April 28 | Last bus tour of 5x5 projecs in SW and SE

The 5x5 Project, the DC Commission and the Art and Humanities' citywide exhibit featuring 25 ground-breaking public art installations from artists from around the world, will be concluding on Monday, April 30th.

The Commission has planned a tour of the exhibits for both media and the general public to catch the works before they come down. This 5x5 bus tour will begin and end at Arena Stage (1101 Sixth Street, SW) highlighting selected projects located across Southwest and Southeast DC.

Date and Time:
Saturday, April 28th from 11:00am – 2:30pm **OPEN TO THE PUBLIC**

National Testimonials
“The vibrant 5x5 project is the start of a new era of tradition.” - Interview Magazine
“ I came away with a better understanding and appreciation of DC culture and got to see aspects of the city which I never really knew existed ... After a whirlwind weekend of public art, it's clear that the DC art scene is on the rise, and has earned a spot alongside the creative capitals of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.” - Blackbook Magazine

**For photos of the exhibits and interviews with artists or curators, please respond to the email with request. Attached please find the press release and curator/artist information.

Please RSVP for the tour to this email address.

Best regards,
Dana Berkowitz

--
Dana Berkowitz
Public Relations
The 5x5 Project
DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities
t: 516.220.6202
e: pr@the5x5project.com

SEE BELOW FOR LIST OF ARTISTS & EXHIBITS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Dana Berkowitz/ DC COMMISSION ON THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES

516.220.6202/pr@the5x5project.com

Danielle Piacente / National Cherry Blossom Festival

202-638-8374 / danielle@downtowndc.org

1. Curator Amy Lipton (New York, NY) is co-director of ecoartspace, a bi-coastal non-profit organization that creates opportunities for addressing environmental issues through the arts since 1999.  Amy’s 5x5 project titled BiodiverCITY includes:

·       Dates: March 25^th – July 25^th - Butterfly Bridge by artist Natalie Jeremijenko will provide butterflies an intervention to help navigate obstacles and barriers in urban settings. The bridge will demonstrate possibilities of re-imagining our urban infrastructure to account for the diverse species that we share space and resources.

·       Dates: March 20^th – July 20^th  - p:ARK by Tattfoo Tan is a large walk-able labyrinth in an open grass field that has been left un-mowed to grow wild with weeds, grasses and other volunteer plants.

·       Dates: March 24^th – June 10^th - Love Motel For Insects is a captivating outdoor light installation by Brandon Ballengée that forms giant dragonfly wings at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. The work uses ultra-violet lights on large blank fabric to attract insects and creates an opportunity for public interactions with nocturnal arthropods, which are not often seen.   

·       Dates: March 20^th – July 20^th - Natural Wishing by Chrysanne Stathacos enables participants to connect with “wishing actions” from around the world. The public will be able to tie a wish to a tree at the Textile Museum, Hill Center and Sasha Bruce, a non-profit that provides homes for homeless children. People will also be able to call a number advertised on dozens of buses touring DC to leave or hear wishes.

·       Dates:  March 20^th – April 27^th - Habitat For Artists has built small, temporary, 6 by 6 foot art studios made from recycled and reclaimed materials to engage local artists and youth groups to take an active role in participating both inside and outside of the habitat.  The Habitats will be installed at TheArc.

2. Curator Justine Topfer (San Francisco, CA) of Out Of The Box Projects is an Australian-born curator who works internationally. Justine’s project name for 5x5 is Betwixt & Between, referring to the artists breathing new life into the ordinary, reinvigorating the fabric of the urban environment.

·       Dates: March 20^th – April 27^th - Using recycled material, Home Mender by Monica Canilao creates a cacophony of color, texture and movement. She will breathe new life into Anacostia, imbuing it with her warm handmade aesthetic. Canliao and crew will gather discarded refuse and create a surreal installation, infused with Native American references, which transport the viewer to a dreamlike world.

·       Dates: March 22^nd at 7pm - Ben-Hur by Jefferson Pinder continues his investigation of dynamic movement at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.  Accompanied by DJ Tony Tech, six performers will exert their masculine virility and physical prowess. While referencing the historical, social and political issues, which underscore ‘blackness’, Ben-Hur speaks to a broader narrative and conveys through evocative kinesthesia our collective experience of human predicament and struggle. 

·       Dates: First workshop: March 30^th – April 1^st - Rebar will develop an artist-led community engagement project which responds to the Central 14^th Neighborhood revitalization strategy.  5x5 will kick off this series by initiating a public forum on utilizing city streets for purposes other then transportation. This process will end by building urban street furniture for the Colorado Art Plaza.

·       Dates: March 20^th – April 27^th - Remember Me by Reko Rennie, a highly acclaimed Australian street artist will create a text-based neon wall painting.  Reko will utilize his diamond iconography in a contemporary context, drawing inspiration from his Aboriginal heritage. Through this universal statement - REMEBER ME, Reko references the original inhabitants of the land.

·       Dates: March 20^th – May 20^th - Using vivid geometric shapes and patterns reminiscent of American folk art and quilt work, artist Clare Rojas creates narrative paintings focused on the relationships between men, women, society, and nature. Melding craft and fine art with unparalleled verve, the exterior of the National Museum for the Women in the Arts will be transformed.

3. Curator Laura Roulet (Washington, DC) is an independent curator and writer, specializing in contemporary and Latin American art. Laura’s 5x5 exhibition is titled Activate => Participate for which she has chosen to work almost entirely with local artists to create communal, multi-sensory experiences for diverse audiences.

·       Dates: Workshops at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW), April 2, 4, 6; and April 14. On-going action at Garfield Park - With Finding a Line, Ben Ashworth will work with local youths to teach them stewardship of their own environment, how to transform that environment, and creative skills like building and video filming/editing. This work will employ Ben’s method of forming a skate community in DC; building skateboards and transforming a public space into a skate park in Garfield Park.

·       Dates: Corcoran Gallery of Art March 17^th from 10:00am – 5:00pm & The Pepco Edison Place Gallery March 25^th from 12:00pm – 7:00pm - The "ReMuseum" by The Floating Lab Collective is a participatory, mobile experiment that investigates museum processes such as collecting, valuing and displaying objects.  Through discussions with DC communities, such as Deanwood, Brentwood, Petworth and Anacostia, the Floating Lab Collective selected and replicated personal objects of value. These objects, along with unique stories delivered by their owners, will be displayed in a retrofitted taco truck.

·       Dates: March 20th – April 27^th - For Charles Juhasz-Alvarado’s Cherry Blossom Cloud, please see description under page 1 of press release.

·       Dates: March 20^th – April 27^th - Patrick McDonough is a multi-media artist, whose “Painted Rock Hunt Game,” a geocaching game, will spread all eight wards. Using the Internet and GPS technology as a platform for public art, McDonough will leave clues on a website revealing the location of eight “caches” of his artwork. This scavenger hunt/art itinerary will lead seekers to piles of encoded stones hidden in various sites ranging from parks, libraries, museums and private galleries. As they log in their finds, participants are encouraged to continue seeking the other sites. McDonough will reward those who visit every site with a certificate of achievement.   Website address: www.prhg.net        

·       Dates: April 5^th at University of the District of Columbia & April 13^th at Old Post Office Pavilion - Though still a student at Howard University, Wilmer Wilson IV has already staged successful performances at Hillyer Art Space and the (e) merge art fair in the district. Wilson will create a suite of performances based on the historic 19th century figure Henry “Box” Brown, a slave from Richmond, Virginia (the artist’s hometown), who mailed himself to freedom in the North by paying to be shipped in a crate. Wilson will cover himself with three grades of postage stamps and walk into post offices, asking to be mailed.

4. Curator Richard Hollinshead (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK,) Director of Grit & Pearl is an artist, designer and curator, and holds a BA, MA and PhD by Practice with a specialism in contemporary projects for heritage landscapes. Richard’s 5x5 project is titled Magnificent Distance.

·       Dates: March 20th – April 1^st - For Cath Campbell’s Marathon please see description under page 1 of press release.

·       Dates: March 20^th – April 27^th - Spore by Ben Jeans Houghton is both an enigmatic object overlooking the National Building Museum’s Great Hall, and a viewing device through which something unseen yet fundamental is revealed within that space.  In biology, once a single spore is released it has the potential to develop into a new organism, and similarly, the Spore artwork promotes a shift in the way we perceive our everyday environments.

·       Dates:  March 20^th – April 27^th - Jo Ray’s Spoken For employs text fragments selected from across DC for their capacity to suggest a meaning other than the author’s original intention. A fish market stall proudly boasts that ‘Our Crabs Have No Sand’ and a derelict shop bears the peeling legend ‘Rescue Workers’, but divorced from their context and placed into the shadow of the Washington Monument these disposable snippets of text assume new meanings more reminiscent of protest and political activism. 

·       Dates: March 20^th – April 27^th at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. Library of Congress screening on April 24^th and 26^th - Hawk and Dove by Isabella Streffen refers in part to the residency of a Cooper’s Hawk in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress in 2010, and archive images of the Graf Zeppelin near the Capitol in 1928. Isabella Streffen’s Hawk and Dove is a film using footage shot from two 7ft remote-controlled zeppelins – the Hawk and the Dove – engaged in a balletic ‘dogfight’ at the Library of Congress and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. Hawk and Dove explores the corridors of power and the role of knowledge in the shaping of political debate.

·       Dates: March 20^th – April 27^th - Res Publica by Wolfgang Weileder is a socially engaged project that uses the Supreme Court of the United States as the symbol for concepts of social justice – literally the ‘shelter’ under which citizens are protected. Students at the Corcoran College of Art & Design will construct a number of human-scale cardboard models of the Supreme Court of the United States for installation at various locations throughout DC, a free construction manual for making the models available via a unique version of newspaper vending boxes, and a limited-edition artwork will raise funds for DC’s homeless community.

5. Curator Steve Rowell (Los Angeles, CA) is an artist, curator, and researcher working in and between Los Angeles and Washington, DC. Rowell’s project, Suspension of Disbelief,  investigates the fringes of the monumental core: airspaces, zones of exclusion, perimeters, liminal landscapes, waterways, shorelines, perceived non-places, and lesser-known or overlooked (sometimes even conspicuously absent) memorials, around the National Mall and along the federal periphery.

·       Dates: March 20^th – April 25^th - Deborah Stratman & Steven Badgett’s Polygonal Address (PA) System is a monumental floating platform, anchored at the Gangplank Marina and the waters behind the Titanic Memorial. This solar-powered sound system will feature a wide range of historic sound recordings, such as public addresses given during the 1932 Bonus Army protests on the National Mall. It will also provide a platform for guest sound programming by local, D.C.-based musicians, speakers, and artists.

·       Dates: March 20^th – April 27^th - Sight Lines by Lize Mogel, whose practice is concentrated on cartographic representations and public actions/interventions/tours, will develop tours which traverse places that are practically invisible, unnoticed, underground, or hidden in plain sight. Some routes visit familiar historic sights or seemingly mundane parts of everyday life; presenting them in new contexts. A custom-designed map, which can be easily transformed into a viewing scope, will be available free to the public at key distributions points at all DC Public Libraries.

·       Dates:  March 24^th, 2012 - Berlin-based artist collective, KUNSTrePUBLIK will create Fountains of D.C., a group of wooden mobile replicas of the Temperance Foundation located in Penn Quarter. KUNSTrePUBLIK’s work is inspired by the relationships of two significant periods in DC’s history – the Temperance Movement and the Straight Edge punk rock music scene. Both periods share similar values of social reform, activism and counter culture – all influential elements of the project, which will be used as focal points for inspirational public gatherings, musical events and community dialogues.  

·       Dates: March 20th – April 27^th - For 1x1 by the Office Of Experiments please see description under page 1 of press release.

·       Dates: TBD - Charles Stankievech will be presenting Over and Out, a shortwave radio repeater station installed within the District. The public will be invited to listen to the stream of real-time shortwave radio signals captured with a customized array of equipment, installed in a building that was used as an art gallery and, allegedly, an FBI listening post from the early 1970s to the early ’90s.

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