SKATE SHOP: Nin Truong and Youth Arts Workshop
Public · By Asian Arts Initiative
Friday, June 14, 2013
6:00pm
Skate Shop: Nin Truong and Youth Arts Workshop
A Storefront Window Exhibition in partnership with WKND Studio
Exhibition Dates: June 14 – September 27, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, June 14, 6 p.m.
Asian Arts Initiative is proud to welcome Seattle-based multi-disciplinary designer and artist Nin Truong to develop and create Skate Shop, a youth-generated pop-up skate shop in the storefront window of our Youth Arts Workshop (YAW) space in the middle of the 1200 block of Vine Street in Philadelphia’s Chinatown North/Callowhill neighborhood. YAW’s space, a former hair salon appropriately named “The Salon” since becoming an integral part of AAI’s new permanent home and multi-tenant arts facility on Vine Street, offers an interesting opportunity to address the intersections of urban history and youth access, as well as the dynamism and challenges of the Vine Street Expressway in its front yard – a formerly pedestrian-friendly corridor now split in two by Interstate 676.
Beginning April, 2013 Truong will collaborate with Asian Arts Initiative staff and local teaching artist Nicole Schaller to lead a youth workshop as part of our Youth Arts Workshop (YAW) – a tuition-free afterschool arts program for youth grades 6-8. Youth participants will be invited to design their own skateboards, stickers, t-shirts and ultimately, a “mock skate shop” which will fill the storefront window of “The Salon.” Youth will explore “creative economies” through art and design, print-making, skate culture and aesthetics through field trips and 2-D and 3-D build workshops.
Skate Shop is supported in part through support from the National Performance Network’s Visual Artists Network.