Activating Vacancy: Arts Incubator (AVAI)Exhibition | Storytelling
BROWNSVILLE, TX
2016
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.
Partners:
City of Brownsville
[bc] Contributors:
Jesse Miller
Lizzie MacWillie
David Tucker
Christina Houle
Elaine Morales
UPDATES
Abriendo Las Puertas
November 21, 2016
On December 3rd, Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator will celebrate the work of Artist in Residence Celeste De Luna, Rigoberto Gonzalez and Nancy Guevara and the future of arts, culture and civic engagement in Historic Downtown Brownsville.
De Luna’s large scale wood-cut prints about resistance and rebellion in the valley will be displayed throughout the Historic Market Square. Her works include portraits of the Buffalo soldiers, Americo Paredes and visualizations of corridos written by Brownsville residents. Guevara will display two large fabric murals made of ropa usada that portray female grassroots activists from the Valley. Gonzalez will reveal a 14 foot long movable mural to be displayed in the street, that addresses challenges experienced by the homeless in Brownsville.
Additional programing will include live music performances by Caldo Frío, photographs from the Taquerías of Southmost exhibit, , produced by Texas Folklike and the Brownsville Historical Association and the dance, #soyBrownsville, choreographed by Caty Wantland. Screen printing workshops will be held by Nancy Guevara and Celeste de Luna throughout the event. All programing is free and open to the public.
Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator is an art and public interest design initiative in Market Square in Historic Downtown Brownsville. Artists collaborate with community members to create art that explores the cultural, social, political and economic life in this region. The project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the City of Brownsville and BCIC and produced by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP.
For more information on AVAI or Abriendo Las Puertas follow up on Facebook!
AVAI Artist Proposals
August 24, 2016
[bc] is excited to share the project proposals for our three Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator Artists-in-Residence. Celeste De Luna, Rigoberto Gonzalez and Nancy Guevara have been hard at work in their studios and throughout the city of Brownsville; meeting local stakeholders, longtime residents, historians and academics. In June & July, they synthesized the knowledge they have collected to generate an exciting series of proposals for projects for the City of Brownsville.
Their projects will unfold from August through November. Learn about each artist’s projects below and join in the workshops and programming that they have designed over the upcoming months. Be sure to stay connected with us on Facebook for future updates and opportunities to participate in forthcoming events!
Playing with Production: Walking tour
Photo by Elaine Morales
Celeste De Luna (R) sharing her prints and collecting stories about Brownsville with an attendee at Playing with Production, Photo by Tom Hill
Celeste De Luna’s project will center around historical and contemporary narratives of strength and resistance native to the Rio Grande Valley. Over the past months she has identified central figures from Brownsville history, including Americo Paredes and Juan Cortina. In partnership with members of the community, she will work to identify how local stakeholders connect with their stories and collaborate with them to generate visuals representing their own stories of protest.
De Luna will conduct a series of workshops beginning in August that will include a steamroller printing workshop, a storytelling workshop and a kite making workshop in Lincoln Park. In November she will exhibit 5 large scale prints representative of the stories shared with her by local residents and the history of the region. Prints from the large woodcuts will be wheatpasted throughout the downtown and the final carved blocks will be exhibited at the conclusion of the residency.
Rigoberto Gonzalez (L) speaking with an attendee and collecting stories about Brownsville with an attendee at Playing with Production, Photo by Tom Hill
Rigoberto Gonzalez will work over the upcoming months on a large scale, moveable mural based upon a series of interviews he will conduct with Brownsville residents. As a longtime resident of the Rio Grande Valley, he is particularly interested in the cultural traditions of the region and the stories that accompany them. At the recent AVAI Open Studio event, Playing with Production, Gonzalez invited attendees to sketch their ideas for the mural and to share stories of their experiences downtown.
During his forthcoming workshops Gonzalez will hold personal narrative workshops to record oral histories and create portraits of the people whose stories he collects. The recordings will become sound installations to accompany Gonzalez’s murals in filling vacant spaces with the stories of Brownsville.
Nancy Guevara (center) speaking with an attendees at Playing with Production, Photo by Tom Hill
Nancy Guevara’s project, Intersections of Transformation on the Border will investigate the experiences that lead people to become activist leaders. Throughout the residency Guevara will work with local women and community leaders to create portraits using fabric from local ropa usada stores that reflect the leaders’ experiences of personal transformation, self-actualization and empowerment. By working closely with community leaders to create designs based on their experiences of struggle and complexity, Guevara hopes to engage aspiring artists and activists in using art as a tool for social justice.
Leading up to the presentation of these works to the public, Guevara will hold a series of workshops and discussions about catalyzing change and cultivation of leadership. Included in this series will be a manta workshop, in which participants will decide upon an issue that has deep personal importance to them and then make a banner representing a cause.
Playing with Production: Walking tour, Photo by Jesse Miller
AVAI will continue throughout the Fall and will culminate in mid-November with installations, performances and exhibitions throughout the month. Follow AVAI on Facebook for updates on the Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator, important information on our monthly events and more details about the artists’ upcoming workshops.
Activating Vacancy Fall Calendar
August
8/27 Rebel Corridos: Corrido Writing Workshop with Celeste De Luna
8/27 El Círculo de Mujeres: Manta Workshop with Nancy Guevara
September
9/24 Make your own Chingona Outfit: Costume Making Workshop with Nancy Guevara
9/24 Kites Sin Fronteras: Kite Making Workshop with Celeste De Luna
October
10/7 Day in the Neighborhood: Brownsville’s first 24 Hour Film Festival begins
10/8 Painting Class Part 1 with Rigoberto Gonzalez
10/8 Work it Out: Open Lab Q and A for 24 Hour Film Festival
10/22Painting Class Part 1 with Rigoberto Gonzalez
10/22 Films from 24 Hour Festival Screened in Collaboration with the First Annual Brownsville International Film Festival
10/29 Steamrolling to the Future: Steamroller and Printmaking Workshop with Celeste De Luna
10/29 Platica Mujeres Líderes en Brownsville with Nancy Guevara
November
11/5Painting Class Part 1 with Rigoberto Gonzalez
11/9 Noche de Filosofía y First Brownsville Story Share: A Brownsville Symposium
11/12 Steamrolling into the Future: Steamroller and Printmaking Workshop with Celeste De Luna
December
12/3 Abriendo las Puertas: Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator Bridge Event with Artist Exhibitions, Charrettes, Panel Discussions, Performances and Live Music
Welcome the new AVAI Artists-in-Residence!
June 13, 2016
We are excited to announce the selection of three talented and innovative artists-in-residence for the Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator (AVAI), an arts and public design initiative in downtown Brownsville. Over the next 6 months, artists-in-residence Celeste De Luna, Rigoberto Gonzalez, and Nansi Guevara will work with [bc] and the City of Brownsville to investigate, analyze and engage with downtown Brownsville through public artworks created in collaboration with local stakeholders. There was an overwhelmingly positive response to the call for artists and we thank all the talented individuals who applied. Read about our artists below and keep up to date with AVAI via our Facebook page.
Celeste De Luna is a painter/printmaker from the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. She received her MFA from the University of Texas Pan American in 2008. She has shown artwork in group exhibitions since 2007 in the various cities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, San Diego and Chicago. Additionally, De Luna’s work has been part of nationally and internationally exhibited printmaking portfolio projects. In 2013, her one person show “Nepantla: Art from the Four Corners of the Valley” at South Texas College in McAllen, Texas was part of the 2013 Texas Biennial.
“My work is a tool to understand and deconstruct oppressive paradigms in my physical/spiritual/psychic environment. The confluence of American and Xicano culture clash and sometimes harmonize in my work. My seemingly morbid interests go well with the death and despair of the border experience. Common themes in my work include migrant/border experiences of women, children, and families, Tejas landscape, and the spiritual struggle of conflicting identities. My practice is rooted in writing, drawing, carving, and taking photographs. At times, my process is like child’s play with props and collected objects. These things manifest themselves in drawings and eventually artworks that can be paintings, drawings, prints, or assemblage.”
Nansi Guevara is a Xicana artist and activist from Laredo, Texas. Her work is at the core of using her border and rasquache sensibilities to create decolonial public artwork alongside communities. In 2006, she moved to Austin, Texas to pursue a Bachelor's in Design from the University of Texas, where she focused on creating educational studio based experiences and educational resources for youth of color. Post graduation, she spent one year in Mexico City on a Fulbright, where she co-authored and co-illustrated a children's book for pediatric cancer patients that is now being used in the Hospital General de México Federico Gómez and Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. In 2013, she moved across the country to study Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In the last two years, she has created three public art pieces with community members in the Boston greater area, that center the experiences of people of color in a way that is celebratory and creates a call to action. She is now reconnecting with the Texas/Mexico border and hopes to join residents of Brownsville to create meaningful work that is deeply resonant to them and their communities.
Rigoberto Gonzalez was born in 1973 in Reynosa Tamaulipas, Mexico, and currently lives in southeast Texas near the Rio Grande in the city of Harlingen. He holds a B.F.A. from The University of Texas at Pan America in 1999 and an M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art in 2004. Gonzalez’s work has been exhibited at The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC (2016), the Hå gamle prestegard, Norway (2015), National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL (2015), The Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, Austin (2012), The Houston Art League, Houston (2012), The Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, El Paso (2011), Texas Biennial, Austin (2011), Las Cruces Museum of Art, Las Cruces, New Mexico (2010), Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico (2009), Harlingen Heritage Museum, Harlingen (2008), Casa de la Cultura, Reynosa Tamaulipas, Mexico (2006) and Richardson Art Gallery, The University of Texas at Brownsville (2005). Rigoberto A. Gonzalez has completed artist residencies at the Coronado Studios Serie XX Project Artist Residency, Austin (2013) Roswell Artist Residency Program, Roswell, New Mexico (2008/09) and Rancho del Cielo, University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College (2004), and received grants from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (2009/10). He has been the subject of artist profiles on PBS, NPR, and Televisa.
AVAI kicked off on April 8th with an informative panel discussion between downtown community stakeholders, artists, building owners, and new bcFELLOW Christina Houle who will be working closely with the incubator. The panel discussed the history of downtown, how it has come to its current condition, and what opportunities and challenges the area faces and how the arts might address these issues. On May 6th, AVAI and the Brownsville Historical Association led community members on a tour of historic and vacant structures throughout downtown Brownsville.
Kickoff! Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator
April 1, 2016
[bc] is excited to announce a kickoff for the Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator (AVAI), a new art and public interest design initiative in Market Square, the center of Historic Downtown Brownsville. This program will create a viable means for artists to thrive in a region where attaining basic needs can be a struggle. The incubator will provide a catalytic hub for Downtown Brownsville and the arts, creating a platform for artistic production and collaboration between artists and the community. AVAI begins Spring 2016 and is produced and curated by [bc] in partnership with the City of Brownsville.
Come hear about the new Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator and other exciting new initiatives happening in Downtown Brownsville. Share your downtown stories and help us envision the future of arts and culture in Downtown! We'll start off with a social hour, including some creative activities and refreshments, followed by a panel discussion with local artistic and cultural leaders.
where: 609 E 11th Street
when: friday, april 8th, 5pm social hour , 6pm panel discussion.
Call for Artists! Announcing the Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator
March 28, 2016
[bc] is excited to announce the launch of the call for artists for the Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator (AVAI), a new art and public interest design initiative in Market Square, the center of Historic Downtown Brownsville. This program will create a viable means for artists to thrive in a region were attaining basic needs can be a struggle. The incubator will provide a catalytic hub for Downtown Brownsville and the arts, creating a platform for artistic production and collaboration between artists and the community. AVAI begins Spring 2016 and is produced and curated by [bc] in partnership with the City of Brownsville.
Three selected artists will be provided with studio space in the Historic San Fernando building in which they will complete a six month-long residency. Beyond producing new work in this unique setting, artists and designers will investigate, strengthen, and share this area’s rich history, engage in the development of a physical and social framework for cultural activities, and plan for the renewal and growth of the neighborhood. Artists will collaborate with the local community to create installations, performances, or other artistic actions exploring the cultural, social, political and economic life of this historic area.
Artists who apply should demonstrate a strong interest in social justice and desire to work collaboratively with neighborhood residents to formulate project proposals which unite residents from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds. Artists with relevant work experience are encouraged to share examples which exhibit an ability to thoughtfully explore political and cultural topics such as urban development, historic preservation, vacancy, and the culture and identity of the border. More information about the residency can be found here, the application is available online here.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.