Cassie Thornton's 'School Flag' is part of Brave Brooklyn

Brave Brooklyn is an art exhibit and auction to benefit the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn (OSA) and Trust Art projects supported by OSA. Brave Brooklyn will be open to the public December 4-11.

Along with various other works, including that of pre-eminent sculptor Richard Serra and mixed-media artist Fred Tomaselli, this exhibition features the artwork of Trust Art artists proposing new public art projects in collaboration with OSA.

To help fundraise for Cassie's upcoming public artwork, School of the Future, Trust Art and OSA are auctioning this piece by Cassie:

School Flag, 2009, 72 inches x 48 inches

In developing the School of the Future, Thornton has both experienced and studied schools invented and run by artists. Her education about learning is visualized as a flag of artist-run-school logos. Some logos are invented by Thornton for the schools, and others have been made for this project by artists who run such schools. The flag marks what looks and smells like a new art movement: one that provokes learning through teaching, conversation with talking and unites people by introducing them. The schools represented include Night School, 16 Beaver, Bruce High Quality Foundation University, Institute of Applied Aesthetics, Anhoek School, Black Mountain College, School of Conduct, Secret School, United Nations Plaza, and Bauhaus-- otherwise known as Cassie's Mental School District.

Go to eBay to bid on this piece.  The starting bid is $800 and the auction closes on December 11 at 9pm (EST).

The work is on view until December 11 at 30 Dobbins Street in Williamsburg.  There is a closing reception open to the public on December 11, 6-9pm.  Join us if you are in Brooklyn!

Other artists in this exhibit include: Bradley Brown, James Case, Ryan Goolsby, Weston Woolly, Emily Goode, Suzanne Zwicky, Gidalya Tashman, Karl Metz, Adam Taye, Chris Burnside, James Woodward, Robbert Jan de Oude, Sam Martineau, Lizzy Wezler, Matt Jones, Kristin Deirup, Jesse Witkin, Kris Graves, Nathan Koch, and Molly Surno.

More info at bravebrooklyn.com

Mobile School Building

In preparation for Tuesday's meeting with Kate Cahill, when we will discuss the building for the School of the Future-- a mobile modular school, this is an email interview that might clarify some questions about this 'school' 'building'. Please chime in online or at our meeting next Tuesday if you are interested!

Kate also gave us this amazing link to Pushcart Schools in the Philippines:
"For the past 12 years, Peñaflorida and his team of teen volunteers have taught basic reading and writing to children living on the streets. Their main tool: A pushcart classroom."

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/03/05/heroes.efren.penaflorida/index.html

Questions by Kate Cahill, answers by Cassie.

How permanent is the school?
I see the school as being permanent, adaptable, reusable, moveable. It should be modular so that it can be adapted to many different terrains and class situations. I like the pushcart idea as a complimentary piece of the school-- it can be sent out for project missions from the mothership. For this summer we will be set up in Sgt. Dougherty Park for a one month trial run of the school.

How many people to set it up/break it down?
The school should be able to be set up with two people to begin. more difficult construction can happen at each school site depending on what is happening, but the basic part should be pretty light and simple- a fancy tent that's more than a tent.

Is transport on the back of a bike still the goal? Maybe the pushcart can attach to a bike, but the entire thing could be larger... maybe small enough to fold and fit into a medium size vehicle.
How many occupants at once? Hmm, since I am thinking of the school building as being quite small with opportunities to expand out, the nucleus part only needs to hold 4-6 people at a time. That can act as an office and more intimate workspace.
What kinds of space will be needed?
I think we need a good place to talk, draw, eat, and construct models: a table, a whiteboard, some seating.

What goes on inside? (bathroom? drinking water? storage? dancing? climbing wall?) Can you reveal more to me about what kind of school/learning is going to be housed by this structure?
I don't think we need a bathroom. I see it as a meeting and brainstorming boutique. A place where we plan- a central idea nucleus lab, and our actions move outward, expand physically from the central space by ways of lots of snaps, velcro, and ziptied attachments, amendments, extensions. LeCorbusier's museum of unlimited growth is a good way for me to think about it. Every class might add its own addition until the original central room is completely disguised. So, I am not sure what will happen inside. I will type a list from the notes that I have taken from our discussions, but there is a broad range from dancing to shoemaking.

I see a grey water system listed as a potential. is that born out of a need for water, or a general desire to include some shinny sustainable tactics?
I think the grey water system is a great way to begin to use observation and reactivity as a cornerstone for curriculum. The school will first exist in a derelict deserted park next to the BQE, bordered by STAPLES and the ConEdison plant fields. In reaction, we should do whatever we can to clean it up, spiff it up, process the air and water and soil like we are the mushrooms, remediating what we can. It doesn't have to be a permanent feature of the school, but it should definitely be explored for this summer's manifestation.

$10 - $100K...general range, what sort of budget are we talkin' here?
I hope to raise more than $5K. We have the potential to work with Association of Teaching Artists and I am spreading the word to other interesting organizations who might give us more clout in the fundraising world. I am working with TrustArt still too, and they are really into raising social and financial capital, and if we set a goal they will help us meet it. I am in the dark as to what we NEED but I think that if you help us define the cost of materials AND we start hoarding materials NOW we can definitely make exactly what we want.

Exactly who all is involved in this project?
Everyone-- Teaching Artist Union is my main community, but that said, it is growing and expanding constantly. I want to find ways to involve all the artists I know. There is interest from the outside, from other organizations, but I want it to mostly be made out of a community for that community. That's us! Teaching artists, artists, teachers! And I want to offer local members of Bushwick and Greenpoint a sincerious place in the process and the school itself.

Documentation and Phollowup:Socio-Grams with Institute of Applied Aesthetics

Just in case you were curious, you can check out what we did with Chris Kennedy from the Institute of Applied Aesthetics in September: http://www.flickr.com/photos/therisingtide/sets/72157622769516283/

If you are interested in working with us to create a publication in January for his magazine 'How We Work', Holler! We could possibly combine that with our 'manual' in its first stages... 

DREAM BUILDING (on tuesdays)

Next Tuesday, December 1 we will have 2 Special Guests, it will begin at 6 and end at 8.
Come for the part that is interesting to you!

At 6, Maya Erdelyi Perez, co-founder, will present a brief history of her interaction with California. She moved away to study animation at CalArts.
At 7 Kate Cahill will be here to talk about building a mobile school building. She is an expert with a deep brainstorm constantly burning inside her. Idea explosions will take place everywhere.

Last Tuesday Ruled. (meeting notes in pictures)
Nick Normal, Abigail Weg, Sarah Julig, and Chris Kennedy came to the meeting.
We discussed the SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE, including programming, building ideas, and possible planning strategies to make a mobile school building that gets planted in Sargeant Dougherty Park this summer.

Sarah Julig came to discuss a directory for us. If you'd like to work with us on making a directory for the web and a physical manual, please email teachingartistunion@gmail and we will set up a time to meet altogether.

After the meeting, Alison Levy screened Rethinking Afghanistan and about 20 people came to watch. There were snacks. And a sauna was built on the roof afterwards, so all the scary news of the documentary was squeezed out of the pores of those who chose to sweat.

Next meeting is on Tuesday, December 1. Maya Erdelyi-Perez, a cofounder of TAU, will be in town from California, and we will begin our meeting at 6. I am hoping she will show us some of the work and life she has been working on at that time. At 7, Kate Cahill, architect, philosopher and mobile materials lab will brainstorm with us about a mobile school building. Smoke will be accumulating under the table-- Kate is a wild idea developer for the built world. Maya is hosting a dinner afterwards here, so if you'd like to join, lets make a potluck at 9. I have a big table, let's fill it with leftovers!

Recommended Survey to take (I just spoke to the director of ATA who has great intentions to understand the life and needs of TA's)
ATA's survey Teaching Artists and Their Work http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=F_2bJJwetasGgrnMZUcqQ99g_3d_3d
clearly demonstrates Teaching Artists know what is necessary for the
work of Teaching Artists to become sustainable. If you have not taken
the survey, please do. 

We are sewing til the break of dawn!

Artist Run Schools Permeate My Membrane

Free schools as artistic practice--at what or who's cost?
proposed by Adam Kleinman

The exhibition of a lecture and events forum positioned as a “school”
by various art practitioners is quickly becoming one of the most
popular forms of cultural production today. Take for example the New
Museum’s Night School, The Bruce High Quality Foundation University,
the Class Room at the New York Art Book Fair, or even The University
of Trash at the Sculpture Center—not to mention this very program.
Considering that talk is thick these days about education and
educational models, what better place and time than now to
self-reflexively question what we are all doing here! So, to begin,
lets pose a few, possibly loaded, Socratic questions:

1. What is the difference between “a school” and an education?
2. What motivates an artist or cultural producer to create
“schools” in the first place? What is at stake for the “principals”?
3. What differentiates “ free schools” from the more traditional,
and free, programs already offered by institutional education
departments such as conferences, colloquia, workshops and the like?
What are the strengths and weakness of each form?
4. Who funds and /or supports free schools? Why do they?
5. What is the social capital of a free school?
6. Although a college education may cost well over $100,000, are
free schools really an “alterative”? What does it mean when these
free schools begin appropriating terms like “university” or “course”.
7. Is google a free school—consider that the word school is derived
from the ancient Greek word for leisure. What other free sources of
education are taken for granted, ie the New York Public Library,
various centers and lectures at Columbia University, New York
University, the Americas Society, PBS on-line, MIT open source, and so
forth.
8. What is the difference between a school and a service?
9. Is research a necessary component of a school, or is
experimentation and exchange and end in itself?
10. What obligations, commitments, criteria, or otherwise should a
school provide?
11. What is the difference between a free school and a book of the
month club or any similar informal social activity?
12. Is there a labor relation between reality tv and a free school?
Don’t both use the production of a below the line volunteer as both
content and content producer?
13. Without granting any form of competency, which can be defined in
the both vocational as well as the intellectual sense, what is really
at stake for the student?
14. Is the exhibition of something, which takes the form of a
school, actually a school?


Suggested Reading:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-06-24/art/the-university-of-thinsp-trash-mdash-or-how-to-frustrate-an-art-dealer/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/arts/design/13roberta.html


Suggested assignment:

Create an itinerary for the next two moths featuring free educational
offerings in New York--thematize the list if you like. While creating
this itinerary, make a list of centers, ie http://www.nyu.edu/ipk/
, which offer these activates and categorizes them.

And additional suggestion:
Create a catalog of free school being offered today and try to
categorize them into different models. For example:

The appropriated University:
Night School, BHQFU (as above) and
http://www.red76.com/fu.html
http://www.roguefilmschool.com/

Reading groups / clubs:
http://a.aaaarg.org/discussions
http://www.16beavergroup.org/

Social Activities/outings:
http://www.futurefarmers.com/play/
Pickpocket Almanack (thanks Adam)

Skills:
a la "cheap rhino tricks"

"Traditional":
http://www.ssrn.com/

Teaching Artist Union Presents TOMORROW

"To be a teacher is my greatest work of art."Joseph Beuys

(a reminder from Alison Levy)

RENEGADE ART COMMUNITIES OF LEARNING
Presentation at Steinhardt tomorrow to Art Education Students
Barney Bldg, 34 Stuyvesant Street, Room 105
(auditorium). Stuyvesant is that funny diagonal street near St Marks
Bookshop that runs between 2nd and 3rd Aves and 9th-10th Streets.
4:00-5:30pm

The presentation is for art education students, and i will be quickly presenting artist run schools and communities of renegade educators. If you have ideas or want to participate, I will be working on the presentation this afternoon. The schools I was going to talk about are local and alive right now: Bruce High Quality, Anhoek School, Institute of Applied Aesthetics, and Night School-- those are what I am able to discuss first hand. Are there others I should mention?

I was also going to give a quick narrative about TAU and a call to arms to get those students involved. Please come support, advise, participate however you see fit. Woot, woot. c

'Creativity is Relational'

MEETING NOVEMBER 15 NOTES

(also available on NEW blog: www.teachingartistunionbrooklyn.blogspot.com)

Attendees:
Sara Julig, Helki Franzen, Michael Wiggins, Alison Levy, Jennifer Sullivan, Abigail Weg, Huong Ngo, Lindsay August Salazar, Anna Larson, Lisa Sinkowski, Michael Eckblad, Candice Heberer, Colin McMullan, Rachel Farmer

IN SPIRIT:
Chris Kennedy, James Andrews, Maya Erdelyi-Perez, Jose Serrano-Reyes, Saira Mclaren, Shizu Homma, Nick Normal, Noah Apple

What a meeting! I am still recovering from having you all in one room!
We talked a lot. It was intense. Many new members!

QUICK VERSION:
-Meetings now every Tuesday, 6-9. Work-time. Next Tuesday's theme is starting the manual. Please let me know if you will be coming.
-Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilarchitexture/sets/72157613581603092/
-Make sure you are on the mailing list (sign up at teachingartistunion.org) or get on our facebook
-Presenting at NYU on Friday evening, please email if you'd like to come or participate. I don't have the details settled yet, but it's going to be around 6pm.
-Roles: I have mapped out some roles for many of the people in the group. Please let me know if you have a specific task, title, or role you would like to fulfill. I have a bit of a plan already, but I want to create a formal board of erectors. I will write individual emails this week about possible roles.
Check out our new id cards: good for discounts and free entry to museums.



LONG VERSION:
The meeting opened with Sara reading Reggio Amelia after we ate Colin's most amazing brunch.
It was the first meeting in the new UNION HALL.
We read the mission statement while cutting out our id cards from the ART WORK Newspaper recently published by Temporary Services.
We discussed the goals of the Union.

We discussed many different teaching strategies, including the inquiry based model taught at Guggenheim and CUP.
We all have teaching packets from our organizations. Let's get them together and wheat-paste something with them.

Many new members came who deal with different facets of art and education in their work/life. A very exciting conversation began as we discussed the membership of artists who are not professional teachers in the union. It is a priority of the TAU to support teaching artists in all manifestations, and we began to explore opportunities to network and support all the different interests represented at the meeting.

Anna Larson came, who is a certified elementary school teacher who teaches at Children's Storefront School in Harlem. Her perspective was from that of a resident teaching staff of a school, and she offered advice about ways to approach schools as an independent artist and offered insight into the difference between being an educated educator vs. being an outsider-(tribal!) teacher.

Michael Wiggins blogs for the Association of Teaching Artists: (http://teachingartists.blogspot.com/2009/11/save-people.html !!)
He brought a big bowl of enthusiasm with a side of experience organizing teaching artists and being one himself. He suggested a weekly working meeting which will now take place on Tuesdays from 6-9pm at Union Hall. He emphasized the need for teamwork, funding, networking with other organizations, and emphasized the timeliness of our sweet group.

I informally introduced the School of the Future, the first manifestation of a school of teaching artists for teaching artists. More on that to come. The first event associated with that project will take place this summer at Sgt. Dougherty Park in Bushwick. Come to a planning meeting to get involved, and updates will be posted here in coming weeks: www.schoolofthefuture.org. I am hoping that TAU members will play a big part in the project.

The last news is that TAU has been invited to present as a part of a colloquium at NYU-Steinhardt this Friday. If there is anyone who would like to come or help present, please let me know! The theme of the talk that night is art education in unconventional contexts, and we are representing 'community' for teaching artists to an audience of art education students. David Darts helped organize the series (http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/David_Darts) and he will be there-- he seems like good people.

Skillshare: Colin and Anna showed us how to put together a sweatlodge for the roof...

Welcome: Teachers, Artists, and People.

Beginning TOMORROW October 18 the TAU will begin a series of monthly events in our new Bushwick space in Brooklyn, NY.

Save that Sunday afternoon!  The third Sunday of every month, come to Splinters and Logs (1027 Grand Street, 4th Floor, Brooklyn, New York, 11211) for a meeting. 
Every month we will present a new expert who will teach us everything they know.  Rain or shine, we will be talking, snacking, and learning great stuff.

For the first event in the series, we will be led by the Director of the Institute of Applied Aesthetics, Christopher Kennedy, as he explains what he has witnessed in his national study of ways that artists and organizations use systems of activating art in education and education in art.  For a side dish, we will be participating in some crafting for his new publication called HowWeWork (http://applied-aesthetics.org/). 

|| Splinters and Logs
|| 718-877-5799
|| 1pm-5pm

WANT TO GET INVOLVED IN TAU?
We are currently seeking organizers, inventors, teachers, artists, and anyone who likes to teach and learn in their lives or for their professions. 
We need your participation!  We are working to:
-explore rights and benefits for NYC Teaching Artists (healthcare, training, backup)
-advocate for fair institutional practices involving art educators
-create a network for support and umm... fun
-develop a web presence so TA's can find us
-offer skillshares at monthly meetings

Mission of the Teaching Artist Union:

The Teaching Artist Union is composed of NYC artists who teach
as a part of their creative practice.  With this union, we aim to
define the role of the teaching artist through developing a
supportive community, celebrating and exhibiting the work
produced in teaching situations, and advocating for the rights
and needs of the teaching artist.  We work in many different kinds
of environments: for non profit arts organizations, schools, museums,
and other agencies.  Because we believe that art can invigorate, agitate,
and reorient stale institutional habits, we want to develop a lasting
structure to support the happiness and health of every manifestation
of Teaching Artist.

|| www.teachingartistunion.org || 718-877-5799 || teachingartistunion@gmail.com ||

Community Seeking

After finishing two weeks in a creative collective thinktank at Ox-Bow residency in Michigan, I have gone south to Indiana where part of my family lives. I am presently in Muncie Indiana where my uncle and grandma live on a communal farm and my mom works full time at Wal-Mart. I spend the mornings walking around the farm, meeting the other residents and animals, and reacquainting with my family. In the afternoon I go to Wal-Mart to see my mom (she works during most of my waking hours), to buy food (there aren't too many alternatives), and to study Wal-Mart. The southern branch of the Muncie Wal-Mart seems to have drawn me in for personal and intellectual reasons, causing me to be in attendance every day I am here. What I have realized about this place is its power over the town, and its potential for gathering people inside. I drive around wondering where the community center is, the main church, or the library. They all exist, but not one of them is for the broader Muncie community. The students from Ball State, the farmers, the ex-farmers, the business owners, the unemployed, the construction worker- they all have something to do at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is organic. Or rather some of their products are. Wal-Mart understands trends and people's thresholds for them. They don't go too far. The new logo was only a small transition from the old one. The new slogan: SAVE MONEY, LIVE BETTER is a subtle change from ALWAYS LOW PRICES, ALWAYS and it shows an awareness of the customer's shifting concerns. Wal-Mart is not stagnant, it is sensitive to its customers and it changes to keep them happy. I guess they have to. Can people buy in without buying in? Can they be taught to DIY without buying the kit? Anyway, I am starting to think that the school of the future will learn from Wal-Mart, the powerful machine that it is. Maybe SotF can compliment, fill in the voids created by, or quietly confront Wal-Mart. The School of the Future might mean recognizing where community is possible and infusing it with a challenging new set of expectations and activities for the community that has already formed in every American town.

The PERFECT DAY for planning the School of the Future.

For the rest of July I am at Ox-Bow, a residency in Saugatuck, MI. With the Collaborative Conservation Corps., we are building and living together in this tent, working on collaboration as a method. Here is home #1 I am camping for the first time, and learning some basic building techniques. Working collaboratively with Caroline Woolard and Christopher Kennedy, we are building various temporary structures in our pursuit of THE PERFECT DAY. This week we are working our fingers to the bone to design and implement a schedule and corresponding living structure that will allow our site specific PERFECT DAY to happen. At the end of each day, we evaluate the success of our attempt at contentment, and we design a new schedule in response to our analysis. The structure we have made so far is totally soft, built out of sewn fabric and rope. A large part of my PERFECT DAY involves thinking and writing (tomorrow from 6-9am, 4-6pm, 9pm-12am) and what I am considering is how to move forward with life and art. As for the Community Stimulus Package, including the School of the Future-- I hope that this project can take me forward into my next phase. I have been through many phases with this project, though I haven't taken direct action to make it happen. I think that the project of creating an educational structure is a life-long project, but I want to adapt the plan I had to suit all the new knowledge I have acquired in these last few experiences. If I could do anything, ANYTHING, I would travel around the US on a combination of my bike, car, and public transportation. On the back of my bike/car/public transport would be a box that folds down into a light mobile structure. I would chart a path and I would move around to small towns, where I would install my 'school box'. My interest is in meeting people in small communities, and offering them a supernatural education situation. I can imagine making friends with local businesses and using the school box as a parasitic structure that moves next to or into a small business or home and offers workshops and apprenticeships for or by the people in the business-place. One day I might be at a beauty salon, doing art historical detailing on the nails of the technicians, another day a nail tech might offer a workshop for young girls to paint really small paintings. I can imagine teaching wal-mart employees to do yoga in a parking lot and having kids from a school teach their favorite subject from inside the school box, parked in their playground. As a longterm goal, I would like to design a school with a foundation of theory and experience, so I see the school of the future as practice. More thoughts to come.

School of Personal Experience

Last month I represented Temporary Art Beauty Services (dot biz) in Basel, Switzerland- a sister fair to the large and infamous ArtBasel (annual international contemporary art market). We were invited as an 'artist project' and so were given a free space in a commercial art fair. As the economy shifts and it becomes harder for art galleries to afford the cost of a booth at an art fair, the organizers of fairs are being challenged to find new ways of filling the space and getting press-- so enter TABS. The space I was given could be valued at up to $10,000 (and more during times of prosperity). In this free space I installed a Brooklyn style art-beauty salon. From my station I offered art consumers the opportunity for a manicure based on the art that they might not be able to afford this year. Oops, did I say that you might not be able to afford something this year? Forgive my naivety (or honesty). HOW IT WORKED AT THE SALON Step 1: REFLECTION-What is your favorite art in the fair? Step 2: NEGOTIATION-How can we get this on your hands? Step 3: RESEARCH-Discuss manicure with gallerist representing art and learn about the artist/work. Step 4: INSTALLATION-Manicure. Step 5: DOCUMENTATION-Photo of manicure with human art installation (manicure). It was a huge surprise to find myself working in an art fair. My interests are in creating a sense of belonging by employing myself somewhere in the non-artworld as an artist. I like to be an outsider, an active participant, and I like to find a place for myself in communities I am unfamiliar with. When I was asked to participate in Volta-Fair, I realized that I would be as much of an outsider within this art world as I am when I am a person pretending to be an octopus. As an artist 'working' in an art fair on any sort of 'experiment', my practice was exposed to many spectators who were not expecting or desiring a part in an art practice-- they wanted products. For me, art has only an indirect relationship to money, so I had to adapt my language and demeanor to create successful interactions with my potential clients. I might have never succeeded. I found myself pushing the limits of the art fair at times just to cause an interaction... I postered all over the bathrooms and garbage bins all over the fair and the city. At times I wondered why I was going so far. It wasn't for money, it was all part of the project. Every aspect of my existence in the art fair became a move forward in the game I was playing as I walked the line between the commercial and the conceptual. If I fell off the line in the end, I landed in the conceptual cesspool.

LOOKING FORWARD TO THE SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE

I think that being an unrepresented artist in an art fair and offering an art interaction was not different from my desire to install the school of the future in a wal-mart parking lot. I am trying to hone a system of successful immersion in challenging contexts. In the School of the Future, one of the ideas is that I experiment with people to activate and take ownership of a 'frozen space; by participating in an art fair, whose form and function is outdated and frail, I feel that by offering my art practice, allowing an open barter option, and asking for active participation, I took steps to warm up a pretty cold place.

Press from Art fair in Basel

A new path through TIME AND SPACE

The summer has presented some amazing opportunities to develop interactivity concepts and processes, in all sorts of contexts. It looks as though I will be representing Temporary Art Beauty Services at the Volta Fair in Basel this June. This disrupts the Trust Art schedule for the groundbreaking of the School of the Future. However, this project seems to be opening a lot of conceptual and physical doors that will lead back to the idea of developing new systems of education, which is the ultimately the goal of the School of the Future. I make public art, but I am exhibiting at an art fair. The art world is changing. Gallerists might not earn a profit on their investment in expensive art fair real estate, and so, a change in format is happening. Public art is being invited to fill the empty spaces presented by a worldwide recession. I'd like to think that I am participating in a revolution as I offer manic-cures, fine art tattoos, and T.A.B.S. products for barter or for tips. I am creating a cheap way for art fair viewers to consume some art, but I am also creating one on one interaction, and human contact where it has never been desired. This performance of art beauty education has never before crossed international borders, so I am very excited to see what type of reaction there is in Switzerland.  Upon returning I will be heading to OxBow residency in Michigan with a group of collaborators as we experiment making building structures in the woods that provide shelter and that we can grow food in, lead foraging adventures, and learn how to live off that land. This project feeds directly into the architectural aspect of School of the Future, as we will be doing physical research about mobile site specific architecture. I will also be engaging in the process of finding and using resources in a very different context than in NYC. In a way, this is a type of education for me that seems necessary before I can pretend to understand and share the idea of realizing and creating unexpected bounty in new places. From Michigan, I will go back to a residency in Wisconsin, called Summerwork, where I hope to continue on a project I began two years ago with Andrew Dayton called Alternative Growth Research Institute. In this project we invite collaborators to come and create experiments and systems that will speed up the growth of genetically modified corn. In this project I believe that the instigation of magical theories around mundane stuff like corn becomes a skill that I will use forever and ever as I explore new ways of getting people excited about nothing and everything.

Mobility, Education, Beauty, Commerce, Service, Performance

With these themes as my priorities, I have been working on a handful of projects that all inform each other. As the School of the Future has been developing, these themes have become more explicit than ever. I have recently developed some new formats for my educational and performative experiments, most of which are also in direct response to new economic structures as the old ones crash around us. All the projects feed each other. A recent conversation with Jose related to the process of working through the Trust Art model made us both realize that the process IS the product. What a relief to realize what one always already knows but rarely ever FEELS. Anyway, with that in mind, I will begin to incorporate news about some of my other projects that relate to School of the Future because they inform the product/process. A recent collaboration with Maya Erdelyi-Perez, called Temporary Art Beauty Services, deals with the common themes of Trust Art in a different way than I ever imagined myself working. We are a mobile beauty salon. Part of our press release, written by Renata Espinosa is here: With Breton’s surrealist musings on the marvelous and the beautiful as their unofficial mantra, Cassie Thornton and Maya Erdelyi-Perez founded Temporary Art Beauty Services (T.A.B.S.) as a mobile theatre of beauty-education-as-fine-art through the administration of manicures, temporary tattoo art and custom-written automatic poetry based on imagery culled from their portable library of art history books. Using a suggested donation and/or barter payment structure, T.A.B.S. explores alternative economic models for services typically administered in a commercial sphere, re-inventing both the art and beauty experience by creating unexpected works through the mobile beauty salon. Like beauty therapists, Thornton and Erdelyi-Perez transform a routine beauty experience into an excuse for intimate conversation and simultaneous art historical education. By interrupting such public spaces as the gallery, the museum and the street, T.A.B.S. creates pop-up schools and salon that broaden the reach of the art arena through personalized consultations. Site-specific performances in 2009 include Volta Fair in Basel, Trust Art Benefit at the Norwood Club in Manhattan, The Working Relationship @ Cornell University, Nada Art Fair Recession Runway Show, HP Garcia Gallery, Secret Project Robot to benefit the Serenissima project, the MoMA cafe and Brooklyn Museum. Thornton and Erdelyi-Perez also operate by request via their Web site, temporaryartbeautyservices.biz.