Welcome to the Storefront Artist Project

	- Hot Coffee For Conversations-
		September 9 – 30, 2006 - 124 Fenn Street Hot Coffee for Conversation is a performance piece created by Carla Repice for the Storefront Artist Project space at 124 Fenn Street. The meaning of the performance is to engage in active participation with the people of the community of Pittsfield and to listen to their stories and thoughts, those that might otherwise be unheard or left unsaid. She uses coffee and conversation, an everyday ritual in places all over the world, as a way to draw out personal voices. Multiple perspectives are heard and each thought and story has a place, ultimately questioning the notion of there being one public narrative. The performance activates a dialogue that continues to reinforce social awareness and action in Pittsfield.
	"To understand a community is to understand all the voices that make up a community."
	Carla Repice is a visual artist living and working in Union City, New Jersey. She was awarded her Masters of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. In 2005 she attended an artist residency and cultural exchange with Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronksy in Johannesburg and Soutpansberg, South Africa. She has also attended residencies in Cape Town and Montagnana, Italy. In 1992 she was awarded an Anthony B. Rhodes fellowship for independent study in London. Her performance piece Goatscape, 2001, was included in the 2002 exhibition Missing: Streetscape of a City in Mourning, at the New York Historical Society. That piece is now part of the permanent collection of related 9-11 works. It was also featured on NPR’s program, The Next Big Thing, on December 8, 2001. Other performance projects include Supporting Exchange, which was included in the exhibition Watch What We Say at Schroeder Romero Gallery in Brooklyn, held during the Republican National Convention. Her recent performance works Processions #2 & #3 have been featured as part of on-going series of Fluxus performance events at Five Myles Gallery in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. For the past six years she has been an artist-in-resident through the organization DreamYard, in the Bronx, where she has created and taught arts-integrated-curriculum projects for New York City Public Schools. In addition, she curates DreamYard’s annual student and faculty exhibition held at Sotheby’s and leads professional development workshops for artists and teachers.