4.23 had no bloodshed – also, no art snobs

“You have the face of a promoter.”
          —Rone said that from his mix­ing board, while sit­ting in the vin­tage chair that was made just for him:

Then an­oth­er mes­sage came in on my iPhone. I’d been get­ting non-stop mes­sages for about 24 hours. This time, some­thing else had gone wrong and I was off again.
 

Last week­end,
a bunch of vol­un­teers put on a FLOMM art event in Stock­ton Cal­i­for­nia USA – 4.23 – one night only – in­spired by Sacra­men­to’s re­cent Art Ho­tel, art his­to­ry, the 100th An­niver­sary of Dada, etc.

And every­thing went wrong. And every­thing went right.
 

 

          —This was the typ­i­cal re­sponse I got when invit­ing folk from Sacra­men­to to Stockton.

City ri­val­ries are noth­ing new. Avoid­ing dan­ger­ous places – a re­al­i­ty in trav­el­ing the Unit­ed States – is a part of our lives. Been to a Broad­way show in The Ten­der­loin in San Fran­cis­co? Exactly.

But,
not go­ing some­where cause it’s not on the cool me­ter: Some­thing else. Some­thing in­di­vid­u­als cre­ate in their heads. Then believe.

“You’re only cool if you live where I live.” Fuck that.

We had peo­ple trav­el in from all over North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, the Bay Area and points be­yond. I was ex­pect­ing 30 or 40 or so con­fused peo­ple. We had over 100.

AND the byprod­uct of all this was:

There were no pre­ten­tious artists in attendance.

(aside from my­self, of course – I’ve been called an ‘elit­ist’ many times cause I care about this stuff)
 

Then there was the oth­er problem:

                          4.23 had NO pub­lic­i­ty –
                          be­yond FLOMM me­dia,
                          a few Face­book posts,
                          and a few posts from par­tic­i­pants.

          Emails were lost,
          tee vee and ra­dio sta­tions nev­er got back,
          PR nev­er went out.
                    —Who even reads a news­pa­per anymore?

No me­dia cov­er­age what­so­ev­er.

But we did it anyway. 

Con­nie Or­tiz (whose name was left off the show hand­out) grabbed our makeshift posters (cause the real ones weren’t print­ed), snagged Adri­ana Flo­res and wall­pa­pered Stock­ton. Just three days be­fore the event. Louis, Brit­tknee, Emi­ly, Chrys­tal, and Ash­li tar­get­ed Sacra­men­to – gueril­la mar­ket­ing style!
 

Also, in the fi­nal days, Rose Ross post­ed any­where she could – and cor­ralled some cool door prizes from lo­cal ven­dors. These included:

                    Ar­roy­o’s Mex­i­can Cafe
                    Buf­fa­lo Wild Wings
                    De Vinci’s
                    Dutch Bros Coffee
                    Mar­ket Tavern
                    Noth­ing Bundt Cakes
                    Nspire Nu­tri­tion
                    Pa­cif­ic Av­enue Bowl
                    Pinot’s Palette, Elk Grove

Kel­lie Macauley and Bi­naypreet Singh scoured thrift store sources to find cloth­ing to screen on. 

PA­CIF­IC fac­ul­ty Brett De­Boer and Daniel Kass­er (lit­er­al­ly) moved walls to help set up. Lu­cin­da Kass­er got sup­plies and pa­per and Clifton Tham­mavongsa on board. Plus, the Vi­su­al Arts de­part­ment (which also in­cludes Moni­ka Mel­er, Marie Lee, Jen­nifer Lit­tle and Eli­nore Ca­ba­los) ap­proved the event and al­lowed us to play in their space. 

The stu­dents AND staff at the THREE SCHOOLS where I teach helped get word out – as well as stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors at a few more schools in the area.
 

Flom­mist Jes made the pin­backs. Rone brought a truck full of sound equip­ment – which made Van­i­ty Nights EX­TRA LOUD.
 

The FRONT DESK was run by Emi­ly Buonau­ro (who also set up our Eventbrite) with Chrys­tal Shamp, Ash­li Nicole, Va­lerie Udani, Shonn Non­ca, Rose Ross and Ali­cia Muiños – while Louis Her­nan­dez chan­neled Sergei Di­aghilev and ran the SWAG ta­ble, demo­ing wood block cut­ting, the FLOMM game AND he put his skills to work mak­ing the FLOMM pho­to op masks!
 

Jes­si­ca Coy Ro­driguez, Fe­li­cia Czwakiel, Mon­i­ca Odeh, Araceli Capil­la, Fe­lix Marceli­no and (my wife) Jeanne Mehal­lo helped with mov­ing things around. Some heavy things, some peo­ple things.
 

Aaron Win­ters con­tributed a nü FLOMM print to the event – as well as his ex­ten­sive poster col­lec­tion and sup­port at Stock­mar­ket. With Bill Mead just across show­cas­ing what can be done with HTML and Java to make ART – the ba­sis for the 4.23 mi­crosite.
 

Kristin Valen­tine Buech­ler fought with a bunch of cos­play peo­ple and won. Brit­tknee gave in­struc­tion, queued films, Christi­na Marie Svan­cara posed, as did Blu (and a few others). 

Our au­di­ence drew and paint­ed and splat­tered me­dia. Car­lo Cyphers paint­ed, Ryan Ouzts print­ed, Lau­ren Richard­son and Kim­ber­ly Stone drew on peo­ple, Bwargh von Mod­nar per­formed – as did Kay­la LeMas­ters and a few oth­ers at the Open Mic.
 

Also in­volved were Danielle Steers, Lawrence Tran, An­drea Lara, Alexan­der Co­coles, Mar­garet Brunet, Odalis Lopez, Kristi­na Davis, Kaila Mun­son, Jon Sanchez, Alex McBride, DAN­GER Hol­ly, Mar­co Vasquez, Gary Ross, Jay Trues­dale, Ale­jan­dra Gutier­rez, There­sa Dela Cruz, Meghan Arnold, Kate Robin­son, Ji­ayi Young, Katie Tkachuk, Denise Sanchez-Scaglione, Kristin Vi­o­let, An­tho­ny Con­del­lo, and An­neka Grace.

(and if I’ve left any­one off this list, lem­mie know. Blog posts are easy to update!)
 

 

“There is noth­ing like this go­ing on any­where. Bay Area or otherwise.”
          —My fa­vorite com­ment from an at­tendee. Right be­fore some­thing else went wrong.

But it did all come to­geth­er – not as one big mul­ti-chan­nel event (as planned) – but some­thing that led to groups of peo­ple try­ing dif­fer­ent things; not ex­act­ly what they’d ex­pect­ed when they showed up (some of the fea­tured ‘guests’ were ei­ther hours late or sim­ply weren’t there). De­spite this, Posi­ta­vo en­er­gy filled the build­ing. The crowd jumped in and MADE art. And BE­CAME art.
 

Thanks to every­one who helped make this hap­pen, our odd, kin­da-Dadaist thing. I am hap­py to have fired the shot that put all this into motion.
 
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Ad­di­tion­al fo­tos by Rone, Jes, Ali­cia Muiños, and a few others.

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