Skid Row History Museum & Archive’s has a new exhibition, “The Dream Walk Exhibit” by Skid Row neighborhood artists from Lamp Community’s Arts Program.
Open: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 2-5pm.
PARTY! Join us this coming Sunday, Sept 18th, 2-5pm for a one-of-a-kind, only Skid Row neighborhood does it like this Closing PARTY of The Dream Walk Exhibit.
FASHION SHOW, PRIZES, DANCE-OFF (and more dancing!)
LOCAL ARTISTS as designers and models
LIVE DJ (Sir Oliver – International Reggae DJ)
REFRESHMENTS from awesome local partners Skid Row Coffee and Dear Mama
The exhibition features the works of a diverse group of more than 40 Skid Row artists, working in a variety of media, from painting to sculpture and video art. The majority of the works have been created specifically for this exhibition. Salem Rose, the artist who submitted the title, explains: “It’s an art walk (of sorts), walking also implies that we are moving forward. ‘Dream’ implies drive, determination, as well as recreation and restoration of aspirations.”
The exhibition opens on Saturday, August 20, 2016 from 6 till 9 pm and runs through Sunday, September 18th, 2016. A number of public events will take place at the museum during the course of the exhibition, including participation in the August and September DTLA Art Walks (August 11th and September 8th, 6-9pm), and spoken word and musical sets on dates to be determined.
The Skid Row History Museum and Archive foregrounds the artistic and social consciousness of Skid Row and recognizes it as neighborhood that is a resource for all of Southern California. The connections between Los Angeles Poverty Department and Lamp Community go back to the origins of both organizations in 1985, as LAPD conducted weekly performance workshops at Lamp throughout the year and as a result many Lamp people became mainstays as Lamp performers.
It’s particularly fitting that this exhibition is now taking place as we mourn the loss of Mollie Lowery, the visionary co-founder of Lamp and long-time friend of LAPD, who passed away July 25.
About Lamp Community’s Arts Program
Lamp Arts Program is a creative studio platform for the residents of the Skid Row neighborhood. Lamp Arts Program offers a safe and nurturing place for creative self-expression to a diverse population of individuals who are homeless, extremely low income and/or living with a mental illness. The program encourages long-term participation as artists develop their individual voices, share artwork, inspire each other, build a healthy community together and make creativity a continuous, restorative part of their lives. Lamp Arts Program includes a visual arts and music studio and regular workshops ranging from creative writing to yoga.
About Lamp Community
Founded in 1985 on San Julian Street in L.A.’s Skid Row, Lamp Community’s mission is to end homelessness of the city’s most vulnerable individuals – primarily adults living with mental illness – through a continuum of services and housing, enabling them to reach their highest level of self-sufficiency and community integration. Its programs are based on the “Housing First” model, which Lamp helped pioneer more than two decades ago. Starting as a small daytime drop-in center, Lamp now operates at more than 10 sites throughout L.A. County. For more information, please visit www.LampCommunity.org or contact Kait Peters, Development Director, [email protected] .
About the Skid Row History Museum and Archive
The Skid Row History Museum and Archive is an exhibition / performing arts space curated by LAPD. It foregrounds the distinctive artistic and historical consciousness of Skid Row, a 40-year-old social experiment. The Skid Row History Museum and Archive functions as a means for exploring the mechanics of displacement in an age of immense income inequality, by mining a neighborhood’s activist history and amplifying effective community strategies. The space operates as an archive, exhibition, performance and meeting space. Exhibitions focus on grassroots strategies that have preserved the neighborhood from successive threats of gentrification and displacement, to be studied for current adaptation and use. The space is activated by performances, community meetings and films, addressing gentrification and displacement locally, nationally and globally.
About the Los Angeles Poverty Department
Currently celebrating its 31st year, Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) was the first ongoing arts initiative in Skid Row. LAPD creates performances and multidisciplinary artworks that connect the experience of people living in poverty to the social forces that shape their lives and communities. LAPD’s works express the realities, hopes, dreams and rights of people who live and work in L.A.’s Skid Row. LAPD has created projects with communities throughout the US and in Europe and South America.
LAPD’s Skid Row History Museum and Archive project is supported with funding from The Surdna Foundation, The Mike Kelley Foundation, The Doris Duke Charitable Trust, The LA County Arts Commission, City of LA Department of Cultural Affairs, and individual donors.
