Come out to ARTBREAK 35 this weekend to help create the next new “Exceptional Friend” who will live in RAINBOW CITY, an installation of 35 inflated characters soaring as high as 50 feet, opening in THE COMMON PARK in late October. Academy Award-winning animation artist and filmmaker William Joyce wants an ARTBREAK play date with you to help design the newest Friend for RAINBOW CITY. ARTBREAK 35 is the start of a beautiful friendship between Joyce, the creators of RAINBOW CITY – fine art collaborative FriendsWithYou team Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III – and the Shreveport Regional Arts Council, as we all make new “FriendsWithYou.”
RAINBOW CITY will be installed during a six-week period in THE COMMON PARK in October. RAINBOW CITY will be completely interactive for a dynamic public experience. The installation will be open daily for six weeks during which time school students, afterschool program groups, churches, day care centers, book clubs, college art departments and “everyone” will tour and engage the experience.
FriendsWithYou will spend much of 2019 in Shreveport as artists in residence working with Joyce and Northwest Louisiana artists to install RAINBOW CITY in the city’s new 2.5-acre urban park, THE COMMON PARK, in the heart of the downtown revitalization project Shreveport Common. THE COMMON PARK will anchor the nine blocks on the western edge of downtown Shreveport that the city is working to revitalize through creative place making initiatives. Borkson and Sandoval will start their year-long artist residency with SRAC and Joyce at ARTBREAK on Thursday, April 25, by helping 100 Very Special Arts Festival students from the Caddo Schools Department of Exceptional Children draw and design a version of the newest “Exceptional Friend” for THE COMMON PARK. The Very Special Arts Festival is an especially appropriate venue for FriendsWithYou, whose mission is to use art as a tool to heal, empower and encourage people to love themselves and be compassionate toward each other and our world.
FriendsWithYou are international pioneers in the field of experiential art. Borkson and Sandoval are known for their immersive installations and inflatable sculptures, whose work reaches beyond the contemporary art world into popular culture. They create experiences that draw audiences into a magical world where the line between imagination and reality is blurred.
Their “Little Cloud” inflatable was the newest balloon to lead the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in November. FriendsWithYou’s work has been exhibited at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Art Basel in Miami Beach; Dallas Contemporary; Haus de Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; The High Line, New York; and most recently at the Oakland Museum of California, to name a few.
Following ArtBreak, the FriendsWithYou yearlong artist residency will include dynamic programming. Students in grades K-6 across Northwest Louisiana will be invited to experience the S.T.E.A.M. learning of RAINBOW CITY including the science of the gases that give lift to the balloons, the technology of the installation, the engineering of the creation of the costumed characters and the math of the geometric designs.
The social service communities of Shreveport Common will each custom design a “dancing man” that uniquely represents the mission of the organization including Providence House, Mercy Center, McAdoo Center, VOA LightHouse and the VOA Senior Citizens’ VISIONS Program.
The “dancing men” will form a trail leading from RAINBOW CITY to artspace, where a FriendsWithYou retrospective of the 17 years of Borkson and Sandoval will be exhibited.
Don’t miss your chance to create a new friend with professional Northwest Louisiana artists under the direction of “Rolie Polie Olie” creator William Joyce and FriendsWithYou Los Angeles artists Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III during the 35th Annual ArtBreak Festival at the Shreveport Convention Center! Doors open to the public Friday at 5 p.m. On Saturday, ArtBreak runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. Parking is free.
For additional information, go to www.artbreaksb.com.
