"LAND/ART," a massive six-month environmental art project involving more than 25 presenting organizations in New Mexico, opened last weekend with a symposium. Coordinated by 516 ARTS, events began June 27 with a guided bus tour by The Center for Land Use Interpretation through dramatic built landscapes. Continuing through December 2009, "LAND/ART" explores relationships of land, art and community through dozens of new exhibitions, community-based projects, site-specific art works, speakers series, performances, tours, excursions and a culminating book. "Historically," says the organizers, "New Mexico has been a place where the intersection of nature and culture is at issue. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the American Southwest was the location of the first generation of Land Art or Earthworks," including The Lightning Field, the Star Axis, Spiral Jetty, the Sun Tunnels and Roden Crater. Details are online. [LINK]

The Social and Public Arts Resource Center (SPARC) celebrates several significant public art works with an upcoming event at its Venice, California, headquarters. The celebration, 2-5 p.m., June 28, 2009, closes “Current Public Art Productions of the UCLA/SPARC Cesar Chavez Digital Mural Lab,” an exhibition featuring artwork by Judy Baca including the Cesar E. Chavez Monument: The Arch of Dignity, Equality and Justice at San Jose State University and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial at the RFK Learning Center in Los Angeles. The event includes an open house at the Digital Mural Lab's SPARC facilities. During the reception, there will also be a performance by The Lefteous Sisters who wrote a song for the Save LA Murals campaign initiated by Baca to bring attention to the deteriorating condition of hundreds of L.A. murals. [LINK]

See a marvelous story from the June 2009 Culture Pour Tous newsletter about The Encampment, a traveling public art installation about mental disability. In 2006, writes Michel Lefebvre, Thom Sokoloski and Jenny McCowan (Studio SM) organized a huge outdoor installation on the theme of mental health. The Encampment consisted of an assemblage of tents, each containing a mini-installation created with the participation of the public and presenting poignant testimonies or stories of intellectual disability and the lives of those affected by it. They recruited “creative collaborators” who would research a story, testimony or fact related to mental illness and use found objects to present this story inside a tent. That year, 68 tents were set up in Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods Park; in 2007, The Encampment and its process moved to Roosevelt Island, N.Y.; in 2008, to Major’s Hill Park, Ottawa. [LINK]

In honor of the centennial of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, N.Y., artist Katie Holten is creating a Tree Museum, and the trees tell stories. Holten has marked out 100 trees along the Concourse, a street about four and a half miles long. Each tree will have a sign that gives a phone number and a code to listen to short recordings of people speaking about the Bronx, their lives and their work. The tree museum will open on June 21, 2009. Four of the stories can be heard online, accompanying "A Museum of Trees That Speak of History," a story about the project by Jim Dwyer. You can hear stories by architect Daniel Libeskind, preservationist Dart Westphal and community gardener Lurry Boyd, as well as Carlos Lazarte's recording of the chirps of coquis, Puerto Rican tree frogs. [LINK]

UC San Diego students and artists are organizing the Freephone Art Project in Tijuana, Mexico, says Diane Haithman in the L.A. Times (5/21/09). They're installing a phone on an outside wall of the student-run Lui Velazquez Gallery, at the Tijuana border, to provide people who have been deported from the U.S. a chance to make one free call after they have been returned to Mexico. The artists purchased a nonworking pay-phone casing on EBay, wired it to a new $10 phone and hooked the contraption up to an adapter that will allow the phone to make Skype calls anywhere in the world over the Internet. The artists are splitting the $20-per-month cost. Says curator Micha Cardenas, a longtime border activist, "[I]t uses this strategy of building the world we want instead of asking for it." The phone goes live May 30. [LINK]

"Spire," Andy Goldsworthy's new public artwork for San Francisco's Presidio, is being celebrated with a special exhibit at the National Historic Landmark, formerly a military post. Goldworthy's towering "Spire" was created near the Arguello Gate from mature trees felled as the Presidio’s declining forest is gradually replanted. As new young trees grow up to meet the sculpture, it will eventually disappear into the forest. The accompanying exhibition, through July 19, 2009, includes preparatory drawings, the artist's color photographs of spires he has created at other sites, and a ten-foot model of the Presidio spire. Text and photographs, a program of film and video clips and maps offer contextual information about Goldsworthy, site-based art and the Presidio Trust’s reforestation efforts. [LINK]

Artists John Stone and Lonnie Graham recently completed work on the Common Room and Community Archive for Project H.O.M.E. in North Philadelphia. The installations, open June 4, 2009, are part of Common Ground, a new permanent public artwork for the St. Elizabeth’s/Diamond Street neighborhood by The Fairmount Park Art Association and the anti-homelessness organization Project H.O.M.E. Built on the footprint of St. Elizabeth's Church, a beloved landmark destroyed by fire, Common Ground features indoor and outdoor elements supporting community meetings and celebrations. The Common Room holds a white oak table, quotes from local elders, and photographic panels and murals of community images. The Community Archive, which occupies a corner of the Common Room, is a repository for photos, videos, and oral histories collected from the neighborhood. [LINK]

The history of the Educational Alliance as reflected in the changes in New York City's Lower East Side is the topic of a conversation during the opening of HomeBase IV. The Educational Alliance is one of the first settlement houses in New York. HomeBase, founded/directed by artist Anat Litwin, is an annual site-specific project devoted to the exploration of "Home," marking a temporary base, a raw urban architectural site in a neighborhood undergoing change, and inviting international artists to engage in a three-week workshop that includes study, dialogue and communal dinners, followed by a three-week happening and a publication. HomeBase IV takes place in a former medical center in the Lower East Side., opening May 9. It's a project of LABA (National Laboratory for New Jewish Culture at the 14th St. Y) and the Educational Alliance. [LINK]

Today we've added The Park, a blog from India, to Blognet, our network of Weblogs from all over our community. It's by artist Sreejata Roy, community art coordinator of Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education in New Delhi. She was recently awarded a public art grant to shape a community park on an abandoned lot where children play in a working-class area of the city. Her blog follows the process of the project,"... how the children cultivate and learn about self, friendship, family, school, neighborhood, community, locality and city through building up a park." Says Roy, "The goal of the project is to celebrate the contributions of community and children and emphasize the pivotal and unique role that art plays as an experimental pedagogy in learning, sharing and developing bond in the neighborhood for a long term." [LINK]

In London this June you can participate in a public art intervention about the colonization of public space by surveillance cameras. A kiosk in Peckham Square, by Neal White and the Office of Experiments, will be staffed daily, June 21-28, by "a new type of security person" talking to the public about civil liberties, inviting responses to the phenomenon of public surveillance in Britain and distributing local information suggesting "alternative ways to navigate the environment." The project, "Limitations Permitted," states: "The apparently benign public zones of libraries, playgrounds and shopping malls are all under observation, generating information about the people who inhabit them via CCTV cameras, ATMs and card readers. ... [A]re our liberties being compromised?" "Limitations Permitted" also features a public talk, "Civil Liberties and Art," and films by Manu Luksch and FLIX about privacy regulations, seen through view finders. [LINK]

Artist Ann Reichlin will hold a reception in "Translucent Home," her latest public art work on the site of an abandoned house in Utica, N.Y. The reception, slated for April 22, 2009, on the grounds of Utica's Sculpture Space, will introduce visitors to the third part of a ten-year project she began in 1998, when she built "Insert," a large stainless steel wall penetrating the abandoned house at 914 Whitesboro Street. In 2001, she created "Solitary View," an exploration of the inside of the house. By 2006, the house became structurally unstable and was demolished. The stone foundation was retained for "Translucent Home," which mimicks the size and volume of the demolished house. "We tend to think of houses as permanent, when in fact they are in constant state of flux," says Reichlin. The Sculpture Space Web site has photos of all phases of the project. [LINK]

"Visual Restoration" is a program that showcases two murals created by Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program with the Albert M. Greenfield Restorative Justice Program. Showing April 17-May 29, 2009, at the MAP's Lincoln Financial Mural Arts Center, the project used public art to "re-engage youth who have committed harm within their communities through a form of visual restitution" by creating murals and fostering community revitalization efforts. This included workshops with youth from St. Gabriel’s Hall, DHS’ E3 centers and men at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, led by restorative-justice professionals from the Pennsylvania Prison Society. Restorative justice is a process of encounter and exchange among victims, offenders and community members that is instrumental in healing wounds inflicted by violent crime. Phoebe Zinman's new book, "Visual Restoration," recounts the story of the Greenfield Restorative Justice Program. [LINK]

During renovations throughout 2009, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, N.C., is presenting Inside Out: Artists in the Community II. The artists in the public art program will respond to the city, its people and its many unique places, says SECCA. Each artist will visit Winston-Salem to install his/her respective project, conduct an artist talk, lead classes and/or workshops and interact with the local community. The SECCA Web site offers descriptions outlining each project, photos of related past works and podcasts like artist's lectures, public responses to the work, radio shows and special videos like N.C. artist Lee Walton's plea for local participants to act in "Small Plots," scenarios that will pop up in the landscape, or Virginia's Charlie Brouwer's request for donated ladders for his complex installation, "Rise Up." [LINK]

Artist Suzanne Lacy and her Otis College of Art & Design graduate students in public practice are making art with the citizens of Laton, California (pop. 1,200). "Laton LIVE!" is an exhibition of the work and a street fair, all over town, March 21, 2009. Working with Laton residents, organizations, and public schools, Otis students and faculty identified two important concerns: supporting youth in civic engagement, and building community pride. Resulting art projects, include "Signs of Welcome," a welcome sign by high-school students to replace one destroyed by vandals; "Picturing Laton," a portrait series in collaboration with noted L.A. photographer Raul Vega, a native of the area; "Painting the Town," a face-lift for local stores; and "The Town is a Stage," a wall-sized video installation. It's all part of Otis Connects: San Joaquin Valley. See the trailer on YouTube. [LINK]

"Tipping Point," in New Orleans, La., March 18-23, 2009, is the fifth annual State of the Nation multidisciplinary arts festival, addressing social, political, and economic issues facing the Gulf South. A partnership between Alternate ROOTS, ArtSpot Productions, Mondo Bizarro, M.U.G.A.B.E.E., Junebug Productions, New Noise, 7th Ward Community Center and the NOLA Human Rights Film Festival, this year’s festival will explore "the intersection of art and activism." Performance, music, film, workshops, visual art installations and site-specific events are scheduled for the 7th Ward Community Center, The Studio at Colton and various site-specific locations throughout New Orleans. See Bruce France's video promo for the festival on the Mondo Bizarro Web site. [LINK]

Raleigh News and Observer columnist J. Peder Zane wants N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue to tear down the state capitol's signature symbol, a 75-foot-tall monument to the Confederacy. In two columns (2/8 & 2/22/90), Zane says the statue of a Confederate soldier is not simply a memorial to the fallen and it cannot be separated from history. He calls it "a bald statement of white supremacy," put in a place of honor in 1895 when the Democratic party was organizing a campaign that would usher in Jim Crow, and dedicated in an hour-long address by Alfred Moore Waddell, who led the 1898 Wilmington massacre. Removal of public artworks that may no longer reflect the public's values is an interesting question, but more fascinating are 100+ readers' comments revealing that faith in white supremacy are alive and well in N.C. Zane's response is public art criticism at work. Hear Zane interviewed on WUNC Radio: http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot0224ab09.mp3/view. [LINK]

"On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City" is a new addition to the CAN Bookstore, published by the University Press of Mississippi. With 150 color photographs, the book highlights significant New York neighborhood murals, their artists and sponsors, and describes the interactions between artists and residents, including the controversies that have led to the destruction of several of the artworks. It's written by community muralist Janet Braun-Reinitz and writer-artist Jane Weissman of Artmakers Inc., a politically oriented, community-based, artist-run mural organization in New York City. Its foreword is by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan; mural historian Timothy W. Drescher does the introduction. There's a booksigning at Artmakers in Brooklyn February 28 and an authors' talk at Hue-man Books in Manhattan on March 25. [LINK]

"somewhere in advance of nowhere*: youth, imagination and transformation" is a public art project by Evan Bissell underway at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. Referencing poet Jayne Cortez’s 1996 book of the same title, the project (through November 22, 2008) investigates and celebrates the social and individual transformative potential of writing, arts education and creative community. It features 18 painted portraits of Bay Area spoken-word poets, ages 15-20, installed citywide, including audio recordings of their poems. (Listen: 415-200-4587 x 10-27.) There's also an interactive exhibition at Intersection with a collaborative drawing wall, recording and reading stations and a resource guide to local art classes for youth. Events include free workshops and civic-engagement opportunities for young people and "Collaborative Aesthetics," a dialogue on the role of creative collaborative processes in building community, facilitated by Brett Cook (November 5). [LINK]

Prospect.1 New Orleans, "the largest exhibition of contemporary art ever held on American soil," is intended to help restore the cultural vibrancy of New Orleans, says Shaila Dewan in the N.Y. Times (10/29/08.) The show, November 1-January 18, curated by Dan Cameron of N.Y.'s New Museum, has "a star-filled roster of 81 artists and a projected 50,000 visitors from out of town." Installations, many referring to Hurricane Katrina, are all over the city, including Wangechi Mutu's “ghost house,” sited on the property of an elderly woman whose attempts to rebuild were stymied by a vanishing contractor. At the U.S. Mint, L.A.'s Stephen G. Rhodes is building a Hall of Presidents, with the presidents themselves largely absent. "Residents have volunteered by the hundreds to act as docents, provide exhibition sites and assist the artists," says Dewan. [LINK]

Durham, N.C. is awash in murals at the conclusion of "Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life," artist Brett Cook's collaboration with the city's residents. On Saturday, September 13, 2008, Cook will take visitors on a "bus or bike" tour of the 13 new murals now installed on the exterior walls of businesses, schools and other public places in Durham. Connecting university faculty, students, staff and Southwest Central Durham residents through an artistic endeavor, the project was co-sponsored with the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University and the Southwest Central Durham Quality of Life Project, which works to unify a sector of the city historically segregated. The residents and organizations that make up the Quality of Life Project are working to bring down economic, social and cultural barriers by building "intentional bridges of common experience and shared concern." The mural tour begins at CDS at 2 p.m. [LINK]

VibranC, a public art project by IN:SITE, continues in Milwaukee's Sherman Park neighborhood this fall with new temporary artworks and community-involvement pieces. Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis will install "Public Heat," made from altered "powerblankets" primarily used at construction sites to help cure concrete. They will be mounted outside Sherman Park Community Association "to keep people warm in winter." At Sherman Perk Coffee Shop, Bridget Frances Quinn will mount "I've Just Seen a Face," creating brief glimpses of neighborhood people. Kamryn K. Boelk and teens from Mary Ryan Boys & Girls Club will wrap recycled plastic bags into 200 feet of park chain-link fence to depict a panoramic horizon line dotted with natural symbols. Artists will discuss their work at the Community Association on September 27, and follow up by answering questions at their installations [LINK]

"My Vote Performs" is a unique project that will produce performance art at 12 different polling places in Milwaukee, Wisc., on November 4, 2008. Nonpartisan and approved by the State Elections Division and the Milwaukee Election Commission, "My Vote Performs" will occur at a widely diverse selection of polling places, including Charles Allis Art Museum, Pulaski Indoor Swimming Pool, Wisconsin Humane Society, United Community Center and Albright United Methodist Church. Artists will present five-to-ten-minute pieces, showing every 20-30 minutes between the highest-volume polling hours of four to eight. "The projects will not interfere with people voting and will celebrate and encourage discussion about citizenship," say co-producers John Loscuito and Pegi Taylor. A free forum at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, November 25, will present documentation of the projects, and some live performances. [LINK]

BrushFire is Provisions Library's guide to activist arts and culture during the run-up to the U.S. elections in November 2008. Artists, arts organizations and their community partners are submitting notices of their arts actions for social change to the Brushfire blog. At the same time, Provisions is presenting a series of public art interventions around the country designed to focus attention on key issues such as the Iraq war, immigration, global warming, civil liberties, housing and healthcare; artists include The Beehive Collective, The Floating Lab Collective, Futurefarmers, Ligorano/Reese and Jon Winet. Brushfire culminates in an exhibition, "Close Encounters: Reflections on the Future," at the American University Art Museum in September and October, along with a D.C.-wide festival of exhibitions and arts events on key social issues. Send your announcements to the blog. [LINK]

There's a floating city on the Hudson River right now, part of an art project called “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea." Julie Bloom in the N.Y.Times (8/17/08) says the fleet of seven handmade ships "with junkyard roots" is on its way down the Hudson, from Troy through New York Harbor to Long Island City, where the fleet will dock at Deitch Studios as part of an exhibition beginning Sept. 7. Created by a collaborative led by the artist Swoon, the project is "part floating artwork, part performance, part mobile utopia and seemingly part summer camp for grown-up artsy kids." Made entirely of recycled materials, the flotilla totes a band and a play, performed by crew members at stops along the way. "Swimming Cities" is reminiscent of Swoon's 2006 “Miss Rockaway Armada" on the Mississippi. [LINK]

Artist Suzane Lacy will be the keynote speaker at "Public Art and Democracy," a conference at the University of MInnesota, September 26-27, 2008. The conference sponsor, the Institute for Advanced Studies, describes it as "occasioned by the confluence of four important events affecting the Twin Cities: Speaking of Home, artist Nancy Ann Coyne's photographic public artwork exploring the meaning of home, acculturation, and alienation for new Americans in the Twin Cities; the thirtieth anniversary of Forecast Public Art, a Twin Cities-based non-profit organization; the need for conversations about public engagement with the political process which will doubtless arise in the wake of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions; and the Minnesota Sesquicentennial." Lacy is one of the foremost scholar/practitioners in public art and community art. Conference participants include Forecast's Jack Becker, who wrote the overview essay on public art for CAN. [LINK]