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CB to You Mobile Art Lab

CB to You Mobile Art Lab

Energizing Community Through Art!

 

Coming soon to a community near you: the CB to You Mobile Art Lab!

The CB to You Mobile Art Lab is a traveling pop-up art experience energizing the power of community through art. Featuring regional artists from across Northwest Arkansas, the art lab will be visiting local libraries and festivals around the region to bring artmaking, music, storytelling, and more.

The mobile art lab runs each year from April to November, with stops featuring art- and community-inspired activities for all ages. From creative experiences with a visiting artist to free special exhibition tickets, free art kits to take home, live music, and more, each stop is packed with inspired fun for everyone.

Find out when CB to You is coming to your community here, or sign up for eNews to learn more about what’s happening with Crystal Bridges.

The CB to You Mobile Art Lab is brought to you in collaboration with regional artists, featuring Lourdes Valverde, Alan Rodrieguez with Razos Studios, Lyette Thrower, and Tram Colwin.

Additional collaborations include: the Mobile Print Cart, facilitated by local printmaker Vic Barquin and designed by Somewhere Studios; music and movement experiences guided by community organizations Music Moves and Latin X Theater Project; and live artmaking at festivals by additional community artists.

CB to You 2023 Tour Schedule

 

Please see individual event listings for details on artists, activities, and performances.

Keep an eye on this space for updates about new stops and CB to You events, or sign up for eNews and be the first to hear where the mobile art lab is headed next!

What to Expect at CB to You

 

  • Art in Action: With interactive artist demos and drop-in studio visits, each of CB to You’s guest artists will explore what community means through resilience and storytelling. You’ll get to meet the artists, hear about their inspiration, and even make some works of your own.
  • Art and Inspiration Coming to You: The mobile art lab will tour from April to November visiting local community libraries, afterschool programs, and festivals. Each visit will feature activities with a guest artist, plus occasional pop-up musical performances, storytelling sessions, and other activities.
  • Something to Take With You: Besides the inspiration and fun, we’ll also have free art kits available at local festivals and art totes for checkout at partner libraries.

Featured CB to You Guest Artists and Partners

 

Tram Colwin

Tram is the artist and designer behind Tram Colwin Art, where she creates custom artwork, prints, and stationery goods. She was born in Vietnam and lived there until her family immigrated to America in 1996, following other relatives straight to Bentonville, Arkansas. With every piece Tram creates, she tries to capture the beauty that can be found in nature and in everyday life. Her hope is that after viewing her art, people will be drawn to search out the beauty of nature and the world around them.

Tram Colwin
Lynette Thrower
Lynette Thrower

Lynette Thrower is a poet and short story writer living in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Her work has appeared in Applause Literary Journal and Arkansas English Journal. One of her roles as a poet is the acknowledgement, honoring, and celebration of the humanity and life’s purpose of the under-celebrated, undervalued, and forgotten. She is also committed to interrogating the “what ifs” and to imagining the undocumented sides of conversations in her poetry.

Lynette is a 2018 grant recipient and member of the inaugural cohort of the Artists 360 project sponsored by the MidAmerica Arts Alliance and Walton Family Foundation. She is also an alumna of the Open Mouth Reading Series and a member of the 2020 Nick Cave Until artists convening. She has served as a guest instructor on magic realism at the Write Now writers’ workshop at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Lynette has performed her poetry at venues such as the Momentary and the Levitt Amp Fort Smith Music Series and has participated in panel discussions such as Fort Smith’s 64/6 Downtown’s 2022 Our Town’s Excellence conversation on art in the River Valley. She holds a B.A. in English with a minor in Rhetoric and Writing from the University of Arkansas Fort Smith.

Alan Rodriguez with Razos Studios

Alan “Toxic” Rodriguez is a first-generation Mexican, self-taught, interdisciplinary visual artist in Northwest Arkansas. Alan is primarily known for his vibrant public art murals that celebrate Mexican culture and identity, with practices in the mediums of illustration, acrylic painting, wood burning, and metal working.

His commissioned work can be found at the Artists Barbershop at the intersection of Sunset and Thompson (Springdale, AR), 8th Street Plaza (Rogers, AR), Terra Studios (Fayetteville, AR), and CACHE’s OzCAST (online). Alan’s most recent partners have included TASC, Latinx Theatre Project, Arkansas United, and Dedicated Studios. When he’s not working on his visual art, Alan writes and performs hip hop. Alan was an invited 2022 panelist for the Latine Artist Panel organized by the University of Arkansas Latin American Studies, and he is a Mid-America Arts Alliance Artist INC Fellow 2020.

Alan credits Jose Hernandez (Little Rock, AR) and Jamie Ulick (Fayetteville, AR) as his mentors. Alan is currently working on the extension of his original 8th Street Plaza mural with a Fall/Winter 2023 end date.

Follow Alan’s work on Instagram at @_toxic.

 

María de Lourdes Valverde

María de Lourdes Valverde Galindo was born and raised in México. She moved to Bentonville, AR. in 2015. She got a bachelor’s degree in Science of Industrial Engineering at Durango Technologic Institute in Mexico. She is a self-taught artist and a fellow of Artists INC. She is represented artist by Art Ventures Gallery in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and director of Raíces de México, an organization that promotes Mexican traditions.

Her work explores her experiences in life, looking always to provoke feelings in the spectator. Nature and family are present in most of her works. She uses oil and acrylic techniques, but she likes exploring new methods to express herself.

Sponsors

Neff and Scarlett Basore | Matt and Mary Kathryn Brown | Anna and Carl George | Sue and Charles Redfield | Lee and Linda Scott | Dennis and Evelyn Shaw | James and Ann McKenzie