POW! WOW! Long Beach – Martha Cooper & Ernest Zacharevic Talk: Photo Coverage by Melinda Sanchez
POW! WOW! Long Beach has returned for it’s second consecutive year. Artists from around the globe are participating in their week-long event bringing art and culture to the city.
POW! WOW! is a gathering of contemporary artists who engage with the broader community in the process and creation of art. Long Beach began playing host on Monday to an exciting week filled with live mural paintings, art exhibitions, talks and more. Included in the programming is that the Long Beach Museum of Art in collaboration with Thinkspace Gallery and POW! WOW! are hosting the opening of “Vitality and Verve: In the Third Dimension,” on Friday, July 15 from 7 PM to 10 PM.
More details on the overall week-long programming, occurring through Sunday July 17th, can be found here.
Cartwheel Art is a media partner. Contributor Melinda Sanchez has been covering the progress of murals for POW! WOW! Long Beach. See the post here to follow her mural adventure.
Melinda also attended the talk with Martha Cooper and Ernest Zacharevic at Art Theatre of Long Beach. The talk was presented by Imprint and hosted by Eugene Kan of Maekan. A few of Melinda’s photos from the talk are below.
From POW! WOW Long Beach, this was the description for the event:
Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic and NYC-based photographer Martha Cooper collaborated on a project of six weeks entitled #ReplayNYC on the streets of Cooper’s hometown. Based on the idea of re-imagining selected pictures from Cooper’s impressive collection of photographs through Zacharevic’s brush, the project includes murals and street art interventions.
Though generations apart and coming from different sides from the world, both artists have a strong passion for capturing the charm and magic of a creative moment. For Cooper, that has been photographing graffiti and street artists at work, and for Zacharevic, it’s children at play. Interestingly enough, it’s photographing children playing that granted Cooper the entry to the underground graffiti world back in the 70s. This eventually lead to the release of the legendary Subway Art book, which later became one of the main sources of inspiration for the young graffiti kid Zacharevic.
A couple of decades later, the two met and came up with the great concept to close this circle by having street artist recreate seven iconic images on the streets of NYC. Painting directly on walls, using cutout panels to recreate the setting, or just using found objects as his canvas, the Malaysia-based artist recently finished this unique series of work. Utilizing classic painting skills along with his love for graffiti and street art, he brought some of the vintage vibe captured through Cooper’s lens back onto the streets of the Big Apple. The duo are continuing their collaboration at POW! WOW! Long Beach.
Get in an in-depth look into their collaboration with Eugene Kan of Maekan hosting the talk.
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Melinda Sanchez: It was in 2007, a trip to New York, that Melinda Sanchez knew she wanted to devote herself to art, specifically the culture of street art. Melinda felt it was important that she had a background in the business of art in order to grow as an artist herself. Working as a Gallery Assistant at Upper Playground in Downtown Los Angeles, she had the opportunity to learn from gallery staff, photographers, and prestigious street artists. As her knowledge of galleries and artists grew, her own talents as a photographer developed.
Melinda is driven by the idea that ease of access to social media and technology is a positive force in the democratization of street art. Melinda describes a common theme in her own work as finding “beauty in the breakdown.” She understands the universal hardship every individual faces, and feels that art is an integral mechanism in the process of healing.
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