Community engages in art to promote stories of Shreveport Common
As part of the Shreveport Regional Arts Council’s artist in residency program, Nick Cave has become a messenger in the Shreveport-Bossier City community.
Cave’s message is to tell the stories and share the voices of Shreveport Common in an all-out artistic performance scheduled March 20 at the Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium. Shreveport Common is a nine-block area around Central ARTSTATION that is home to more than 800 people in the city. SRAC is working to revitalize the space and draw the community with Cave’s project to aid in that goal.
Pam Atchison, SRAC executive director, said the nonprofit sees Shreveport Common as a huge DIY neighborhood.
“This is part of that UNSCENE! project that we created that is designed to bring in that national artist to discover something new about our local artist community and the indelibleness of it is that it goes on. When Nick leaves, these artists are still equipped to make great art, to think about art differently and to think about our neighbors differently, and hopefully, the artist will start incorporating the personalities and stories of the neighbors and how they make art,” Atchison said. “It’s really important that this project be about incorporating or involving as many local artists as possible.”
Part of Cave’s eight-month residency will be working with different nonprofits: Providence House, Mercy Center, VOA McAdoo and the Youth Programs at the VOA Lighthouse; and seven artists from the Northwest Louisiana Artists: Sherry Tamburo, Heather Beauvais, Luther Cox Jr., Poetic X, Jerry Davenport, Karen La Beau and Kathryn Usher.
This collaborative effort will focus on the creation of the art that Cave is bestknown for: Sound Suits. His Sound Suits are created from materials – any and every material that Cave is attracted to – and are then formed into suits that can be worn. Essentially, Cave’s art are wearable performance pieces.
Cave said his Sound Suits strip the performer of their identity, and soon they take on the suit’s personality.
“It’s not about fashion but about using the body as a vehicle. It becomes the carrier,” he said.
Cave created his art for sculpture first and then evolved it into performance art. In 1991, his perspective changed after the Rodney King beating causing Cave to make his first Sound Suit.
“It sort of flipped my world around, and that is when I realized that I was an artist with a civic responsibility, and it changed how I wanted to engage my creative impulse. [I wanted to] find a way in which [my art] would matter in a larger context in terms of the world,” Cave said.
Surrounded by beaded blankets in progress, Cave explained the unknown of his artwork involving the community. “We can identify it in multiple ways, we can respond to it in multiple ways,” Cave said. “The fact that it takes on all of these personas, it’s how does this object – and how will his object be used.”
Cave said he wants the artist to, in effect, become the artwork and tell their personal story.
“We are working with these organizations and they are building the pieces, and we want them to sort of look at this as a selfportrait,” Cave said. “What does that mean when you are creating this sort of blanket and how does that make you feel in terms of bringing a narrative to it? We are open to any ways in which one may want to approach the project, but the end result is sort of larger cloth of sorts.”
Cave said his approach to working with the community is not to show them how, but to allow them to express themselves.
“We don’t want to limit people’s expectations. Tell us what they are interested in doing and then sort of direct. Because it’s important that they each have their own sort of personality and their own look,” he said.
The artists have plans to make more than 300 pieces. These pieces can be seen throughout the community at what Cave is infamous for: invasions. Cave’s invasions are sporadic performances around the city in which performers wear the Sound Suits and invade a space.
“[These are] something that just sort of throws off your day,” Cave said. “What do you do with that sort of information? Again, creating ways to facilitate what’s to come. These are trailers or glimpses of what will happen March 20.”
After about seven invasions planned throughout Shreveport-Bossier City, Cave will conclude his residency with a largescale performance March 20, in which each of the pieces made by the community get their chance in the spotlight. The event will not only display Cave’s work but also encompass the Shreveport- Bossier City’s creative community.
“We are trying to localize this piece as much as possible. It’s me coming here with a vision and hiring the community to build the project,” Cave said. “At the end of the day, it’s really about that dynamic relationship – rebuilding and reconnecting people to one another. There’s going to be music components. There’s going to be dance components, spoken word components, and all of these things are happening as we speak, in doing their research on materials. And then I will come in and basically pull all of these elements together to build the project.”
Not only is SRAC inviting artists to help with this project but the council is giving the community a chance to create the Sound Suits during bead-a-thons. The first one is scheduled in October during the Louisiana Film Prize screening at Central ARTSTATION. During the intermission at the Film Prize location, the community can help bead a piece that will be seen in the March 20 performance.
“When I am creating an exhibition, it has to operate in a particular way. It has to work and function in a particular way,” Cave said. “It’s like when I finish a Sound Suit, there’s a heartbeat to it. I do not release it until it’s ready.”
He said one of his favorite things to do is to let the art do the work and tell the story.
“Because [this artwork] is not for me at the end of the day,” Cave said. “I am just the messenger.”
–Lydia Earhart
WANT TO GO?
For more information on bead-a-thons or the March 20 performance, go to shrevearts. org or follow SRAC on Facebook at facebook.com/ shreveportregionalartscouncil.
