S W O O N KONBIT SHELTER & G U I L D S P R E S E N T : A LIMITED EDITION SUITE OF WORKS
ALL PROCEEDS G O T O WA R D S THE CREATION OF
A LEARNING CENTER IN CORMIERS, HAITI
You hold in your hands an opportunity to do something very special: to create a place dedicated to the wonder and curiosity of children, in a corner of the world that is struggling to emerge from the shadow of recent structural collapse as well as centuries of colonial oppression. You can help bring this place into being through the purchase of this unique suite of works, donated to the fundraising effort. Please help us find a home for this suite, and send our team to Cormiers this January to lay the groundwork for a curious new endeavor. With love, Caledonia Curry, Guilds & Konbit Shelter
The community center in Cormiers, under construction.
Celebrating its completion.
photo by Tod Seelie
A CURIOUS PLACE After the 2010 earthquake, artist Caledonia Curry (also known as Swoon) and a small group of U.S. artists and builders formed a group called Konbit Shelter and began working with the village of Cormiers, located a few miles from the epicenter of the quake. Within six months Konbit had mobilized their creative community, raising funds to build new structures using the highly resilient SuperAdobe construction method and creating 70 construction jobs for residents in the process. The project resulted in three SuperAdobe structures, the centerpiece of which is a three-dome community center with 20-foot ceilings that terminate in an oculus, letting in the abundant sunlight of Haiti.
In the three years since the quake, Konbit’s relationship with the village has evolved. Now that Cormiers is no longer in the immediate aftermath of structural devastation, thoughts have turned towards what would be necessary to activate the center as a place dedicated to the children of the village. To this end, Konbit will be collaborating with Guilds, a learning center design group, working with Cormiers families towards creating an inviting environment for play and inquiry within the domes.
A BRIGHT DARK ROOM Guilds is currently working with the Lower Eastside Girls Club in NYC, conducting a ten-week program for children called “A Bright Dark Room”. In this workshop, teen and ‘tweenage girls explore optics, light as a substance, and the elemental building blocks of the camera. When Guilds director Bryan Welch first saw pictures of the Cormiers community center, with its oculus and natural illumination, he was taken with its potential as a place perfectly suited for inquiry into light. In January 2014, Guilds and Konbit will travel to Haiti, and present a condensed version of this workshop to the children of Cormiers, with a focus on how light interacts with and transforms the domes. Guilds and Konbit will return to the Lower Eastside Girls Club at the end of January, sharing with the girls the story of how their fellow explorers in Cormiers interacted with the provocations of the workshop, creating a bridge between children in Cormiers and children in NYC. photographs from “A Bright Dark Room”, by Bryan Welch
AN OBSERVATORY When in Cormiers, we’ll also begin a conversation with families about their desires for the future of the community center, while taking measurements and drawing up plans to add a new set of features to the domes. Working with children and adults, we will explore different ways we can embed lenses in the walls and ceiling, to create a multimodal camera obscura that demonstrates the science of light while creating opportunities to observe and delight in images of the natural world, and of each other. When we return to NYC, we’ll grind some lenses to the specifications of the domes and come back in the spring to install them, provoking a longer, in-depth exploration of the eye, the camera, and the image.
Through this initial programming on light, we wish to inaugurate the domes as a space for children, and help Cormiers families move towards the creation of a resilient, community-run learning center. ... The collaboration between Konbit and Guilds is built around our common belief that spaces of joy and curiosity are the ether in which we become our truest selves. We are excited to participate in the creation of a space dedicated to this becoming: a space that encourages the scientific and aesthetic exploration of the world around us, of phenomena both as commonplace and as mysterious as light.
CALEDONIA CURRY
SWOON
Working under the artist name Swoon, Callie is a classically trained visual artist and printmaker who has spent the last 13 years exploring the relationship between people and their built environment. Her first interventions in the urban landscape took the form of wheat-pasting portraits to the walls of cities around the world, a project that is still evolving. From 2006 to 2009, she constructed and navigated a flotilla of sculptural rafts made from recycled materials down the Mississippi and Hudson rivers, and across the Adriatic Sea to Venice. Since 2008, Callie has been working in collaboration with the collective Transformazium on a revitalization project in the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, giving a century-old church new life as an arts center and ceramics guild.
In 2010 she cofounded Konbit Shelter and built a community center and two homes in earthquake-devastated Haiti, integrating her creative process into a sustainable reconstruction effort. Callie is currently working toward the construction of a musical house - entitled Dithyrambalina in New Orleans, collaborating with arts initiative New Orleans Airlift. Alongside her place-based work, she has a studio practice of drawing, printmaking, architectural sculpture and installations. ...
Callie’s work has been collected and shown internationally at galleries and museums, including the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and the Sao Paolo Museum of Art. A solo exhibition of her work will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum in Spring 2014.
A SUITE OF WORKS Swoon is donating WA L K I to the fundraising effort for this new phase of the Konbit Shelter project. Her piece will be included in a suite of works - all proceeds from the purchase of this suite will go towards transforming the Cormiers domes into a learning center for children and adults.
WALKI Signed edition of 6 Screenprint, coffee stain, handpainting, spraypaint, and cutout on mylar 62” x 78”
T H E
S U I T E
For a contribution of $15,000 you will receive: W
A
L
K
I
• Two archival 13” x 19” prints of photographic work by Bryan Welch, taken in Haiti this January. • An invitation to athe very special Bright Room at our Konbit gala in Spring 2014. • A workshop on light, conducted within the camera obscura at the Lower Eastside Girls Club, conducted by Caledonia Curry and Bryan Welch, scheduled at your convenience. • The custom fabrication of a portable camera obscura of your own.
This suite will be available from December 1st, 2013 for a limited time. To inquire about purchasing one of these suites, please contact suite@guilds.co
drawing by Alyssa Dennis
THANK YOU Proceeds from this suite are the sole source of funding for our January workshop in Haiti. By purchasing this suite, you’re helping us continue a creative dialogue, bringing into being a place of new possibilities for children and families.
For more information on Konbit Shelter - konbitshelter.org For more information on Guilds - guilds.co