Life is Art Foundation / KKProjects
NEW ORLEANS
Life is Art Foundation (Originally KKProjects) was founded shortly after Hurricaine Katrina in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans in six abandoned structures: a former bakery, a storefront, and four 1800s houses. The structures sit in a one block area of the derelict neighborhood on North Villere between Music and Arts streets. Each structure is home to site-specific installation for varying exhibition periods. Local and international artists are invited to work with the spaces as they find them, as well as with the surrounding (often challenging) physical and cultural environment. Life is Art Foundation is dedicated to an ongoing conversation with our neighbors. Through art projects involving the greater social ecosystem, the project exists to cultivate creativity and inspire the hearts, minds, and economy of the St Roch neighborhood and its visitors. Integrated into our spaces is a summer urban farm and children's program. As with the houses, the farm serves as art space and vehicle for community evolution. During summer months, herbs and vegetables are grown with neighborhood children for eating and selling to New Orleans' best restaurants. There is currently no exhibition at Life is Art Foundation St Roch, but programs will resume in 2011.
SONOMA / LIFE IS ART WEST
Life is Art Foundation has expanded West, to a new site, a mountaintop in Sonoma, California. The property, set on 120 acres, is dedicated to land art and will serve as home to an artists residency. We invite artists nationally and internationally to create site-specific work using nature as a medium. Artists are invited to rotate between St Roch and Sonoma, alternating the beauty of an intimate (and challenging) New Orleans community with the natural beauty of the California Landscape. Proposals are currently being accepted for Life is Art West Land Art installations.
THE THINK TANK
Life is Art Foundation takes a collective approach to brainstorming and envisioning the direction of our organization. Our core team holds a deep love for art and humanity, and works together by whatever means necessary to see our vision into reality. Founding Director: Kirsha Kaechele | Associate Director: Pamala Bishop | Co-Director: Jaohn Orgon | Vision + Creative Force: Tora Lopez | Everything (fur coat heisting included): Benjamin Berniard With Gratitude to Our Past Partners: Katherine Bray + Aimee Toledano And Our Endless List of Mentors, Supporters, Patrons + Beloved Interns. Especially the First to Believe (John Gilmore) and Those Who Say Keep Going: Coleman Coker.
Our Mission
The mission of Life is Art Foundation is the exhibition of large scale, site-specific installation art. But we love other types of art as well. Focus lies with conceptual works which explore natural order and draw from natural phenomena such as light, ecology, celestial motion, everyday experience and society. Formally, Life is Art Foundation focuses on pieces which express aesthetic purity and the resulting spiritualized space. However, when this purity takes form in apparent chaos arising from a natural system, (or is just very sexy), formal preference is abandoned for devotion to what is. We exist to converse with chaos, balancing the impulse for beauty and order with the unwieldy environment of St Roch, Our Sonoma land, and the other unlikely social contexts we show within (Eiffel Society or Voodoo Experience). Through constant conversation with unwelcome forces, we find deeper appreciation for nature, expanding our understanding of beauty. Art thus becomes how we see. We also believe in the power of love. We cultivate love with our neighbors, particularly the children we work with in the St Roch neighborhood of New Orleans.