Dan Flaming and Mario Ybarra, Jr. in conversation

This conversation initiates the spring 2009, Liberty Hill Foundation sponsored series of talks between artists and civic leaders.

Daniel Flaming and Mario Ybarra, Jr. will each talk briefly about their own work before engaging in a conversation with eachother about informal economies, art, and the possibilities of developing small business for artists, push cart vendors and short-order cooks. The conversation will open up to the audience for Q & A, leaving enough time for a sampling of curry corn dog tests made by cook and artist David Thorne.

Daniel Flaming has been president of the Economic Roundtable since 1991, when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously endorsed converting the Roundtable into an independent research organization. The purpose of the Economic Roundable's work is to support informed actions to build a sustainable economy and an inclusive community. Reseach projects that Daniel has led have produced widely respected findings about the informal economy, industrial restructuring, community economic change, impacts of recessions on workers, immigrant workers, welfare reform and homelessness. Daniel recieved his Ph.D. in Urban Studies from USC, his Masters Degree in Urban Planning from UCLA, and his Bachelors Degree in Philosophy from Pomona College. Recent research papers produced by the Roundtable can be downloaded here.

Mario Ybarra, Jr. is a founding member of the artists’ collective Slanguage. Ybarra is developing, producing, and selling corndogs at a homemade stand in order to explore one of Los Angeles’s most well-known cultural crossroads -- food. The Curry Corndog Stand will be part of Project Broadway, a series of temporary site-specific installations taking place on a six-block stretch of Broadway Avenue. His work has been featured in a number of institutional exhibitions, recently including Alien Nation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and Uncertain States of America, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, as part of the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. Ybarra curated a ten-year survey of graffiti art at the Inshallah Gallery in Los Angeles, commissioned by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. He is a guest lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and is featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.