This audio was recorded by Caldera Youth at the "A Day In Paradise" series of events on Saturday October 24, 2015. Thanks to Beans, Little Hawk, the interviewees, and all Caldera helpers.
Edited and produced by Erin Yanke.
Fallen Fruit creates art installations in cities around the world, featuring a fruit specific to each project place–for Portland, that fruit is the apple. Using the apple as metaphor, Fallen Fruit of Portland will explore concepts of place and history in the context of complexities unique to Portland.
A Day in Paradise
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Join us for a day of free public events with Caldera youth, Fallen Fruit (David Allen Burns and Austin Young), Oregon artists, and the Portland Art Museum.
Paradise
Saturday, October 24, 2015 from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. (through Sunday, January 17, 2016)
(Opening date: Saturday, October 24 is also a Miller Family Free Day)
Location: Portland Art Museum
This exhibit, on display in the Portland Art Museum’s Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Sculpture Court beginning late October and running through January, includes a backdrop of lavish, custom-designed, apple-themed wallpaper and selected works of art and historical objects from the Museum’s collections. Paradise will explore the symbolic meaning of the apple and Fallen Fruit of Portland’s core themes: Western expansion and immigration, definitions of morality, and localized histories and complexities of the city of Portland. For more information click here.
Partner: Portland Art Museum
Fruit Magazine
Saturday, October 24, 2015 from Noon–5 p.m.
Location: Portland Art Museum
To coincide with the opening of Paradise at the Portland Art Museum, in one day, an invited team of artists, cultural leaders, Caldera youth, and the general public will use fruit and its metaphors to create a limited edition contemporary culture magazine. “Fruit Magazine”‘s Portland-specific content will feature native languages and visual vocabularies that reflect Portland’s diversity. “Fruit Magazine” will be published in a limited edition of 100 copies; plus artists’ proofs to match the number of contributors. The printed magazine will be distributed to the public and a downloadable version will be posted accessible at www.CalderaArts.org/FallenFruitPDX and www.fallenfruit.org.
Partner: Portland Art Museum
The Culture of We
Saturday, October 24 from 12 p.m.–5 p.m. (through November 13, 2015 with First Thursday Public Reception on November 5 from 5:30 p.m.–8 p.m.)
Location: Wieden+Kennedy Gallery (224 NW 13th Ave. Portland, OR 97209)
“The Culture of We” showcases the power of creativity through the voices of Caldera students. Students will learn about curation from Fallen Fruit’s David and Austin during the installation of “Paradise” at the Portland Art Museum, and will use that knowledge to curate their own student companion exhibition, “The Culture of We”, in the Wieden+Kennedy Gallery. About 100 pieces of Caldera student work by 75 students will be displayed over an apple-themed wallpaper, custom-designed by Fallen Fruit. Hung salon-style, the artwork creates a dialogue of how the individual contributes to community while reflecting unique youth perspectives, reactions, and inspirations, and highlights Caldera’s focus on the integration of art and nature. See photos of the exhibition on Facebook here.
A Day In Paradise Artist Projects
Saturday, October 24, 2015 from Noon–8 p.m. (Various times for each project)
Locations: Throughout Portland
Fallen Fruit of Portland will curate seven Oregon-based artists’ projects for “A Day in Paradise Artist Projects”. Each of these projects speak to Fallen Fruit of Portland’s themes in work that varies in media and materials.
Artists include: Natalie Ball, Chiloquin; Bruce Conkle, Portland; Bill Cravis, Bend; Tahni Holt, Portland; Aaron Lish, Bend; Jess Perlitz, Portland; and DeAngelo Raines, Portland. See artist bios and details of installations here.
Partners: Regional Arts & Culture Council, Portland City Parks, Portland Art Museum
About Fallen Fruit
Originally conceived in 2004 by David Allen Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young (and continued since 2013 by Burns and Young), Fallen Fruit began by mapping fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles. The collaboration has expanded to include serialized public projects and site-specific installations and happenings in various cities around the world. Fallen Fruit’s visual work includes an ongoing series of narrative photographs, wallpapers, everyday objects and video works that explore the social and political implications of our relationship to fruit and world around us. Recent curatorial projects re-index the social and historical complexities of museums and archives by re-installing permanent collections through syntactical relationships of fruit as subject. Fallen Fruit is part of Pasadena Arts Council’s EMERGE Fiscal Sponsorship Program, 2013 Creative Capital Grantee, Emerging Fields 2013, and Muriel Pollia Foundation Awardee. More information at www.fallenfruit.org.
Bios
David Allen Burns is a life-long Californian and native of Los Angeles. He earned an MFA in Studio Art from University of California, Irvine and a BFA from California Institute of the Arts. David is a co-founder of Fallen Fruit. Prior to his work with Fallen Fruit, David was core faculty in two programs at CalArts from 1994 to 2008. David’s curatorial practice investigates narrative structures in contemporary art with notable exhibitions for the journal Leonardo at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.; the Armory Center for the Arts; and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Currently, David is on the faculty of the Social Practice graduate program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Concurrent to the development of his career in contemporary art and academics, David has built expertise in corporate branding strategy, advertising and television as a technical consultant for projects with Mercedes Benz, Discovery Channel, SEGA Gameworks and others. David’s work activates the nuances of social spaces, public archives and cultural indexes as an authentic negotiation of concepts that reframe real-time and the real-world.
Austin Young grew up in Reno, Nevada. He is a co-founder of Fallen Fruit. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and studied painting at Parsons in Paris, France. Early in his career, Austin transferred his interests from traditional painting and taught himself portrait photography. In many ways, Austin is more accurately described as an image-maker: his works illustrate the sublime qualities of character that make celebrated people unique. Based on a visual language of iconography, his trademark style and techniques have captured musicians, artists and celebrities including Debbie Harry, Leigh Bowery and Margaret Cho. In several series, Austin captures portraits of drag and transgendered subjects, confusing personality and identity issues in confrontational and unapologetic images of people who do not cross gender but instead split gender and socially-constructed identity. Recently, Austin’s portraiture practice has become a reality TV subject, with Austin featured as a reoccurring character on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Gene Simmons Family Jewels. Austin directed and produced a feature length documentary, Hadda Brooks, This is My Life, about torch singer Hadda Brooks, and has completed production on his second feature film, a crowd-sourced musical titled TBD, a musical play and video by EVERYONE who comes.
Elizabeth Quinn (Little Hawk) is the Creative Director for Caldera. Previous to her work at Caldera, she was the Founding Editor of High Desert Journal, a publication that strives for a deeper understanding of the interior West through arts and literature. She also helped found Playa, a residency program in Summer Lake, Oregon, and was the Director of The Dalles Art Association. Having worked across Oregon, Elizabeth has developed in-depth knowledge of arts communities throughout the state and an understanding of the unique needs of artists from diverse backgrounds.
- KBOO