to the Saint Monica statue, incorporating poetry, info on public art, the Wilshire corridor, Spanish history and more. PERFORMANCE
12:15pm: Arcadia’s Gaze with Maryam Hosseinzadeh Rainbow Flower Fun Time! by Beck + Col 12:30pm: The Belmar Triangle with Quinn Research Center 11am & 12pm: The monster Rainbow Face! with its This history tour passes through Tongva cohort of colorful companions (possibly figments of Park and the Courthouse area to discuss the its imagination) arrive to bestow color-coordinated land where the Rand Corporation is now flowers on passersby in honor of the concept of located and the historic African-American neighborhood around Main between Pico inalienable aliens. and Olympic. (25min) Superbroke Marching Band 12:45pm: Spontaneous Poetry Tour with Brian Sonia-Wallace 12:30-2pm: The Superbroke Brass and Tin and Strings RENT Poet Brian Sonia-Wallace guarantees that each of his tours Marching Band Ensemble is an association of musical has never happened before and will never happen again. He superheroes dedicated to liberating the SuperFlow of weaves audience suggestions and Santa Monica facts into his unique blend of improv and poetry, creating a bespoke experience the Universe and defending Her against the Evil Anti- each time. Groove, the bane of all things creative. 12:45pm: Poetry Puppet Show Tour with Bobby Gordon Jay Carlon: Out of Bounds - Reconstruction (excerpt) Ever thought poems could be puppets? 1pm, 2pm & 3pm: Stop by for twenty minute dance UCLA Poetry Lecturer Bobby Gordon brings performances that utilize a cardboard dance floor with words to life in this interactive tour that takes “building dialogue” to a whole new a little sonic twist. Choreographer: Jay Carlon; music: level. Alex Wand; dancers: Christopher Bordenave, Jay Carlon, Isaac Huerta, Samantha Mohr. 1pm: Public Art of Palisades Park with Lesley Elwood Lesley leads a tour of public art and monuments of Palisades Art Zone façade and Parklet design by Johnny Burton Park, ending at the totem pole at Ocean/ and David Offner. San Vicente. (30 min) ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Jay Carlon’s Reconstruction, photo by Stephen Burr Beck + Col Superbroke
Zeina Baltagi (Postcard Printing) is a California State University, Northridge graduate with a B.A. in printmaking. Upon graduation, she co-founded the Valley Art Workshop in Woodland Hills. She currently teaches classes at Los Angeles Music and Art School, as well as a variety of workshops at the Camera Obscura Art Lab and throughout Los Angeles, for all ages. She has exhibited at various galleries and academic institutions around Southern California. zeinabaltagi.com
Los Angeles-based artists Beck+Col (Rainbow Flower Fun Time!) use humor and chaos to examine the crisis of human exceptionalism. Through costume-based performance and video, their work explores alternate universes populated with monsters who obsess over humanity and emulate its dominant attributes. Within these universes, Beck and Col analyze humanity’s construction of sexualized, racialized and naturalized others. By removing human attributes, they shift focus from hyper- individualism to a post-anthropocentric perspective, rejecting the view of humanity as the bas(ic unit of reference. beckandcol.com
Half-breed, South Texan, queer, figurative sculptor Roberto Benavidez (Art Pinata demo) specializes in the piñata form; playing on themes of race, sexuality, art, sin, humor and beauty. Drawn to art at a young age, but raised in rural South Texas with very little access to art education, Benavidez followed a secondary interest into a BFA in acting at Texas State University. After a few years of moderate success Benavidez found himself drawn back to sculpture and headed west, orienting himself through art classes at Pasadena City College. He has worked in abstract figuration and now specializes in sculpturally elegant and fantastical piñatas. robertobenavidez.com
Shelley Bloom (Rainbow Flower Fun Time!) has worked closely with Beck and Col for nearly a decade. Punk and dadaism inform her physically demanding performances. Her humor and dedication result in hilariously entertaining works.
Christopher Bordenave (Out of Bounds excerpt) was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. Upon graduating from high school, Christopher went on to study at the Ailey School and the LINES Ballet School acquiring his BFA in Dance. Christopher has performed the works of Nacho Duato, Stijn Celis, Alonzo King, Idan Sharabi, and Gustavo Ramirez Sansano with numerous companies throughout the States and abroad. In 2014, Christopher founded No)one. Art House, an organization that promotes and produces quality interdisciplinary art such as dance, film, and photography throughout the greater Los Angeles area.
Jay Carlon (Out of Bounds excerpt) was born in Santa Barbara County to a migrant working family and attended the University of California, Irvine for his BFA in Dance and the California State University, Long Beach for his MFA; his roots in California are embedded in this soil and are evident in his identity-based work and performance. Carlon’s immersive, interactive, and site-based choreography has been showcased at HomeLA, LA Dance Festival, the 92nd Y in New York, The CURRENT SESSIONS, Electric Lodge, ARC Pasadena, and at Automata Theatre in Chinatown, where he was recently a D+R resident with Los Angeles Performance Practice. He has also performed with the Metropolitan Opera, Palissimo, and Schoen Movement Company. He has been working at the Annenberg Community Beach House since early July 2017 as Choreographer-in-Residence and debuts his new work there on Sunday 10/8 at 5pm. RSVP to annenbergbeachhouse.com/beachculture. jaycarlon.com
Nicelle Davis (Twenty Minute Treks) is a California poet, collaborator, and performance artist who walks the desert with her son J.J. in search of owl pellets and rattlesnake skins. Her previous collections include In the Circus of You (Rose Metal Press, 2015), Becoming Judas (Red Hen Press, 2013), and Circe (Lowbrow Press, 2011). Her poetry film collaborations with Cheryl Gross have been shown across the world. She has taught poetry at Youth for Positive Change, an organization that promotes success for youth in secondary schools, MHA, Volunteers of America in their Homeless Youth Center, and with Red Hen’s WITS program. She is a recipient of the 2013 AROHO retreat 9 3/4 Fellowship, and currently teaches at Paraclete High School. nicelledavis.net
Carolyne & Bill Edwards / The Quinn Research Center (Day of Tours) provides educational resources that promote study, research, and preservation of African American history and culture in the Santa Monica/Venice Bay Area. quinnresearachcenter.com
Lesley Elwood (Twenty Minute Treks), founder of Elwood and Associates, has been working with small municipalities, transit agencies and private developers since 2003 to develop innovative art projects for the public realm. Currently Elwood is working with Gail M. Goldman on the City of Santa Monica Public Art Masterplan.
Shannon Freshwater (Collaborative Drawing) is an illustrator and fine artist who uses collage and assemblage as a way to appropriate and re-contextualize imagery and ideas. She grew up in the bizarre landscape of Las Vegas, studied painting and film in New Mexico, and lived in a collaborative art community in Seattle before moving to Southern California in 2005. Shannon is a graduate of Art Center College of Design, and she now teaches there and at CSUN Northridge. Her illustrations have appeared on book covers and The New York Times, Le Monde, Scientific American and other venues. She has exhibited across the U.S. and her book covers are included in the permanent collection of AIGA in New York. She is the current Camera Obscura Art Lab Studio Resident (8/9/17 – 11/15/2017.) shannonfreshwater.com
Robby Fontana (Sing-along Lounge) is an American recording artist, vocalist, composer, pianist, and producer based in Pasadena, CA. His original music ranges from early 60s inspired singer-songwriter pop to jazz to Americana. Originally from Milwaukee, Fontana relocated to Boston to study jazz piano at Berklee College of Music. He has since performed or recorded with artists and musicians such as John Mayer, Jackson Browne, Ozomatli, Kenny Aronoff, and Paul Buckmaster. Fontana was also one of six artists to chosen to perform as part of The New York Times “Emerging Artists” event, hosted by James Taylor. robbyfontana.com
Carolina Gamero (Twenty Minute Treks) is a Long Angeles-based writer and poet. Carolina has written in Lunas Locas, an LA all womens’writing circle centering voices of color. Carolina uses her creative writer in broad ways that engage community. Whether it is preparing for a MicHikem - an outdoor hike that culmintates in a spoken word open mic at the summit - or creating impromptu poetry on typewriters at neighborhood health fairs, Carolina enjoys using spoken word, writing, and poetry to facilitate storytelling with communities of color. Bobby Gordon (Twenty Minute Treks) is a Los Angeles based poet, participatory arts practitioner, lecturer, and performance artist with an M.A in Applied Theater Arts from USC and a B.A in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA. He has conducted workshops at the 2013 International Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference and the 2013 Imagining America Conference. Gordon has also led other around the U.S., in Mexico, India, and South Africa about everything from image theater techniques to performance poetry strategies.
Maryam Hosseinzadeh (Twenty Minute Treks) is interested in the layered sites, memories, places and histories encountered individually and created collectively by all people, everyday. She creates original projects connecting people, place, and history with a focus on developing microhistories through site-investigation, archival research, personal reflection, and everyday conversation. Past walks have been organized for or featured by the Women’s Center for Creative Work, the Armory Center for the Arts, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the MAK Center, and Machine Project’s Guide to Modern Architecture (Pacific Standard Time), among others.
Soon after graduated from OC’s High School for the Arts, Isaac Huerta (Out of Bounds excerpt) signed with Bloc Talent Agency and shortly went on to dance on a cruise ship with the Holland America Cruise line. Since then he has been performing with several Southern California dance companies, including Solevita and Heidi Duckler’s Dance Theater, and with world renowned choreographer, Daniel Ezralow, touring China, Canada and Europe in his production Pearl. Isaac has been danced in two of Taylor Swift’s music videos, numerous Disney productions and is currently backup dancing for the intoxicating Natalita.
Now in its 10th year, Indiecade supports independent game development and organizes a series of international events showcasing the future of independent games. It encourages, publicizes, and cultivates innovation and artistry in interactive media, helping to create a public perception of games as rich, diverse, artistic, and culturally significant. IndieCade’s events and related production and publication programs are designed to bring visibility to and facilitate the production of new works within the emerging independent game movement. http://www.indiecade.com Tender Claws can be found at tenderclaws.com and Thorny Games at thornygames.com
Alison Rose Jefferson (Twenty Minute Treks) co-curated ‘Intersections of South Central Los Angeles’ for the California African American Museum, wrote the text for the Inkwell Monument, and is a featured historian in the documentary films White Wash and 12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story. She is author of ‘African American Leisure Space in Santa Monica: The Beach Sometimes Known as the “Inkwell,” 1900s-1960s’ in Southern California Quarterly. A native of Los Angeles, she researches the intersection of historical memory, American history, Black Angeleno history, historic preservation and cultural tourism in Southern California during the twentieth century, great migration and Jim Crow era. She holds a doctorate in Public History from UCSB and a Master’s degree from USC. alisonrosejefferson.com
Santa Monica native Robbie Jones (Twenty Minute Treks) is founding Director/Producer of Black Santa Monica Tours and Concierge, which celebrates, documents, explores, and shares the untold and unsung story of African Americans in Santa Monica. Jones is membership chair at the Philomathean Charity Club, and has served on boards including the Pico Neighborhood Association, LA Children’s Planning Council, and SMMUSD Inter Cultural Council. In 1992, Jones was a founding organizer of the African Parent Student Support Group at Santa Monica High School, and Visions/Images Rites of Passage Mentoring Program at Virginia Avenue Park. She also supports the work of the Santa Monica Venice Reunion Organization. blacksantamonicatoursandconcierge.com
Ron Libbrecht (Flock of Plein Air Painters) has traveled the world, capturing its beauty on his canvas. When he’s not painting abroad in places like Hawaii, France, Italy, and Spain- he’s painting locally in Southern California. In addition to painting outdoors “en plein air”, Ron also creates vivid works in his home studio. His passion for art led him to open APC Fine Arts Gallery, where he curates monthly art shows and conducts weekly art classes. apcfinearts.com
Native to Southern California, Samantha Mohr (Out of Bounds excerpt) holds a BA in World Arts and Cultures/Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has since collaborated as a performer with Lionel Popkin, David Roussève, Victoria Marks, Julien Prévieux, Elizabeth Leister, Rebecca Bruno, Laurel Jenkins, Alexx Shilling, Sarah Leddy, Monica Duncan, and CARLON + LOLLIE. Samantha has performed and presented shared works through homeLA/Frogtown in partnership with The Women’s Center for Creative Work, at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, LACE Gallery and Highways Performance Space. In addition to dancing, she is currently pursuing her 200 hour registered yoga teacher certification with Farzaneh Noori, Hanna Gilan and Allison Linamen.
Linda Ravenswood (Twenty Minute Treks) is a Poet and Performance artist from Los Angeles. Her work aims towards inquiry and uncovering, holding memory, history, place and lineage as meaningful, available markers. Recent work include commissions for Cornell University, The Broad Theatre, AWP PEN USA, Google Corporation, Hammer Museum and The Centre for the Art of Performance. Linda is a lecturer, dramaturg and workshop presenter, most recently teaching at UCLA World Arts and Cultures, Occidental College and The 24th Street Theatre. She is NDN / First Nation, (Pokanoket, Wampanoag), a Mayflower descendant on her mother’s side, and an Indigenous Mestizaje from Baja California Sur on her father’s side. She was raised in Los Angeles by Jewish Holocaust survivors from WWII.
Sharyn Scott (Rainbow Flower Fun Time!) soars through the sky, singing silly lullabies, sending swirling sparkles to the streets from her soul. Sharyn is a passionate dancer, always seeking inspiration for ways to move, shake and inspire for entertainment and healing.
Brian Sonia-Wallace (Twenty Minute Treks), is the RENT Poet. A creator of live art and poetry, he is currently guest lecturer in Poetry and Performance at UCLA, and most recently Writer in Residence with Amtrak Trains, Mall of America, and the Electric Forest Music Festival. As the Co-Director of Melrose Poetry Bureau, he has performed creating poetry with typewriters around the country. His first book of poetry came out in 2016 through Yak Press. Past accomplishments include residencies with the City of Los Angeles, National Parks System, LA County Museum of Arts, Shuar Nation of Ecuador, and Dollar Shave Club, and a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award Nomination. He is interested in community development, cultural literacy, eco-consciousness, and people talking to each other. rentpoet.com
Mike Sonksen (Twenty Minute Treks) also known as Mike the Poet, is a 3rd-generation LA native acclaimed for poetry performances, published articles & legendary city tours. Poet, journalist, historian, tour guide, & teacher, he first graduated from UCLA, then completed an Interdisciplinary M.A. in English & History from the Cal State LA. Equally a scholar and performer, Sonksen has published over 500 essays and poems. His KCET column L.A. Letters celebrates literary Los Angeles. Mike has an Interdisciplinary Master of Arts in English and History and his prose and poetry have been included in programs with the Mayor’s Office, Grand Park and the Music Center. Sonksen has lectured at & had his book I Am Alive In Los Angeles! added to the curriculum of over 60 universities & high schools. His most recent book, Poetics of Location, was just published by Writ Large Press. aliveinlosangeles.com
Kayla Tange (Rainbow Flower Fun Time!) is a performance artist who is drawn to the power of freeing one’s conscience from moral dilemmas by presenting a public space that serves as an interactive confessional.
Alex Wand (Out of Bounds excerpt) is a Grammy Award-winning musician and composer based in Los Angeles. He is a guitarist and singer who has performed at venues and festivals from California to Tibet such as REDCAT, Bootleg Theater, and the Xinghai International Poetry Festival. Alex performs as a solo artist and in Three Thirds, Desert Magic, and Partch. He often writes music for film and dance with recent projects including the documentary The Harvest Run, Porcupine, and Sometimes I Fall, with Carlon + Lollie. In 2014, he founded Song A Day, a challenge to musicians to write and upload a song every day for a month. Originally from Detroit, he studied music composition at the University of Michigan and at CalArts with composers Bright Sheng, Michael Fink, Ulrich Krieger, and Wolfgang von Schweinitz. alexwand.com #ArtSaMo