Opportunity: Welcome House

The Welcome House needs volunteers!
WCA Member Michelle Wilson and Mary Tasillo are participating in the Welcome House public art project in Love Park on Friday, October 9, as part of this Design Philadelphia and First Person Arts event. We will be engaging park visitors in making pulp prints and drawings about the park space. We are seeking volunteers on October 9, for the whole day or only for part of it, to talk to interested passers-by about the Welcome House project to while the Michelle or Mary are engaged with other visitors. We would love to have some folks there to lend a hand on our day who might be interested in learning about papermaking or screen printing - though no experience is neccessary.

There is a chance that volunteers will receive free First Person Arts tickets. I have included our press release about the project below.
The Welcome House project (www.thewelcomehouse.net) is getting some great press (see the new City Paper cover story). If you are willing to lend us some of your time, or have any questions, you can email me at
michelle_print@yahoo.com. First Person Arts can also be contacted directly. Dan is the guy doing volunteer coordination: dang@firstpersonarts.org.
Thanks so much!

BOOK BOMBS SHELTER
PART OF THE WELCOME HOUSE PROJECT

October 9, 2009
10am-6pm

Press Release

welcome house


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Philadelphia, PA - Sept. 22, 2009 -

Philadelphia's First Person Arts Festival is proud to host BOOK BOMBS as
part of the Welcome House Project. BOOK BOMBS is a collaboration between
artists Mary Tasillo and Michelle Wilson. The Welcome House is a 10 foot by
10 foot transparent cube installed in Philadelphia's own Love Park,
featuring artist projects by day and video of the day's activities by
night. On October 9, 2009, 10am-6pm, as part of their day-long residency,
BOOK BOMBS will utilize handmade paper and community participation to
create a site-specific one-night installation called Book Bombs Shelter.
This event is free and open to the public.

BOOK BOMBS is a collaborative, site-based zine project examining
Philadelphia parks and benches as social spaces, shelters and art
galleries, and will culminate next year as a component of PHILAGRAFIKA
2010. (See bookbombing.blogspot.com.) For Book Bombs Shelter, Tasillo and
Wilson invite the population of Love Park, including office workers,
skateboarders, protesters, passers-by, and the homeless, to create works in
handmade paper about Love Park. The resulting papers will be attached while
still wet to the interior of the Welcome House, creating an evolving visual
conversation about the nature of urban public space in general and Love
Park in particular. In addition, the pieces will be documented on the
project blog and used as material for the upcoming zine publication about
shelter, homelessness, and urban space during PHILAGRAFIKA 2010.

The Welcome House is a project conceived and curated by artist Marianne
Bernstein and presented by First Person Arts in collaboration with
InLiquid.com. Designed to re-imagine art spaces, art practice, and
community engagement, artists were invited to propose one-day residencies
using the space as a nexus for public interaction. All daytime events will
be filmed by klip collective videographer Ricardo Rivera and projected onto
the cube at night for public viewing. Following the project will be an
exhibition of the works created in the Welcome House at the Painted Bride
Art Center, located at 230 Vine Street in Philadelphia, in November 2009.
The exhibition will remain on display during the First Person Arts Festival
and through the end of 2009.