Boats, Beavers & Performance Art: The Diverse World of Artist Alita Edgar

Imagine this: a boat outfitted to celebrate… the Beaver. Artist Alita Edgar is currently crafting a performance site and installation art piece inside a historic Squarehead boat, paying tribute to her favorite quadrupeds, the beaver. Edgar’s art and installation projects are incredibly diverse, and that’s what makes her so captivating as an artist. Whether it’s transforming abandoned buildings or creating floating art pieces, Edgar’s work always engages the viewer, immersing them in the experience of the art.

Music Box V – photo credit Tod Seelie

I wanted to get to know Edgar more because I just love the way they approach each of their projects and thought you’d find it pretty fun to get to know them also. Here’s some insight into the world of artist Alita Edgar.

How Alita Edgar Got Started as an Artist:

Alita Edgar’s origin story involves trespassing and finding their way to The Bay Area via collectives and non-traditional art projects. While they’ve only been officially living in The Bay for a couple years, their roots within the Bay Area art scene go back.

“Well, you’re always a weirdo kid as an artist, right? I was into writing, fashion & insect furniture design as a kid but started working on large-scale projects with the Madagascar Institute ( a machine art combine as they say) in Brooklyn around 2000-ish… and performing with the Coney Island Sideshow around the same time. I moved into Flux Factory, a Williamsburg Brooklyn-based art collective and was working at Rubulad, an underground dance club too. So I was surrounded by interesting people doing interesting things, many of whom I have made sure to keep around, as much as I can!

2014 The Dreary Coast

We kept making processionals, “trespass theater” performances in abandoned buildings, on the Gowanus Canal, etc. for decades (still do, sometimes), outside of my day job as a journalist. 

I went to Venice with Swimming Cities, a junk raft project by Swoon. Came back and attended many Camp Tipsies. I moved to New Orleans and co-founded the Music Box Village with Swoon & friends. We became a legit nonprofit and opened a sound art institution! I was Lead Artist & producer on some huge, ambitious collaborative works – at home and overseas. At some point I realized I’d been earning my living in the fine art world for a decade or so – it was not originally the plan. And realized that working in collectives is not the traditional artistic path, nor is it always easy, but can be key to making something much greater than the sum of its parts, and transformational, sometimes, to the artists taking those risks to create together.

In Covid shutdown, Spring 2020, I was offered an option to come to the Bay Area, and took it. I’d spent a lot of time visiting throughout the past two decades and had a bit of community here, and was impressed by the creative forces at work.”

Porch Life Wonder Wheel – photo credit Lauren Silberman

About The Untitled Beaver Project:

Inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology (a museum in LA which has been coined as one of So. Cal’s strangest museums), the interior will transform into a speculative mini-museum and cabaret, paying homage to one of the artist’s most cherished places. “Untitled Beaver Project” is actually a project Edgar is working on with several other artists and the initial spark of inspiration came from a local hat shop owner, Abbie Dwelle of Paul’s Hat Works located in The Outer Richmond. It’s looking for a permanent home and has a Kickstarter to help with its creation. The campaign offers exciting rewards, including the opportunity to host one’s event on the completed project. You get way more amazing detail about the project in Edgar’s own words:

“Abbie Dwelle of Paul’s Hat Works inspired this project with her curiosity and intent to honor the beavers whose fur she uses in her creations. She’s gone deep with their historic and current impact. I am researching and reaching out to the many Beaver Believers, and fascinating and wonderful people supporting those 40lb. terraforming watershed engineers. I have been making performances with the Shadow Parks Department in Brooklyn, doing biomimicry, puppetry, and costume + movement, ceremony and ritual for 10+ years now. So I invited them to come apply their disciplines, thought, vision and handiwork to this topic on the West Coast for the first time. We are calling the show Viviparous Quadrupeds (for now).

This boat will become an art installation: The Untitled Beaver Project

Our last project was germinated with a Black ecologist and urban tree specialist in Manhattan, wishing to evoke the lost Minetta Creek on the surface streets that have covered it. 40-60+ people in costumes handmade from 2020-2021, acting out plants, animals and elements from pre-Dutch settler colonial times. It’s touched on some aspects of our relationship to our climate and our current moment. I’m glad our work is finding some support and leading us down some new paths.

Briefly – we are enamored with this 1931 San Francisco-built hay scow, a nearly 100-year-old wooden boat, and are hoping to repair her and get her 1925 engine going again. She can serve as a mini-museum inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and the Bywater Museum of Unnatural History, and probably some other great museums I’m forgetting about right now, a gathering place, tiny venue and traveling performance platform that brings audiences down to their respective waterfronts.

We are seeking a fan club for this boat! She’s very special, last of her kind, historic and needs a lot of love, work, and care, more than I as one person who doesn’t know that much about boats or engines can give. So we are asking people to sign on, donate if they can, or come help steward her year to year. We do have a Kickstarter campaign with something like 10 days left to give for her first haulout with us. bit.ly/savesqhd!!”

The view from The Stars and Moon Art Park

About Co-Founding The Stars and Moon Art Park in Isleton:

Today, I am excited to share with our readers the existence of a new art park in The Delta named “The Stars and Moon Art Park.” If you haven’t already heard rumblings about it, this is your revelation. I’ll certainly do a more in-depth article in the future about this amazing place. Edgar is actually the Co-Founder of The Stars and Moon Art Park along with John Rinaldi of The Institute of Possibility. Edgar talks about how they have been working with Rinaldi for a while now and how the partnership came to be.

“John Rinaldi is a friend and co-conspirator of many years, last year he purchased a marina and RV park which he has turned into the Art Park with an Innovation Dock for art boat experiments, and he is Executive Director of the SF Institute of Possibility 501(c)3 which I am employed by as Artistic Director. For this new site I have written grants and created programming for a series of Summer Campouts which is underway now. I think we are hoping the Park can be an exciting spot, not too far away (about an hour from Oakland) with access to nature, birds, boating, sunsets and room for people to build and realize some dreams whether they be artcars or art boats or sculptures. And a place where community can happen as people get together and reconnect or meet new friends.”

Learn about Stars and Moon Art Park here:

When not working on The Untitled Beaver Project, Edgar works to bring other work to The Art Park. This also includes writing grants and helping to run events at the space. They have some other hobbies and jobs as well which allow them to be a full-time working artist.

“In my day job, I have written an NEA grant to bring visiting artists to the Art Park, so I am doing a lot of collaborative ideating, care and feeding of artists which is super rewarding and fun. Otherwise, once in a while I make a hat! Formerly I was an independent designer creating sculptural, Surrealist hats. Or if I have time I sew a garment or mend some of the many decrepit vintage clothes I own and love. As a very young person I worked for André Leon Talley at VOGUE and married my grandmother’s skills in crochet and hand sewing to high fashion, sort of. Tangentially, the Squarehead and the Viviparous Quadrupeds need a logo, letterhead, bandana design, maybe some wallpaper, etc. so my partner and I are deep in researching the origins of paisley. ”

The Beaver Fever Dream pilot effort at The Stars and Moon Art Park

Artists You Should Know, as Recommended by Alita Edgar:

It’s important to me that through our Artist You Should Know series on Broke-Ass Stuart you’re able to discover new art but also see how many amazing artists live within The Bay Area. So, as part of these interviews I want to remember to ask these amazing creators I interview who they think you should look into. Edgar names some of my own favorite artists including John Law and the crew at Raining Chainsaws.

“Well I’ve been adventuring around with John Law for several decades now, we always have a great time exploring and making sort of alternate reality spooky events with some favorite people in Detroit and anywhere we can. He is wonderful to talk over ideas and thoughts with. I’ve been working with filmmaker Yasmin Mawaz Khan on her documentary Ace in the Hole, chronicling the Ace Junkyard, which has inspired me to try to compile and record some of the Squarehead’s history as well. 

John Law and his famous Doggy Diner heads

I love the Raining Chainsaws group and their wild Night Parade and Rare Birds troupe, they are truly impressive on an aesthetic and performing level, and also having a really good time which is important in the long run! And I was lucky enough to catch a lot of great stuff in the past couple decades visiting – the Yard Dogs, Dr. Hal, Peralta Junction – thanks to friends pointing me in the right direction. And more recently I’m inspired by my friend Candace Locklear who is a champion of artists, really showing up and doing the work to support artists of color and also to find homes and patrons for large-scale art, post- Burning Man. That was a quibble of mine years ago, that I thought the work I was seeing there (many years ago, now!) deserved wider recognition and public access and all kinds of things, so it was really gratifying to move here and find Candace engaged in making that happen.”

Raining Chainsaws also has a regular craft night which I’ve been meaning to hit up. Their regular performances in the space are not to be missed either. John Law has some interesting things going on in his world (always).

Puppet Death Match at Raining Chainsaws – image from their website

Where Can You Find Alita Edgar And Her Projects Online?

The next campout at The Stars And Moon Art Park is in August
The Untitled Beaver Project Facebook: my brand new Squarehead page
Personal Facebook: @charmschooldesign
IG: @reversibleskirt
Website: alitaedgar.com

note: all images are courtesy of Alita Edgar

Trans-National Performance Sharjah Biennial 14 – photo credit Alita Edgar

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