ArtWorks! Outreach Program

JunkJam Workshops: King City- Sol Treasures and YOSAL students.
Performance: First Night Monterey 2013
The commissioned artist for First Night Monterey 2013 was The Junkman, aka Donald Knaack, the classically trained percussionist who played with esteemed philharmonic orchestras before making his name by performing on instruments of his own construction made entirely from reclaimed materials and found objects. The Junkman travels to the beat of a different drummer. He now exclusively composes for and performs on junk and recycled materials. It's called Junk Music and it's a unique collection of infectious grooves and musical styles that's gaining audiences from every spectrum of the music business from rock to jazz to world music. Impossible to categorize, worldwide audiences are recognizing Junk Music is eye-opening, provocative and entirely new.

First Night Monterey invited the tinkerers, music-makers and dreamers of all ages to come make instruments from junk. The Junkman hosted free workshops in Monterey, Greenfiield and Marina to build the instruments that were played at the Junk Jams on New Year's Eve in historic downtown Monterey. Under the guidance of the Junkman and with help from local artist and museum manager Addison Moore, the community built sound sculptures from recycled materials donated by Waste Management. At the Archer Park Community Center discarded plumbing parts, plastic buckets and scrap wood were transformed by members of the local community into the instruments at the center of the Junk Jams at First Night on December 31st. Watch the JunkJam video below!

These activities are supported, in part, with funds provided by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Robert and Virginia Stanton Endowment Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County.

Greenfield Harvest Festival: October 21, 2012 A FREE community event featuring six bands, seven dance troupes, a community parade, eight art activities for children and their families, pony rides, a petting zoo and a pumpkin patch. Watch the video below!

Art Camp at Archer Park: Six Summer and Fall sessions, full description below.
Exhibit: House of Four Winds (Monterey Civic club), First Night Monterey 2013
Celebrate Monterey! Fall Break Art Camp Students participated in a fall break art day camp at the First Night art studio at Monterey's Archer Park Community Center (home of First Night studio and office), where they created paintings on canvas depicting their interpretation of the historic adobes in Monterey. The paintings were exhibited in a show at the House of the Four Winds, home of the Monterey Civic Club.

 

Puzzle Art Collaborative Project Monterey, Greenfield, Gonzales, Soledad, King City, Marina
Exhibit: First Night Monterey 2013
This is a county-wide project in which each individual has taken a 24" x 24" puzzle piece and created a work of art depicting their lives, hopes and dreams. All of the puzzle pieces fit together into one big jigsaw puzzle art structure. They have been assembled and are displayed as a group collaborative art installation. Seeing hundreds of individual puzzle pieces together and walking along and looking at each artist's story is a truly impressive experience.

Castroville Mural Project: Spring 2013 at the Castroville Recreation Center

Greenfield Music and Art Series: September 2013

Our Outreach Partners Include Greenfield Science Workshop, Greenfield/Soledad/Gonzales Public Libraries, Sol Treasures, Migrant Ed, South County YMCA, Future Farmers of America, CSUMB, Marina Teen Center.

In 2010, First Night ArtWorks! introduced a fee-based Summer Art Day Camp at the Archer Park Community Center, and followed up with a Fall Break Art Camp, where drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, puppetry, mixed media, printmaking and performance art happened! FNM Staff are professional artists and teachers and our goal is to nurture creativity and enhance art skills in a non-competitive, safe, fun environment. Each Friday we have a "performance or gallery exhibit" of the work completed during the past week. Some projects included:

• Learning the "ten key words" of drawing!
• Puppets - Large Walkable Moving Puppets, using recycled materials; the group made large-scale movable puppets.
• Introduced American artists to kids while offering hands-on art experiences in the styles of Great American Masters!

If you are interested in the Summer Art Day Camp or the Fall Break Art Camp for school children, see more details here. Registration forms are online and fees may be paid by credit/debit card or by PayPal.

FNM’s Art Works! presents year-round, free arts workshops to introduce the visual and performing arts to children and adults throughout Monterey County and makes their work an integral part of the region’s largest New Year’s arts celebration. These workshops encourage an active involvement in and love of the arts. Young people and their families directly participate in hands-on workshops conducted by artists/educators in the months leading up to First Night. Often, these workshops offer important enrichment programs for community organizations with whom we partner to offer the workshops. The creative workshops culminate in exhibits and/or performances that become part of the First Night Celebration and are exhibited in other public venues throughout the region, such as the Monterey Peninsula Airport Gallery, Sunset Center, The National Steinbeck Center and Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. These exhibits give voice to the viewpoints and philosophies of all our residents and illuminate the commonality of our world views.

Collaboration is woven into our philosophy of engaging both the artistic community and the greater community, bringing them together to enrich lives and promote understanding. We collaborate with approximately 50 artists, more than 20 schools and community and arts organizations, and hundreds of volunteers in order to be able to present our workshops and the Celebration. We collaborate with business partners such as MST to provide free transportation and with Del Monte Shopping Center to offer free parking and shuttles to our audience on December 31st, and with CSU Monterey Bay for design work for each year’s fresh new look. We also rely on many sponsors and donors in our community to be able to present these workshops and the celebration year after year.

We are especially grateful to all of the donors and sponsors who so generously contributed to our success:
Arts Council for Monterey County, The California Arts Council, James Irvine Foundation, Target Stores, WESTAF, National Endowment for the Arts, Nancy Buck Ramson Foundation, Harden Foundation, Monterey Peninsula Foundation- AT&T Charities, the Robert and Virginia Stanton Endowment Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County, First Five Monterey County, Driscoll's.

Thank you!

To become a sponsor or outreach partner, call the First Night Office at 831 373-4478.

To become an Artist/Instructor, please email: info[at]firstnightmonterey[dot]org

First Night^® Monterey