Collaborative Mosaic Mural and Painting Series by Artists Erin McCullough and Ashira Siegel

Erin McCullough, a mosaic artist with Down Syndrome, has been staying in Los Angeles for the month of July to do a summer arts internship and public mural project with LA based artist Ashira Siegel at Jeffrey Foundation Early Education School in the Mid-City are of Los Angeles. This project received full funding through Indiegogo and has resulted in hundreds of drawings, a new body of paintings and a mosaic mural in the entry way of The Jeffrey Foundation. Erin McCullough is one half of Picklefish Productions, a mother daughter team of mosaic artists based in Carlsbad, NM, who have been working on mosaics projects for about 10 years. Ashira Siegel creates multimedia work merging various printing and dying techniques, collage, assemblage, photography, video, glass, ceramics, sewing and sculpture. She has completed numerous collaborative art projects as part of her work with Swoon’s collective “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea,” and Andrea Zittel’s “Panelshop” and “Smockshop” projects. Jeffrey Foundation Early Education School is a nonprofit institution that helps young children with disabilities to prepare for for inclusion in public schools at little or no cost to their families.

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“Ian MacKinnon’s Gay Hist-Orgy” Is Something To Be Proud Of

“Ian MacKinnon’s Gay Hist-Orgy” is a brilliant, side splitting and wonderfully sexy piece of storytelling and performance. Ian has distilled and spun queer world history, mythology, and folklore in a way that is titillating, inspiring, and easily palpable. While I often found myself saddened and angered by the erasure of our homo history Ian’s hilarious performance made me laugh and feel grateful to be a grownup queer with access to beautiful art that celebrates and investigates our queerly complex stories.

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I’m Reading At Featherless With Dana Johnson And Michelle Joyner At Stories Books And Cafe June 8th 7pm

Sometimes I say that I am a professional bisexual and other times I say I am “straight for pay”. Only it seems I am becoming straight FOR FREE with increasing regularity and part of me wonders if I should be alarmed!

M. Jackalinski’s color test for the short story “Professional Bisexual” That’s me and Miller riding the bus to Occupy. We are professional (and lifestyle) monsters, really.
My first “not gay” reading on Friday, June 8th pretty much confirms this! I mean, don’t get me wrong, Featherless co-curators Andrea Lambert and Katie are pretty gay (in fact I heard they’re actually GAY TOGETHER!) but still it is a bit thrilling to read at something that is not explicitly HOMO. I’m also thrilled to have the opportunity to read with two really amazing women, Michelle Joyner and Dana Johnson. I’ve been busy working on a chapbook entitled “Professional Bisexual” that I hope to have ready by then. I’m collaborating with some really amazing illustrators including Tara Avery, M. Jackalinski and Amie Wee who is also doing the layout and cover design. I’ve wanted to collaborate with all three artists for years and am thrilled to be doing so now.

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PUNK ASS QUEERS

Raquel Gutiérrez (b. 1976, Los Angeles, California) cut her teeth on Los Angeles performance art when she interned and house managed at Highways Performance Space in the year 2000. Raquel is a performance writer, playwright, and cultural organizer, studied in university settings and performed in a variety of locations, like the Salvadoran countryside, cabarets, galleries, San Antonio, more universities, Pico-Union, etc. In 2001, Gutiérrez was one of the co-founding members of the performance ensemble, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP), a community-based and activist-minded group aimed at creating a visual vernacular around queer Latinidad in Los Angeles. Raquel also co-founded other queer women of color projects and Latino projects, Tongues, A Project of VIVA and Epicentro Poetry project. Raquel has published work in Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano), Los Angeles Weekly, Make/shift magazine, Journal of Chicana/Latina Studies, and Izote Vos: Salvadoran American Literary and Visual Art (published by SF’s Pacific News Service).

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iMappening

“USC’s iMAP program is on the cutting edge of new media art and design research and digital scholarship, one of only a handful of PhD programs that combine digital theory and practice,” said Jeanne Jo, an iMAP Student who will be finishing in 2014. Bringing together all the strengths of a world class school of cinema with innovations in art, science and technology, iMAP students work in emerging fields including critical design, networked performance, serious games, social media analytics, data visualization, wearable electronics, non-linear narrative cinema, immersive cinema, digital media and learning and database documentary.

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WANDERLUST writers of latina/o and queer extractions HIGHWAYS PERFORMANCE SPACE

My dear friend, Micha Cardenas, is doing a reading from her book, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities, Fri and Sat at Highways with a great group of performers. Raquel Gutierrez, another of my favorite queer writers and performance artists is curating this amazing evening of queer latin voices.
CHARLES RICE-GONZALEZ (April 21 only)
SUSANA COOK
MARCELA FUENTES
RAFA ESPARZA + LUIS FLORES
FRANK GALARTE
MICHA CARDENAS
RAQUEL GUTIERREZ

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QUEER MONDAYS AT AKBAR

Kate Gilbert
Highways has a big awesome installation that you should check out taking up the space this month but luckily The Akbar was kind enough to host QUEER MONDAYS. So this month head east to AKBAR for QUEER MONDAYS action.

QM is a non-elitist performance lab dedicated to the development of new LGBTQ artistic works and is open to all disciplines.

Performances by:

Greg Barnett, Leopold Nu Nan, Anson Sky, Sky Palkowitz, Jason Jenn, Kate Gilbert, Jason Jones, & Jay Lyons

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