Picasso’s Dilemma
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist as one grows up.” Pablo Picasso
Fight for Art!!! Picasso’s Dilemma is a public video art installation created by Alex Kritselis and Joey Forsyte featuring 60 artists from first grade to museum grade, fighting for art in 5 venues across Pasadena, California. Opened June 25, 2011 at the Armory Center for the Arts
Each artist was to make a 1minute self-portrait, the resulting self portrait on glass was then exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts and sold to help fund arts education in Pasadena, California. The videos were projected on the windows of the Armory facing the outside.
River Alchemy, Moes Up River, fabric installation, Los Angeles river, 2002
River Alchemy was a site specific event with temporary installations and performances along the Los Angeles river. I used the fabric shapes, Michael and I began calling “moes” with their twisted and knotted forms spilling out of a storm drain that had the face of a cat. I relished the feedback from viewers that thought the “moes” were falling out of the mouth and those that thought the drain-beast was trying to gobble them up. For me, the shapes, writhing and animal-like were bursting open and free, heading in and out of the river. As large and galumphing as the shapes were, they carried a message to the delicate river from those of us Up River.
Without Alarm II: Public and Private Security, Moes in Stir, fabric installation, former Los Angeles Jail, Lincoln Heights, 1998
This piece was a collaboration between Caryl St. Ama and Michael Coomes.
The Arroyo Arts Collective took over the former Los Angeles jail in Lincoln Heights with more than 100 artists involved in transforming cells, corridors and holding tanks into disturbing urban art. The show was about crime and punishment, the loss and the reclamation of hope. The dim lighting in the decaying space sets the viewer up to be emotionally stalked and blurs the boundaries of the inmate doing time and the victim. The real questions become “How free are we?” and “Can art redeem us?”
Safari; Far Bazzar at the Old Zoo, Chrysalis Praecox, fabric installation, former Los Angeles Zoo, Los Angeles, 1997
This piece was a collaboration between Caryl St. Ama and Michael Coomes.
We took over the abandoned lion’s den for this installation – we imagined all the life that was once held in that cage. It provided us with an amazing power as we worked with the fabric pieces, twisting them around and through the bars,then tumbling towards the ground in chaotic rhythms. The shapes we called “moes” seemed to provide a shelter and at once were born here in the abandoned zoo installation.