As part of the Renovated Dreams exhibition, Red River is a blog that will document the The Microloan Project.
In this social project, we plan to work with local artists to create small installations and performances in empty storefronts. Funding will supply these artists with microloans of $100 increments. Each loan will be paid back upon sale of the work and then partially gifted to the local students who participate in workshops. The gift will go towards the student’s higher education or towards a professional career path. A beneficial mentorship or role modeling is encouraged between the professional artists and students through meetings and/or studio visits.
The primary aspect of this project relates social art-life practices to students and artists. The project will culminate in a large-scale installation based on nature mythology. Students and participating community members will create a dreamscape of painted cardboard cutouts. This will produce a community-imagined landscape, like the set of a theatrical stage. Contributing artists and students will share stories from their neighborhood, culture, or families. The realized imaginings of fantastical mythical worlds from collected stories will be combined to form scenes and characters as well as a published script of short stories that the students and artist could create a play from.
All the cardboard will be collected by the artists and students from their own homes and community and then recycled at the end of the project, the community will thereby help to offset global warming by engaging in this art-event recycling project.
Jung A Woo and Gabriel Akagawa
Chicago organizations for future sites of this project
Korean American Community Services
Butler Street Foundry and Iron Co