Drive-By-Art (Public Art In This Moment of Social Distancing) East End, Long Island

Participating artists include: Suzanne Anker, Brianna Ashe, Elena Bajo, Monica Banks, Dianne Blell, Joe Brondo, Philippe Cheng, Kelly Darr, Jeremy Dennis, Eric Dever, Sally Egbert, Eslye Escobar, Eva Faye, Eric Fischl, Saskia Friedrich, Robin Gianis, Frank Gillette, Janet Goleas, Carly Haffner, Hiroyuki Hamada, Barry Holden, Alice Hope, Soren Hope, Erica-Lynn Huberty, Bryan Hunt, Joan Jonas, Eileen O’Kane Kornreich, Laurie Lambrecht, Cassi Namoda, Steve Miller, Jill Musnicki, Stephen Neidich, Joel Perlman, Clifford Ross, Toni Ross, and Sara Salaway, Matthew Satz, Bastienne Schmidt, Christine Sciulli, Barry Schwabsky, Bruce M. Sherman, Keith Sonnier, Sabina Streeter, Carol Szymanski, Evan Thomas, Susan Vecsey, Ryan Wallace, Lucy Winton, Nina Yankowitz, Darius Yektai, and Almond Zigmund.

Drive-by baby showers and birthdays have become the norm for celebrating special events during this time of social distancing and the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many others, artists and cultural producers are sequestered in their homes and studios dealing with depressed income, isolation and the fears that precarious futures produce. Enter Drive-By-Art, an outdoor public art exhibition that is experienced from the safety and intimacy of one’s own automobile.

Not only does Drive-By-Art create a sense of needed solidarity within the artistic and cultural communities now entrenched in the South Fork of Long Island, but it also offers an experience that is otherwise severely limited by our current social distancing practices: interacting with tangible objects in the real world.

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS!

Taking advantage of the rich, artistic heritage of the South Fork of Long Island, artists currently living and working there will install and display artworks related to this moment of social distancing on their properties, near roads or on highways. For instance, classic and experimental sculptures made inside may be installed in driveways or as lawn objects, tree trunks can be sites of interventions as paintings, rooftops as sites for light sculptures seen from the road but also the sky. Sides of houses might become surfaces for video projections and picture windows as stages for shadow puppet performances while musicians and sound poets might give live performances at the edge of properties.

Around 50 painters, sculptors, photographers, performance artists, film and video makers, poets, and musicians of varying ages, cultural backgrounds, and gender are involved. All artists, their addresses, and maps of hamlets where their works can be viewed are available here: www.drive-by-art.org

We will also be conducting real-time interviews with some of the artists on Instagram and Facebook. Specifics will be posted to our website. A Los Angeles rendition will take place over Memorial Day weekend.

Special thanks to Guild Hall and Parrish Art Museum for their support.

Drive-By-Art is organized by American artist and theorist Warren Neidich, a conceptual artist, theorist, and organizer. He is the founding director of Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art and the American editor of Archive Books, Berlin, and Milan. He works and lives in Los Angeles and Berlin.