From Gerda's prologue to "Poetry Within Reach in Unexpected Places":

Poetry Within Reach in Unexpected Places is a testamentto my experience that poetic words and phrases are hidden in everyday conversations.  I interacted and collaborated with Public Address artists, California Center for the Arts staff, and diverse 
community members and organizations. This included reading poetry at Escondido City Council meetings and connecting with Poets Inc. based in Escondido. An array of written materials and videos were part of the information gathering process. I composed poems based on the collection of words and phrases that I harvested for the Exhibit “DesEscondido/No Longer Hidden,” and artwork created by Public Address artists, which enabled the poems to serve as a thread that runs through the exhibit tapestry outside and inside of the Museum. 
 
Public Address
 
Eighteen months of dialogue
listen discover  taste  words
infused with remnants of past
bear witness to what’s next as
we grow in the shade of our dreams.
 
 
Public Address, a group of San Diego (and beyond) artists, who came together 18 years ago to correct the ills of the public art sector. We are now a diverse twenty. DesEscondido/No Longer Hidden is our first museum exhibition. Individually and collaboratively we are reimagining the California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum realm with public work in a private space that addresses and celebrates our most cherished ideals, concerns and history. 
www.publicaddressart.com 

Melissa reports: "along with Doris Bittar and Todd Ayoung, we were invited by CAMP: Center for Art on Migration Politics, nestled in a place called Trampoline House, "a community center in Copenhagen that provides refugees and asylum seekers in Denmark with a place of support, community, and purpose".  Collaboratively, we developed three performances for the Art Zone of the Roskilde music festival (a week-long pop-up small city!). Our working title was "Storming the Wall"; and thanks to a team of extraordinarily engaged volunteers, our art interventions addressed themes including migrant labor, de-colonizing our bodies, and worldwide border conditions.  Our art activities were accompanied by discussion, even amidst the raucus, windy, "hot as a frying pan", crowded, venue.  What ensued was a somewhat structured group collaboration, and a bonding experience with our volunteers, shareable through three videos showing on Vimeo:
1) Red Light Green Light
2) Trackless Shoes
3) Ululation Choir
Art Ranger found it to be a poignant surprise, to have flown over 6000 miles away from home to discover that people there were experiencing, and expressing, - just as directly - the uncertainty and angst from this tragicomedy as (we/so many) U.S. citizens are.  On this trip we also met, and worked with, young people whose lives have been torn and spit out by our foreign policy, in serious ongoing limbo.  Our art activities sought to bring attention to these societal/ global issues in a way that was physical, visual and visceral, and yet bearing these topics with enough lightness to digest, to listen in.

Luis’s participation will consist of 2 events, a series of sculptures called MY FAMILIA and an art event called Trans-National Cempazuchitl Express (A live art event-performa-video piece).


Gerda is producing a poetry book inspired in the work of all 16 participating artists.


More info about Luis’s sculptures
https://www.artworkarchive.com/artwork/luis-ituarte


The exhibit will open at 6 pm on September 28 and will run through November 18.

The "founding exhibition of our collective: Critical Ground launched last week at Pacific Grove Art Center (four local women artists doing very different work but with the same, nearly ridiculous, amount of dedication) and we all met the challenge... ”It is, in short, about technology, communication technology, changing technology, e-waste even.”