Finding the Bones in Immigrant America

In her new chapbook, Finding the Bones, poet Aimee Suzara writes about a Filipino migrant family, their place in the Philippines and the U.S., as well as the relationship between the “sending” and “receiving” country. The scope is simultaneously expansive (geographically and historically) and intimate as she asks the reader to constantly move between countries, to grasp the present by understanding the past. Divided into three sections, Finding the Bones digs through the materials of an unnamed narrator’s personal and family story, while discovering ancient layers of sedimented life, creatures that bear some eerie semblance to us. Suzara’s poetic excavations complicate the …

Domestic Art: Nannies, Immigrants, and Labor

While most artists find their voice in the studio, Ramiro Gomez Jr. found his in the space between two very disparate and disconnected worlds. In 2009, he left the California Institute of the Arts and moved in with a wealthy family in West Hollywood to work as a live-in nanny and care for two infants. Although nervous about his huge new responsibilities, he was also grateful and relieved to finally have some stability and a chance to rethink his artistic path. With one baby strapped to this chest and another baby slung on his hip, Ramiro found his way to the park, the un-official gathering and organizing space for maids and nannies. At first the other domestic workers didn’t know what to …

Activating Alternative Historical Narratives: The Black Arts Collective of Philadelphia Visits South El Monte

SEMAP Interview from Henry Pacheco on Vimeo. For Activate Vacant, the South El Monte Arts Posse invited artists to transgress space by creating installations in abandoned, un-used, and, often, fenced of lots. Carribean Fragoza’s two word self-titled poem installation/billboard “ay corazon,” made entirely of white plastic grocery bags, interrupted the monotonous landscape and functioned as an emotional holograph for El Monte’s commuters. Christopher Anthony Velasco’s “Let It Sparkle,” invited bus riders and the SEMAP team to cover the adjacent abandoned car garage and parking lot with yarn. Lastly, Jennifer Renteria’s rendering “The Uncultivated Park,” allowed residents …

The Relentless Pace of Hipsterdom: A Day at Pitchfork Music Festival Paris

[Editor's note: Please welcome Greg Spivak to ToM.  All photos appearing here were taken by Mr. Spivak, we encourage you to click on them to see them at full size and resolution.] In French there is no equivalent for “hipster.” Recently the term has been adopted by the French press, with articles describing this American idea of “le hipster”; slowly, the word is starting to lose its italicized status as a new loan word along with les has-been, les best-of and les lifting (fine, the last is a strange Gallic deformation of "face-lift"). The closest the French come is the bobo, which, although coined by David Brooks, moved to, settled, and thrived in France -- talk shows speak …

Jennifer Renteria’s “The Uncultivated Park”

For Activate Vacant, the South El Monte Arts Posse invited artists to transgress space by creating installations in abandoned, un-used, and, often, fenced of lots. Jennifer Renteria, a recent graduate of USC's School of Architecture," imaged and rendered "The Uncultivated Park." Join us for the on-site installations: October 13th, 9am, corner of Merced and Santa Anita, South El Monte. For further reading on SEMAP and Activate Vacant, see: The South El Monte Arts Posse Presents "Ay Corazon" Christopher Anthony Velasco's "Let It Sparkle" Blurring Boundaries: A Conversation about Urban Nature with Jennifer Renteria …

This Wall Wasn’t Dead: Public Art in Atlanta

From New York's graffiti wars of the 1980s to the political street art of Banksy in the 2000s, the role of art in public space continues to stir controversy and debate.  Under the divine tutelage of Mayor Ed Koch (such a singular historical figure that NYC lamely attempted to rebrand the great Queensboro Bridge in his honor), New York spent millions trying to eradicate the menace of spraypainted tags and murals from subway cars, adding to the myriad ways that young people, mostly of color, were criminalized amid the urban crisis of deindustrialization, unemployment, and drug addiction.  (See Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop for more on this history.) Due in part to the pioneering …

Blurring Boundaries: A Conversation About Urban Nature with Jennifer Renteria

For Activate Vacant, SEMAP invited artists to transgress space by creating installations in abandoned, un-used, and, often, fenced-in lots. Jennifer Renteria, a recent graduate of USC’s School of Architecture, is our third artist. In anticipating her project, we thought we’d let you know a little more about her. Renteria grew up in the city of Commerce, studied history and fine arts at Bowdoin College and recently received her Master’s in Landspace Architecture. Her research, writing, and projects, which often utilize photography and multimedia, center around informal/alternative economies and the relationship between the urban environment and nature. This past year, she visited …

Dog Days Classics: Lanny Budd, Upton Sinclair’s Ideal Idler

"It was profoundly true that movements of the spirit came first, and that events of history were consequences thereof." -Upton Sinclair, Wide is the Gate Several years ago I was directed toward Upton Sinclair’s socialist-minded quasi-spy novels about a young man named Lanning Prescott Budd. The 11 books span the breadth of time from the onset of The Great War to the rise of the Cold War, but as I have been able to acquire only the first half of the series, my investigation has followed Lanny only so far as the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. A New York Times reflection on the books gives a decent introduction to the protagonist: Born in 1900, he was the illegitimate child of an …

Christopher Anthony Velasco’s “Let It Sparkle”

“Let it Sparkle” is a public art installation by Christopher Anthony Velasco that occupied much of a vacated car garage at the corner of Tyler Ave and Ramona in El Monte as part of SEMAP’s Activate Vacant series. The unoccupied building, painted over entirely in white, including the glass windows, shines under the blazing sun like a skull on a scorched landscape. On a Saturday morning in August, Velasco and a crew of SEMAP posse reoccupied the dead space with an intricate web of multi-colored yarn, neon colored tape and glitter.  Lots and lots of glitter. Beautiful or obnoxious? Well, that depends. Once a certain Italian arts magazine editor I knew snidely described L.A. art …

The South El Monte Arts Posse Presents ‘ay corazon’

My project is influenced by graffiti art and shares graffiti’s affinity for transgressing boundaries and trespassing private property. Also similar to graffiti, the goal is to beautify an otherwise blank or blighted space with my own aesthetic vision. However, there are some marked differences. Unlike graffiti, instead of marking one’s own name as a way of claiming or marking territory, I’m interested in marking the name of another, of a loved one as in a public proclamation of affection. In addition, instead of observing the anonymous moniker of a tagger or graffiti writer, the audience is meant to insert the image of their personal sweetheart. Also unlike the often illegible quality …