Daniel Bozhkov Monday Night Lecture

Daniel Bozhkov is a contemporary artist who does his art in public, interactive settings.  I gathered from the lecture that he is a highly educated artist and applies his academia in a particularly humanitarian manner.  He spoke of many of his past projects and left the lecture with the attendees wanting more.  In the beginning he touched on a new project he was working on inspired by refugee camps and the instant communities that are able to be sustained in emergency situations.  He seemed particularly interested in the food cart system that we have in downtown Portland.  

Bozhkov spoke of many of his past projects.  He began with his stint as an employee at Wallmart as a greeter and while he was there, painted a fresco in the customer service department.  He found the position of the "greeter" to be interesting because in his culture greeting was a natural occurrence and would be considered an odd position.  His fresco consisted of community blending with consumer products, a very interesting juxtaposition in the composition.  One of my favorites was the Larry King crop circle.  He titled his piece "Learning to Fly Over a Very Large Larry."  He recorded himself taking a helicopter piloting lesson over the crop circle he created.   I was also drawn to the project he did in Istambul.  He was there with his mother who spoke some Turkish, but old fashioned Turkish.   He also noticed the Simit stands everywhere.  Simits are a combination of a pretzel and a bagel.  He decided that he wanted to learn to make them and eventually formed them into old fashioned Turkish phrases and designed a bag for them to be distributed in.  He then went into the streets of Istambul and sold them from his own Simit stand.   

I would like to follow the works of Daniel Bozhkov to see what he does with his new projects.