Metabolic Studio Public SalonJulian LairdFriday, September 25, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

Arctic Ice and Frozen Seeds - Feeding the Future

About The Salon

High in the Arctic, deep inside a frozen mountain, a concrete bunker provides protection to one of the most important resources for human life on Earth - seeds. Julian Laird, of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, one of the principal partners in this ambitious project, will describe not only how the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built and how it works, but why its treasure is so valuable and yet so threatened.

About The Salon Presenter

Julian is Director of Development and Communications at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a young international organisation, with which he has been involved since before the Trust became a legal entity. Before moving to the Trust, Julian was Director of Programmes and Acting Chief Executive of Earthwatch Institute (Europe), an international non-profit organisation supporting environmental field research and conservation in 40 countries. Julian has been involved in the design and development of capacity building programmes in national parks throughout Africa, as well as global environmental awareness-raising campaigns in the public and private sectors.

Above: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Image courtesy: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust

Metabolic Studio Public Salon Public Practice, Otis College of Art and DesignFriday, September 18, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

Reunion/Reunión:

“Laton, CA: Public Practice in the San Joaquin Valley”


About The Salon

A cohort of nine first year MFA students designed a collaborative project, building on their observations, their skills and community needs as observed over several months. Their final project took place on Saturday, March 21st, in a public video installation highlighting the unique identity of Laton through multiple outdoor projections onto freshly painted buildings.

People of the community and visitors processed along the two block long main street of the small town of 1200 where they encountered music, video projections of life in the community, and opportunities to talk about the future of the region. Inside the local merchants stores, short video documentaries revealed the role of small businesses in the identity of this community. The once-abandoned Methodist Church was recreated as a community space and art studio. During the evening installation it featured a free store to nurture a temporary barter and exchange system, created by Suzanne Lacy and Otis students, and a video installation by Andrea Bowers. Photographer Raul Vega and Videographer Dana Duff also produced work on Laton suitable for this presentation.

The salon will present questions about how art can influence and change a community. After a presentation on their collaborative “Reunion / Reunion” project, students will open the floor to engage a critical dialogue about the work, and its artistic and political pursuits.

About The Salon Presenters

Public Practice is a new MFA program at Otis College of Art and Design. Its focus is on developing projects that ask the question “who and what is art created for?” With community building, and political action in mind, what can art accomplish? Graduate students explore new artistic strategies and practices based on observation, research, social commentary and activism, and visual and performance arts productions in the public realm.

Above: Event postcard

Image courtesy: Public Practice Otis College of Art and Design

Further Information: http://ospace.otis.edu/publicpracticeportfolio

https://wikis.otis.edu/sjv/index.php/Welcome!_Bienvenidos!_Bem-vindo!

Metabolic Studio Public SalonRickey SmithFriday, September 11, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

Urban Green on Spring

About The Salon

You may have noticed that Millies - the old hamburger stand on the Los Angeles State Historic Park - has been repainted a fetching citrus shade recently? Reincarnated for the 21st century, Millie’s burger stand is in the process of becoming "Urban Green at LASHP". Rather than burger and chips though, Urban Green will grow vegetables and serve them up in delicious vegetarian dishes.

Urban Green has contracted with The State of California Parks and Recreation to build an interactive, interpretive system on the site of The Historic State Park in Downtown Los Angeles. The development envisions “ON SPRING” as a community hub with activities involving educational and practical application of sustainable functions which guests can incorporate into their own personal lives.

Discussing the venture and answering questions will be Urban Green Founder and Director, Rickey Smith.

About The Salon Presenter

Rickey Smith is founder and principal of Urban Green, a social entrepreneurship dedicated to restoring, developing and promoting “green space” within the communities it serves. Urban Green was designed upon Rickey’s philosophy of Circular Synergy, which seeks to establish a CLEAR path connecting the inter-disciplines of Cuisine, Land-use, Environment, and Architecture into Renewable cycles of self-reliant communities.

Inspired by the challenge to evolve food production in the United States, and seeking to create a deeper, more significant experience than just the mere exchange of goods for money, Rickey is committed to the development of functional, small-scale operations using closed-loop, urban-farming systems within the Los Angeles Metropolitan area.

Recognized as a leader and change agent who passionately believes in the Urban Green adage “Waste not. Want not.” He is currently a guest lecturer at UCLA, local charter schools and conference round table discussions. Rickey is also recognized for his community service work with diverse organizations such as Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles Robotics Team and Mother’s Club in Pasadena.

Above: pre-green Millies

Image courtesy http://lashp.wordpress.com

Metabolic Studio Public SalonDan EtheridgeFriday, September 4, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

A New Food Landscape in post-Katrina New Orleans

About the Salon

This salon will present the collaborative work of the Tulane City Center (TCC) and the New Orleans Food and Farm Network (NOFFN) in their efforts to support the growing urban farming/local food movement in New Orleans. Although part of a national trend, the projects presented here also grew out of a post disaster context that has enabled many new visions to emerge with a high probability of success.

The salon will specifically look at two larger scale initiatives in the New Orleans area: the Viet Village Urban Farm (a proposed 28acre urban farm and farmers market in the principal Vietnamese nighborhood in New Orleans) and the Hollygrove Growers Market and Farm (a smaller local growers market and urban farming training center).

These projects differ in scale and intent, however they were both supported by the TCC/NOFFN collaboration that brought design, planning, technical and other skills to projects that had great community support and a piece of land. We feel we have developed a model to support groups that lack the resources to access these skill sets, and the projects we will present showcase how these community generated initiatives can begin to garner the momentum they need to become reality.

About the Salon Presenter

Dan Etheridge is Associate Director of the Tulane City Center and Adjunct Lecturer at the Tulane School of Architecture. Dan has a degree in Applied Environmental Management from Southern Cross University in New South Wales, Australia, is a Fellow of the Institute for Environmental Communications at Loyola University New Orleans, and has worked for the last five years at the intersection of regional coastal restoration strategies and urban design and policy. He has been published in environmental science and management journals, design publications and community advocacy forums and continues to work across these disciplines in research and practice. In addition, Dan is a partner in the environmental consulting practice Meffert + Etheridge Environmental Projects that specializes in bringing sound ecological practice and communication to design, planning and development projects.

Further information: www.tulanecitycenter.org

Image: Tulane City Center, courtesy Dan Etheridge

Metabolic Studio Public SalonKirk Anderson & Amy SeidenwurmFriday, August 28, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

Let the Bees Be Bees!

About the Salon

Convinced that the current decline in bee numbers is the result of their ‘enslavement’ to industrial processes, Kirk and Amy will discuss the pleasures of beekeeping and ways to encourage the native feral bee population.

Bees make honey to survive, and they’ve been doing it a long time. In its natural state, honey contains sugars, yeast and enzymes. It can also contain pollen and propolis (the resinous substance made by bees to seal cracks and small gaps in their hive). Humans discovered this wonderful honey, and eventually figured out a way to make the bees work for them.

In the early days, beekeepers used an inverted straw basket called a ‘skep’ to house the bees. Later, a man named Langstroth invented the current square wooden box with removable wood frames. This made it much easier for beekeepers to look at their bees and to get the honey out.

Honey can be extracted two ways: the frames can be put in a centrifugal extractor and the honey spun out of the comb or the comb can be cut out of the frame, crushed and the honey strained from it. Commercial beekeepers store the extracted honey in 55 gallon drums until it’s needed. Honey left alone will crystallize. It has to be liquefied to get it out of the drum. If the temperature used to melt the honey is less than 120E it can still be called “raw”. Honey can also be pasteurized (at temperatures up to 280E) to stabilize it and improve shelf life by killing the natural yeast and enzymes.

Humans like to control their environment and the living creatures in it, so beekeepers figured out ways for their bees to make more honey. However, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” really applies to bees. When bees and their hive are messed with, all sorts of problems can arise. If bees are allowed to go about their business as they always have, they’ll create strong hives and delicious, beneficial honey.

About the Salon Presenters

Kirk Anderson is an urban beekeeper and the founder of an LA collective of small-scale organic beekeepers. His goal is to do right by the bees so that the bees can return the favor. Amy Seidenwurm is a fan of bees, food, dogs, wine, music, typography, technology and basketball. In her professional life, she is a digital marketing geek.

Above: Bees settle into a front porch hive cut out of a wood-and-masonry dollhouse, Los Angeles 2009. Courtesy Kirk Anderson

Further Information: www.backwardsbeekeepers.com

Metabolic Studio Public SalonDetective Don HrycykFriday, August 21, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

Art Fraud in L.A.

About The Salon
Los Angeles is the second largest center for the visual arts in the U.S. This has attracted art thieves and conmen (and women) who have often targeted the cultural heritage of the city. LAPD's two-detective Art Theft Detail has investigated many of these crimes involving not only art but other types of cultural property including rare books, musical instruments, fossils, and Hollywood movie props. These crimes involve not only theft of art but also fakes, fraud and forgeries.

Detective Hrycyk will discuss some of these cases and profile the type of art criminals who prey on artists, art dealers and collectors. Preventive measures that art lovers can take to protect themselves will also be discussed. Additional information about the Art Theft Detail including crime alerts on stolen art can be found at http://www.lapdonline.org/art_theft

About the Salon Presenter
Don Hrycyk is the detective in charge of LAPD’s Art Theft Detail – the only full-time municipal art investigative unit in the United States. During the 15 years that he has been in this position, the unit has recovered over $77 million in cultural property. He has been a police officer for over 35 years. Prior to investigating art crimes, Hrycyk worked a variety of assignments including homicide, robbery, sex crimes, burglary, juvenile, assaults, forgery, gangs, and patrol.

He graduated from California State University where he majored in Criminology. He teaches Art Crimes Investigation to law enforcement officers and lectures on the art crime problem. Hrycyk is a recipient of the Smithsonian Institution’s Burke Award for Excellence in Cultural Property Protection.

Image courtesy Det. Don Hrycyk

Metabolic Studio Public SalonGreenmemeFriday, August 14, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

Weaving the Landscape

About the Salon

Freya Bardell and Brian Howe of the Los Angeles-based design studio Greenmeme will discuss a variety of their projects. Their cross-disciplinary collective has worked to bridge artistic and scientific disciplines to produce public art, architecture, landscape and ecological design projects, which seek to raise awareness of the cultural and environmental conditions around them. Using science, form, history, story-telling and myth, they have created a series of site-specific works which are playful and educational interpretations of their surroundings. Come join our discussion on River Livers, Matryoshka dolls and how to harness the power of Grandmothers!

Further information: www.greenmeme.com

Image: Matryoshka, Plummer Park 2009 ©2004-2009 Dwell LLC

Metabolic Studio Public SalonFinishing SchoolFriday, July 31, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

M.O.L.D. / Bioindicator Workshop

About the Salon
Finishing School will discuss their most recent project M.O.L.D. (2009), a performative installation that investigates critical issues related to the science, politics, and culture of food through the lens of decomposition. The salon audience will also participate in a workshop where they will build their own amateur bioindicators to assess food quality and safety.

About the Salon Participants
Formed in late 2001, Finishing School is a collective identity that investigates diverse social, political, and environmental issues. Their projects combine praxis, play, and activism and engage viewers through various participatory models. They have exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally.

Finishing School was recently the inaugural participants in MOCA's Engagement Party, an ongoing "artists residency" program at MOCA in Los Angeles where they presented three projects: Finding Joy (2008), The Drug Run (2008), and Executive Order Karaoke (2008). Other current projects include Little Pharma (2008), which investigates alternative medicines and lifestyles as a viable antidote to some of the drug industry's pathologies. Little Pharma consists of a series of workshops, roundtable meetings, lectures, weblog, community medicinal garden, and drug themed bike ride.

Past projects include Public Interaction Objects (2006), a series of low-tech participatory objects including meet/greet, a semi-autonomous drone designed to move through public spaces and greet individuals with multilingual salutations representing the six official languages of the United Nations; The Patriot Library (2003), a working library that provides access to books, periodicals, and other media considered "dangerous" by the United States government; and Saturday School (2001), a temporary, nomadic teaching institution offering multidisciplinary classes that dissect, question, and illuminate various aspects of everyday life.

Further information: www.finishing-school.net

Metabolic Studio Public SalonJill LeovyFriday, July 24, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

The Homicide Report

About the salon

Two or three homicides occur every day in Los Angeles County, but major newspapers report on only around 10% of these. Realizing that most of the stories went untold, LA Times crime reporter Jill Leovy committed to reporting each and every single murder.

Leovy initiated the blog the Homicide Report in 2007 with just 17 names received from the local coroner's office. A year later, the blog had documented every murder in Los Angeles County, 845 in all, something that had never been done before.

The Homicide Blog, "seeks to exploit the advantages of the web to eliminate selectivity in homicide coverage and give readers a more complete picture of who dies from homicide, where, and why -- thus conveying both the personal story and the statistical story with greater accuracy."

About the presenter

Jill Leovy is a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Click here to access the Homicide Report.

Photo: Pearl White sits near a vigil for her cousin, Dennis Joe Rodgers, Jr. who was shot and killed Wednesday night, 7.8.09.Credit: Ruben Vives/Los Angeles Times

Metabolic Studio Public SalonDeborah KaneFriday, July 10, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

A Facebook for Food as Local Goes Online:
Getting Regional Food to Market with FoodHub

About the Salon

Demand for local food is at an all-time high. As a result, larger-volume and institutional purchasers such as public schools, colleges, hospitals, retail grocery stores and many others are increasingly assigning geographic preference to their key purchase criteria along with long-standing cost, quality, quantity, and delivery requirements. Yet every year more American small- and medium-sized family farms go out of business, having not found a viable method for accessing this increased market demand for their products. This year in the Pacific Northwest the farmer with a fire sale on blueberries will have access to hundreds of online wholesale buyers through a new tool called FoodHub. Will it save the family farm? It just might. Come find out more. (see too www.ecotrust.org/foodhub/)

About the Salon Participant

Deborah Kane’s passion for promoting local and sustainable agriculture places her at that critical junction where the culinary arts and the sustainable agriculture movement intersect. A tireless advocate for sustainable agriculture and food-related industries, Kane currently serves as vice president of Food and Farms at Ecotrust, a Northwest-based conservation organization.

Under Kane's leadership, Oregon became the first state in the nation to institutionalize the notion of getting regionally produced food into public schools by creating full time ‘farm to school’ positions in both its Departments of Education and Agriculture. Kane is the publisher of Edible Portland, an award-winning quarterly magazine that celebrates the region’s bounty, season by delicious season.

FoodHub, Kane's latest project, is an online directory and marketplace designed to make it easy and efficient for buyers and sellers of regional food to find one another and conduct business. Kane looks forward to the day when supply chains are transparent and information flows readily so that questions such as “I wonder where I can sell these parsnips” and “Where can I get 120 pounds of wild salmon” are answered with the click of a button.


Photo: Chef John Toboada receives a delivery of local produce from farmer Laura Masterson. Foodhub makes it possible for local producers to find (hungry) buyers.

Photo courtesy Deborah Kane.

Metabolic Studio Public SalonKevin KuzmaFriday, June 26, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

Edendale: Where the Hollywood film industry was born

About the Salon

This year marks the centennial of the first permanent movie studio to set up shop in Los Angeles. But that first studio and others that sprang up nearby where not located in Hollywood. They cranked out silent films several miles east in a village called Edendale, which straddled the border of what is now Echo Park and Silver Lake. The presentation will cover the founding of that first studio, Selig Polyscope, and the emergence and brief reign of Edendale as the center of the region's movie making business.

About the Salon Participant

Angelino Heights resident Kevin Kuzma is president of the Echo Park Historical Society and the owner of Revival Arts Restoration, a preservation and restoration consulting company.

Updated -- New Salon Speakers For This FridayWouter Osterholt & Elke UitentuisFriday, June 19, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

The Farmlab Public Salon Series welcomes Wouter Osterholt & Elke Uitentuis as the Salon presenters on Friday, June 19, 2009 @ Noon.

Osterholt and Uitentuis are currently MAK Center Artists and Architects-in-Residence.

For more information about Osterholt and Uitentuis, please visit their website and see the "about" section at the bottom of this page.

Special thanks to the duo for being able and willing to come Friday on such short notice. Thanks, too, to the MAK staff.

The Salon Series also apologies to anyone anticipating seeing our previously scheduled Salon speakers this week. That duo are unable to participate.

-- Farmlab Public Salon Series

About the Salon Presenters

As of 2005 Wouter Osterholt and Elke Uitentuis have been collaborating together as an artistduo. Their work utilizes a context-specific approach, investigating the relationship between people and their surroundings. They try to visualize the friction of regulation and improvisation in relationship to the planning of society and space and to unravel hidden hierarchies in order to offer an insight into the contradicting interests defining the use of public space. The test-situations they create are supposed to challenge people to redefine their relationship with their surroundings and their personal attitude towards ‘citizenship’.

Farmlab Public SalonRiccarlo PorterFriday, June 5, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

How-To For Economic Dilemnas

About the Salon

Focus: Insightful solutions and ideas for troubling economic times get a step-by-step once-over by Riccarlo Porter, ACS (Toastmaster). He give green initiatives for new development and alternative speak for collective development.

The Main conclusion: To give participants new hope in dealing with a troubled system.

Q&A to follow.

About the Salon Participant

Riccarlo Porter developed a perspective on Public Relations through theater, media experience and social activism. Recently, working on four plays; two of which, he is the director. At Aware 1 Magazine, he wrote contracts, advised on production, placed magazines, and set up locations for photo shoots. He also writes scripts and articles for newspapers and magazines. He has developed a knack for networking from working as a Co-host on Go Gospel Radio and ad consultant for Fix My PC Please, I Will Recycling Service, and other companies.

Image courtesy Riccarlo Porter

Farmlab Public SalonVictoria Yust and Ian McIlvaineFriday, May 29, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

Old Ideas that should be new again...and other dreams for L.A.

About the Salon

Monorail? Solar hot water on every roof? Courtyard housing? Shared green spaces? Natural hot spring community bathhouse?

Architects Ian McIlvaine and Victoria Yust, of Tierra Sol y Mar, will present a few projects, still in their very early stages, that incorporate these old, yet still forward-thinking, ideas. Small steps that could make Los Angeles not only a more sustainable place to live, but a more pleasant one. We lost the red car system; would a monorail be the 21st century solution? We used to have unlimited space and room for everyone to have a freestanding house and a garden; would a "small lot subdivision" with a shared central park be the solution for a denser city? Los Angeles has long been called a collection of neighborhoods in search of a city, but these neighborhoods need to maintain their sense of community; is a mixed-use building at the old Bimini Baths, on an LAUSD-owned site, a way to do that?


About the Salon Participants

Ian McIlvaine, AIA, LEED AP, and Victoria Yust, AIA, formed Tierra Sol y Mar in 1994 to provide environmentally conscious design through a close collaboration with builders, artists, and most importantly, their clients. Their first project was the design and construction of a straw bale pavilion for the 1994 Yuba-Sutter County Fair, using rice straw, a local waste material. Projects completed since then range from single family residences, including a house in Venice which was the first permitted SCIP (Structural Concrete Insulated Panel) building in Los Angeles, to commercial projects including a three story commercial building in downtown Santa Monica where they collaborated with three different artists. In their own 4-unit building in Venice, they had the opportunity to test their mettle as "green developers". 90% of their current clients have come to them asking for sustainable design – a noticeable change since 1994.

Image: The Schwebebahn (monorail), in Wuppertal, Germany, built in 1900 and still in operation.(LIFE Images)

from: http://www.californiasolarcenter.org/history_solarthermal.html via Victoria Yust

Farmlab Public SalonMichael DavisFriday, October 12 @ NoonFree-of-Charge

Progress: IN SEARCH OF THE AMERICAN ESTHETIC

Salon Presenters:
Michael Davis and Stephen Moore
("Stephen passed away Oct. 19, 2006, he will be there in spirit" - Michael Davis)

About the Salon:
An Artistl/video presentation on Progress-1970-2005-parallel deja vu, documentary from two separate cross-country trips in search of the American esthetic, social consciousness, politics and road-side attractions.

About the Presenters:
Michael Davis, 1971 M.F.A. graduate of CSU Fullerton, maintains a studio in San Pedro, CA. He has exhibited in over ninety-seven solo and group exhibitions and created over forty public art installations in the U.S. and abroad. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Hand Hollow Arts Fellowship, and an AIA Award of Excellence. He has been honored as a visiting artist and guest lecturer and is an active advisory board member for the University Arts Museum, CSU Long Beach and LA Cultural Affairs. He recently completed public artworks for the cities of New York and Los Angeles, and is currently working on artworks for San Francisco, Ventura and Arcadia. Progress, a multi-media exhibition, created by Michael Davis and Stephen Moore, was on view last year at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, CA. A book-length catalog accompanies the exhibition, which is planned to travel to various US venues.

Stephen Moore
October 31, 1939-October 19, 2006

Stephen Moore was an artist, curator, and writer involved with visual art since the early 1970's. His interest in marginal and experimental art activity, with an emphasis on alternative exhibition venues, led him to be the founding co-director of "58F Plaza" (1971-75) with Michael Davis in Orange, CA, +LOCUS+ (1981-86) with Ann Rosenthal in Los Angeles, and therart.net.

Stephen's work explores the edge between content and image and the potential of publishing as an art medium. His print and online works have been included in numerous exhibitions of Artist Books and digital media. He was a contributing writer and editor for various art publications, including Artweek, and an editor of several art journals, including BOXCAR (Los Angeles) and WordWorks (San Jose), which won a publications award from the Western Association of Art Museums.

His pioneering website "Infinity City" (infcty.net) in 1994 with Ann T. Rosenthal, was included in the VI Salon Internationale de Arte Digital (Havana). He created "NewWebWorks", a series of digital art for the web; and developed "Infinity City: Critical Path", for the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bomb in 2005. Stephen's unwavering vision of art as a catalyst for social change and public dialogue gave hope and courage to many. He will be sorely missed.