The Power of Collaborative Creating: Social Practice Art

1. Art and artists play many roles in contemporary society. Some artistic practices support just socio-political practices and processes. At other times, artists ignore or even encourage injustices.
2. We are members of a demographic cohort that has tried for a half century to be involved in positive social change.
3. We are also beneficiaries of a society that has given us a certain amount of financial freedom and security. And we intend to use that freedom, not to indulge ourselves but to facilitate our commitment to social change through artistic practice.
4. The characteristics of our proposed artistic practice include:

A. We will stimulate and be involved in positive social action

B. We will provide constructive criticism

C. We will denounce and oppose, when needed

D. We will maintain our commitment to bettering the world

E. We will use our time energy and experience for our constant improvement.

F. We will work collaboratively with others

G. We are willing to teach and mentor but we will never stop learning from others, including those younger than us.

H. We will always look to the future, focus on the present, as we reflect on the past.

Johnathon Liv: Boston Harbor  2014

Mixed Media: Adirondak, Seagull, plastic bottles, cigarette packs, shells, rope

Barbara Bridges seeks to empower all people to embrace the creative process. She makes art from artist fabricated components in a variety of media and rescued power objects. She organizes the objects to create meaning and provoke discussions and reflection on a wide variety of social topics including Ode to Gluten (agricultural practices), Onion/Academia Nuts, (Hi Tech/HiTouch in academia) Found In Our Water (water quality), and Talking Chairs (recovery/worldview truths). Invite her to your school.

Johnathon Liv was created for the Route One: USA, part of  the Found in Our Waters project.
Our concern for the quality of our water should be an international dialogue. I seek collaborators to stage panel discussions, exhibitions with local artists, student workshops, school visits and adult events around the planet.

Wollaston Beach in Quincy, MA was a pungent experience when I stepped from the car.  I saw many
people running and playing and swimming in the water but it smelled of chemicals to my nose.  I spent
quite a bit of time trying to verify and identify any studies done on water quality. Studies exist but you need to be a scientist to read them.

The Working Waterfront (a Maine fisherman weekly) and other publications, claim the striped bass (stripa’s- as they are called Down East)  are in decline. Details  PropTalk ( Chesapeake Bay Power Boating) claims they just had the best “rock fish” season ever. Perhaps they caught all the rock fish in Maryland before they are reaching Maine?

On page 17 of the June 2014 PropTalk, Zach Ditmars has a fix for the Chesapeake Bay invasive fish- the Snakehead. Rename them the ” spotted channa” and eat ’em – he directs and gives a recipe including breading and deep fat frying.

Orange Roughy was once called ” slime head.”  I would challenge the Mississippi waterways wardens to run a cooking contest for the “invasive carp” (renamed in Minnesota to avoid offending the Asians) . Then let’s eat ’em.  Click here for one idea. We homo sapiens seem especially skilled at eating most everything which walks, crawls, swims or flies!

Short sighted and disappointing news from those entrusted with managing our fishery

Our concern for the quality of our water should be a national and international dialogue. I seek collaborators to stage exhibitions, panel discussions, student workshops, school visits and adult events around the country.

May 2014

KFAI interview http://kfai.org/news/2014/05/43407

The Found In Our Water series emerged at the annual NorthEast Minneapolis spring show. Barbara lives in the Northeast Arts  District where over 1000 artists have studios and show their work.  Barbara presented her water quality installation first at a WARM (Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota) critique. Twenty-five mentors and proteges shared their reflections using the Liz Lerman critique model. Barbara’s WARM mentor, Jill Waterhouse, facilitated.
WARM Videos and pictures   Warm Critique Notes

Appearances: Here you will view authentic voices and pictures taken with cell phones, professional and unprofessional cameras and videographers and uncut videos from the Art-A-Whirl event.  Please enjoy the dynamic sound of people at an art show looking, making, and learning.
NEMAA, Art-A-Whirl Minneapolis 2014    ArtMaking     Art-A-Whirl Selfies        Visitors      Chair Signing      Pictures   Results of Survey

Inspired by Robert Kramer’s 1987 Documentary Route 1 USA, I am creating art works-sometimes collaboratively – inviting local artists -from objects I am finding in our waters as I drive from from Key West, Florida to Fort Kent, Maine.

I have spent a lifetime pondering waves. Hailing from Maine,  I have experienced and reflected on, the impact of waves on us as biological organisms – often fighting against each other. Where the waves meet is where the action is.

I have spent many hours examining, oftentimes in excruciatingly minute detail, theoretical waves of human thought. Waves deliver tranquility, sustenance and insight – along with trash and terror.
I have become increasingly concerned with the ocean trends I has seen over the last several decades.

The future water concerns are here today.  Our concern for the quality of our water should be a national and international dialogue.

In the largest body of fresh water on the planet, Lake Superior, there is a toxin alert on the salmon. In Barbara’s Treasures of the Inland Sea series she looked at what has happened to this natural resource- our inland sea. http://bridgescreate.com/artwork/totis-1

We seek grant support and collaborators for the Atlantic Ocean 2020 to stage exhibitions (inviting local artists), panel discussions, student workshops, school visits and adult events around the country.

It is my belief that social practice art invites the participants to consider serious social issues while experiencing the joys of collaborative creating.

Join us in the non-profit Art To Change The World https://www.arttochangetheworld.org/ for more information.  Contact Barbara at drb@bridgescreate.com.

Image: See deconstruction: LOVE  http://bridgescreate.com/artwork/love

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Mainer-with Love

22″ W X 2 2″ W X 48″ T  Mixed Media  Canvas, rescued chair, shells, rope, buoy, hand hooked pillow

The creation of Mainer was a five year labor of love. My oil painting of  the Heritage Schooner was inspired by the needlepoint chair backs I have enjoyed viewing at the Searsport Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine. The pillow was a wool hooked rug pillow created  by a Castine, Maine rug maker and the buoy came from my lobster people family in Stockton Springs.  The lobster claws are from three pound lobsters I buy, dry and clean using ant helpers.  When “cured”, I seal them in boat epoxy.  The large rope comes from local boat yards and found on the beaches I walk from Kittery to Eastport.  Sandy Point, Maine

Sit on this chair and you will hear the oceans.   More Mainer
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Penobscot Bay

Penobscot Bay, Maine

24″WX24″WX55″T, Mixed Media. Drift wood, authentic buoy, Sandy Point lobsters, buoy rope, sea glass, Morgan’s top sider, beads, tanker rope, metal findings, rocks, drift wood.

After 36 years of living on Sandy Point Beach in Chateau Mer, I finally created this work in August of 2014. We consumed these lobsters, I saved all these objects for some higher purpose over the course of 36 years.

This work captures the soul of Maine.   Read More

Double Click to View Larger

Harborside, Maine. The Good Life Center, Helen and Scott Nearing 

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Chesapeake Bay

Dowell, MD  

Ann Marie Gallery

After a grueling road trip from Gary, Indiana, I arrived at the Ann Marie Gallery in Dowell, MD. I have been around more than a few blocks but AnnMarie offers a unique experience which includes highly creative educational programing (theater in the woods, message in a bottle, materials and technique classes and more), special exhibitions (Seagoing “Woolies” was there when I arrived), forward thinking /interactive participant calls for art (Instagrams), and a darling Fairy House project which has inspired me to create a similar call for houses in Sandy Point!  Read More

As I sit at the Dry Dock Restaurant in the Solomon Islands,  MD on Chesapeake Bay (known as the Solomon Islands), I am experiencing the adrenalin rush I enjoy when I am “on the hunt for objects and data.  I have found a giant horseshoe crab, a weathered board of great character and a oyster midden. Does it get any better?

I am awaiting my dinner of ‘rockfish”. I am amused with my rockfish since this culinary delight is known to me in Maine as “striped bass” also known as Bluefish”. Mainers scorn this fish as “oily”. I just paid $57.00 for a four inch square of what is rejected in my home state. As many of you know, semantics is a special area of cultural context that I find mesmerizing.

The Working Waterfront (a Maine fisherman weekly) and other publications, claim the striped bass (stripa’s- as they are called Down East)  are in decline. Details  PropTalk ( Chesapeake Bay Power Boating) claims they just had the best “rock fish” season ever. Perhaps they caught all the rock fish in Maryland before they are reaching Maine?

On page 17 of the June 2014 PropTalk, Zach Ditmars has a fix for the Chesapeake Bay invasive fish- the Snakehead. Rename them the ” spotted channa” and eat ’em – he directs and gives a recipe including breading and deep fat frying.

Orange Roughy was once called ” slime head.”  I would challenge the Mississippi waterways wardens to run a cooking contest for the “invasive carp” (renamed in Minnesota to avoid offending the Asians) . Then let’s eat ’em.  Click here for one idea. We homo sapiens seem especially skilled at eating most everything which walks, crawls, swims or flies!

Chesapeake 

18″W X 72″T. Mixed Media. Driftwood, oyster shells, horseshoe crab shell, pearls.
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Jersey Shore  –  Art In Progress

The  Jersey Shore was an icon of middle class access to the Atlantic Ocean. This was NOT the haven for the Duponts and the Biddles.  Snookie  brought infamy to the Jersey Shore but Hurricane Sandy brought the real devastation.  The warren of what some would describe as shacks and others as “the cottage on the Jersey Shore” was scoured clean down to the sand, along with what ALL would agree, was many generations of memories.

I had a hard time finding access TO the shore. The hurricane fence runs uninterrupted for 10 to 15 blocks. They are protecting the dunes.  I finally made my way to the water and the beach was beautiful and deserted! See Video below

Today, in May of 2014, the view is sanitized. Row upon row of brand spanking new tiny pastel  dwellings. Average size= 20X20 feet. Learn More-Watch Testimony

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Coney Island –  Art In Progress

As I pulled over the Brooklyn Bridge after driving from the Long Island Cross Sound Ferry dock in New London Connecticut, I was still open to where my New York waterfront study would be the most meaningful. I suddenly saw a small little 12” green “Coney Island” sign. It captured my imagination. Hard to do.

Coney Island has most assuredly been sanitized from what we have read in the history books.  The beach was quite clean but with the grit, went the texture.

This snap to the left illustrates the weird new aesthetic which is coney island

More on Coney Island

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Brighten Beach , Brooklyn–  Art In Progress

SWANS???  The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the Brighten Beach, Brooklyn waterfront were the swans- in salt water!  That was a first for me. Hundreds and hundreds of swans. The hotel sent me to Liman’s for dinner.  This Turkish restaurant delivered one of the best meals I have enjoyed anywhere!  When I asked about the swans- they declared they had always been there and reported the EPA had tried to kill them! Asking Dr. Google for confirmation revealed the STORY Does it get any better?  The mute swans could not speak for themselves!  I checked with the fisherman and I wish I had had the video running. They had many choice words to describe how the plethora of swan poop had changed the chemistry of the water and ruined the flounder and fluke fishing!!

As I drove under the train on Brighten Beach Boulevard I could not help but think about Neil Simon’s Brighten Beach Memoirs about growing up in Brooklyn in 1937.  You can read about the play and see it at the Kelsey Theater.

Brighten Beach changed dramatically in the late 1930’s with the German Jews fleeing from Hitler and Russian Jews from Stalin, next the fall of the Soviet Union and most recently the conflict in the Ukraine have contributed to what is now a  predominantly Russian speaking 10 block section of Brighten Boulevard. I can testify.  I shopped for sculpture materials. Read More

It is illegal to have a shark fin in Minnesota and I noticed a tournament in Brooklyn. Interesting, No?

Click below to hear what Brooklyn fishermen have to say!  More Brighten Beach

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Boston Harbor   

Wollaston Beach in Quincy, MA was a pungent experience when I stepped from the car.  I saw many people running and playing and swimming in the water but it smelled of chemicals to my nose.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to verify and identify any studies done on water quality.  I  did find several federally funded reports which reported raw data which was difficult to analyze with no legend for acronyms but I did find the following summary which indicated that the risk for swimmers was human waste-not chemical.  Click here to review

I found a perfectly dessicated seagull in Quincy. Johnathon Liv:Boston Harbor

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Florida Keys  2013

Conch Key, Florida, Rescued objects,  24″ X 24″

Conch Key, Florida

Marathon Key

Melbourne, Florida

Key Largo

Outer Banks