About: Open Circles engages three seemingly very different social (service) organizations: Sisters of the Road, Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette and the Place Gallery at Pioneer Place Mall, to explore with their communities the notions of “social currency” and the “real worth” of their services; and to further look at the concerns championed by these organizations; hunger and homelessness, women’s reproductive rights, consumerism, and their shifting socio-political relations to the contemporary society.
Open Circles works with each community to invest value, meaning and power in regular folks, and ordinary human relations with simple materials such as second-hand plates, wire coat hangers, shopping bags, and other common materials that our society overlooked or deemed worthless. The encounters combined with community art workshops, result in three different collaborative installations: New Urban (Hobo)Signs, Birds Nest Project, and Shoponomics.
Open Circles is created and coordinated by artist Horatio Hung-Yan Law in collaboration with artists: Pete McCracken+Crack Press, Sandy Sampson, Anne Greenwood, Sam Nagmay and Alex Hirsch.
Open Circles is funded by an Artist Project Grant from the Regional Art & Cultural Council, with additional support from the Celebration Foundation, Sisters Of The Road and Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette.
Bio: Horatio Hung-Yan Law is a Portland based artist who works in installation and public art. He creates collaborative work with diverse communities to connect with the regular folks, and to explore the current human conditions. He is a faculty member of the Pacific Northwest College of Art. www.horatiolaw.com opencirclespdx.wordpress.com
