Events work to elevate arts and artists in Happy Valley

With an event list of internationally known artists including Jennifer Mann and Shevaun Williams, the State College Artists Doing Art Series, aka Badass, is bringing a big-city art scene to town.

Badass events are held in artist Michael Black’s 2,600-square-foot Black Sun studio at 700 E. Beaver Ave. Through the events, Black wanted to create a more intimate setting for guests to meet with artists, with a goal to “elevate visual and performance artists and art.”

Alex Sotiropoulos, an intern at Badass and senior studying public relations and Chinese at Penn State, said that the events are not just for artists, but for all community members.

“We think that this event gives them an opportunity to elevate their knowledge of the arts, or even if they’re not super interested they can support the arts as well,” she said. “They don’t have to be just an artist.”

For Black, “the point is there are artists, art consumers and art appreciators in this room and you all fit in that fold somewhere or in multiple folds.”

Badass has been running for just over a year now, with the inaugural season bringing out more than 200 community members over five events with six different artists — a sculptor, filmmaker, painter, photographer, musician and playwright. The series boasts on its website that it offers distinct food, unique people and one-of-a-kind art.

The most recent event, on Dec. 4, featured Howard Schatz, a professional photographer whose work has been exhibited internationally and who released a 25-year retrospective book in 2015 that garnered awards and acclaim.

“I want to shoot what hasn’t been there before. I want to make stuff up. I photograph to surprise and delight myself. So, I want to make things happen in this world that weren’t there before and try to find things that I’ve never seen before,” Schatz said.

Guests of Badass events are excited about the idea and concept that the events are bringing to the community.

“It gathers people to think about things in a different way,” Dan Rowland, of State College, said during the Schatz event.

Michelle Rockower, of Boalsburg, added, “Art is one of those things that is forgotten too quickly. It’s important to share.”

With each unique event, Sotiropoulos said the goal is to create an intimate experience.

“We transform the space each time so it is very different,” she said. “People would come have a nice lunch at a very long table and the artist would have a very casual conversation with people. It’s very loose. It’s not so much of, you know, a presentation where someone is in front of a podium talking about their inspiration.”

The events started out as a lunch with an average of 24 people from the community, Sotiropoulos said.

“It’s first come first serve when you sign up,” she said.

Now, the events have received such a positive response from the community that they’ve been selling out within the first couple of hours.

While Badass is funded through Black’s Black Sun studio and is donation of time, sweat, energy and money back into the community, Black is committed to the one-of-a-kind events.

“Some people say that State College is a sleepy little town, a football town. It’s much bigger than that,” Black said.

Sotiropoulos agrees that this is an important series to have in State College.

“This is a need because it’s a different kind of event,” she said. “It’s an event that would be compared to something in New York. It’s kind of edgier, different. It’s a way to escape, people have said, which is kind of interesting. And I think that’s something we really try to do. We try to add another layer of why state College is a great place to be.”

Upcoming Badass events include wildlife and outdoor photographer Andy Biggs in January and travel photographer Shevaun Williams in February. Both artists will participate in events as well as workshops.

For more information and to register for upcoming events, visit www.liveBadass.org.

This story was originally published December 26, 2015 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Events work to elevate arts and artists in Happy Valley."