October is Arts Month in Long Beach, and the community is invited to attend a forum on public art on Sunday, Oct. 11 from 3pm to 5pm at Stearns Champions Park Community Center, 4520 East 23rd Street.
“During October, we celebrate the art that happens every day all over Long Beach,” said Mayor Robert Garcia. “Murals, music, arts education, and dance programs are all part of the diverse, vibrant fabric that is woven throughout our city.”
A panel of renowned artists moderated by Craig Cree Stone, professor of art and director of the American-Indian Studies program at California State University, Long Beach, will discuss the creation, maintenance, funding and community-private or city-state government ownership of public art.
The forum is sponsored by the Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine. For more information, contact Heather Green, cultural supervisor, at (562) 570-1685 or Heather.Green@longbeach.gov.
Moderator Craig Cree Stone is known for his public artworks including “Shadows Casting on the Shore” (1995) that is literally permanent “street art” where images of shadows extend from the parking meters along Second Street in Belmont Shore, on the sidewalks and up the walls of buildings. His most recent effort titled “Image Emergence: Promenade of Clouds” (2011) consists of the design of a plaza including five large sculptures for the first block of The Promenade in Long Beach.
The panelists include SwissPrecise aka Kenneth S Cassidy, Man One and Elliot Pinkney.
SwissPrecise, aka Kenneth S. Cassidy, was born and raised in Long Beach. He turned his illegal graffiti in the early 1980s into legal painting at the Parks, Recreation and Marine’s Homeland Community Center in the 1990s. He has done freelance art for Lexani Wheels, Hurley, Split, Triple 5 Soul, MTV and the Discovery Channel. Still active in the art game, he travels around the world with a studio based in Long Beach. Visit instagram.com/sharkpolansky .
Man One is a world-renowned artist, born and raised in Los Angeles. With a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Loyola Marymount University, Man One has worked in the visual arts since 1987, when he began painting graffiti on the streets of Los Angeles. His paintings have been showcased globally in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, including: The Getty; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Parco Museum in Tokyo; Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Man One has been recognized by the City of Los Angeles and the U.S. State Department for his dedication to promoting international understanding and cultural exchange through the arts. Visit manone.com .
Elliott Pinkney is an internationally acclaimed artist and muralist who has lived in Compton for more than 40 years. He has created murals at the Watts Towers and throughout the Los Angeles area, Compton and Long Beach. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was instrumental in many Long Beach community and youth workshops, teaching and producing murals with youth participants. Over the years, he has created many works of art and murals with underlying themes of the importance of understanding between cultures and African American pride.
