Allida Warn is an artist, teacher, and researcher with a practice in Socially Engaged Art (SEA). She creates participatory projects in order to share and learn with others. She loves the ephemeral and the interconnected. She creates contemplative personal work primarily in the disciplines of printmaking, fiber, and non-traditional materials. Allida’s SEA practices range through most artistic media and bridge academic disciplines through collaborations that she cultivates with disciplinary experts from anthropology and geology to engineering and math.
Collaborative and Social Projects
There is a tension in creating socially engaged work between breaking through boundaries and creating connections between people so that they gain critical awareness of differences that create dissonant systems.
In my work, I tend to create opportunities for learning through imaginative narrative or metaphorical abstraction. The piece above leverages the metaphor of weaving with different choices, textures, and motions to create a literal social fabric. You can read more about it in these two posts.
March Spring Winds
https://vimeo.com/531040168 A sequential animation with improvisational flute using a Japanese pentatonic scale. March Spring Winds is a contemplation on tensions that coincide as seasonal change…
Looking Back, Looking Forward
https://vimeo.com/195641581 Four years ago this weekend, in the midst of concern over the potential for our country to unravel after the 2016 election, I had an opportunity at the last minute to…
Songs of Urban Ecology: Cathedral of M-14 Fugue
What spaces around you do you ignore? Stop, Observe, Listen. https://vimeo.com/412973474 The Second Song to Urban Ecology, this one was actually begun first. It was originally a photo…
Make it Out of the Ordinary: Pixel Magic
We are all living in a surreal moment, so this next creative prompt leans on the Surrealist practice of collaborative drawing to connect our FOOLmoon CommUNITY. Over the next few weeks…
Make it Out of the Ordinary: Faux Luminariaux
This post about making something “Out of the Ordinary” is the first of several I will be doing in collaboration with WonderFool Productions as a part of their new initiative, FOOLmoon CommUNITY…
First Song to Urban Ecology: Jamaicaway Matins
https://vimeo.com/403553049 While natural systems and cities are symbiotic everywhere, there are huge equity gaps across the globe. Higher income areas have more access to open space, and…
How to Make: Shadow Puppet Machine for FOOLmoon Reimagined
For FossilFOOLs, I created a work of arts-based research about how city-dwellers access nature combining digital animation and found sounds to highlight the ways that nature is affected by and yet…
Bedouin Cocoon: Spring 2001
The unexpected places in which surprises happen are the places where invention happens. Whatever plans I made, the process of creating and performing forced me to push my…
Teaching
ABC Segovia
To see the video, click here or on the photo above* This project was done with three little girls, a family with whom I went on a…
Itsy Bitsy Spider Projects
This is a lesson which I prepared to teach EFL students in Spain. In it they practice numbers, learn to indicate up and down, practice the weather,…
Fractal Collars
Last weekend, I had an extraordinary experience. At the College Arts Association Conference, I met several people through my Fractal Necklaces.…
Symmetry
This week I was digging through some old image files for one reason and another. This one stood out as something interesting. It was done…
Goings On About Town
Though my drawing a day project has once again fizzled, I have in fact been making art nearly every day. When I started the project, my…