After a long winter of being stuck inside with way too much time on various screened devices, it’s time to get out there and experience all that the real live world has to offer! Bring yourself, and your devices, on over to Modern Art for a weekend a screen-free neighborhood delights. You can check your phone into the newly-remodeled Phonotel, drop your iPad off at the CrashPad, and we’ll provide you with everything you need to enjoy the people and world around you.
Machines In Between
Modern Art has been quietly working behind the scenes to make disturbing sense of our present state of saturation. Our new collaborative project, Machines in Between, will soon ask you to grow differently entangled with machines, their myths and their promise. It will soon invite you to imagine things otherwise.
Made up of a collective of artists, musicians, and writers, MACHINES IN BETWEEN is a network phenomenon, a variety show for those bored with hot takes and corpse-cold orthodoxies.
Mark your calendars for Fall 2022 for the launch of sound and spectacle. (Until then, spend a little more time with your this machine while you check out the website.)
PACE Neighbors
Modern Art is super pumped to be participating in Lancaster’s PACE (Public Art Community Engagement) Neighbors residency-signed to support a cohort of local artists in making temporary public art projects to engage Lancaster city residents in discovering the connections between art and civic government. Keep an eye out for new projects, conducted in and around Lancaster’s West End.
PACE Neighbors is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; Franklin & Marshall College; The City of Lancaster’s Comprehensive Plan, the Lancaster County Community Foundation; the High Family Foundation; and the Rick and Gail Gray Fund.
One of many Neighborhood MAPS OF DELIGHTS
Self Portrait with My Alogrithm
Instagram ads from the Modern Art feed, April 15, 5-5:30 am.
Self Portrait with my Phone:
The last 36 photos taken with my phone (from April 8-15).
Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve
It’s a beautiful time of year to check out Lancaster Conservancy’s Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve, and while you’re there, pick up one of these lovely stickers, designed by Modern Art, with illustrations by our wonderful friend and former intern Bailey Watro.
SOME NEWS:
Make Lancaster Weird(er)!
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.
L'Chai'M
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!
Don't Forget How to Read
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!
THANKSGIVING WITH (friends of modern) ART
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:
the ART bARTer mART at Modern ART
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:
VOTING PRACTICE
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!
Nostalgia
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
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:
Store Front Short Story
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:
Memories of an awkward (but lovely) Date.
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
Lancaster Public Art Call for Artists
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.
Modern Art Receives Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts Project Stream Grant
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
Got some thoughts on Public Art?
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!
Creative Thinking Camp
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.