IMAGINARY FRIENDS

*Imaginary Friends* is a multi-day gallery installation for all ages that fosters rigorous experimental arts collaboration between parents and their children. The represented projects have been co-created by local artist-parents—and one grandparent—and their children (ages 1-12), led by child collaborators’ imagination and play. The project seeks to challenge the binary between “kids” and “adult” art, and explore new modes of intergenerational artistic collaboration. Taking seriously the creative potential of children’s play, the artists use their children’s imagination and play as the prime source for collaborative experimental art practice. Media represented include textile, sculpture, film, participatory art, and installation. The inaugural cohort of artists features Hallie Bahn, Christina Balch & Nora De La Cour, Lisa Iglesias & Bodhild Iglesias, Sarah Marcus, Lucia Monge, Katie Richardson, Daniel Sack, Dante Sepúlveda & Aleksandra Ponomareva, and Marianna Dixon Williams & Amy Nicole Buckley.

*Imaginary Friends is funded in part by a grant from the Northampton Arts Council, the South Hadley Cultural Council, and the Hadley Cultural Council, local agencies which are supported by Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. A.P.E.’s programming is made possible in part through sustained support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.*