EVENT / 2018
Connecting Art + Community
A fundraiser benefiting
Transition Projects, p:ear, New Avenues for Youth,
Gather:Make:Shelter and Converge 45
Converge 45: Connecting Art + Community is a silent auction and dinner fundraising event featuring artists whose work engages with issues of homelessness. The event honors four local organizations and projects dedicated to providing resources to those experiencing homelessness.
Connecting Art + Community builds upon Converge 45 YOU IN MIND, Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds’ 2016-18 program which focuses on artistic practices that contemplate the public realm and consider the broader ecology of our communities.
SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2018
5:30 – 11:00 pm
Vibrant Table
2010 SE 8th Avenue
ART
Jim Hodges,
collaborative project by Chris Johanson and
Johanna Jackson with New Avenues for Youth artists,
collaborative project by Dana Lynn Louis,
p:ear artists and more
ENTERTAINMENT
Karen Lovely
SPONSORS
The Juliet Hillman Foundation, Michael & Mamie Hummel
and Bridgeport Laser & Wellness
IN-KIND SPONSORS
Atlas Cider Co, Aviary, Caffe Mingo, Carabella, Gallo Nero, House Spirits, Il Terrazzo, Jo Bar, La Linda, Lagunitas, MetroEast, No Such Recipe, Omnivore, Papa Haydn, Portland Monthly, Really Big Video, Teutonic Wine Company, The Allison Inn & Spa and Vibrant Table
ARTISTS + ORGANIZATIONS
Jim Hodges + Transition Projects
Jim Hodges is an internationally recognized artist whose work explores themes of fragility, temporality, love, and death in a poetic vocabulary. He frequently deploys different materials and techniques: from ready-made objects to traditional media such as graphite and ink. Often disarmingly simple or executed with minimal means, Hodges’ works express a sentiment of deeply felt experience and encourages a visceral and communal response. Incorporated in his choice of media and articulated in text and image is a narrative of human experience, one of life and death and of the proximity of contingency that affects us all. Works from his 2017 Converge 45 public project You Are Not Alone benefited local non-profit Transition Projects.
Transition Projects was founded in 1969 to help people transition from homelessness to housing in the Portland metro area. Each year, they assist more than 10,000 people through a broad array of services, resources, and tools. On any given day, Transition Projects helps to meet the basic needs of more than 500 people experiencing homelessness through their Resource Center and provides a safe place to sleep for more than 800 people with nowhere else to turn. In any given year, they help place more than 1,000 people into affordable housing and support them in retaining that housing.
Chris Johanson + New Avenues for Youth
In 2016 artists Chris Johanson and Johanna Jackson partnered with New Avenues for Youth to create a collaborative mural project in downtown Portland, OR that positively represented the diversity of human life. Working with local artists and youth in the program the artists painted portraits on plywood that surrounded the perimeter of the building.
New Avenues for Youth began in in 1997 and has impacted the lives of 20,000 youth through a range of services that address basic needs & safety, provides opportunities for education & career, and helps youth achieve self-sufficiency. Their mission is to work in partnership with our community to prevent youth homelessness and provide homeless and at-risk young people with the resources and skills needed to lead healthy, productive lives.
p:ear youth artists + p:ear
p:ear was founded in 2002 and has provided invaluable mentoring services to Portland’s homeless and parent-less young people for over 15 years. p:ear’s mission is to builds positive relationships with 15-25 year old homeless and transitional youth through Education, Arts and Recreation to affirm personal worth and create more meaningful and healthier lives. Each year, p:ear serves roughly 800 homeless young people. p:ear was created from a vision of compassion and we believe that each youth deserves to empower themselves and to develop a positive self-identity that encompasses a sense of self-worth and a capacity for risk, growth, change.
Dana Lynn Louis + Gather:Make:Shelter
Dana Lynn Louis is a visual artist interested in connective experience and explores themes surrounding the natural, personal, and constructed world. Louis creates drawings, collaborative performances and large scale installations using materials of glass, light, drawing, and shadow among others. Louis brings a social component to her work based on her yoga practice and her experiences traveling through West Africa while helping to create Ko-Falen, a cultural center in Bamako, Mali. In January 2017, Louis returned from a residency in the remote village of Sinthian in Senegal, West Africa where she introduced yoga and drawing classes and collaborated with villagers on several projects.
Gather:Make:Shelter is a community engagement art project shepherded by Dana Lynn Louis in collaboration with people experiencing homelessness and local potters. The project will engage over 500 people experiencing homelessness to draw and paint over 500 ceramic bowls over a 6- month period and give participants a stipend to produce events that build bridges to puts them in a leadership role. The project will teach entrepreneurial skill building through art, food, and mindfulness activities and culminate in two public events that encourage communication and interaction in the summer of 2018. Project locations will be in Portland’s historic North Park Blocks and the lawn space of Washington High School.