RoadsignUSA

RoadsignUSA

Address: 4200 Block Bellaire Boulevard, Houston, TX 77025
Contact: June Woest
Email: jw@UrbanArtists.com
Website: http://www.junewoest.com/monument-to-four-mayors.html
Phone: 713-410-5368

How is the project operated?
Artist-run

How long has it been in existence?
Since, Nov. 2009

What was your motivation?
What drives me is a curiosity about the geopolitical aspects of nature and landscape. I’m also interested in the formal qualities of space and time. My travels motivate me to question the astounding rise of capitalism that I have witnessed in America in my lifetime.

Number of organizers/responsible persons of the project.
Me and my friends, any number of Urban Artists, a collective of serious, academic and hobbyist artists.

How are programs funded?
A Kickstarter site funded the first project.
Artists pay for materials and printing. My second job pays for the added expenses of hanging and installation. I encourage fans to buy a poster and “save a billboard.” These are available on the website in the $$ gallery.

Who is responsible for the programming?
Me, basically, but I never act alone.

Number and average duration of exhibitions/events per year.
Four.

What kind of events are usually organized?
We exhibit collaborative and performative art exhibitions in the neighborhood and collaborate with small businesses whenever they will let me on or inside their place of business. I am addicted to learning.

How is your programming determined?
Via trust and respectful dialogue.

Do you accept proposals/submissions?
Yes.

What is your artistic/curatorial approach?
RoadsignUSA is an extension of my interest in landscape. I look for artists whose work comments on culture and responds to the urban, post-natural environment. Ultimately the production of a RoadsignUSA event is a collaboration between me, the invited artist, and neighborhood interests. When we start the process, each of us knows what we know, and not much else. By the end, it’s all different.

What’s working? What’s not working?
People outside of museums are talking about art. An estate-sized, landscape mural, was recently hung upside down and backwards in the local pub near RoadsignUSA. It was repurposed for magic marker graffiti. Professional artists are devising ingenious ways to collaborate with RoadsignUSA, both in the USA and abroad.  What isn’t working is that I continue to fund the project with personal finances.

What kind of role do you hope to play in your local art scene or community?
I would like to use RoadsignUSA as a non-retail space where artists can experiment with ways to make capitalism work.

What idea are you most excited about for the future?
I’m excited about bringing art to a community of educated and generous, over-served and under-served, consumer oriented citizens that reside in this neighborhood or drive-by the billboard.

Images courtesy of RoadsignUSA.