Friends and neighbors, when we reminded you to Make Lancaster Weird a few years back, you leaned into our call with gusto. With dinosaur costumes. With tiny pianos and celery. With odd plastic dolls outside political headquarters. With unmentionable weirdness. But now, weirdos, you’re ready for something bigger. it’s time to get out there and MAKE LANCASTER WEIRDER. Not sure where to start on your oddball journey? How about with a soft, purple t-shirt? All proceeds support the cause.
Check out the lovely new packaging Modern Art designed for this lovely new product: J. Sugarmama’s Masala Chai blend, L’Chai’M. Now go get yourself some!
Friends! We submit to you, Modern Art’s entry into the holiday window decoration contest: Don’t Forget How to Read. Worried that people were, indeed, forgetting how to read, I set up a cozy, comfortable, quiet, but highly visible, nook for volunteers to sit and read in hour-long shifts in the studio’s front window. As neighbors pass by, perhaps they would look longingly in the window and think, "wow, what a wonderful way to spend time. I’m going to go read a book.” They’d be happy if they did!
Well, Thanksgiving turned out to be just as weird as we’d imagined. Thanks to everyone who walked by, jazzercized, danced, waved, laughed, looked confused, or stopped and stared at our window while our group of crazy friends did their thing. Check out some of the photos from the day here:
A neighborhood art swap.
Come on over to Modern Art’s sidewalk where you can make art, take art, leave art or be art. The mART’s 27 drawers are open for any kind of creative swapping: drawings, paintings, poems, zines, photos, cards, stories, macrame, prints -- whatever your crazy heart desires.
Here's how it works:
LOOKING FOR some ART? Look inside the drawers labeled “TAKE ART” to find a piece of art that you'd like for your own. Admire it, bring it home, give it to someone, keep it as long as you like, or swap it out for another piece of art later.
GOT SOME ART TO SWAP? Wonderful! Just pick a drawer with the “LEAVE ART” label and put your work inside. Be sure to put your name and contact info (if you wish) so that whoever takes your art knows who you are and can tell you how much they love your piece. Any type of art you can fit into the 9(w) x 12(d) x 3(h) drawer is welcome!
WANT TO MAKE SOME ART TO SWAP? Cool! Check out the top middle drawer labeled “SUPPLIES” and get to work.
The mART will live outside Modern Art at 529 W. Chestnut Street indefinitely, as long as it holds up. Check out some of our friendly neighborhood artists and the artwork they swapped below:
Get back into voting shape and build up those election muscles with Modern Art’s 6-week Voting Practice. For the full duration of the training, you'll be challenged with various voting workouts: making choices, filling in squares, recognizing misinformation and getting yourself to the polls (or the mailbox!). The workouts start off light and will begin to become more challenging as your body and brain adapt to the challenges. We guarantee that you’ll get stronger, more confident, and overall feel better about the chaos that is our 2020 election.
Once you complete the six weeks, you’ll be in prime voting shape, just in time for the Nov. 3 election!
Last week I found myself looking for an article that John and I had penned together, years ago, on the emergence and ethics of advertising portfolio schools. It was for SPEAK magazine—a mag I admired for its ground-breaking design by my heroes of design school, David Carson and Martin Venesky. Much to my surprise, the website that I had designed for it was still up, in all its 2001 HTML, frames-and-little-gifs-in-dreamwaver, glory. I still like it. Check it out here. (and for a deeper dive, check out a write-up and interview with Speak’s founder, here.)
20 years ago (way back in the year 2000!!!) my partner-in-crime, Kristi Chester Vance, and I had just launched our design and communications studio from the corners of our tiny apartments in San Francisco. One of our first jobs, for Rainforest Action Network, was to design visuals for a campaign to hold Citibank accountable for their many environmentally-destructive investments. I’d long lost track of those materials we’d made, so was super excited when Kristi sent me this pic she’d found recently:
It’s hard these days. We can’t see each other. We can’t go to shows, restaurants, readings. But we CAN go for walks (safely) and on one of those walks, we can head over to the corner of Chestnut and Pine streets where in our window you can see an exciting literary experience unfolding: THE STORE FRONT SHORT STORY: a line a day until the story’s over (about 2 weeks).
Our first installment is “The Grand-Am” by one of our faves, Tyler Barton of Fear No Lit. Walk on by and check it out:
We LOVED celebrating a day of love with the Creative Works of Lancaster, hosting their performance, “Awkward Date Stories,” at Modern Art on February 14 & 15. Our favorite part was the tables of “awkwardly” paired audience members, yukking it up as if they’d known each other forever!
All photos by Lauren Adkins of Lauren Altheah Photography
Fellow artists! Check out Lancaster’s call for artists for temporary PSA murals in response to COVID-19.
“Inspired by an effort in Philadelphia, the City of Lancaster is commissioning local artists to get essential COVID-19 related messaging out to the public. These temporary murals provide essential communication in a creative way while providing a morale booster for city residents and paid opportunities for artists.”
FOR MORE INFO on how to apply, click here.
Many thanks to the PA Council on the Arts for funding two of Modern Art’s favorite Projects for 2020: The Art Peep Show and the Museum of the Living Worker. Thanks to the grant money, we can offer three scholarship/stipend supported artist workers to set up shop here and get cracking on interesting projects, AND put on the second round of our progressive, interactive PEEP SHOW this March. Interested in participating? Email libby@itsmodernart.com for an application or more information.
Photo by Michelle Johnsen
The Lancaster Public Art Advisory Board is hosting an information and feedback session for the Public Art proposed for the new Lancaster Parking Authority Building & Public Library at Ewell Plaza. This has been an exciting, controversial, and invigorating process. And a chance for everyone who would like to be involved in shaping the experience of Lancaster to come and learn, discuss, and participate.
The conversations we have about this project and the arts in Lancaster are invaluable. Public Art provides a way for people to connect with a place, offers a visual tool for promoting civic dialogue and understanding other cultures, gives a city a visual identity, humanizes the built environment and enlivens public spaces.
Saturday, Nov. 9 10:30 - 12:00pm
PCA&D
all are welcome!
MODERN ART: CREATIVE THINKING WORKSHOP
July 8-12, 2019
9:00 am – 12:30
Suggested ages 10+
In this week-long workshop, students will be introduced to the idea of design thinking, problem solving and socially-engaged art. By way of engaging and collaborative exercises emphasizing observation, research, empathy, brainstorming, prototyping and creating; participants will explore the creative process as a means to communicating ideas, creating change and fostering possibility. Students will push their creative skills, think outside, inside, up and around the box, culminating with a collaborative group project to be displayed in and around Modern Art.
Modern Art’s Creative Thinking Workshop is led by Libby Modern, with special guests, writers Erin Dorney and Tyler Barton (of FEAR NO LIT).
For more info, call Libby Modern at 610-761-9799 or email libby@itsmodernart.com.
* Financial assistance available: contact Modern Art at 610-761-9799 for more information.
Hey everyone, due to all of the ups and downs of the past month, we’ve rescheduled Modern Art’s LANC PHONE HOME custom phone hotel making workshop to Monday, April 1.
Check it out:
Modeled on Modern Art's Phonotel workshop participants will create their own custom HOTEL for their PHONE, a space to disconnect from the internet & reconnect with the world. We’ve all gotten used to these small yet mighty screens, so it is quite useful to take a break and see what the tangible world around us has to offer. (Plus, these devices deserve some much needed time off from us humans.)
We'll have everything you need to make a hotel room for your device that is comfy, cozy and a perfect place to recharge. Use your satellite Phonotel at home to see how long you can go without looking at your screen and notice how much more relaxed you are! And how much more you get done! How much more of this crazy world you interact with! Or keep it in your bag or the car; bring it when you go to work, to meetings or out to eat with family and friends.
Maybe you'd like to make one for your special friend who keeps staring at their screen when you are trying to tell them about your day? Or that pesky teen who is snapchatting at the dinner table? You can do that too!
Participants can also paint their own wooden dummy phone for those trying times when you feel the need to hold something in your pocket or close to your face, but your phone is still on its luxurious vacation at the Phonotel.
Check it out here.
RSVP to weirdo@itsmodernart.com
Check out the Lancaster Museum of Art’s Silent Night exhibit, presented by Echo Valley Art Group where you can see this nice painting (All is (not) Calm) by Libby Modern.
And many thanks to the wonderful artists of the Echo Valley Art Group for the invitation to be a part of this show!
November 30- December 16, 2018.
Modern Art recently completed a new and exciting work in PCA&D’s “Art Garden,” in honor of president Mike Molla’s inauguration installation. As a nod to the new administration’s desire to weave together PCA&D and the community, we designed a giant mirrored ampersand (PCA&D AND YOU!) as well as a series of signs, some static, some interactive, throughout the park to highlight all the things PCAD could “&” with: ants, dancing gorillas, el cielo, trees, places for murals, paths to other worlds, and of course, flatulence. Thank you PCA&D for bringing our City together! (Click through the photos below to see the installation.)
The magical, wonderful thinking that came out of our Creative Thinking Workshop far exceeded anything we'd ever thunk about. Our final project, "Fixing Broken Windows: A tour of creative interventions on the block" was on view for anyone who traversed the block on which Modern Art calls home.
Inspired by the artist Lucy Lippard's questions for artists and activists: "What do you want to say", "Who do you want to say it to" and "How do you want to say it"; we followed a process of observation, research, empathy, brainstorming, prototyping and creation to come up with a plan to engage the folks in our neighborhood. The final project was on view on the 500 block of West Chestnut, with maps outlining each of the intervention installations. Plus, we did art stake outs (thanks to an art assignment from Deb Sokolow,) turned some of the sad, broken objects into new pieces of art, and took turns seeing the world from the eyes of a gorilla suit.
It was a great week.
We are so excited to have local writer and professor Erik Anderson as our second Living Worker in Residence. Erik will be set up in the Museum, operating as a Public Narrativizer, inviting participants to share their craziest Lancaster stories. These stories will be edited to highly digestable 100-word or less pieces, that will be sent to their tellers on official LOPN (Lancaster Office of Public Narrative) letterhead and archived in LOPN records.
Come by anytime from Sunday, July 22 (11-5) or Monday, the 23-Thursday the 25 (4-7pm) and tell your story!
We all had such a blast at our release party for Erin Dorney's new book, I am Not Famous Anymore: Poems after Shia LeBoeuf. Thanks to everyone who came out, wrote and read their poems, and put bags on their heads. AND HUGE THANKS TO MICHELLE JOHNSEN for these great photos. Go buy Erin's book!
Modern Art is an art and design studio based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Through slightly disarming, curious, and unconventional surprises, we use creativity and design thinking to provide an entry point into change making. We investigate how this can strengthen and propel a community’s sense of social awareness and responsibility.
529 W. Chestnut St., Lancaster, PA / (610) 761-9799 / Studio is open on Open Studio evening, by appointment and by chance!
