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DaSilva’s work included in this year’s Los Angeles Billboard Project

March 31, 2021

-by April MacDonald
    LOS ANGELES – Now in its seventh iteration, The Billboard Creative (TBC) is presenting a new exhibition opening on April 5th that features the work of 30 emerging and established artists on 30 billboards across Los Angeles.
TBC turns billboard advertising spaces into open-air art exhibitions for all Angelenos.
    “I am happy to share that my artwork, Four Isms, has been chosen for inclusion in this year’s 2021 L.A. Billboard Project,” said Vicki DaSilva.
    Reaching out to DaSilva on Monday to talk about her work and her connection to Inverness County, she said the way by which she found this part of the world and how she calls this place home is a very fun story.
    The story goes a little something like this:
    “The Serras [Richard] asked me to dog-sit in August 1988 at their place here in Inverness. Upon arrival, I noticed the sign up the Banks Road that said ‘Sight Point.’ I knew my cousin (her mother was my great aunt) had come to a summer camp in 1952 when she was 15 years old at a place called Sight Point in Nova Scotia,” said DaSilva.
    “I did not know it was Cape Breton or Inverness. When the Serras called to check in, I told them about my cousin having property near a place called Sight Point in Nova Scotia and asked if there was a camp nearby,” explained DaSilva.
    “It was Carmelita Hinton’s Putney Camp that my cousin attended. She had received a scholarship to attend and her father bought her the property on the Banks Road as a gift. While on the phone with the Serras I asked if they had a survey with local landowners. They did and I pulled it out of the drawer and exclaimed ‘My cousin’s property is on the Banks Road!’”
    “Antonio and I moved from NYC to Portugal in 1989. And then to Paris in 1990 after our first daughter was born. When we moved to Pennsylvania in 1993, after our second daughter was born, I called my cousin in Florida and finally reconnected with her and told her the story about how much we loved Cape Breton and Inverness and wanted to return. She very generously gifted me a piece of her property in 1998. We subsequently bought more from her in 2008,” added DaSilva.
    “Inverness found me and the rest is a love story of us trying to return permanently,” she said.
    They finally made it in November of 2018 after receiving permanent residency from Canada.
    “Also, Joan Jonas has been coming here since the ’70s as well. It was quite the coincidence that in 1988 my NYC art life was intersecting with a future life I would have in Inverness,” closed DaSilva.
    But, back to Los Angeles.
    The exhibited works for The Billboard Creative Project are selected through a curated, blind-submission process open to all, and shown alongside selected guest artists.
    This year’s show includes works from guest artists Ramiro Gomez, Phung Huynh, Narsiso Martinez, and Calida Rawles.
    “The Billboard Creative expands the audience for fine art into the public realm, exposing new artists to Los Angeles drivers and pedestrians alike,” said show curator Victoria Burns.
    “This exhibition is meant to be thought provoking and addresses some of the most important issues of our time through a variety of artistic voices,” she added.
    “Since launching The Billboard Creative in 2014, our goals have always been to provide emerging and underrepresented artists with a platform to elevate their profile through massive exposure and to bring art to the public via billboards,” says TBC Founder and Executive Director Adam Santelli.
    “With Los Angeles museums closed to the public for roughly a year due to the pandemic, now is more important than ever to continue to bring this art experience to the streets and create an opportunity for Angelenos to discover their new favourite artists.”
    To date, TBC has hung nearly 200 billboards featuring the work of artists from around the globe and has generated over 40 million outdoor impressions.
    The exhibition runs April 5th to 30th, artworks will start being placed on billboards on April 5th and all will be on display by April 9th.
    To view the interactive map with billboard locations and artist details visit: https://viewer.mapme.com/2021_billboard_project.
    To learn more about the 2021 show visit: https://www.thebillboardcreative.com/2021-show 2021.
    About The Billboard Creative: Founded in 2014, The Billboard Creative is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that stages public art shows on billboards throughout Los Angeles with a mission to help emerging and undiscovered artists and bring art into the everyday paths of Angelenos.
    Submitted artists are shown alongside guest artists. Previously presented guest artists include Ed Ruscha, Paul McCarthy, Marilyn Minter, and Alex Prager.
    Vicki DaSilva was born in 1960 in Bethesda, Maryland. She began making time exposure photographs in 1980 as an undergraduate art student at Kutztown University of PA. After receiving her BFA, Vicki moved to NYC. She was influenced by both postmodern art and the convergence of street and graffiti art during the birth of hip-hop. She coined the term “light graffiti” in the ’80s to describe the act of creating drawings for the camera on location at night using a variety of colored light bulbs to mimic spray painted graffiti. In 1981 Vicki did an internship and later worked as an assistant for internationally acclaimed performance artist Joan Jonas in NYC. Through Jonas, she was introduced to many artists, including Richard Serra, for whom she worked as a personal assistant throughout the ’80s. Vicki’s work evolved during this time, and in the late ’80s she began to use four-foot and eventually eight-foot fluorescent lamps to make landscape-based light paintings in both urban and rural locations. She continues to make light graffiti text works as well as works using fluorescent tube lamps. Vicki has lived and worked in NYC, Portugal, France, Pennsylvania, and Canada. She and her husband, Antonio, have two daughters. In November 2018 Vicki and Antonio relocated permanently to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. They have been making art and memories together there since 1988. In October 2021, Vicki will have an exhibition at Studio 21 Gallery in Halifax. Current and past exhibitions include the 2021 L.A. Billboard Project, Lumen Lineation, SL Gallery NYC (2018); Allentown X 7: Photographic Explorations, Allentown Art Museum (2017); Radical Love: Female Lust, Crypt Gallery, London (2017); Interference, International Light Art Project, Tunis (2016); East River Flows, NYC Art in the Parks (2015). In 2012, Vicki won the international competition Art Takes Times Square and her work was displayed on the 13 digital billboards of Times Square Arts Midnight Moment. In March 2015, during UNESCO’s International Year of Light, Vicki partnered with Oxfam in London’s Trafalgar Square to raise awareness of the Syrian conflict. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, Brooklyn Street Art, Dazed, Musée Magazine, and Paper Magazine among others.

 

 

 

 

 

 


    

 


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