I am so excited to share a new adventure in economic research and community. I am delighted to share in the role in taking over Sun Spot, a cooperative local artist shop at the Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley open on Saturdays from 9a-1pm. Elena Yu created and founded the project in 2022 and I participated as a member artist.
This year, I am looking forward to building upon previous experience with artist-and-alternative economies as well as learning about desert weekend marketplace exchanges. The site is a hub for bargain hunters and desert conversationalists alike.
I am working alongside the amazing fellow desert artist, Jillian Sandell, as Sun Spot’s co-stewards for this season. We are doing our best to learn alongside Elena’s vision and the current artist members experiences as we manifest a marketplace for artists that stands proudly outside of grind culture and wealthy patronage which often persists in popular imaginations of artist offerings.
Sun Spot offers a hub for shopping for artist’s local and experimental works as well as workshops and performative engagements during the shop’s Saturday hours. Please stay tuned to the project’s instagram account for the latest in workshop offerings.
A collection of currencies I have come across through my Brooklyn Torch Project will be on display in a group show at the Galveston Arts Center in an exhibition curated by Dennis Nance titled Value Exchange this summer/fall. If you are in or near Galveston, please check it out.
July 13 – October 6, 2019 Opening Reception, Saturday, July 13, 2019 6:00 – 9:00 PM Artist talks at 6:30 PM
We revived the Brooklyn Torch Trade Store at Proteus Gowanus on February 21st. As part of their current exhibition on Labor in their series on Commerce, the Brooklyn Torch Project has been invited to tender a medium of exchange for the Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op, selling Autonomous Zapatista Coffee in the gallery.
The Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op is a project developed by Fran Ilich that offers organic coffee sourced locally in Chiapas, Mexico from Zapatista autonomous farms. Its goal is to connect social movements and geographical regions – Chiapas and New York City – and to create a horizontal financial flow between social movements.
I was honored to participate for the second time as an artist resource for three districts as part of PBNYC‘s participatory budgeting initiative to bring community funding and decision making back to the neighborhood.
On Sunday, April 28th join The Brooklyn Torch and TimeBanksNYC at NURTUREart Gallery for an afternoon of play exploring cooperative exchange. The Brooklyn Torch Project invites David Morgan, a co-creator of new board game ‘Co-opoly’ made by Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA) to demonstrate and support gameplay.
In Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives, players collaborate to found and run a democratic business. This is an exciting game of skill and solidarity, where everyone wins – or everybody loses.
Jessie Reilly of TimeBanksNYC will also facilitate a variety collaborative games, including a new twist on surrealist drawing and storytelling exercises which explore themes raised by participant’s relationships to time and money. As part of the Brooklyn Torch Economic Kindling Package, everyone who joins and completes a game with gallery visitors and neighbors, will be rewarded for their play-training session in Brooklyn Torches, North Brooklyn’s local currency. Brooklyn Torches are good for a wide range of local services and goods on our registry and in our Trade Stores.
Every first Saturday of every month in 2013, I plan to hold a Brooklyn Torch Trade Store at my studio in Greenpoint. If you’re around, you should come:
50 Dobbin Street (between Berry and Norman)
Brooklyn, NY 11222
