(April 26, 2021—Los Angeles, CA) The Mistake Room (TMR) is pleased to present Things With Feathers—a trio of public art projects by Classroom of Compassion, Crenshaw Dairy Mart, and Gisela McDaniel. The projects will be sited or take place in Downtown LA and Pico Union beginning May 7, 2021 as part of Art Rise.

Over the past year the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed how we exist in the world. To date, more than 140 million people worldwide have been infected with this virus and over 3 million of them have lost their lives to it. While the virus ravages bodies, it also wrecks the lives bodies live. Our daily routines are now very different, our personal and professional responsibilities overlap and expand, and distance tests our resolve. People continue to lose their jobs, businesses close, and too many face food and housing insecurity. These unprecedented losses bring with them multiple forms of grief that manifest in feelings, emotions, and behaviors that are as painful to understand as the losses we are enduring. This reality severely impacts our mental health and wellbeing.   Titled after Emily Dickinson’s famous description of hope as a thing with feathers, this project strives to shed light on loss and the grief it provokes while imagining ways to heal and persevere.

The three public art projects of this outdoor exhibition recognize the grief we are currently embodying and the necessity to acknowledge it as the first step toward healing. The artists and artist collectives included in this project have practices forged by long-standing relationships to communities and their respective commissions build from that in responding to this moment. These projects make clear that while individual experiences of loss may seem isolating, they are also collective in nature and require us all to participate in collective recovery.    “These projects bring attention to many layered experiences of loss that have defined our past year and remind us of the healing work we have ahead of us,” says César García-Alvarez, TMR Executive & Artistic Director. “We thought long and hard about what we wanted to do to resume our program and it became clear fast that we needed to open a conversation about collective grief and healing,” he adds.

PROJECTS

Classroom of Compassion Los Angeles, I hope u know how loved u are

Little Tokyo Car Wash (647 Mateo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021)

May 7 – 31, 2021*  

*This project is viewable from the sidewalk on Mateo Street and visitors are asked to be respectful of the small business hosting the installation and not enter the premises to view it.

Classroom of Compassion (David Maldonado and Noah Reich) is a collective that over the past five years has explored the role that public memorials have in helping communities process grief. For Things With Feathers, TMR’s trio of projects for Art Rise, Classroom of Compassion will present a large-scale floral altar to remember the many Angelenos we’ve lost amid the pandemic and in particular those from communities that have been disproportionately affected. The work is envisioned as a space and moment to grieve and memorialize the many angels of LA together. Titled Los Angeles, I hope u know how loved you are, the work will be sited in Downtown LA on a lot on Mateo Street that currently functions as a car wash. Through a public outreach campaign that will last throughout the presentation of the installation, Classroom of Compassion and TMR will ask members of the community to submit photos and stories of loved ones they have lost amid the pandemic. The photos will be used to create a looping in memoriam video that projects on a screen embedded in the altar and also on a microsite that will function as a virtual form of the work. Classroom of Compassion hopes that this space will give those that are grieving the loss of friends and family an opportunity to process their loss with others like them, and in turn hold space for their healing journey. An accompanying series of online public programs will activate the work throughout the duration of its presentation.  

To see the virtual form of the work visit: www.losangeleslovestory.com after May 7, 2021.  

To make a submission for the altar, please visit: https://www.tmr.la/epublicprojectsclassroomofcompassion2021  

Social Media: #TMR #ThingsWithFeathers #LALoveStory #ClassroomofCompassion #WhyWeRise #WeRiseLA

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Crenshaw Dairy Mart + domingo

domingo  
LOCATION: Various locations in Pico Union DATES: May 2021*

*Out of respect to the communities and partner organizations involved in this project, this project will be shared with audiences only as documentation on the TMR website and social media channels as well as on the Crenshaw Dairy Mart’s social media channels.  

A South LA art space focused on art and community healing, the Crenshaw Dairy Mart was founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alexandre Dorriz, and noé olivas, artists who share a deep commitment to social justice. Recently, the Crenshaw Dairy Mart launched a multi-faceted initiative titled Pray for LA that will encompass multiple projects aimed at confronting the relationship between systemic racism and the ways the pandemic has affected communities of color. For Things With Feathers, TMR’s trio of projects for Art Rise, the collective will activate domingo, a rolling social sculpture based out of a 1967 Chevrolet step-van repurposed as a rolling space for art and healing. Working with the largely working-class immigrant communities of Pico Union, olivas will put the delivery van to work as a site of service to its peers and community, distributing care in the form of food and art supplies, and providing a site for collective creativity to a community disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Deeply inspired by Southern California custom lowrider culture when conceiving domingo, olivas prioritized amongst the first renovations to the vehicle when acquired in 2011 the lowering and altering of the airbag suspension of the vehicle. This system not only provides a smoother and safer ride, where each wheel may lower independently, but it is also a play off the philosophy of “low and slow,” to stay grounded, rooting into its habitat, to move slow, to be accessible through function and through programming, and to bow for its audiences.  

To view documentation of this project throughout the month of May please visit: https://www.tmr.la/epublicprojectscrenshawdairymart2021  

Social Media: #TMR #ThingsWithFeathers #domingo #CrenshawDairyMart #WhyWeRise #WeRiseLA

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Gisela McDaniel

Sakkan Eku LA  

LOCATION: TMR Exterior Façade 1811 E 20 St, Los Angeles, CA. 90058  

DATES: May 7 – December 31, 2021  

Gisela McDaniel is a diasporic, indigenous, Chamorro artist based in Detroit who for years has collaborated with survivors of various forms of violence through a practice that mobilizes storytelling as a method for healing. Recording interviews and conversations with people who want to share their stories, McDaniel creates soundscapes that go beyond bearing witness to violence and instead center narratives of care and perseverance. These soundscapes are remixed to allow for McDaniel’s collaborators to share as much or as little of their story as they want. Accompanying these soundscapes are intricately textured paintings of McDaniel’s collaborators that she creates through in-person sittings or photographs that people send to her. In these paintings, individuals are often portrayed through a gaze that privileges the possibilities of their future rather than just the burdens of their past. Wearing their favorite articles of clothing and incorporating objects of important significance to them, McDaniel’s collaborators are seen anew in her works. For Things With Feathers, TMR’s trio of projects for Art Rise, McDaniel will conduct interviews with individuals in Los Angeles and elsewhere whose experiences with violence shed light on the injustices and inequities that the pandemic has exacerbated. McDaniel will record their stories, and create a soundscape to accompany a major public mural of her collaborators on the façade of TMR’s building at the southernmost edge of Downtown LA. The textured, mixed-media mural and accompanying sound work will highlight various experiences of healing, and remind us that there will be vibrant lives to live after this moment.

Social Media: #TMR #ThingsWithFeathers #SakkanEkuLA #GiselaMcDaniel #WhyWeRise #WeRiseLA

Artist Bios - Click Here

ABOUT THE MISTAKE ROOM (TMR) The Mistake Room (TMR) is a non-profit space and global-reaching platform for art, culture, and ideas. Founded in Los Angeles in 2014, TMR transforms how art and other forms of creative expression are made; broadens who gets to make and experience them; and re-imagines where and how we encounter them. We believe that mistakes disrupt the way things are and that the discomforts they cause show us new ways of existing in the world. That is why our work challenges what we have come to expect from encounters with and in spaces like ours. What drives us is a deep commitment to making the arts more equitable so that meaningful and dignified participation is possible for others like us and the ones that will come after them.   TMR is located at the southernmost edge of Downtown LA at 1811 E. 20th St., Los Angeles, CA, 90058. Our program unfolds in a renovated industrial warehouse space and in other venues around the city and the world. This allows us to connect Los Angeles to people, places, and histories well beyond its confines. Our galleries currently are closed. Visit www.tmr.la for more information on upcoming projects and programs.   

CREDITS Things With Feathers is organized by The Mistake Room for Art Rise. Art Rise, part of the WE RISE initiative of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, is a series of 21 art experiences across five Los Angeles neighborhoods created in collaboration with museums, cultural institutions, and artists to use the power of art toward collective wellbeing, health and connectedness. Art Rise, part of the WE RISE initiative of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, is a series of 21 art experiences across five Los Angeles neighborhoods created in collaboration with museums, cultural institutions, and artists to use the power of art toward collective wellbeing, health and connectedness.

For more information, please visit werise.la

Additional support for Classroom of Compassion’s project is provided by: Continuum Partners and Little Tokyo Car Wash.

TMR's program is made possible with the support of its Board of Directors, Big Mistake Patron Group, International Council, and Contemporary Council.

For more information contact:

Jennifer Gross | Evolutionary Media Group

323-658-8700

Jennifer@emgpr.com