Show Up Show Down premieres in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a series of exhibitions featuring artists Kim Stringfellow, Mira Burack + Kate Daughdrill, Amy Harwood + Ryan Pierce, and Matthew Mazzotta, as part of tART: temporary art in downtown public places.
Show Up Show Down stages world-changing art through visiting artist presentations, brief photography exhibitions, and an ever-growing publicly-accessible archive. It features exceptional artists who use the built environment – everything from houses to freeways to nature preserves, along with the man-made systems that created them – to impact contemporary life in a variety of beneficial ways.
The Line Up
March 7 – 13: Kim Stringfellow
Project on display: There It Is—Take It! Owens Valley and the Los Angeles Aqueduct, 1913 – 2013
Exhibition opening and public reception Friday, March 7, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. with artist talk 6:00 – 6:15 p.m.
There It Is—Take It! is a self-guided car audio tour through Owens Valley, California, along U.S. Route 395 examining the controversial social, political, and environmental history of the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. Designed as a free, 90-minute-long downloadable audio program, There It Is—Take It! seeks to shed light on the mutual past, present, and possible future of Los Angeles and Owens Valley – centered around its complicated and intertwined water history.
Kim Stringfellow’s professional practice and research interests address ecological, historical, and activist issues related to land use and the built environment through hybrid documentary forms incorporating writing, digital media, photography, audio, video, installation, and mapping. Her work investigates repercussions of human development within the western United States evolving out of a rigorously researched area of interest focused on a particular subject, community or region to discuss complex, interrelated issues of the chosen site.
March 14 – 20: Kate Daughdrill and Mira Burack
Project on display: The Edible Hut
Exhibition opening and public reception Friday, March 14, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. with artist talk 6:00 – 6:15 p.m.
The Edible Hut is a community gathering space and living sculpture in a public park in the Osborn neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan. It is a collaboration between residents, organizations, artists, and schools that enlivens conversations about care, health, and well-being in Detroit.
Mira Burack was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up on the coast of Maine. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts and Psychology from Pepperdine University and a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She currently lives and works in Detroit, where she engages with the community as an artist, gardener, and educator. Her installations and projects explore the ‘living sculptures’ in our everyday lives – the garden, the bed, public and private spaces.
Kate Daughdrill is an artist living and working in Detroit. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and Political & Social Thought from the University of Virginia and a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Daughdrill lives and works on Burnside Farm on Detroit’s east side. This past summer she organized a creative CSA from her farm that provides diverse shareholders with a variety of creative produce.
March 21 – 27: Signal Fire (Amy Harwood + Ryan Pierce)
Project on display: Signal Fire
Exhibition opening and public reception Friday, March 21, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. with artist talk 6:00 – 6:15 p.m.
Signal Fire provides opportunities for artists and activists to engage in the natural world through projects that instill self-reliance, catalyze creative energy, and invite interdisciplinary collaboration. Signal Fire utilizes public lands to advocate for the access to – and protection of remaining wild and open places in order to enrich and sustain societ.
Amy Harwood has been involved in forest conservation and public lands advocacy since 1998. She served as Program Director at Bark, a watchdog group for Mt. Hood National Forest for five years. She has led hundreds of hikes and backpacking trips, educating people on the threats that face our ancient forests. She was most recently on staff with the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, Arizona.
Ryan Pierce is an artist whose work draws on ecological theories to portray possible futures. He exhibits internationally, has completed numerous residencies, and has taught art at Pacific Northwest College of Art and, most recently, served as Visiting Professor at Eastern Oregon University. Ryan is a life long backpacker, an occasional essayist, and a certified Wilderness First Responder.
March 28 – April 4: Matthew Mazzotta
Project on display: Open House
Exhibition opening and public reception Friday, March 28, 6:00-8:00 p.m. with artist talk 6:00-6:15 p.m.
What happens when an artist is invited to use the resources of a small town to help transform its identity? Artist Matthew Mazzotta, the Coleman Center for the Arts, and the people of York, Alabama, have teamed up to transform one of York’s most iconic blighted properties into a new public space. Open House is a house with a secret, it physically transforms from the shape of a house into an open-air theater that seats one hundred people by having its walls and roof fold down.
Matthew Mazzotta’s work evolves from an interest in exploring the relationship between people and their environments, as well as between each other. His practice is conceptual and manifests as participatory public interventions. His work has been recognized both nationally and internationally and he is a graduate of School of Art Institute of Chicago and received a Masters of Science in Visual Studies in 2009 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For more information, visit: http://www.showupshowdown.org.