The Teen New Media Program at the ICA is having its annual Spring Showcase on May 25th, from 5-9.
Come and see:
The event is free and open to the public.
Institute of Contemporary Art
25 Harbor Shore Drive
Boston, MA 02110
Red Line to South Station
Silver Line to Courthouse
The ICA Slam Team headed to the Strand Theater in Dorchester last Saturday, April 28th, to compete in the final round of this year’s Louder Than a Bomb youth slam festival. Carloyn, Tubby, Vicrtoria, Mithsuca, and Sydney ate a delicious lunch together with their coaches — and last year’s team member Cece and her new baby Cha’Niyaa!
The sun was out. They practiced all afternoon. Finals is always a special day, but this was extra sentimental because it’s Mithsuca, Carolyn, Victoria, and Sydney’s last year with the team.
The event began with individual poems — Mithsuca, Carloyn, Victoria and Sydney performed and they killed it! The whole event was amazing and everybody was super impressive. The last round was for group pieces, and Tubby, Sydney, Victoria, and Mithsuca did a piece together. Cece and Cha’Niyaa were amazing cheerleaders through the whole event!
The whole night was completely magical, and in the end it was announced that the ICA slam team came in 2nd place! We are so proud and happy for our poets and all their hard work.
On top of it all, Coach Febo received the 2018 Charmaine Santiago Galdon Coaches award. A huge and well-deserved honor!
After months of collaborative preparation, three ICA teens — Mithsuca Berry, Sydney Bobb, and Gabe S. — created site-specific original artwork for display on the triptych monitors at many MBTA stops and stations. The themes addressed by the work include “whimsy”, a “love letter to Boston”, and “peace and quiet”. Check out the write-ups in the Boston Globe and the Boston Metro and watch the videos below!
This past fall, ICA Teen Programs has had the chance for a couple fun trips over to East Boston. With the development of the ICA’s Watershed installation space on the horizon, it’s good to befriend our future neighbors — and it’s just a water taxi ride away!
In November, Fast Forward Thursday, our beginner filmmaking class, took a trip to Zumix, a youth based music organization. Students went live on the air to share the audio projects that they had been working on. The pieces were inspired by favorite film genres and artwork in the ICA galleries, and after each piece, students got a chance to discuss their thoughts and process with our Zumix Youth Radio program host, Dawry. Check out a recording of the broadcast.
Our Advanced Music Production class also had a chance to visit Zumix Radio in December to play some of the beats that they had composed in recent months on the radio. Listen to our beats and conversation!
Zumix also has a post about our visits on their blog.
Another recent East Boston crossover has been with Windy Films, a local indie production company. Both our Digital Photography: Special Focus class and Fast Forward Friday, our advanced filmmaking class, were lucky enough to participate in lighting workshops led by Tripp, one of the founders of Windy Films. Tripp also gave us a tour of the headquarters, showed us the various spaces and stages involved in the production of a film, and talked us through the genesis of a indie production company like Windy Films. Our field trips to Windy were fun and illuminating — especially when we got out the cameras and lights!
We look forward to participating even more with the East Boston neighborhoods as the launch of Watershed this summer approaches!
On December 16, the ICA hosted its third iteration of The Current, a teen-organized event and platform to showcase teen artwork and amplify youth voices through open discussion and engagement around contemporary art and current issues. The theme this round was “Nature”, taking a cue from the preoccupations of the ICA’s recent Mark Dion retrospective, “Misadventures of a 21st Century Naturalist“.
Amireh, a member of the ICA’s Teen Arts Council and the Current’s main emcee, led the crowd up to the galleries and began a conversation around several pieces from the Dion show. The group shared first impressions of the pieces, observations, and reflections on the complicated relationship between humanity and the natural world. After this primer on the theme, the audience returned to the cafe for the focal point of the event.
Five ICA teens — Dubem, Sydney, Mithsuca, Reyggie, and Be — had each prepared work of various media — drawing, film, sculpture, photography, and poetry — to showcase and discuss. The work was beautiful, brave, sensitive and truthful, touching on personal struggles, connections to the natural world, and ideas of the Self. Positivity and freedom took over the room as each teen artist provided their own thoughts and inspirations and invited the audience to discuss the themes of their work. Our conversations were honest and deep, and every participant was encouraging and empathetic — and so the conversation continued beyond The Current, beyond the ICA, into the city’s snowy streets and along their diverse ways and crossings.
As part of the ICA’s continued engagement with East Boston, the ICA Teens Special Focus and Advanced Digital Photography classes took a field trip on Saturday Dec. 1st to East Boston, in order to visit landmark sites, meet locals, and take pictures. We met at the ICA Seaport and took the water taxi across the harbor to Maverick Landing and walked to our first stop: Zumix, a long-running youth arts organization with a highlight on music and audio work.
We met Rene Dongo and Brittany Thomas, two staff working mainly with the Radio Lab, at Zumix. They showed us around and introduced us to Sindy Castillo, a local Latinx activist who brought a couple teens and staff to a nearby church that was offering community services.
After spending time with the teens and staff in the Zumix Radio Lab and Beatmaking Studio, we made for Eastie Farms, barely a block over. Director Kannan Thiruvengadam met us and talked the group through the inspirational history and many features of the publicly owned urban farm.
Kannan also led us to the East Boston Greenway, which is currently installed with a public artwork called FutureWATERS/AGUASfuturas, which demonstrates in real-space the anticipated flood water levels of 2030 and 2070. We could see clearly that the levels of 2070 were dangerously high –up to and above the heads of many in our group!
Our second to last stop was Atlantic Works Gallery, which is run out of a warehouse building off of Border St. by the East Boston Artist Group. There we met members of the Group, drank homemade apple cider, and enjoyed the artwork on display.
At about 3:30pm, with the sun barely still in the sky, we left Atlantic Works and walked back along Sumner over towards Maverick Station. Before hitting the Blue Line and going our separate ways, however, we made sure to stop in at La Sultana Bakery and enjoy some fresh, crispy empanadas as a group, reflecting on our day with the neighborhood.
We sat on the rocky slope of a hurricane barrier at Fort Phoenix beach, enjoying the ocean view. It was a misty afternoon and not the sunlit August weather we expected. Mark pointed to the water, explaining that as a teenager this was his favorite spot for swimming and diving. It was peculiar to think of Mark Dion, now a major contemporary artist, being our age and jumping off cliffs with friends. As Mark shared his story, I looked below my feet and saw a red object peeking out from between rocks. I recognized it to be an inhaler, an odd item to find on a beach. Jokingly, I asked Mark if he wanted it, knowing his artwork incorporates found objects. I expected a laugh, but Mark instead accepted my offer and handed me a plastic bag to grab it. Within minutes, all of the Teen Arts Council had climbed down the dike’s boulders to search for hidden treasures with Mark Dion. Onlookers may have thought we were collecting beach trash. However, we saw ourselves as studio assistants, finding colorful pieces of plastic Mark would hopefully incorporate into his art at the ICA.
This fall at the ICA, Mark Dion’s exhibition Misadventures of a 21st-Century Naturalist will become inspiration for our youth events: The Current and Teen Night. To prepare for these events, Teen Arts Council had the exclusive opportunity to tour Mark’s hometown. Over the course of our two-day adventure in New Bedford, TAC visited Mark’s home, explored museums, bought antiques, and yes, even collected beach trash with the artist.
Arriving in New Bedford, TAC first met [he greeted you, really] Mark at Mac’s Soda Bar, one of his favorite lunch spots. With stomachs full of quahogs and lobster rolls, we then stopped by Mark’s summer home. To reach his house, we walked down a long gravel road adjacent to a corn field, cow farm, and other barnyard animals. For city kids, these were unusual sights. As we walked, Mark acted like a true naturalist and pointed out various plant species. At the end of the road, we reached Mark’s cozy house with a gorgeous view of a saltmarsh and the sea. He brought us to the back deck where a table was covered in sea glass, rocks, and pottery fragments. These items collected from the beach would soon make their way into Mark’s artwork. Situated in the back room of his house, was [the clause before the comma modifies whatever comes right after it] Mark’s makeshift summer studio. In the studio, Mark was working on transforming modern objects like a cellphone into ancient sea relics. Finished pieces from this series are often shown in museums, but for TAC it was just as interesting to see them in an unfinished state.
Leaving Mark’s home studio, we then went on a historical walking tour of Fairhaven, a neighbor of New Bedford. As we entered the town’s library, Mark reminisced about the times he spent there as a child, reading books about science and nature. Following this town tour, we went to Fort Phoenix, where TAC helped Mark collect from the beach.
Starting the day at Mark’s studio gave TAC an intimate view into his working process and life style. We saw the ocean he collects specimens from, the room he creates art in, and the space where he spends time with family. The day then went on to show us the places that inspired him as a child his process for collecting objects. Following Fort Phoenix, our first day in New Bedford concluded at Martha’s Stewart’s favorite Portuguese restaurant, where TAC had dinner with Mark’s family.
Day two of our adventure began at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Mark arranged for the curator to lead a tour explaining the history of whaling in New Bedford. Surprisingly, the museum also featured art exhibits centered around knot tying and their large scrimshaw collection. Overall, the museum had a very interdisciplinary approach to the concept of whales and the whaling industry. The museum viewed the subject matter in terms of its social context, biological impacts, and utilization in art. While Mark’s art was not present in the museum, it was clear how the museum inspired his work.
During our second day, we also visited the New Bedford Art Museum. Here we viewed their main exhibition Plunge, which explores water and the ocean through the lens of an artist. This show was another example of art being combined with the study of nature. This museum also exhibited lifesize bird paintings by the naturalist John James Audubon. By bringing us to this museum, Mark continued to show us the ways science, art, and history overlap.
After our museum visits, we moved on to finding collectibles of our own at a New Bedford antique shop. TAC quickly scattered throughout the store, trying on vintage clothes, flipping through dusty books, and playing songs on heirloom pianos. After exploring the shop for hours, TAC reconvened to share their takeaways. Mithsuka left with a porcelain doll to paint, Nick found an assortment of toy cars to restart a childhood collection, and I picked up a book on carpets to learn about an interest of mine. Mark also left with a variety of objects, including a case of miniature seashells, possibly to become a part of his artwork.
Our second day in New Bedford focused less on Mark’s own artwork, but still left us thinking about the connections between art and science. With these ideas in mind, TAC then became collectors like Mark at the antique shop. We left with objects that corresponded to our interests and that could become part of our own artwork.
For most traditional artist encounters, TAC conducts filmed interviews in the gallery with an artist, or spends a few days making art at the ICA. However, our artist encounter with Mark Dion was a little different from our past meetings with artists. Instead of just exploring Mark’s artwork at the ICA, we adventured into Mark Dion’s New Bedford, experiencing firsthand the places that inspire him as an artist.