JOHN BLANCO -I.T.S.O.A.B.

LPV Community Garden Welcomes,
I.T.S.O.A.B.
A little Art, Historical and Natural Science Project.
By Visiting Artist,
John Blanco.
Tuesday August 5th – Monday August 11th, 2008.

About ITSOAB.
Evolution and entropy are keys to the ITSOAB living studio practice: often beginning several distinct projects simultaneously and combining, postponing, or abandoning them is not uncommon. Over a period of seven days at the LPV Community Garden, ITSOAB proposes to develop an experimental, comprehensive, diligent, and playful creative practice that embraces installation, discussions, scientific method, performative acts, dance, drawing, writing, gardening, physical exercise, and zine making. The garden may expand its ability to function as a living studio, and the visiting artist and local community are invited to expand their understanding of everything and nothing in the shadow of a butterfly.

The Inference—an assumption based on past experience, extension of observation and a result of the process of creative and critical thinking.
Unwanted, unpractical, overlooked civilized areas such as vacant lots, spaces along property lines, unused sidewalks, staircases, and bridges, become sites where natural processes of reclamation occur. Other uncivilized sites that are preserved, forested, and gardened, serve as an index of the community and its authority to define spaces for natural processes to occur. The characters of natural~naturalized sites propels the questioning of a communities relationship to, and definition of the land. An unspoken discourse may evolve from the questions, ‘Does the land perform as a material record of the thoughts, emotions, and actions of generations before us? What are the contemporary records to be read, written, and illustrated? How are the perception of natural phenomena and experienced emotions stored in our minds and bodies, and environment? Who authorizes these natural sites?’

ITSOAB Timeline.
07/31/2008 – 08042008, New York City area.
Time of the unsighting’s somewhere by bicycle.

Tuesday 08052008, LPV Community Garden, SunUp to SunDown E.T.
Sixteen hour public display of observation—no sex for 7 days.

Wednesday 08062008, LPV Community Garden, 7am -11am, 4pm – 8pm.
Identifying the phenomena and introducing the absurd from a new frontier.

Thursday 08072008, LPV Community Garden, by chance
The making something with you in the garden good time call (510) 282-0144

Friday 08082008, LPV Community Garden, 7am -11am, 4pm – 8pm.
It’s in the dirt.

Saturday 08092008, LPV Community Garden, 7am – 11am, 4pm – 8pm, an event
Fete-gallante—At twilight coming together with the human intellect and the
majesty of nature.

Sunday 08102008, LPV Community Garden, at an Undetermined Time of Day
A thing falls apart.

Monday 08112008, LPV Community Garden, 7am -11am, 4pm – 8pm.
A Public Reading Service in the garden.

About the Visiting Artist.
John Blanco's works are challenging due to its slow evolution, absurd presence, and unseen quality. Resembling elements of Conceptual Art, Performance, and Sculpture, he exhibits the influences of Social Activism, Printed Matter, Natural Sciences and Technology. At the point of overlap among multiple categories, a dynamic voice is invented. Often using discarded materials to create new contemplative experience. By collecting materials site specifically, an aesthetic substrate becomes conducive to his processes of exploring the idea of a re-imagined thing. An objects meaning is researched, observed, practiced, ignored, and momentarily isolated from its prescribed context and inserted in a new. For example, a rice cooker is designed to conveniently prepare rice, but what if the object is displaced amidst imagination? Why not make rain instead of rice? Does it not already make rain? So let it be conceptualized as a rainmaker. John is a composer of potentials, and by experimenting and questioning the function of the everyday, what many of us recognize as appliances, he reassigns to make clouds instead of rice.

John is part of the new creative class. He is recognized as an Artist, Activist, Curator, Dancer, Educator, Gardener, Imagination Officer, Mentor and Social Entrepreneur. However defined, his practices are described as whimsical, courageous, and authentic. He received his BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005. During his senior year at SFAI, he served as a consultant for the Director of Admissions, by lecturing nationally about art education in the Bay Area. Recently he served as Artist Assistant for Clare Rojas and Barry Mcgee, and as an Imagination Officer working inside San Francisco's Youth Guidance Center with adjudicated teenagers.