Archiving and Upcoming Artists

Yesterday, I was able to meet up with Suzanne Lacy to help her with some archiving work. We met at the Otis Public Practice Grad Studio in Santa Monica. Somehow, I managed to avoid traffic and arrive twenty minuets ahead of schedule. Unfortunately though, I was pretty lost in the space. After wandering around for ten minuets I ran into a woman who I had met a week prior at the storage facility downtown. Apparently, the studio is part of a larger studio complex named 18th Street Art Center. This is the center's message off of their website:
"18th Street Arts Center is an artists’ residency program that provokes public dialogue through contemporary art-making. We value art-making as an essential part of a vibrant, just and healthy society. Through our artist residencies we are a contemporary art hub that fosters inter-cultural collaboration and dialogue. 18th Street’s residencies, exhibitions, public events, talks, and publications encourage, showcase and support the creation of cutting-edge contemporary art and foster collaboration and interaction between artists locally, nationally and internationally."

Since they have so many studios I wasn't quite sure where to go. The woman who I met happily led me to the studio space while introducing me to Leslie Labowitz-Starus, who collaborated with Suzanne in Three Weeks in May and Three Weeks in January, along various other projects.
The studio was spacious and comfortable, with a kitchen, a community table, a couple of blackboards, computers, and all the back issues of Public Art Review you could ever want. Suzanne arrived and we had a protein filled lunch of sausage and hard boiled eggs. Then we got to work organizing. Overall we got a lot done, but for me it was great to talk to her and be able to see glimpses into her work.

The rest of the day was spent sitting in traffic heading back to the Valley. In the evening though, I got to see an old friend from the east coast who moved out here with her parents a few years back. We had a lovely dinner in Studio City where we saw the youngest daughter from Modern Family eating with her boyfriend (?).... I am not one to follow celebrities but it was pretty funny.

In other news: tomorrow I am meeting with Sandra de la Loza to have a conversation and hear more about her work. An interesting project she did was installing "corrective" historical plaques and monument markers next to official plaques at certain sites. The idea was to investigate how one history becomes enshrined while another one is erased. This was formed through the Poncho Research Society.

On Friday, I will be meeting with Janet Owen Driggs (from the lecture last week) and Andrea Bowers. I will hopefully be helping Suzanne and Andrea set up for a performance in November at the Drawing Center.

It has been a busy week.