FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Art & Elements—Second Installation of Street Scenes— To Open
October 18 With Dirt Mosaics and Sand Drawings Throughout DC

October 5, 2006

Contact: Welmoed Laanstra
301-270-4648, 301-651-8275
wlaanstra@aol.com
www.streetscenesdc.com

WASHINGTON, DC – Art & Elements, the second project of an ambitious public arts program, will launch on October 18, 2006, as two artists, Cal Lane and Linn Meyers, will create temporary installations on the streets of Washington, DC.
Art & Elements is an installation of Street Scenes: Projects for DC, which has been established by local independent art curators to mount temporary public art interventions.
Art & Elements—which was created in collaboration with leading art galleries, art institutions, and commercial enterprises of Washington—will showcase the works of two artists who usually work in different mediums. Using sand and dirt, they will create temporary art works at different times and different locations throughout the city over the course of seven days. Cal Lane, an artist and a welder, has created large-scale outdoor sculptures. Most recently, she created a work for the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, NY. Linn Meyers is well-known within the Washington art world for producing precise and colorful line drawings. The project will start on October 18 with an installation at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in the vibrant new arts community on H Street NE.

It will end on October 24, with three installations in Chinatown. In contrast to the premier project of Street Scenes, Art not Ads (during which mobile billboards cruised the streets of Washington with poetry, painting and video works), this October project will showcase artists at work at fixed locations. The dirt and sand installations will be on public display at the following locations from October 18 through October 24, weather permitting:

Wednesday October 18 / H Street Corridor NE
Atlas Performing Arts Center,1333 H Street NE
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Thursday October 19/ 14th Street Art Corridor
Studio Theatre/ 1501 14th Street NW
Transformer /1404 P Street NW
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Friday, October 20/ Adams Morgan
Park on Euclid Street NW/ Champlain Street NW / Columbia Road NW
Champlain Street / Columbia Road N.W.
Design Within Reach/ 1838 Columbia Road N.W.
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Saturday October 21/ Uptown
Comet Ping Pong/ 5037 Connecticut Avenue NW
Buck’s Fishing & Camping/ 5031 Connecticut Avenue NW
Politics and Prose/ 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
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Sunday October 22/ Chinatown
Goethe-Institut/ 812 7th Street NW
American Society of Landscape Architects/ 636 I Street NW
Lee & Associates/ 833 7th Street NW

“By seeing artists at work on the streets of Washington, DC residents, workers and visitors will be able to understand and appreciate what artists do,” says Welmoed Laanstra, one of the exhibit’s curators. “The artwork is temporary and so is the art experience. But by presenting art that uses the most mundane materials in the most common of places—the streets of the city—we hope we can encourage people to recognize beauty in their daily surroundings.”

In an essay for the Street Scenes series, Nora Halpern, co-curator of the project, observes,

Washington is rich in its cultural institutions. But given the long history andstructure of these organizations, there can be an inherent inflexibility when it comes to mission and form. Curators need to work outside of these institutional systems and strip the walls away from exhibitions and collections—to consider the entire city as a gallery space. Street Scenes seeks to broaden the viewer’s sense of a museum, a library or a performance space and to reinforce the thought that “all the world’s a stage”—or, in this case, a performance, a poem, an artwork.

Art & Elements is curated by Nora Halpern and Welmoed Laanstra. Halpern is an independent curator and Vice President for Leadership Advancement at Americans for the Arts. Laanstra, an independent art curator, was the curator and organizer of Found Sound, a public art program that last year presented sound art in sound booths placed on sidewalks across Washington. Found Sound was the first collaboration for Halpern and Laanstra.
Reporting on Art not Ads, The Washington Post noted, “The inaugural event showcases works by an impressive group of local and national artists....Both Halpern and Laanstra know what they’re doing....Halpern and Laansta have harnessed an impressive amount of energy, volunteerism and support form the area’s galleries, artists and local governments. For this they deserve our applause.”

ART AND ELEMENTS has been made possible by the support of the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Downtown BID, the Public Arts Trust of Montgomery County, Arlington Cultural Affairs, the Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust, Chrome Digital Imaging and Photography, Atlas Performing Arts Center, The Studio Theatre, G Fine Art, Curator’s Office, Conner Contemporary Art, Transformer Gallery, Hemphill, Strand on Volta, Buck’ s Fishing & Camping, Comet Ping Pong, Politics & Prose, Design Within Reach, Goethe-Institut, The American Society of Landscape Architects, Adams Morgan BID, and others. Special thanks to Donna Hanousek and Denise Wiktor at DDoT. Donations are being made through Provisions Library.

For more information on Art & Elements or Street Scenes, contact Welmoed Laanstra at
301-651-8275 or wlaanstra@aol.com. Or go to the website at www.streetscenesdc.com
For more information on Provisions Library, contact Don Russell at 202-299-0460 or pl@provisionslibrary.org or visit their website at www.provisionslibrary.org.