Rafa Esparza [From a photo by Hart Leshkina]
“Please help us continue to build on our legacy of mindful engagement with the communities we serve,” stated Side Street Projects. “Our community and staff have been severely impacted by the Eaton Fire. Your support now will help us help our beautiful community recover.”
The Phantom Ball operates with a unique pricing strategy designed to encourage early support. Supporters pre-order the exclusive print at half price without seeing it first, adding an element of anticipation to the fundraising process. All proceeds support Side Street Projects’ free public art programs and education services, with artwork shipping to supporters in June after the June 1 revelation.
Esparza, who was born, raised, and currently lives in Los Angeles, creates work focusing on history, personal narratives, and kinship. His art explores relationships to colonization and disrupted genealogies, using live performance as his primary form of inquiry. Esparza employs site-specificity, materiality, memory, and non-documentation to question ideologies and power structures.
The accomplished artist has performed in numerous spaces including AIDS Project Los Angeles, Highways Performance Space, REDCAT, Human Resources, SOMArts, Vincent Price Museum, LACE, and various public sites throughout Los Angeles. His accolades include a 2014 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Arts, a 2014 Art Matters grant, and a 2015 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. Esparza participated in the 2016 Made in L.A. Biennial at the Hammer Museum and the 2017 Whitney Biennial.
Founded in 1992, Side Street Projects describes itself as “a mobile, artist-run organization that supports artists, projects, and programs to foster leadership in our community through a DIY (do-it-yourself) & DIT (do-it-together) ethos.” Their mission is to “give artists of all ages the ability and means to support their creative endeavors.” The organization is “devoted to community-centered artists through community-led programming that promotes creativity, well-being, and the potential for collective growth” and is specifically “centered and led by the justice-impacted communities of Pasadena and LA County.”
The Phantom Ball has become a cornerstone of Side Street Projects’ fundraising strategy over three decades. Unlike traditional galas, the organization invites supporters to purchase tickets to an event that never happens, as search results indicate, “We’ll understand if you can’t attend, because nobody ever has. Nobody ever does.” This approach eliminates overhead costs while generating substantial support for their various initiatives including a mobile woodworking program, project spaces, equipment cooperative, artist projects, and artist support services.
Throughout its 32-year history, the Phantom Ball has featured a different contemporary artist each year. Previous Phantom Ball artists have included Cathy Opie, Edgar Arceneaux, John Outterbridge, Alexandra Grant, Sam Durant, and April Bey, among many others. The significance of the Phantom Ball was previously highlighted in a retrospective exhibition titled “Phantom Ball: 23 Years of Side Street Projects’ Print Editions,” which showcased benefit print editions by 26 contributing artists.
