Random Acts of Kindness Interactive Art Workshop

Type:
* Informational
* Performance
* Social

This Event: May be of interest to the LGBTQ community

In this drop-in event, artists from across Wisconsin will be joining us for an interactive art workshop. For this unique event, each artist will be setting up a station for participants to create art or pieces for random acts of kindness.

Featured artists:
Jennifer Bastian: As a photographer, Jennifer has a gift for composition. She is an emotional archivist, gifted in curating a space that is comforting, inviting people to rest, and share a cup of tea. With this, she will be creating an installation space for us, allowing strangers to meet, connect, and relax.

Everything I do in life and art is based on a desire for contact with people I know, and people I’m meant to meet. I strive to maintain these connections over distance and extend the common experiences that keep us together. I photograph every day toward a never-ending visual archive of experience. When the photographs are developed, I find emotional themes in the work and create qualitative surveys based on those themes. The responses to these surveys are then organized into archives, and placed into gallery installations that allow viewers to reflect on their own relationship to the theme at hand.

Anja Notanja Sieger ‘La Prosette’: La Prosette is the current artist in residence at Redline Milwaukee. Before that, she was the first typewriter poet in residence at the Pfister. Her typewritten poetry will be featured at this event, where she will write a new poem specifically for participants. She will be composing compliment-poems where she compliments the person she is writing it for. She notes: “IT IS GOOD AND RIGHT TO ACCEPT COMPLIMENTS ON YOUR OWN BEHALF.”

As an artist I use several mediums such as typewritten poetry, performance art, community collaboration, paper cutting, drawing, crochet and sound to understand life. No matter the medium I use, improvisation is the uniting force because it is the split second that most interests me. What wisdom rises to the surface by following instinct? Each day as I create without preliminary sketches or goals, I convey the precise essence of the present moment. Common themes explored in my work: the spirit world, the animal psyche, the feral feminine, the unknown, facing fear, mortality, and forging a humorous rebellion against the unacknowledged minutia of daily life.

Danika Brubaker is the founder of the project ‘For the One Who Finds Me,’ This project seeks to create more magic and more kindness in the world–one tiny hashtagged bouquet at a time. Danika will be bringing small vases, and participants are invted to create small bouquets of flowers to take and share anonymously around Madison.
She writes, “I founded this project in June 2015 in Madison, Wisconsin. I purchase the flowers myself and buy the vases at thrift stores. I tag each one with the social media accounts and hide them in public places such as: the cereal aisle, the public library, art museums, coffee shops, etc. People find them and sometimes tag me back! It’s a really exciting random act of kindness that strangers in other states have taken on (leaving their own bouquets and using the hashtags).

This is a community-building project that promotes kindness, connection and collaboration between strangers. I hope to build it into a larger and larger movement that has a ripple effect of reminding us all we can commit a random act of kindness at ANY time.

Katrina Lord: Under the pseudonym “MKELoveLetter” on Instagram, Katrina’s goal is to simply spread some joy by writing letters and stashing them around Milwaukee. ‘Love loves to love love’ -James Joyce.” Katrina will have a table where participants can write letters to strangers, to take home and leave at places around Madison.

Mallory Shotwell will be offering a positive spin on the parking ticket experience. Providing ‘tickets’ and envelopes, participants are invited to create letters of kindness to strangers. Masking these in the envelope, taking them home, and placing them on cars, it creates a unique experience where people are once disappointed by the ticket, but then surprised by the unexpected act.

Mallory is the founder of Madison Community Discourse and curator of this event. She is studying happiness in Madison, Wisconsin for one year, serving to strengthen community through art and discourse. She believes that happiness is a universal experience, and it connects all of us. Through this study, she is interviewing two hundred people on the topic, hosting art and discourse workshops across the city, and curating an art exhibition to foster personal exploration and social engagement on happiness.

This event is designed to create a wave of random acts of kindness in the Madison community. Each of these artists work independently, serving strangers in their actions, and hoping that these actions stir up other random acts of kindness. When we bring all of these people together, we create a tidal wave of kindness in the community. What will happen? Come to participate, be a part of the waves, and watch what happens.

All proceeds from this event go to paying the artists These artists pay for their supplies out of their own pockets (as many artists do) for their own events, however, with the larger scale of this event, we’d like to cover the expenses of their supplies for them. We have a sliding scale, please help as you are able.

In an effort to encourage community members to engage in art and discourse, we will be hosting free ‘secret missions’ with random acts of kindness, mindfulness, and happiness.

We will only be releasing these missions (should you choose to accept them) on the facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/aMadisonCommunityDiscourse

The first will be on February 2 at the Bubbler at Madison Central Library, stay tuned.