 |
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
ARTS & SKILLS Service in an ongoing project that re-stages a World War II-era collaboration between the American Red Cross and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
"Here in San Francisco over fifteen hundred men a month are being sent out from our three military hospitals with a new weapon in their hands: a skill or craft with which to fight discouragement or boredom..." Sophie Morris Kent on Arts & Skills, 1944
On the occasion of SFMOMA's anniversary exhibition "75 Years of Looking Forward," I was commissioned to research and reenact self-selected episodes in the history of the Museum's public programs. What began as an artist residency has evolved into a series of interactive installations, public conversations, hands-on workshops and other exchanges in which I bring Bay Area makers, veterans, art students, and art therapists together in dialogue through forms of making and doing.
In ARTS & SKILLS Service, I enlist a volunteer corps of artists and craftspeople to teach hands-on workshops to military veterans, in order to engage in dialogue through creative skill-shares. At ongoing gatherings at SMITHS, SFMOMA's original location at the War Memorial Veterans Building at San Francisco City Hall, and the FOR-SITE Foundation Exhibition Pavilion in the Presidio, we have shared the research, resources, ideas and questions occasioned by the project.
In 2011, I began partnering with Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco-based non-partisan veteran service organization whose program SHOUT! for Women Veterans was inspired by the notion that the arts encourage expression and healing.
This spring I am leading a series of workshops for women veterans and the public on the theme of trench art: objects made by soldiers, prisoners of war, or civilians, where the object’s making and materiality are directly linked to armed conflict or its consequences. My collaborators Amber Cady and Helena Keeffe and I will present historical trench art objects as “conversation pieces,” then demonstrate many of the skills needed for making the objects.
Through skill shares, public conversations, and interactive sculptural installations, ARTS & SKILLS Service brings together people who have experienced war from the “home front” with those who have experienced it on the “front lines."
Call for Trench Art
Individuals with experience serving in the military are called to submit photographs, stories, or actual objects they have made or collected throughout their experiences of armed conflict or its consequences, for the FOR-SITE Foundation's International Orange exhibition opening May 2012 in the Presidio.
Fort Point Bunting
Throughout the workshops above, participants are invited to take part in a large-scale textile installation consisting of 75 swags of bunting to adorn Fort Point on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge.
For more information, to participate or volunteer contact me at smithsgeneral (at) gmail (dot) com |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Arts & Skills Service 2010 participatory art event
|
The War Memorial Veterans Building at San Francisco City Hall, the original site of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
