Folk Lounge ✥ Downstream Prophecy: What Serves The Current 🪡 On The LA River
LOCATION CHANGE: Now at Frogtown Arts Gallery & Patio due to the heat advisory.
PARKING
Frogtown Arts Gallery is located facing the LA River, on the ground floor of the Blake Lofts residential building. Guests must enter through the LA River path, set your GPS for La Colombe Coffee and park nearby. From there, it's a short walk to the bike path entrance, where you'll enter and exit using the ADA ramp. Per our facilities agreement, guests cannot access or pass through the Blake Lofts courtyard, out of respect for our neighbors' privacy and safety. Thank you for understanding. PS. Need a hand getting in? Call us right away (503) 740-6722.
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Join us for a contemplative workshop hosted by Folk Lounge to create a social textile with cross stitch embroidery exploring the natural rhythms of release and renewal. A practice of memory editing as we navigate seasonal transitions, expressed as a collaborative topography that captures our personal and cultural feelings about navigating change. Layer memory, intention, & vision on a flowing tapestry of stories. Rivers are natural editors, carrying some things downstream while depositing others on banks, carving new channels while filling old ones.
GUESTS
Instructor: Shagho
Shagho is a multidisciplinary design leader, artist, and speaker working at the frontier of creativity and culture. As a founder of Folk Lounge, she facilitates classes, workshops & programs for communities inspired by ornamental lineages in LA and beyond. Known for Embroidery Socials, she is passionate about sparking new lineages of expression, curiosity for open archives and cultural preservation, connecting with land and encourage being in contemporary urban settings. Born in Vladivostok, of Armenian and Russian heritage, she holds a BS in Fashion Design and an MFA in Human-Computer Interaction from California College of the Arts. She believes in the power of collective to weave new connections between past wisdom and future possibility.
Volunteers: Olivia Sia, Nora Abushaaban, Irena Li
Guest Speaker: Aaron Tupac, Author of Meeting The Mushrooms Of LA & Founder Of Exploring The Mycoverse Community 12-12:45pm
Ververi Coffee Collective by Ani Hakobyan
DJ: Magmatic 2-4pm
Mattia, who performs as Magmatic, is a poet and musician based in Frogtown, Los Angeles. Since moving to LA in 2020, his poetry has been featured in Crocetti's Poetry magazine and recognized as a finalist for the prestigious Mario Luzi, Camaiore Proposta, and Lord Byron awards.
Magmatic creates video poetry that blurs the lines between poetry and electronic music, performing live along the Los Angeles River with layered piano, guitar, synth, and electronic drums. His immersive sonic experiences blend electronic and rap sounds to capture the spirit of the waterways and urban landscape he calls home.
Guest Speakers: Coming Soon
HOST
Folk Lounge is a contemporary craft collective founded by multidisciplinary artist and design leader Shagho that bridges ancestral ornamental traditions with urgent contemporary needs. Through contemplative craft circles held in public parks and collaborative programs with cultural institutions, Folk Lounge creates living spaces where traditional practices become responses to the crises of our time: nature deficit, digital overwhelm, cultural homogenization, and the erosion of intergenerational knowledge transmission.
ORGANIZER
LA Design Weekend is a weekend-long celebration of LA's sprawling, spectacular design scene—broken down into bite-sized, neighborhood-based experiences. LAD/W is a hands-on, community-driven experience that welcomes everyone to step behind the scenes and into the spaces where creativity really happens. This year, honoring the resilience of the creative community while spotlighting the makers, spaces, and ideas that continue to rebuild, reimagine, and inspire.
VENUE
Frogtown Arts Gallery is a nonprofit rooted in Elysian Valley, along the Los Angeles River — one of the few places in LA where art, community, and place-making have been quietly inseparable for nearly two decades. Through festivals, free classes, film, and year-round programming, they hold space for artists and neighbors alike. Members are a buzzing community that gathers, exhibits, and shares a network you won't find anywhere else.
TERMS
By registering or attending any Folk Lounge event, you confirm awareness of associated risks and release the Organizer, Assistant Organizers, and Event Hosts from all related liability. You affirm agreement to our Weaving Belonging, Mindful Making and Participation Agreement — and if acting as a legal guardian, that you're authorized to agree on another's behalf: folklounge.com/terms