Visual Arts Development Project- "the Land" Rituals and traditions a two-week artist in residency
May 13 – May 25 in Placer County.
The VADP will be the first collaborating organization to partner with the MAP Gallery of Myth, Stories, and Living Traditions to establish a series of land trusts that serve as networks for Altar training and research. "The Land" will serve as a living experiment for sustainable practices and an incubator for personal and collective transformation.
Anita Posey-Lowe lives on three and a half archers in Placer County, where she has a potter's studio, with several areas on her property for pit firing. She has whole-heartedly loaned the use of her land to The Gallery of Myth, Stories, and Living Traditions to expand its outreach program of workshops and outdoor altar installations and to build a permanent structure that will be left on her land in the area we have proposed to erect the outdoor Altar.
The artist has proposed that the panels and other installation elements be a temporary installation that will be deconstructed by the resident artist at the end of the exhibition. The residency will be a series of workshops, intensive structure construction, clearing of the land for ceremonies, artists constructing individual elements of the sculpture, independent studio, time for creative conversation, and libations.
Visual Arts Development Project - Faculty
Alpha Bruton, Talver Germany-Miller, Anita Posey-Lowe, Andrea Porras (Yaya)
The primary focus areas for this project are:
- Artist in Residency Projects
- Creating markers for temporary installation
- Land Trust for Small Museum
- Research for permanent markers
2013 TRAINING SCHEDULE
March 23 – 25: Weekend Retreat Visual Arts Development Project,
March 30: De-installation Gallery of Myth, Stories, and Living Traditions.
April 1 – 30: Invitation to guest artists, facilitators, and registration
May 11-12: North Auburn Studio's Tour Mother's Day Weekend
May 13 – 25: Building Living Sculpture Installation- Guest Artist and Preparatory
May 17 – 19: Weekend Retreat Workshop and Studio Intensive
May 18: Ceremony Begins
May 20 – 24: Installations, murals, and layering of the shell
May 25 Community Celebration
MAP - Gallery of Myth, Stories, and Living Traditions
Envisioned to evoke the transformative value of historical and contemporary cultural traditions, MAP's Gallery uses the power of myth, stories, and imagination to give voice to the universality of cultural traditions.
The gallery is an outreach program of the Metropolitan Arts Partnership ("MAP ") and is designed to provide a more significant regional presence. The Gallery of Myth, Stories, and Living Traditions will soon include a companion lecture, workshop, and conference series.
The primary programs of MAP are its workplace giving Arts Fund; the management of the local federal workplace offering program, the Combined Federal Campaign; and the gallery outreach program, which was at the Arts Building in downtown Auburn from 2006 – 2013.
The mission of the Metropolitan Arts Partnership is to support arts education and outreach programs for children and youth in schools, performance venues, and neighborhood centers provided by our members' agencies. MAP members are all certified nonprofit arts organizations based in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, or Yuba Counties.
From 2006 until its closing in March of 2013, the MAP Gallery consisted of temporary installations curated by Founder and Executive Director Michelle Walker, the Artistic Director of the Gallery and Founder of the International Society of Altar Making. In addition, she has facilitated Altar Doing workshops since 1980. Michelle drew from her New Orleans ancestry and interests in Ndebele, Hopi, Bon Po, Tibetan Tantric, and Kundalini philosophies and practices; she integrated those elements into her personal altars and Altar Making over the years.
Co-curator Andrea "YaYa" Porras is an artist and assistant to the Map Gallery, where she was mentored and guided by master artist/Altar Maker Michelle Walker. YaYa, in her own right, has studied the traditions of her ancestry; she is an Aztecan dancer, African-modern dancer, actress, poet, and altar artist from Sacramento, California.
Gallery-Assistant Ondrea Walker is an artist apprentice trained in concept development and installation by the International Society of Altar Making. She attended the San Francisco Art Academy, where her concentration was photography, photo documentary, and photojournalism.
PROPOSED INSTALLATION "the Land" Rituals and traditions Purification Ceremony Rituals and practices associated with sweating vary regionally and culturally. Ceremonies often include traditional prayers and songs. In addition, in some cultures drumming and offerings to the spirit world may be part of the ceremony, or a sweat lodge ceremony may be a part of another, more extended tradition.
Some standard practices and key elements associated with purification ceremonies include:
Training - Most cultures holding ceremonial sweats require that someone undergo intensive training for many years to be allowed to lead a purification ceremony. One of the requirements is that the leader can pray and communicate fluently in the indigenous language of that culture and understand how to conduct the ceremony safely. This leadership role is granted by the Elders of the community, not self-designated.
Construction – The purification ceremonies are generally built with great care and respect for the environment and materials used. Many traditions construct the purification ceremonies in complete silence, some have a drum playing while they build, and others have the builders fast during construction.
Support – In many traditions, one or more persons will remain outside the structure to protect the ceremony, assist the participants, and aid purification ceremony etiquette. Sometimes they will tend the fire and place the hot stones if a system uses stones, though usually done by a designated fire keeper.
Proposed Project-
Creation of Living Land Trust for Outdoor Altar Installations- a Continuum: MAP - Gallery of Myth, Stories, and Living Traditions- Breathing Life into the Gallery 2013. "The Land" will serve as a living experiment for sustainable practices and an incubator for personal and collective transformation.
The initiative for community land trust was known as the Bhoodan or Land Gift movement in the 1950s and 1960s. It gathered people together and asked those with more land than needed to give their poorer sisters and brothers a portion of it. Many of India's leaders participated in these walks from village to village.[i]
Seeing this, Vinoba altered the Boodan system to a Gramdan or Village gift system. All donated land was subsequently held by the village itself. The town would then lease the land to those capable of working it. The lease expires if the land is unused. The Gramdan movement inspired a series of regional village land trusts that anticipated Community Land Trusts in the United States.
The first organization labeled with the term 'community land trust' in the U.S., called New Communities, Inc., was founded to help African-American farmers in the rural South access farmland and work it with security.
A precursor to this was the Celo Community in North Carolina, founded in 1937 by Arthur Ernest Morgan.
New communities: Robert Swann worked with Slater King, president of the Albany Movement and a cousin of Martin Luther King, Jr., Charles Sherrod, an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and individuals from other southern civil rights organizations in the South to develop New Communities, Inc., "a nonprofit organization to hold land in perpetual trust for the permanent use of rural communities." [ii]
There are currently over 250 community land trusts in the United States. Fledgling CLT movements are also underway in England, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Kenya, and New Zealand. In 2006, a national association was established in the United States to provide assistance and support for CLTs: the National Community Land Trust Network.[iii]
Sustainability
I am interested in developing a "Community Land Trusts and Art Place Making to expand the MAP Gallery of Myth, Stories, and Living Traditions in the acquisition of land ownership to capture the value of a public investment for long-term community benefit. Instead of leasing or renting gallery spaces for exhibition, the gallery would become landowners.
Conservation Land Trust: A land trust is a nonprofit organization that, as part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisition or by its stewardship of such land or easements.
Putting real estate assets into a land trust allows the owner to avoid probate and save on estate taxes when the property passes to heirs. It will also protect the property from liens and judgments that might be brought against an owner. For partners and tenants in common, each owner is insulated from decisions. With a land trust, an owner can privately transfer their beneficial interest in the faith (the actual ownership) without being reported to any governmental agencies. Lastly, a person's property ownership remains confidential with a land trust and does not appear in any county recorder's office or publicly accessible resource.
In particular, Community land trusts attempt to meet the needs of residents least served by the prevailing land market. Community land trusts help communities gain control over local land use and reduce absentee ownership, provide affordable housing for lower-income residents in the community, promote resident ownership and control of housing, keep housing affordable for future residents, and build a strong base for community action.
