"Strange Invitation" Upcoming Exhibition Programs

ART What Thou EAT: Innovation in Food / Art / Ecosystems

A lecture by Linda Weintraub 

Tuesday, April 23, 11:20 – 12:35

Room 305 UConn, Stamford, campus

ART What Thou EAT: Innovation in Food / Art / Ecosystems is a talk presented by Linda Weintraub. This lecture will explore the dynamic issues at work today in art, food and social practice, addressing questions such as: Why does art change over time? Why is innovation a measure of great art? Linda Weintraub is an artist, curator, educator, homesteader, and the author of TO LIFE! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (2012), the first eco-art textbook for college art and environmental studies students.  Linda Weintraub is speaking to an art history class at UConn, Stamford. There are ten seats available to the public. To attend the lecture, please RSVP by April 20 to Sandrine@franklinstreetworks.org. 

 Note: The day of the talk, visitors can check with the front desk in the middle of the Rich Concourse for directions to the classroom.

 Honey Locust Tree Relocation

Saturday, May 4

Connecticut meet up 10:30 a.m. (Franklin Street Works) and New York meet up at approximately 12:30pm (Clocktower Gallery)

There are 55 Honey Locust trees growing in New York City's Zuccoti Park, the central locale of the 2011 Occupy Walls Street protests. Artist David Horvitz collected the seeds from those trees in 2012 and is now germinating them in New York's Clocktower Gallery. At the end of Horvitz's Clocktower residency the seedlings will be carried to Connecticut, one tree per person, walking first to Zuccotti Park and then to Grand Central's Metro North train to Stamford (a 40 - 60 minute ride). Trees will continue to germinate at Franklin Street Works during the Strange Invitation exhibition. In June, Horvitz and Franklin Street Works will find permanent homes for the trees, ideally at public institutions such as museums, libraries, and college campuses.

Clocktower Gallery is located at 108 Leonard Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10013. For more on the artist and project visit http://artonair.org/residency/david-horvitz. To sign up for the event please email your RSVP to sandrine@franklinstreetworks.org by May 1, 2013.

 Art in the New City: Stephen Zacks

Thursday, May 23, Stamford Innovation Center, 6:00 pm

For Art in the New City, Stephen Zacks will discuss new practices of public art and design that have emerged since the 1970s and how they can be put at the service of contemporary city-making. Zacks is an internationally recognized architecture and urbanism reporter, theorist, and cultural producer based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and a native of Flint, Michigan. He is also the Director of the Flint Public Art Project. Stephen Zacks received an M.A. in Liberal Studies from the New School for Social Research, worked as an editor at Metropolis magazine, and has received awards from the NY State Council on the Arts, Newtown Creek Fund, Graham Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He is currently writing A Beautiful Ruin: The Generation that Transformed New York, 1967 - 1986. For more http://www.stephenzacks.com/

 An Incomplete Portrait of the Reanimation Library 

Thursday, May 30, 6:30 - 7:30pm

An Incomplete Portrait of the Reanimation Library will feature Andrew Beccone performing a set of short readings made up entirely of excerpts from the library’s holdings paired with projected images from its image archive. Sequenced, unmediated fragments of found text and an accompanying stream of decontextualized images will provide a personalized, fractured and incomplete portrait of the wide-ranging attitudes, ideologies and visual systems contained within the collection. For more on Reanimation Library http://www.reanimationlibrary.org/

Emily Larned: Book Binding Workshop 

Thursday, June 13, 5:30 - 7:30pm 

As part of the Strange Invitation programming and inspired by Franklin Street Works' Reanimation Library branch, Emily Larned will conduct a free, public bookbinding workshop. Larned, Chair and Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at SASD, University of Bridgeport, is an artist and graphic designer. For more on the artist visit http://www.redcharming.com/ 

"Excess" performance by Brooke Singer and Ricardo Mirando

June 15, Time TBD (rain date June 14)

Artists Ricardo Miranda and Brooke Singer will, with the help of volunteers, conduct a survey of small businesses in downtown Stamford to learn more about the "food waste landscape". This information along with a bicycle with built-in composter, will be visualized in a storefront near participating cafes, restaurants, and markets. The visualization will provide a snapshot of current practices and propose creative tactics to reduce waste, curb greenhouse gas emissions and ensure edible food gets eaten and shared! For a one-day event, the artists plan to cycle around downtown Stamford on their composting bicycle, collecting waste from businesses, redistributing the edible portions at a free public picnic, and composting the remainder. For more on the "Excess" project http://www.excessnyc.org/