Lamp Life

We currently offer annual subscriptions and membership benefits to individuals and students. We hope you’ll join us in this cause; the larger our group is, the more powerful we’ll become!

INDIVIDUAL SUBSCRIPTION $120

Mammut Magazine : “Mammut is a biannual magazine dedicated to exploring all forms of creative production that have a relationship with nature, landscape and environmentalism- or what we call ecological aesthetics.”

CSPA Quarterly: The CSPA’s published periodical that explores the nature of sustainability in art, showcases artists and organizations who practice various forms of sustainability in their art-making, and asks “What should be sustained?”

A copy of one of our favorite books. For 2009, choose from:

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

RenGen: The Rise of the Cultural Consumer- and What It Means to Your Business by Patricia Martin

Monthly E-Newsletters

Opportunities to submit articles, essays, and information to our quarterly publication and newsletters

Opportunities to apply for CSPA commissions to support your work as an individual artist

Annual CSPA Convergence admission discount- Our first convergence will be held in May 2010

Free and discounted workshops and CSPA Field-TripsDiscounts on CSPA Merchandise, publications sold on our website, and discounted registration fees at partnering conferences

via Join the CSPA : The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts.

Before I was hired at LA Stage Alliance, I consulted on web projects for them. It led to the overhaul of the LA Stage Blog. Not much else from that time has been realized, but one idea that didn’t happen at the time was a social network for LA Theater.

Theater is a social network. We can’t, or at least probably shouldn’t, do EVERYTHING on our own and needing others means we need some kind of network in which to work. So it would make sense that we should try and provide the best tools for making this happen. Being that theater is a social network, it makes sense to use social networking. 

When I was at LASA, we looked at ning. Ning is a social networking platform that allows users to start their own social network for whatever they’d like. We looked into it for things with LASA, but it didn’t really fit, so we forgot about it. I kept it in might for other uses. I looked at it for the school of theater at CalArts and for the CSPA to provide a bottom up companion to the site we have. 

I did make the leap. I started a social network for Big Cheap Theater. Big Cheap Theater is a term coined by Erik Ehn, Dean of the School of Theater at CalArts, in reference to the type of theater he writes for (he is a playwright). It had been co-opted after the RAT Conference to name the yahoo group that stood in for any other type of infrastructure in LA Theater. That group was started in 1999 and I joined it in 2004, tipped off by a stage manager I was working with. 

On a whim, I logged into my web panel on dreamhost and checked to see if the domain was open. It was with theater spelled either way and at .com and .org (which as a service I suppose, made sense to me) and I snatched them up. I created a ning social network and I figured I would walk away, tell some people and see if anyone uses it. 

The first couple of days there was nothing to write about. People joined, a few kudos and so I posted for a second time on the Yahoo Group that it was there, have at. This turned into a bit of a shit storm. 

For a bit I was banned from the group. A survey on the group came about because of the back and forth between myself and the moderators of the group. And people took sides, some people sent me kudos (most) and some sent me some nasty notes and now I’m in this position that I have to actually pay attention to the thing. It’s gotten up to 270 members, the poll isn’t there, and Im not really giving it much thought. But, these are tools, it makes sense to use the best tools for the job. I just can’t believe that this caused so much hub bub.

It is always nice to leave a job or a position on a high note. I think that most of my positions have been left with good feelings from both me and my employer. It usually has something to do with my leave being due to a relocation or an obvious career adjustment.

My design career is now on hold because of the last bit. In response to the “What Now?” post yesterday, it is now all about an unrelenting passion for the CSPA.

I feel I’ve finally reached some equilibrium in my professional life. I have a good design resume and while I am breaking from it, I don’t intend on abandoning it, I just don’t need the money as badly so I can afford to be more selective with my projects. Why not only 4 to 6 a year, as opposed to the rate of a dozen or two.

But, I’ve been given a nice, steady, part-time job in theater still and I don’t worry as much about my cintibutiin to the house. Most importantly I now have the headspace that is required to think about the CSPA, and I’m pretty jazzed about it right now.

Today was the cast and crew talkback for Song of Extinction. It is now off to run. Aside from the stuff I’ve left at the theater, the green day on December 7th and whatever strike needs to be done, I don’t have to be there any more. This is not unusual for any reason, but this was perhaps the most positive experience I’ve had as a designer since moving back to Los Angeles, excluding graduate school. This isn’t to say that other shows have been negative, but I’ve decided to take a break, decided before this show was in it’s swing, and I’m actually a bit down. But it is as much as I am excited to evolve the CSPA.