Reaching for the sky in a vacant lot

Though the students of Portland State’s new Social Practice MFA program have been relatively quiet this year, as spring fades into summer, their work will see light. A Lot of ___, an event series the students are collaborating on, will take place every Sunday until June 29 on an empty lot in Northeast Portland. Designed to be outdoors and open to the public, the events will encapsulate some of the ideas the art students have been developing on their own and through group discussions all year. Last Saturday, the series began with a party and countdown for Cyrus Smith, a first-year MFA student who built a Pepsi-themed rocket ship to take him to the moon.

Though the students of Portland State’s new Social Practice MFA program have been relatively quiet this year, as spring fades into summer, their work will see light.

A Lot of ___, an event series the students are collaborating on, will take place every Sunday until June 29 on an empty lot in Northeast Portland. Designed to be outdoors and open to the public, the events will encapsulate some of the ideas the art students have been developing on their own and through group discussions all year. Last Saturday, the series began with a party and countdown for Cyrus Smith, a first-year MFA student who built a Pepsi-themed rocket ship to take him to the moon. His reasons for space exploration are simple:

“It’s just because the Pepsi Company is such a glowing example of corporate responsibility and because they do so much for our country,” Smith said in a recent interview, adding, “and they’re sponsoring me to go to the moon.” Eric Steen, who was helping Smith color posters in the Food for Thought Cafe; last week for the event series, tried to explain his friend’s homemade moon-launch attempt: “Under certain circumstances, if you keep pursuing it, it will someday become reality.”

The principle seemed emblematic of the ideas Master of Fine Arts students are developing together in PSU’s new Social Practice program. Started by PSU professor Harrell Fletcher, the new program is an attempt to provide students with learning experiences that cannot exist in ordinary studio MFA classes. Instead of solitary hours working with a single medium such as paint or wood, the students here are encouraged to be open to learning and engagement that does not always have an art-specific context, but which works as part of a participatory-based artistic practice.

Part of the program’s vision is to build an off-site classroom that students will be able to use for projects that involve a neighborhood away from the PSU campus.

The A Lot of ___ event series is a way for the students to start temporarily using a space donated by PSU architecture professor Matthew Bietz, who bought the empty lot adjacent to his home. Bietz is teaching an architecture studio this year in which he will lead students in developing and building a portable classroom for the Social Practice students. The classroom will be roughly the size of a trailer, and will be designed with the MFA program’s vision in mind.
Once the classroom is installed on the vacant lot, MFA students will be able to use the space for community projects, and then move it to a different location to begin projects in a new neighborhood.

“Right now it’s just a vacant lot,” said Smith, who thought the most important result of this collaboration with the architecture department would be the classroom’s “multiplicity and use of space, because it will have a lot of different functions.”

As well as being a center for the graduate students’ work, the space will be used for the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s TBA festival this fall.

Eric Steen and Sandy Sampson will host a “Meet and Greet BBQ” at Neighborhood Projects, the empty lot at 15th Avenue and Alberta Street, Sunday, May 25 at 3 p.m. For a full schedule of weekly events, check out www.lotofprojects.blogspot.com.

Also this week:

See Cyrus Smith’s studio gallery and artist-in-residence center, “Pancake Clubhouse Historic Township and Activity Destination for the Living Arts (Welcomes You),” at 906A N.E. 24th Ave. Open Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. Up this month is Heckaville: Pictures from Home, a small village collaboratively built by Luke Forsyth.

Two new thesis shows by students in the MFA studio program open this week: things in and of themselves by Posie Currin in the Autzen Gallery on the second floor of Neuberger, and Joel Garcia’s show in the MK Gallery (room 210 in the Art Building at 2000 S.W. Fifth Ave.) Receptions for both shows will be held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 22.