!8th Street Arts Center

18th Street Arts Center is pleased to present the exhibition (Re)imagining Home: On Care for Our Common Home, curated by Emma Balda and Venus Tung-yan Lau, on view in the Kitchen Lab at 18th Street Arts Center’s Airport Campus (3026 Airport Ave. in Santa Monica) from August 22, 2022 – July 31, 2023.

What is home?

Over the last two years, our notions of home have been challenged, transformed, and clarified. The pandemic has simultaneously forced us to shrink our physical home, while also asking us to expand our sense of home to now include people, food, rituals, and ideas. We have also seen our relationship with and to the Earth change. We have seen that our sense of home must expand to include the Earth and the way we care for it.

As we attempt to create a shared home, the first step in that is defining what home means to us. This project asked the 18th Street community to examine the idea of home outside of the domestic sense. They were asked to identify people, memories, materials, places, movements, or concepts that resonate as home to them. These ideas, in combination with art that reflects on this concept, will then be displayed on the monitor in the Kitchen Lab at the Airport Campus. This project relied heavily on 18th Street’s theme “Our Shared Home,” while also deconstructing and defining what that sense of home means so that we can better understand what it means to share this space with one another.

This exhibition highlights the artworks of Alexandra Dillon, Christopher Tin, Dan Kwong, Dan S Wang, David McDonald, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Debra Disman, Edi Dai, Elham Sagharchi, Gwen Samuels, Jeff Beale, Julia Michelle Dawson, Lionel Popkin, Luciana Abait, M Susan Broussard, Melinda Smith Altshuler, Michael Masucci, Po-Hao Chi, Rebecca Youssef, and Yvette Gellis, all artists in residence at 18th Street Arts Center.

Explore a 360 view of the virtual exhibition HERE.

Recovery Justice: Being Well

“Being Well” is what we seek together as neighbors, and recalls one of the central guiding principles of the City of Santa Monica, the notion of “wellbeing” as key to civic health. Recovery Justice: Being Well, aims to highlight the recent circumstances that have evolved during the pandemic (racial justice demonstrations and destruction, as well as social discontent and general disconnection) into a series of self-organized artist projects that merges the exterior and interior public spaces of City of Santa Monica property. 18th Street Airport Campus at Santa Monica Municipal Airport will be the site where artists reimagine the city and beyond in the midst of complex social unrest globally. Recovery Justice will recuperate through various means the digital and physical footprints left in a city that struggles to reclaim the seemingly peaceful environment it once had. Artists will develop a palette for making and sharing artworks responding to the street experience in safe, healing and expressive modes. This porous series is a point of departure to reconcile and redefine the concept of justice.

WE RISE PROJECTS: THIS MAY

For the We Rise series of projects related to Recovery Justice: Being Well, 18th Street Arts Center will produce a series of artist-led workshops and civic engagement projects addressing mental health for youth and for families in Spanish and English.

ARTS LEARNING LAB @ HOME: CREATIVE SELF-COMPASSION

This May, we are thrilled to present three new Arts Learning Lab @ Home art-making workshops for families all around wellbeing and self-compassion. May is Mental Health Awareness month, and taking time for creativity together with loved ones is a key part of self-care in these uncertain times. We are partnering with WE RISE LA (https://werise.la/) to bring these moments for creative growth to you, centered around the theme of wellbeing as we navigate coming out of a pandemic and transitioning to new routines together.

We will be providing ALL@HOME Art Kits with materials for each workshop that will be available for pick up from 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica, for those that live in the LA Metro area, but all materials will also be easily found at home or at a local supply store. More information on Art Kit pick-up will be provided once you register for a workshop. Supplies are limited and are first come, first serve. All of the virtual workshops will be presented on Zoom, and interpretation will be provided in both English and Spanish.

May 15, 2021 at 11 AM- 12:30 PM [Virtual: Zoom] Bookmaking with Self-Compassion | Debra Disman

Debra Disman, Narrow Bridge, (inside) 2016, 5.5 x 16 x 3.5 inches, Artists' Book/Mixed Media (board, paper, fabric, linen thread).

Make an artist book celebrating your own creative growth!!!

Join 18th Street Arts Center artist in residence, Debra Disman and discover how to create the beautiful, fun and versatile Flower Fold book into which you can write or paste wishes, hopes, prayers and dreams, make into a chain to hang in your home, or give as a gift. Explore what the pandemic has meant to you while learning new skills and creating a unique expression of renewal and rebirth during the spring season.