Join us for Spare A Dime on April 18, 19, and 20, 2013!
Get your tickets today!
Spare A Dime's projected sets unite city residents, past and present. Illustrations by artist Steve Teare animated by designer Gerardo McGarity-Alegrett create projected backdrops for Spare A Dime singers, while photographic replicas by city residents create visual counterparts to audio stories. We call this corner store our dimestore, where the character of The Merchant sings Pocket of Blues, a song describing the Great Depression. The Builder later joins her here to sing a duet, Change in the Making – look for a WPA poster to appear in the window!
Join us for Spare A Dime on April 18, 19, and 20, 2013! Get your tickets today!
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Spare A Dime animated images bring the urban environment to life. Illustrations by artist Steve Teare animated by designer Gerardo McGarity-Alegrett create projected backdrops for Spare A Dime singers. This cityscape appears as the character of The Builder sings Foundation of Hope, a song about searching for a job and for hope in a time of economic crisis.
Join us for Spare A Dime on April 18, 19, and 20, 2013! Get your tickets today! Spare A Dime's community stories create Gardens of Liberty. For over a year, COSACOSA youth, artists, and staff have collected stories of the Great Depression and our current "Great Recession" from community residents citywide. These interviews created the taproot of Spare A Dime, defining the project's characters and anchoring the storyline through their powerful interplay of hope and hopelessness in times of crisis. This summer, thanks to the support from the Knight Arts Challenge, the Kresge Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Union Benevolent Association, and other generous funders, these collected stories will also find a home in a new series of Site and Sound Gardens we're is creating with community members in North Philadelphia. Transforming abandoned lots into "sacred" spaces for our city neighborhoods, the new Gardens join COSACOSA's existing Healing Garden. The Gardens will feature two- and three-dimensional visual art plus temporary sound art exhibitions, including stories, songs, and poetry by neighborhood residents. Visit COSACOSA's website, www.cosacosa.org, for upcoming dates and times to volunteer to help create and maintain the Site and Sound Gardens. You can also read about the Gardens and other community-building efforts in the recently published Philadelphia edition of US Airways magazine! Best of all, hear our collected stories as part of Spare A Dime on April 18, 19, and 20, 2013! Get your tickets today! PIFA 2013 launched today with the theme "Where will you #timetravel2?" The 15 minute mini-musical "Flash of Time" plays nightly through the festival at the Kimmel Center. Check out Spare A Dime vocalist Julian Coleman at the front of the top platform!
We'll finish up our artist posts this week with profiles of our Chorus of Liberty members. Then, follow us next week as we begin to build our set at the historic Bok Tech Theater and start tech and dress rehearsals! Click here to get your tickets to Spare A Dime today! COSACOSA's curriculum for Spare A Dime connects history with civic responsibility.
"We can learn from history to rework our plans for tomorrow." "A coloring book is such a great, hands-on way to educate children about history," said visual artist Liv Rothfuss. Rothfuss is creating a coloring storybook with Spare A Dime imagery for COSACOSA's youngest constituents. "The lessons of the Great Depression are particularly relevant today as we experience the worst economy since the 1930s. We need to realize the importance of looking out for others and of thinking ahead. We can learn from history to rework our plans for tomorrow. I'm excited to be a part of COSACOSA and its mission to engage Philadelphia communities through art. Illustrating images for Spare a Dime allows me to use my creativity to inspire youth by showing them how to work together to improve the future. " Rothfuss is a Philadelphia based photographer and visual artist creating work that explores the human condition -- with all its philosophical and practical implications. She works as a freelance photographer and illustrator, and also loves using fiber art in mixed mediums. Her work in fabric has ranged from creating original tapestries that examine the psychology behind the story of Snow White, to designing marketable commercial textiles, to creating costumes for regional theater productions. Rothfuss has worked with youth in a variety of settings, including managed classes for Main Line Art Center and creating painted tiles with pediatric hospital patients for several of COSACOSA's large-scale mosaic projects at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Rothfuss graduated with honors from Arcadia University, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with concentrations in both photography and illustration. She has studied abroad at Accademia Italiana in Florence and at City University in London. "...a true community can only originate in the creativity, effort, and skill of all its members." "To me, the lesson of the WPA is how to empower individuals and, by doing so, build community," said John Pickersgill, COSACOSA Youth Development Specialist and Spare A Dime teaching artist. "Everyone has something to contribute to society, and a true community can only originate in the creativity, effort, and skill of all its members. We need to be inspired. We need to cultivate creativity. As the arts wither away from a public education based in standardized testing, we need to recall a time when culture was valued. Through the WPA, art educated and lifted the spirits of the entire country. We need to recapture that grand sense of cultural identity and look to the arts as a mode of critical thinking rather than a mere commercial endeavor. Pickersgill is an alumnus of Temple University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Secondary English Education. He has taught in public and charter schools throughout Philadelphia. His work with COSACOSA applies his pedagogical expertise to create new curricula infusing art into K-12 education. A Philly native, Pickersgill connects with a wide variety of arts, cultural, and educational organizations throughout the region to engage students in their larger community while building lasting literacy and social studies skills in the classroom. In his spare time, Pickersgill prioritizes travel, musical expression, and his passion for cooking. He attributes much of his culinary curiosity and inspiration to travels in Southeastern Asia. His favorite contemporary author is David Sedaris (for his cynical wit, lyrical agility, and lighthearted, campy perspective regarding dysfunctional families and the like). His favorite musical artist is Regina Spektor, and his favorite food to prepare is fresh, homemade bread. Pickersgill also writes the Something for Nothing: Thrifty Foods from the 1930s entries for the Spare A Dime blog! "...students bring such insightful ideas to our discussions of liberty and justice in America." COSACOSA Program Manager and Spare A Dime teaching artist Sharnae Johnson truly enjoys working with youth on civic engagement initiatives. "Our Bok Tech students bring such insightful ideas to our discussions of liberty and justice in America," Johnson said. "Our conversations are very lively. It's interesting to see what they already know about the Great Depression and the WPA, as well as about our current economic situation and how the government is addressing it. Helping the students translate their diverse views on our rights and responsibilities into WPA-style posters and new Liberty dime designs is a great experience!" Johnson is a multimedia artist specializing in community-building projects. As COSACOSA's Program Manager, she has been integral to the development of accessible, intergenerational programming. Johnson has been an artist in residence at a wide range of community centers, as well as a youth development leader at the Free Library of Philadelphia. As an arts educator, she has taught new media and dramatic arts at numerous elementary and secondary schools throughout the Philadelphia region, including working with Spare A Dime participants at Bok Tech. She is founder of Mask Media, a multimedia production company providing photographic, videographic, and new media services to the community at large. Johnson holds a degree in Theater and Communication Arts from Temple University. She is Communications Officer on the Board of the Nicetown-Tioga Improvement Team and a member of the Philadelphia Urban Coalition. Art works to move us forward. The National Endowment for the Arts describes its tagline "Art Works" as serving "to remind us of the ways that art works on audiences to change, confront, challenge, and inspire us; to allow us to imagine and to aspire to something more." Art's role in working for America was never more evident than during the Great Depression. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) saw all artists as workers, with skills as valuable as any other profession. For visual artists, being asked to make art for America at a liveable wage -- without having to market it -- was a very unusual circumstance. Whether documenting the times through photography, painting public murals, or designing civic posters, the visual artists of the WPA contributed iconic imagery that confronted the status quo and created hope for a better future. Artists' empowerment during the 1930s stretched well beyond the WPA. With the rise of the social realist movement, for the first time on a mass scale art centered on the challenging themes like poverty, workers' rights, and racism. A painting or a poster may not stop a lynching or a slaughter, but it can move us instantly to reframe our perspective -- worth more than a thousand words of counter argument. As COSACOSA's tagline says, art can "Make it Better.™" An art of the people, by the people, and for the people creates social justice. Art works to move us forward. New Deal documentation of the Great Depression helps set the Spare A Dime stage. The Great Depression is one of the most heavily documented time periods in American history. The National Archives holds tens of thousands of prints and negatives created by New Deal programs (like Dorothea Lange's iconic Migrant Mother, a series of 1936 images taken of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in Nipomo, California, at left). Photographers typically worked for the Farm Security Administration (like Lange) or in one of three WPA divisions: Creative Projects, Art Teaching, or Allied Art Projects, which documented other WPA programs. Nationwide, WPA's Information Service coordinated state level activities and sent photographers into the field to create journalistic photo essays. Spare A Dime features many of these historical photographs, plus our own versions replicated with our constituents and communities affected by the "Great Recession." Before each song in the cycle, and audio story from COSACOSA's community constituents sets the stage with WPA photographs that cross-fade into their modern-day equivalents. Check out the visual parallels across time at Spare A Dime at PIFA 2013! Tickets are on sale now! |
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