our second 4.23 event: a whole different vibe

It hap­pened again on Sat­ur­day night 22 April 2017. FLOMM 4.23 turned the Jean­nette Pow­ell Art Cen­ter into an avant garde space. 

And here’s a re­cap. The good and the ugly. (we re­al­ly have noth­ing to hide)
 

wat worked

FASH­ION. Ger­ry Simp­son’s first fash­ion col­lec­tion in 24 years walked through mood light­ing with a lit­er­al work­shop garage door as a backdrop. 

GREEN and RED artwear, re­cy­cled den­im – and Ger­ry spent a year de­sign­ing, fine tun­ing. BIG hair by Shan­non Hul­ley, make­up by our own Lau­ren Richard­son – who had her own make­up trend workshop – 

Flom­mist mod­els were Ali­cia Luera, Clau­dia Mar­tinez, Milk, Da­nee Thomas­son, Mon­i­ca Odeh, and Naia Pizon.

 

PHO­TOG­RA­PHY. Else­where, Danielle Steers and Claire Carr shot at­ten­dees in our PHO­TO­STU­DIO, with props by Louis Hernandez.

 

LIVE EN­TER­TAIN­MENT. Bwargh von Mod­nar spent sev­er­al months prep­ping a new set – and took the 10 o’clock hour and made it her own (video com­ing soon). 

Back­ing her up, 4 Lines (feat. Eddy & Rose of Eddy, Rose and the For­eign Lo­cals) hit us with con­tem­po­rary cov­ers with a Dutch twist.

And speak­ing of Dutch twist, Dutch Bros Elk Grove do­nat­ed two gift cards again this year – which we gave away just be­fore midnight. 

 

PRINT­ING. Blue and NEON YEL­LOW 4.23 tees were print­ed live by Kyle Sab­bati­no, Tony Con­del­lo, and our attendees. 

As were 1923 de Sti­jl-in­spired let­ter­press cal­en­dars (1923 dates = 2018 dates) by Con­nie Ortiz. 

Some weren’t quite ready to jump into press and screens, oth­ers grabbed things and made them move. 

Ja­nine and Yves gave us last minute Dutch trans­la­tions, which led to some type be­ing moved around just be­fore hit­ting the press (can you spot the al­most-typo still in there?)
 

Dorel Ro­tar read en­er­gies through his ex­ten­sive knowl­edge of acupunc­ture – blow­ing quite a few minds. 

Jes made the but­tons. Not a FLOMM event or ex­hi­bi­tion with­out but­tons. Brit­tknee mixed ‘the solution.’

Aaron Win­ters gave at­ten­dees a self-study pro­pa­gan­da product. 

Face (and body) paint­ing were han­dled by Leila Valencia. 

AND Ju­lia Al­le­gret­ti craft­ed de Sti­jl por­traits of attendees.
 

Louis Her­nan­dez and The Pas­tel Lady brought hand­made wares – great gifts for any­one need­ing some flomm in their lives.

Plus, we had a last minute show of ex­pres­sion­ist work. Some­thing I’ve want­ed to do for awhile.

 

And like last year, the hard­core flom­mists were the ones on hand. Cre­at­ing, mak­ing and doing.

BUT it was a whole dif­fer­ent vibe. 

New flom­mists and some old. 4.23 was one thing last year, this year it was some­thing else. MOR things to do, we changed up a lot. Dif­fer­ent is good … Let’s do some good.

This year we were MOR or­ga­nized and MOR co­he­sive – 4.23 would be run by my ad­vanced graph­ic de­sign stu­dents at Pa­cif­ic (Alex, Jon, Adri­ana, Kyle, An­drea, Tony, Joan­na) and they stepped up, ready to hit what­ev­er would be thrown their way. 

And as with FLOMM, who knows what’s go­ing to come across the plate? Adding a last minute sus­tain­able fash­ion show, a few switch ups in the en­ter­tain­ment, odd post­ing reg­u­la­tions on lo­cal cam­pus­es for posters and fly­ers? Fly­ers sud­den­ly van­ish­ing over the week­end? Our Press Re­lease MOST­LY van­ish­ing again this year. 

Re­al­l­l­ly? Really.

4.23, again, be­came an up­hill climb – tho we were ready, we’re FLOM­MISTS, this is The BAT­TLE For MOD­erN, right?
 

THIS SAT! @flommus re­turns to UOP #Stock­ton for its 2nd Year of Ex­per­i­men­tal Art, De­sign, Per­for­mance & Ed­u­ca­tion https://t.co/DDOUWcMBuA pic.twitter.com/zO9RThD7Li

— CreativeMornings/SAC (@CM_Sacramento) April 19, 2017

CreativeMornings/SAC gave us a shout out as did KDVS 90.3 FM – UC­Davis’ ul­tra­cool freeform stu­dent-run ra­dio sta­tion. KDVS just fin­ished up a pledge dri­ve, send em some moneys.

 

wat didn’t worked

Some­one for­got to say ‘break a leg’ 

So some­one broke a leg. 

The night be­fore. Else­where. Our drag per­former sent a text, he wouldn’t be show­ing up to per­form his set cause bro­ken leg. New flom­mist Ju­lia Al­le­gret­ti filled in with a beat po­et­ry performance.

Also, the morn­ing be­fore, the flom­mist in charge of the short films rolled her an­kle – and our in­ter­ac­tive me­dia artist Bill Mead sent a text meme of puk­ing. Cause he was sick. 

And then some­one else was sick. Then some­one else. In­fluen­za was spread­ing through­out the re­gion – JUST LIKE in 1918 (well­ll, it seemed), the flom­mists were drop­ping like flies. 

Es­pe­cial­ly our ven­dors – Car­lo, a main­stay at flomm events texted, Sor­ry yo.

Then we lost a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to malar­ia (and baby poop),
one of our new­er flom­mists fought a tiger (we think it was a cat),
five art stu­dents we know were EAT­EN by their own homework,
an­oth­er one had a ra­dio tow­er fall on them,
am­pu­ta­tions be­came common,
and then we dis­cov­ered com­pet­ing events were crop­ping up on a Sat­ur­day night at a lev­el we didn’t see before. 

Like, the Back­street Boys were hav­ing a fuck­ing reunion!

 

Hy­drodip­ping – it turns out – is quite dan­ger­ous. But our paired down ‘safer’ ver­sion worked with some shoes – and sten­cils (found in a re­cy­cling bin in a re­stroom at UC­Davis – via the De­sign Ca­reers Club) added paint­ed colour to tees.

 

Then fa­mous dutch artist MONDAIN. Don’t get me started.

“I’ve seen art. And this isn’t art. If you ac­tu­al­ly want­ed me to be here, you should have sent a car. With a dri­ver. And a can of Pep­si. That 1893 kind. Chilled, with or­ange bit­ters and ca­pers. Square ice only, cause of De Sti­jl. You guys do NOT know what you’re do­ing. I can’t be­lieve you put my name on this. Leave my art alone, it’s the ONLY thing I can con­trol. You are not the only shop in town. I’ve had more one-man in­ter­na­tion­al ex­hi­bi­tions in Boston, Philadel­phia, and Bal­ti­more than you’ll ever see in your life­time. There’s noth­ing here. Don’t even think there is.”

(And, a week lat­er, Mondain sent a text ask­ing what our next event was and could he bring some Thai noo­dles for all of us)

But it all came together. 

 

HUGE THANKS to every­one in­volved, the at­ten­dees, my ad­vanced de­sign course, the flom­mists, the par­tic­i­pants, the art de­part­ment at PA­CIF­IC, et cetera.

We hope we can again do some­thing else dif­fer­ent this time next year.

 
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Pho­tos by Claire Carr, Mon­i­ca Odeh, mehal­lo and pho­to of the Back­street Boys by Emi­ly Buonau­ro, The Trai­tor. Ad­di­tion­al 4.23 pics can be found on our Flickr (which we for­got we even had) and our Tum­blr arte blog. AND if I’ve for­got­ten to thank ANY­ONE who helped us here, please drop me a note.

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