CCA News
Fine Arts Faculty Allison Smith Receives Creative Work Fund Award
Posted on Monday, August 30, 2010, by Christine Bradley
The Creative Work Fund (CWF) has named Allison Smith (in collaboration with Southern Exposure) as one of 17 recipients of this year's award. A total of $650,000 has been awarded for the creation of new works in the fields of performing and visual arts, funding collaborations between artists and local nonprofit community organizations on dynamic and creative projects that include dance, music, theater, sculpture, murals, interactive community art-making, and more.
Smith's proposed project involves recruiting 50 artists to collaborate with her and with Southern Exposure to create “The Cries of San Francisco,” a temporary public art project, series of events, exhibition, and publication that takes as its inspiration early San Francisco street merchants who would hawk their wares with melodic songs and calls. Participating artists will create peddler identities and cries, as well as items to hawk. T
he key public presentation will take place over the course of one day along Market Street between the Embarcadero and the Civic Center. Participants will reenact life on the street, demonstrating notions of alternative micro-economics—literally carrying your self-made business on your back—along with soapbox speech-making, performance, and sculptural drag. Southern Exposure will serve as the home base where artists will gather, work, and present additional performances and an exhibition.
Southern Exposure is a 36 year-old nonprofit visual arts organization dedicated to presenting diverse, innovative, contemporary art, arts education, and related programs and events in an accessible environment. It offers artists the opportunity to experiment, exposes them to new audiences, and engages them in meaningful conversation with other artists and the public.
Allison Smith’s diverse artistic practice investigates the cultural phenomenon of historical reenactment and the role of craft in the construction of national identity.