urbanrethink

On September 5th in Orlando, FL people started their day with art installations springing up around the Mills50 and downtown area. For one day artists participated in the “Walk On By” show curated by The Corridor Project. Everything from Yarnbombing to performance art was taking place. Here are some photos from the show taken by artist Lesley Silvia.

Occupying a tiny corner inside Urban ReThink, the self-proclaimed "Happy Food Café" is the culmination of the hard work and effort of sisters Tisse and Joyce Mallon.

As important as cyclist safety is, this month's Collide*scope tackled an even more intractable issue: homelessness. Orlando's population lacking permanent housing varies depending on who's counting. According to statistics shared during the presentation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development calculates 2,800 people go homeless in Orange County nightly; using the Department of Education's metrics, that number jumps to 6,000. Either way, it's a staggering figure that grows each year, making the Orange County Jail by default our largest homeless shelter and mental facility.

Leah Fairchild did an installation in front of Urban ReThink in Thornton Park called "public library." Its a box with books inside. Very simple. But you can take the books. You can leave your old books behind. You can write a book and leave it. How fun is this?

Thornton Park's Urban Rethink creative co-working center hosted the August edition of their collide*scope collaborative experiment. Each month, a small group of diverse interesting individuals is assembled by event curator Anna McCambridge Thomas, and tasked with tackling a significant issue in only a week.

The quartet were charged with developing a new weapon in the war against homelessness, and the idea they came up with was both innovative and provocative. In fact, one audience member became so agitated by the Q&A; that followed, that he had to be escorted out.

this wasn’t in some distant hazy land full of minarets and goats in the streets, this was here, in the United States of freaking America! These tax paying citizens were not only failed to be taken care of adequately, but they were failed to be taken care of humanely. A civilized, Western State was so entrenched in bureaucratic policies, that it did what it had always done; evacuate, house, and walk away. According to the powers at be these people should have used their bootstraps and be reality show millionaires by now.

Urban ReThink's Book Making workshop Wednesday, led by Greg Leibowitz and Adrian Gonzalez, both veterans of the Flying Horse Editions print studio. (Local illustrator Carly Jean Andrews will also be on hand.)

"Take a piece of paper. Fold it eight times, and now you have a book," Leibowitz says.

It seems simplistic, even self-evident, but it's that simple act of transformation that first fascinated Leibowitz, who delved into the processes of print by interning at local letterpress concern Mama's Sauce as well as Flying Horse.

McDaniel imagined the piece in giant format on the Urban ReThink wall and, in particular, the reaction it might trigger in his niece. Yet, upon seeing his first Photoshopped rendering, Spath quickly dismissed its authenticity. “It’s not real.”

When seven Central Florida counties were factored in, the study showed that the arts contribute $264 million annually to the economies of Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Volusia, Brevard and Polk counties.

Conducted by Americans for the Arts, aWashington, D.C.-based national advocacy group, the study did not measure ticket sales or entry fees, but tallied other spending created by cultural organizations — everything from the groups' rents and payrolls to patrons' expenditures on transportation and baby sitters.

August 13 – collide•scope at Urban ReThink