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]

Three artists will stage a public event in New York's Dead Horse Bay, August 16, 2008, during the convergence of sunset, moonrise and high tide. The event is part of an iLAND collaborative residency by choreographer Sarah White, architect Angel Ayón and visual artist Gerald Marks. The project explores the dynamic of man’s interactions with the natural environment over time and as it applies to this area of coastline, once home to horse-processing and fish-oil plants. Nature has reclaimed much of the bay, now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. "Through these public events [August 16, September 14, October 12]," say the artists,"we would like to call attention to a multidimensional experience of this particular coastal landscape … spatially, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually." iLAND (interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance) is directed by choreographer Jennifer Monson. [LINK]

SPARC, the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice, Calif., is at work on three important monuments: to Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. SPARC Founder Judy Baca's designs won commissions for all three. The Chavez monument at California's San Jose State University will honor the American labor leader and founder of the United Farm Workers of America with a Mayan corbelled arch and images illustrating his activism. The 350' King monument (with Philip Matzengeit), on the I-94 freeway in San Diego, Calif., will comprise three 30' laser-cut steel murals representing apsects of King's work: racial equality, economic justice and peace. The Kennedy monument, on facing arches at the Ambassador Hotel site in Los Angeles, where Kennedy died, will also be steel-cut murals. See SPARC's Web site for details. [LINK]

California artist Kent Twitchell has won what is believed to be the largest payout ever under the Federal Visual Rights Act and the California Art Preservation Act. Two years ago, Twitchell's massive Downtown L.A. mural of pop artist Ed Ruscha was "rudely painted over by work crews," said Richard Guzman in the Downtown News (5/2/08). "Now, following last week’s $1.1 million settlement between the artist, the federal government and 12 other defendants - including the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles, which was readying the building at 1031 S. Hill St. for a new YWCA Job Corps Center when the mural was painted over - the 70-foot-tall 'Ed Ruscha Monument' could find a new home in Downtown." Twitchell spent nine years working on the mural, starting in 1978. A work crew erased it in a matter of hours. [LINK]

With the first event of its kind at a national political convention, Denver's Office of Cultural Affairs will launch neighborhood public art events for the Democratic Convention. "Dialog:City: An Event Converging Art, Democracy and Digital Media" will feature ten site-specific art installations catalyzing public discourse in neighborhoods throughout Denver, August 21-29, 2008. They will include "Partly Sunny: Designs to Change the Forecast," a climate-change showcase by Charlie Cannon and 100 Rhode Island School of Design students; a text reframing queer identity in public life, recited by Sharon Hayes and 100 volunteers; "Artificial Intelligence is better than no Intelligence at all," an artificial being running for president created by Lynn Hershman Leeson; "Karaoke Convention 2008," a karaoke device for bars and clubs by Daniel Peltz that lets you perform public addresses by 2008 presidential candidates; and more. (Thanks, Animating Democracy.) [LINK]

Artist Richard Kamler's project "Seeing Peace: Artists Collaborate with the United Nations" surfaces with Peace Billboards, May 26, 2008, in San Francisco. Ten artists form ten member states of the United Nations were asked to imagine what peace looks like from their unique cultural perspectives. Starting May 26, their visions will be displayed on full-sized outdoor billboards all over San Francisco. The artists are from South Africa, Cuba, Tibet, Puerto Rico, U.S., Iran, Ukraine, El Salvador, Japan and Israel. "The aim of this project," says Kamler, "is to incite members of our community to imagine for themselves their own vision of peace. Because if we cannot first imagine peace, we may never make it so." Some of the participating artists will join a May 26 bus tour to all the billboards sites, discussing the work and returning to the University of San Francisco for a reception. [LINK]

Photographer Christopher Irion unveils The Dogpatch Portrait Project in the oldest, largest and most intact industrial complex in San Francisco, May 15, 2008. It's part of his ongoing PhotoBooth Project to document communities across the U.S. and create public installations of the collected portraits in those communities. Dogpatch is a nine-square-block area on the Waterfront with a distinctive and colorful history that "... contains architecturally and historically significant workers' cottages, factories, warehouses and public buildings constructed between 1860 to 1945," says John Borg in "The Story of Dogpatch," online. "It is one of the few neighborhoods to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire." The unveiling, which Irion calls "a great party and a chance for the neighborhood to get together and meet each other" is on the sidewalk at 900 Minnesota St., 5-7 p.m. Refreshments will be served. [LINK]

May 3, 2008, is the opening of the third annual round of installations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin's neighborhoods by IN:SITE, a resource for temporary public art in the city and county. This year's installations, in the Sherman Park neighborhood, include Green Gallery-owner John Riepenhoff's vending-machine project at the Sherman Perk Coffee Shop, retrofitted to show and sell postcard photographs of Milwaukee by ten different artists. Madison artist Melanie Kehoss will show "Local Accents" in the park, sidewalk stencils of decorative elements she observed in local residents' homes. Art student Cari Enot will install "Step It Up Milwaukee," an "interactive trash can" at the bus stop at Chambers and Sherman, intended to raise awareness of the connection between waste, consumerism and their after-effects on the environment. There's also a celebration of the first IN:SITE mentorship project. [LINK]

The District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities is seeking an artist or artist team to enhance the Metropolitan Branch Trail. The selected artist(s) will work with urban designers, transportation and trail planners, landscape architects, civil engineers and District government employees to create a plan that visually unifies an eight-mile multi-use trail running from Silver Spring, Md., to D.C.'s Union Station. It will connect to the Capital Crescent Trail, the Anacostia Tributaries Trail System and the National Mall, part of the East Coast Greenway. This "artistic driven identity" will be included in the trail's signage, amenities maps and materials. The Commissions is working with the District Department of Transportation and surrounding communities. The commission, worth $7,550, is open only to artists in D.C., Virginia and Maryland. [LINK]

Looking to "wake up community movements through new forms of cultural art villages and by restoring small communities that have disappeared in rapid industrialization"? Apply for a residency in South Korea through the Seok-Su Art Project, August 1-October 30, 2008. Stone & Water, a nonprofit , community-based "supplemental art space" in An-Yang, has organized the SAP for 20-25 Korean and international artists. Successul residency candidates can expect to carry out public art and ecological projects using vacant spaces around Seok-Su Market and An-yang River; to conduct activities to restore small communities; and to conduct education/art programs with local residents. Residency activities are supported by Arts Council Korea and An-yang City. Photos from SAP 2007 may be found online at: http://www.cyworld.com/stonenwaterresidency. [LINK]

CAN is happy to welcome visual artist Michael Schwartz to Blognet, a network of Weblogs from all over our community, relayed electronically to the CAN site through rss feeds. Schwartz's blog, "Community Arts and Murals," reports on participatory and community-based visual arts projects. Says Schwartz: "We will examine how projects transform the places we live, change and save lives, transcend differences, challenge stereotypes and build a more egalitarian and democratic society." His latest posts are about his most recent project, "Hello Tucson, Hello Philadelphia." They include videos of schoolkids in both cities doing a creative exchange about their neighborhoods and compiling the information for murals at both schools. And Schwartz has embedded the CAN widget on his blogsite, cycling APInews to his online audience automatically. [LINK]

New critical texts about public art and community interaction have been commissioned by ixia, England's public-art think tank, and they're posted online. Available are: "A New Year Provocation for 2008" by artist David Patten, arguing that keeping artists out of the public-art development process, sheltered by agencies and curators, can add to the sense of unease and mystery over the artist’s role; "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out! " by Freee (artists Mel Jordan, Andy Hewitt and Dave Beech), introducing their work and challenges readers to rethink the role that artists continue to "quietly and predictably" occupy in public space; and "Art with Communities: Reflections on a Changing Landscape" by artist Loraine Leeson, reflecting on how her community practice has had to shift in relation to the changing politics from the '70s to the present. [LINK]

"Public Art 360: Symposium from Seven Perspectives," is a conferene April 11–12, 2008, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This conference, say the sponsors, will "address current and future orientations on public art from the perspectives of the artist, architect, landscape architect, government, private interests, community and critic, recognizing the inherent complexities in a public art process when multiple constituencies need voice and there is potential for conflicting perspectives among commissioning organizations, review agencies, elected officials, taxpayers, design professionals and artists." Seven keynote discussions will frame critical issues associated with how public art projects can be initiated, approved, funded and implemented; how to reinforce shared objectives through a public review process; and implications for public policy. Speakers include nationally prominent practitioners from the field. Area tours feature local public art and artist studios, including Durham's Golden Belt, a new artist live-work housing-redevelopment project. [LINK]

Good news: The role of community-based arts and culture in neighborhood revitalization is the subject of a new publication from three major entities in the field. "Creativity and Neighborhood Development: Strategies for Community Investment" is a monograph resulting from and 18-month collaboration among The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), the Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) at the University of Pennsylvania and the Rockefeller Foundation. the monograph recommends investing public, public and philanthropic resources in "community-based creative activity" to enhance the community's place-making role and potential. Place-making ventures worth investing in: art-making projects that engage communities; artist live-work space; creative partnerships between individuals and organizations; commissioned research and "the creation of a data infrastructure that can highlight emerging trends, markets and opportunities, influence policy, and inform ongoing evaluation geared toward increasing investment impact." Download it on the Web. [LINK]

Visitors to Highways Performance Space's exhibition "Right in Public" will take a field trip to a traffic island on March 9, courtesy of Islands of L.A., an ongoing artwork conceived by artist Ari Kletzky that is turning traffic islands into "territories of art to create community, promote intellectual discussions in public and explore the use and availability of public space." The Highways "activity-experiment" in Santa Monica, Calif., is part of "Who Owns Public Space," an Islands project that began on February 2 on a traffic island in L.A.'s Echo Park with Kletzky handing out mini-postcards asking the community that question. A few days later, he took the project to Newtown’s Hugely Tiny Festival in Pasadena with a mini-traffic-island float. On March 28, Kletky leads a salon at Farmlab in downtown L.A. A diary and slideshow are on the Web. [LINK]

"Increasingly, there are two intellectual platforms for art in public," says Jeremy Hunt, guest editor of the fall/winter issue of Public Art Review, "art in the service of political engineering and social values, and... art centered mainly on artistic concepts and aesthetic ideals." Hunt, editor of the U.K.'s Art and Architecture Journal, produced an issue on public art in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He roots the schism in "funding, power and control": Arts Council England, the government funding body with an annual budget of £411m, "has dictated that publicly funded arts should make a measurable contribution to its sustainable-communities agenda. Art is expected to improve education in impoverished schools, raise health standards, reduce crime...[etc.]. ...[I]t is little wonder that arts administrators place community interest first." Alas, it's only available in print. [LINK]

"Cherry Blossoms" is a riveting recent public performance work by artist Alyssa Wright pointing to Americans' underestimation of the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the current war. The project starts in a backpack outfitted with a microcontroller and GPS unit. News of recent bombings in Iraq is downloaded to the unit every night, and their relative locations are superimposed on a map of Boston. If the wearer walks in a space in Boston that correlates to a site of violence in Baghdad, the backpack detonates and releases a compressed-air cloud of confetti, each piece inscribed with the name of a civilian who died in the war and his/her death circumstances. Wright is a master's student in the MIT Media Lab. Maps, a gallery, methodology and data sources are on the Web. [LINK]

Students Jorgen Tandberg and Yo Murata are the winners of the Bat House Competition, and their design for an urban bat house will be built at the Wetlands Centre in South London. The competition was initiated this year by artist Jeremy Deller and the Bat House Partners to highlight the potential for architects, builders, home-owners and conservationists to work together to produce wildlife-friendly building design. The public was challenged to design a building of aesthetic and environmental excellence, built with sustainable materials, offering a home to bats and an educational visitor attraction. Tandberg and Murata, fourth-year undergraduates at the Architectural Association, designed a complex, beautiful structure that looks like a picture in a frame. Jeremy Deller won the Turner Prize in 2004 with "Memory Bucket," a film including three million bats leaving Frio Cave in Texas. [LINK]

Students from Massachusetts College of Art will be "dining and sleeping in the public domain" during "Second Culture Sleep Over" in the windows of Mobius' new Boston artspace. Tonight, November 26, 2007, Milan Kohout of Mobius Artists Group and his performance art students will have dinner and sleep over in the artist-run space's floor-to-ceiling windows in full view of the street to "dissolve the sense of private space and turn it into a space very nearly in the public domain." The group is exploring the Czech underground movement idea of "Second Culture," which initiated a peaceful revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Kohout, a Czech native, was a member of the "Second Culture" artist's movement and of the dissident human-rights organization Charter 77, a group of artists and activists nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. [LINK]

Public artist Brett Cook is in Durham, N.C., for a new community residency project called "Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life." It will commission eight to ten large collaborative murals based on interviews with community members and research of historic persons and events in South Central Durham. The project will connect faculty, students, staff and local residents. Cook is in Durham for two weeks gathering participants and working on the first mural. His residency continues during winter/spring 2008, when he will live in Durham and teach a documentary public art course for Duke and UNC students. The project, including a gallery exhibit, a catalog and a Web site is sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke and the Southwest Central Durham Quality of Life Project. [LINK]

Tapeart.com is a remarkable Web site documenting the work of three public artists who create temporary, large-scale murals and installations for teaching and healing. Since 1989, The Tape Artists have worked using a special low-density tape in hospitals, schools and psychiatric institutes "looking to positively reinforce healthy processes." Notable are the site's sections on the Hope Project: work in Oklahoma after the 1995 Federal Building bombing, and in New York after 9/11, when they drew life-sized portraits of every lost airline passenger and fireman on the buildings of Manhattan. The figures held up fingers counting all 2,749 who died in the attack. The Web document, "Eleventh of September: an act of remembrance," uses innovative technologies (including Google maps) to compile five years of documentation and biographical information relating to the project and the people depicted. [LINK]

New York City schoolchildren are handing out 80,000 flowers throughout the city today, November 1, 2007, to raise awareness of their public art project, Garden in Transit. 23,000 children in schools and hospitals have painted 80,000 flowers on 750,000 square feet of adhesive panels for a four-month public art exhibition featured on taxis citywide. The project was originated in 2000 by two brothers, Ed and Bernie Massey, who say, "Using our 1" brushes as a base, the GIT participants have painted the equivalent of a 1" straight line from NYC to Vail, Colorado, a distance of more than 1,700 miles." During the process, the children participated in civic educational sessions, led by the Massey's Portraits of Hope initiative, about the environment, education, senior care, national security, ethnic relations, healthcare, women's equality, medical research, foreign aid, poverty and animal rights. Lots more on the Web. [LINK]

Six hundred leaves incised with peace wishes and the sacred Sanskrit syllable Om were floated on the Chicago River by dozens of canoeists, October 6, 2007. The artwork, "Where Sky Meets Water," initiated by Indian-born artist Indira Freitas Johnson as an offering for peace, is rooted in the South Asian tradition where offerings of leaves and flowers are sent out into the rivers and seas from China to Japan, Bali to India. "I wanted to engage local communities in the various aspects of the project: planning, gathering leaves, incising symbols that are meaningful to them and finally, to come together in a culminating ritual that allowed the leaves to float away with the tide and the wind," says Johnson. She and community members spent two years preparing the leaves. [LINK]