Sharita Towne
in The Integrated Global Creative Economy
means Sharita Towne throughout the world...
Curation
CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
Matrix Page
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Name:
Sharita Towne
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City/Place:
Portland, Oregon
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Country:
United States
Life & Work
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Bio:
As an artist, Sharita Towne’s interests lie in unpacking the inherited struggles of past burdens and in affording collective catharsis. Through collaboration, stereo-photography, printmaking, video, and community art projects, she’s worked at memorials in Germany; in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria; Brazil; in gentrifying cities like Portland, Oregon and New Orleans; in schools, museums, and neighborhoods, and within her own family.
She received a BFA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from Portland State University. She currently teaches at Pacific Northwest College of Art, works in the DIY printmaking and audiovisual collective URe:AD Press (United Re:Public of the African Diaspora), the post-colonial conceptual karaoke band Weird Allan Kaprow, and is a 2016 Art Matters grant recipient.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Selected Professional Experience (will be updated)
2016 - Instructor, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Media Arts, Mentor, & BFA Thesis Critique
2015 Fulbright, English Teaching Assistant, Brazil
2014 Screenprinting Shop Steward, Independent Publishing Resource Center, Portland, OR
2014 Instructor, Portland African American Leadership Forum & SEI, “De-Gentrifying Portland”
2014 Instructor, ART 257 Video I: Experimental Video, Portland State University
2013 Graduate Assistant, Event and Space Coordinator, Portland State University, OR
2013 Teaching Assistant, Printmaking, Portland State University, OR
2013 Film and Video Instructor, Ravensbrück Memorial, Fürstenberg/Havel, Germany
2013 Art Teacher & Interpreter, Book Arts/Newsletter, Metropolitan Family Serv., Portland, OR
2012 Youth Organizer, Interpreter, Video Instr., Germany/Saharawi Refugee Camps in Algeria
Selected Exhibitions and Screenings (will be updated)
2016 (*upcoming) URe:AD TV, BRIC, NY
2016 (*upcoming) Portland Prints, Micro screenprinting artist residencies, Portland Art Museum
2016 Our City in Stereo, Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR
2016 Our City in Stereo, residency, c3:initiative, Portland
2016 Out of Sight, King St. Station, Seattle, WA, survey of contemporary art in the Pacific Northwest
2016 mamuk x̣alaqɬ iliʔi, Littman Gallery, Portland, OR
2016 Portland Lyric, Independent Publishing Resource Center, Portland, OR
2016 AgitProp!, “Karaoking the Museum”, Brooklyn Museum, NY, NY
2015 Karaoking Portland, by Weird Allan Kaprow, Independent Publishing Resource Center
2015 Continents, Auto Body: Buenos Aires, Faena Arts Center
2015 black [genus, genesis, genius], group exhibition, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR
2014 Continents, Auto Body, Giant Motors: Auto Body & Paint Shop, Miami, FA
2014 Beasts of Notation, transmedia collaboration & event, Independent Publishing Resource Center
2014 Public Apology Karaoke, by Weird Allan Kaprow, Independent Publishing Resource Center
2014 De-Gentrifying Portland, film workshop and community screenings, Portland, OR
2014 Now We Know, In Other Words Feminist Community Center, Portland, OR
2014 Sahara in Stereo, Experimental Film Festival Portland, OR
2014 Karaoking the Museum, Shine A Light, Portland Art Museum, OR
2013 The People’s Laundromat Theatre, with Shani Peters, New York, NY
2013 Memorybildia, Shine a Light, Portland Art Museum, OR
2013 The Living Lab of Family Memory, Field Work, Portland OR
2012 Sahara in Stereo, Here! Hear! Experimental Ethnographic Film, Albuquerque, NM
Selected Awards
2017 The Precipice FUnd (URe:AD Press)
2017 Regional Arts and Culture Council (URe:AD Press)
2016 Art Matters
2016 Regional Arts and Culture Council, Project Grant, Our Family in Stereo
2016 Regional Arts and Culture Council, Professional Development Grant, Agitprop!
2015 Rema Hort Mann Foundation, ACE Community Engagement Grant:
"Tradução: Intercultural Media Exchange: US & Brazil", collaborator to Shani Peters
2015 Expanding Cultural Access, Regional Arts and Culture Council, “BCC:BrownHall”
2015 Community Grant: Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, “Hair & Community in Black Portland”
2015 Regional Arts and Culture Council, “Karaoking Portland” with Weird Allan Kaprow
2015 Regional Arts and Culture Council, “Conscientização” with Betty Marín and Zachary Gough
2015 Regional Arts and Culture Council, with Roger Peet, Sara Siestreem, and Gabe Flores
2014 Precipice Award, Black Creative Collective BrownHall, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
2014 Expanding Cultural Access, Regional Arts and Culture Council, “De-Gentrifying Portland”
2014 Community Grant: Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, “De-Gentrifying Portland”
Bibliography and Publications
2016 “An Artist Sees Portland In Stereoscopic Show”, State of Wonder, Oregon Public Broadcasting
2014 De-Gentrifying Portland, KOIN, Portland Mercury, The Skanner, KBOO Radio, and The Oregonian
2014 Talk to the Gun, Social Practice Reference Points Book series, with Pedro Reyes
2014 State of Wonder, June 7th 2014, Oregon Public Broadcasting, OPB, with Pedro Reyes
2012 Now I know my…, Printed Matter LLC, NY, NY
Education
MFA, Contemporary Art Practices, Portland State University
BA, Art & Interdisciplinary Studies (dbl. major) Honors, University of California Berkeley
Languages
English (Native language)
Spanish (Fluent)
Portuguese (Fluent)
Arabic (Working knowledge)
German (Working knowledge)
Clips (more may be added)
Few people know that the Bay of All Saints was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. And few people know the transcendence these people, and their descendents, wrought. That's where this Matrix begins...
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers all over the planet.
This Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from Brazil's sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix... expanding like the canopy of a rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, branches spreading to embrace the entire world...
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
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