A ‘GROUP AS LEADER’ THEMED SCULPTURE DESIGNED TO SUPPORT LOCAL COMMUNITY MEMBERS IN BECOMING IMMERSED IN A VARIETY OF LOCAL COMMUNITY ARTS SERVICE PROJECTS
The Museum of Personal & Social Transformation is a sculpture designed for the dual purposes of (a) enacting nonhierarchical models of peer mentorship and (b) supporting community members in becoming involved in community arts service. Our project plays on the Las Vegas trope of the local, one-of-a-kind museum, reimagining the museum structure itself as an organization dedicated to helping community members become more involved in a variety of community arts service projects. We are three independent artists, each with our own bodies of independent work, sharing a common interest in collaboration, experimental art forms, and community arts service. Our plans for the sculpture are based on a series of sketches related to two of Adams' early childhood drawings of female figures, and utilize Adams' personal experience as a prototype, showing how Adams and Lay's decision to participate in a shared introspective peer mentoring process in 2022 led to Adams' eventual decision to accept service commitments with the Sin Sity Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the Las Vegas Men's Choir. Our plans for the sculpture build on Adams' prior, ongoing project Social Sculpture for Individual Goals, and consist of six objects which can be placed in a circle, signifying group process. Five of the six objects are stackable, and this aspect of the piece is intended to generate conversations about the paradox of leadership within nonhierarchical societies. Our plans for the sculpture utilize geometry and the Platonic solids as metaphors for the complex interconnections that form within social groups.
WE ARE THREE LAS VEGAS ARTISTS COMMITTED TO SUPPORTING COMMUNITY MEMBERS IN ENACTING NONHIERARCHICAL MODELS OF PEER MENTORSHIP AND IN BECOMING MORE INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY ARTS SERVICE
Since 2020, Holly Lay and Homer Hidalgo have been facilitating a local experimental art space, Available Space Art Projects (ASAP) for the local Las Vegas community. At ASAP, local artists are supported in exhibiting temporary, experimental artworks in a manner that is entirely artist centered and artist led, i.e., Lay and Hidalgo deliberately refrain from exerting any curatorial influence. Local artists who show their work at ASAP are allowed to sell their work, but are not required to do so. When an artist does sell an artwork, ASAP never accepts any commission. In 2022 Ben G Adams and Holly Lay began meeting with the intention of creating a (then undefined) collaborative artwork together, and this resulted in the development of a peer mentorship relationship that eventually helped Adams to decide to accept service commitments with two local LGBTQ+ focused community arts service organizations, the Sin Sity Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the Las Vegas Men's Choir. In 2023 Adams, Lay, and Hidalgo joined forces and began working on creating The Museum of Personal & Social Transformation, a sculpture dedicated to supporting the enactment of nonhierarchical models of peer mentorship and to helping individuals become more engaged in community arts service.