Category: Events

  • Viva Panama Organization 20th Anniversary

    Viva Panama Organization 20th Anniversary

    The Viva Panama Organization holds it’s 20th Anniversary celebration at the Downey Civic Theatre, Saturday, August 20, 2011 7:00PM to 9:00PM

    For two decades the group has been sharing the culture of Panama with the multicultural population of southern California. The performance features a Gala displaying a showcase of traditional dances by Ballet Folklorico Viva Panama and the selection of Miss Panama California, with special guest of Justine Pasek, Miss Universe 2002.

    For more information, visit http://www.vivapanama.org

     

     

     

     

  • Downey Arts Meeting July 30th at Granata’s

    Downey Arts Meeting July 30th at Granata’s

    The next Downey Arts Coalition meeting is Saturday July 30th, 12:30 PM at Granata’s Italian Villa on Downey Avenue.  Have a passion for the visual and performing arts, and want to see great things happen here in our local community?  We could use your leadership and involvement.

    The Encore Playhouse on Downey Avenue was the home of the 1955 production of Harvey that brought John Hume to Downey, leading to the Downey Children's Theatre
  • Luau to benefit Downey Symphony Guild

    Luau to benefit Downey Symphony Guild

    How about going to a big summer birthday party where a gift isn’t even required?

    Well, it’s Tuesday, July 12, at 6 p.m. and it is not only the Downey Symphony Guild’s birthday, it’s a luau and a serious barbecue at the Rio Hondo Event Center. All you need to bring is yourself ready for feasting, music and celebration.

    Again the Downey Symphony Guild invites the community to join them in support of Music in the Schools and the Downey Symphony Orchestra. It is through the efforts of this time-honored organization that generous donations go out each year to fund music appreciation for our school children and to benefit our excellent orchestra.

    Katy Hare of the Guild announces that a giant feast is being planned consisting of four meat choices, fish and four or five salads along with all those good things which accompany the entrees, as well as a birthday cake, of course.

    Adding to the light-hearted Hawaiian theme of the evening will be two young ladies from Warren and Downey high schools. The girls, who won first prize in the local talent show, will perform Hawaiian and Polynesian dances and songs.

    Come to our summer luau-barbecue-birthday party July 12 for door prizes, leis, good food and tidal waves of fun.

    For reservations, please send $20 per adult and $10 for children under 12 on or before July 9 and mail to Downey Symphony Guild, 9700 Garnish Dr., Downey 90240. Questions: (562) 861-8507.

    –Rosalie Sciortino, Downey Symphony Guild

    Read more:The Downey Patriot – Luau to benefit Downey Symphony Guild

     

  • Local Art @ Mari’s Wine Bar, August 6

    Local Art @ Mari’s Wine Bar, August 6

    Announcing the launch of a new venue for local art, a partnership between the Downey Arts Coalition and Mari’s Wine Bar at 8222 Firestone Blvd in Downey.  We hope to bring you monthly exhibitions of local artists in a wide variety of styles.

    Featuring the work of local artists Carolina Del Toro, Jorge Del Toro, Claudia Hernandez, and Don Lamkin, the works will remain at Mari’s through the end of August.  There will be an opening night event on Saturday August 6th, 6:30 PM until close.  Come for food & drink, art and community.

     

  • Warren High Chalk Festival

    Warren High Chalk Festival

    I wish I could have spent more time looking around, but congratulations to the artists at Warren High School for their wonderful chalk-art a couple weeks ago, May 28th.  The winners and other pictures are posted up on the Warren High Art Club blog.  Congrats to the students and teachers, particularly the prolific George Redfox.

     

    Courtesy George Redfox

  • Thursday: Fine Arts night at Downey High

    Downey High School is showing student art work across all disciplines Thursday evening, 4 to 7PM in the J-Hall on campus. The event is free to the public, and there will also be food prepared by culinary students as well.

  • Next Meeting May 28th, WHS Chalk Festival

    Next Meeting May 28th, WHS Chalk Festival

    Our next meeting will take place at 11AM on Saturday May 28th at Warren High School, taking place during their 2nd Annual Chalk Art Festival, which runs 8AM to 4PM.  We’ll be meeting in George Redfox’s classroom, J-1 out at the back of the school near the parking lot.  We’ll be discussing the Downey Museum of Art, which has been closed for awhile, but now has cleared its legal challenges and can re-open again as long as the organization can prove to the city that it is good shape to do so.

    The Mission of the Downey Arts Coalition is to engage the local community in a meaningful relationship with the arts.  We will seek to promote artistic presentations in the City of Downey, through fostering support and collaboration with current local arts organizations, as well as initiating new opportunities for artists and audiences to connect.

  • Coordinating Art with Downey Symphony Concert

    Coordinating Art with Downey Symphony Concert

    One of the sadly under-utilized features of the Downey Theatre is the gallery space that was designed with the lobby. In it’s forty year history it may have been used less than 5 times, with two of those in the past year. One of those just a couple weeks ago coordinated with the Downey Symphony concert. Early on, one of the ideas that has come out of advocating for the arts here in Downey, was to showcase local art whenever there is a major event at the theatre. The Downey Art Vibe held a significant event about a year ago called “Ambivilance” which showcased photography by GabeOne and Valentin Flores. Around 800 people showed up for that, showing that the visual arts is not dead in this town.

    Thanks to the efforts of George Redfox, art by students of Warren High school was on display at the Downey Symphony concert on April 2nd. Redfox is a photography teacher at Warren High School, as well as a leader in several local organizations such as the Downey Historical Society, the Downey Art Museum and his own start-up the Downey Conservancy. His leadership in the area of conservancy and respect for Downey’s mid-century architecture has led to several re-designs of new business downtown. He worked on pushing the Bob’s Big Boy Broiler project, and influenced council members to encourage a redesign the new Porto’s Bakery from Spanish style to mid-century– an effort that now extends to the Downey Gateway project’s design.

    George also has an extensive Flickr Photo stream featuring photos of Downey’s historical sites, new and old. Add to that these photos of the art on display during the symphony concert. Hopefully this will lead to more theatre & art collaborations in the future.

  • Next meeting, Saturday April 30th 2PM

    Next meeting, Saturday April 30th 2PM

    Pencil in our next meeting for April 30th, 2PM, back at the Downey Theatre green room.

    We have special guest, Jay Lopez, formerly of the Downtown LA Art Walk, and currently of Art Weekend LA, Off Broadway LA, and has is own outfit called Contemporary Cultural Consultants.  He helps cities find their footing with arts events and marrying the city’s interests of economic revitalization of downtown areas with the arts.  Thanks to Rene Garzona for hooking up a contact with Jay.

    Also, we want to formalize our “mission statement” if you will, and decide on what the main function of the Downey Arts Coalition will be.  We talked last month through various options of being an collaboration and advocacy group vs getting into the business of producing events ourselves.   Our assignment is to email a sentence or two of what you think the Downey Arts Coalition should become, and what types of tasks we take on as a group.

    For those who missed the meeting, we talked for awhile about what the challenges and current business of the Downey Symphony as a test-case to discuss how our group could potentially help their group.  Then we discussed putting together an Art Walk event, which branched into two questions:  What does the legal producing/insurance/non-profit/tax exempt requirements play out of producing an event, and does the DAC even want to be a producing organization?  Also, we debated about the push-pull of staying true to the goals of creating community around art, vs. getting corporate sponsors and helping them advertise themselves through our event.  Councilman Fernando Vasquez also shared his perspective from working with the city.   We also heard from new theatre manager Amber Vogel about what VenueTech has been doing at the theatre.

    Looking forward to seeing you at the next meeting, we’ll enter through the office door, which is in the back across from the Library building.

    Downtown Downey, 3rd Street:

  • Next Meeting Saturday March 26th

    Next Meeting Saturday March 26th

    The second meeting of the Downey Arts Coalition will be this Saturday, March 26th, 12 Noon at the Downey Civic Theatre.  Meeting will take place in the green room, so please enter from the back door on Brookshire Ave.  The theatre’s address is 8435 Firestone Blvd, Downey.

    We’ll discuss ideas for a Downey Art Walk event, as well as hear from theatre manager Amber Vogel about their current plans.