(Pics) Sumi Ink Club: Building Community Through Art

Sometimes the best projects are the simplest. Lucky Dragons are renowned for their art projects, performances and their ability to create a temporary community between audience members. Often in their performances, this takes the form of using custom sound objects like Wrong Spectrum, in which a video projector and blank cd-rs are utilized to enable a synesthetic light and sound experience controlled by the crowd.

However, their work is not limited to sound-based projects. Last Saturday at London’s Auto-Italia project space in conjunction with Upset the Rhythm, Lucky Dragons used their Sumi Ink Club project to build community through collaborative art.

They explain Sumi Ink Club:

sumi ink club is a los angeles-based drawing collective founded in 2005 by sarah anderson and luke fischbeck. the group holds regular open meetings to execute topsy-turvy, detailed, collaborative drawings using ink on paper. in each of its permutations, sumi ink club uses group drawings as a means to open and fortify social interactions that bleed into everyday life. sumi ink club is non-hierarchical: all ages, all humans, all styles.

Utilizing water-based ink and brushes, participants were invited to draw on the glass windows of Auto-Italia, creating a large-scale intervention that connected the group art with the scenery outside.

Sumi Ink Club has chapters in cities across the world, and a collection of club artwork was recently on view at the MOCA in Los Angeles.

Sumi Ink Club

Lucky Dragons

Special thanks to Upset the Rhythm for images.