KC Confidential Interview

I was just interviewed by Jennifer Janesko for KC Confidential this week-see interview here http://www.kcconfidential.com/?p=18698

Thanks Jennifer!

September First Friday Leedy Voulkos

I will have the S'mores cart out in front of the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center 2010 Baltimore, Friday, September 3rd from 7pm until 10:30 pm. Stop by and support local artists and learn more about our project!

Leedy -Voulkos website: http://www.leedy-voulkos.com

S'mores Mission

The S'mores Grant Project is a capital raising opportunity that can benefit and enrich public spaces. I intend to generate funds by selling s'mores from a street vending cart and distribute partial profits, in the form of micro-grants, to individuals or groups in the community that are involved in public art.

 A street vending cart is  a simple and self-contained profit-generating vehicle with low overhead costs. It is mobile and efficient, impacting multiple public sites. The urban street environment is the optimum context for spontaneous education and information exchange.

 This project functions in multiple public environments and opens up a dialogue that concerns 1). the placement and space available for art discourse in our community 2). economic structures as a medium with which to craft and traverse 3). activating public space with the intent of generosity, education, and enjoyment.

 I am interested in the evolving functions of art in the world. Participating in apparent structures,  be they urban street-scapes, commercial art venues, or a system of for-profit-maximization, motivates me to focus on their boundaries and limits. Operating in ambiguous and co-created  public space provides the greatest reward for my own understanding of how I position my work in the world. At the same time, I aim to generously activate my community and help others do the same.

 My past involvement performing as a musician,  crafting functional wood-working, making furniture and lighting, and most recently public sculpture, has led me to making work that is contextually based. The sites where these works are negotiated is the content I explore.

 

Boris Groys on Public Art

Every urban population believes in having its own collective psychology. One can ridicule this belief, but it has produced a lot of poetry, music and cinema that we are accustomed to valuing. The volume of poems about Parisian air or St. Petersburg’s weather is a sufficient justification for their architecture. However, if we don’t speak about art that is stimulated by a city but about art in the public space, then one should be very careful. The chance that any really good artwork can go though all possible channels that evaluate it is minimal. And, in general, art that is exhibited outside of arts institutions has to additionally identify itself as art. That makes art shown in the public space even more conservative than art shown within the framework of institutions.

S'Mores Grant in the News

The Rocket grant recipients are featured in this Kansas City Star article: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/06/05/1990845/rocket-grants-boost-local-artists.htm

SMORES GRANT PROJECT WINS ROCKET GRANT

After a small set-back where we had to cancel our Chicago trip, we are bouncing back nicely by procuring a Rocket Grant. This funding will enable us to build a new cart this summer and therefore have a greater presence in the community. The Rocket Grant has been provided by the Warhol Foundation (see here http://www.charlottestreet.org/).  I sincerely hope more opportunities like this are available to creative people in our community. I want Kansas City to be on the map because of its creative population, in addition to BBQ, s'mores, hot n' sweaty

all night snake-bit evangelist trance-a-thons, and that bright new museum building. We can have it all! 

Origins

The idea of marketing s’mores from a street vending cart was originally conceived around a campfire, in the summer of 2009, by Sean Starowitz and myself. It was obvious nothing like a s’mores vending cart existed; in fact, s’mores of any kind were rare to encounter in urban areas. With the realization of a niche and novelty marketing status as possible assurance of profit, the project appeared to have good chance of success. 

Many contemporary artists utilize evolving marketing strategies while not critically inquiring about the subjective market in which these strategies are applied. I think this path of inquiry is fascinating because the over-arching for -profit economic system seems to be steering the way art is made, viewed and positioned in culture. I was hoping it was the other way around. 

Most artists I know are confronted with the fact that romantic notions of art practice, content, and conceptual development are nurtured in a completely different environment than the limited, and often rigid, market for their work. Artists are encouraged to be saavy marketers, but a proper market analysis of the average local art market machinations would undoubtedly reveal a highly, subjective, ambiguous and capricious environment that may well be un-analyzable. This may be exactly the playing field artists are trained to deal with.

Why all the encouragement for artists to adopt the marketing status quo? Are questions about the very economic system artists operate in considered passe’ to talk about? Can they be approached in contradictory ways, using simple, effective market strategies? How do we feel about artists operating as venture capitalists in order to promote the work of others, for us all to share? Are s’mores easily accessible in your area?

These questions are at the source of this project. We intend this encounter with our local economic and social landscape to be a site for crafting community interaction and identity. This includes exploration of the for-profit system as a mode of generosity.  We offer an opportunity to spark conversation on the street  about  public art.

Kurt Flecksing