December Art View 2018
By Jim Christiansen
Update on the point of the Graceada Park Performance Art Project. Even though I’ve returned to Riverside, California, my birthplace over the past 40 some years I’ve been in Modesto, I have no immediate plans to move back, just visit Riverside events like the opening of the Cheech Marin Chicano, Grafitti Fine Arts Gallery, UC Riverside and other class reunions, I live in Modesto. People seem to misunderstand my point of the Performance Art Project. I found friends, real musicians, live theatre, great restaurants, venues, artists I enjoy working with, poets and other creative people to work with, many who I thought should be spotlighted nationally and internationally as just as good or better than any other City and Cultural area in the World, with real talent I thought others should take note of.
Just because I am able to play music more similar to my former Southern California style, I noted to my friends, after I found out I supposedly died in 1979, when all I had done is move to Modesto, some two years before, that I planned to stay. I’m not moving, have two of my properties I own free and clear. My studio for art, and music practice set up, and if I were to really record with others, there are plenty of excellent studios, sound techs, and venues and friends to play with, as good or better than anything I did in the LA Basin, or even San Francisco.
I live in Modesto, CA, where the downtown park near me has a bandshell, known as Graceada Park, with a musical heritage known as Moband, and hosts plenty of concerts and festivals for decades before I arrived here as a permanent resident. Motown is the home of Rockabilly, Star Wars, and American Graffiti, cruising ain’t no crime, and the Graceada Park Performance Art Project. Nice to be able to play again, but not planning to move, invested much here in Modesto, CA so not moving my primary residence, voting registration, dmv contact, or ssa primary accounts and address, Medi Cal address, or home mailing address, or landlord rights on 537 Bodem or 210 Olive. The point was, you can make it here, and I have. I travel, but this is home. This was supposed to be my vacation with Jen Eros in New Orleans, but instead, my working vacation as usual on the streets of Modesto, CA USA.
Jim Christiansen, originator, but hardly the only partner in the Graceada Park Performance Art Project.
The real ones, have gone out separate ways, but meet up en masse, or in spots you’d not expect, connecting friends, new connections, networking as a working team, to bring home a message of hope, and probably spectacular xmas gifts of meaning, purposes, adventures in creativity, and a change of tide. Merry Christmas. Trump was wrong, no war on Christmas, the Christmas Elves struck back, many struck out, called out, balled hit, hit deliberately, ejected from game, or damn near stole home, only we were home all the time, wherever we were.
See Chris Murphy and Chris Ricci for more on the legacy of MAMA award winners and nominees, hall of famers at www.modestoview.com Tell them Dave Hanley or Steve Perry sent you, along with Jen Eros, Don Stevenson, and Sam, a black cat who gives a damn.
