A closeup of Chris Jordan’s Barbies, which is featured in Close Encounters at the Katzen Arts Center. Copyright Chris Jordan. Courtesy Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles.

Provisions Library, D.C.’s learning laboratory for the arts and social change, which opened its doors in September of 2001, launched a new initiative this past summer, BrushFire. By staging socially-minded public art events nationally, BrushFire aims to promote discourse about democracy, including key political and social issues such as the war in Iraq, immigration, the environment, the economy and health care. The highest concentration of BrushFire events is in the D.C. area, with over a dozen arts organizations holding events in the months leading to the November elections, and several of these exhibitions open this weekend. We touched on a few of them in yesterday’s Arts Agenda, but get out your calendars, because here’s the full run-down.

>> The centerpiece of D.C.’s events is Close Encounters, the exhibit which opens tomorrow and runs until October 26 at American University’s Katzen Arts Center. The painting, video, photography and installation work of twenty-seven artists will be featured, including internationally-recognized Leon Golub, Yoko Ono, Jenny Holzer, Adrian Piper, Chris Jordan (pictured right), and Nancy Spero, as well as D.C. artists Floating Lab Collective, whose floating museum will be parked at the Katzen throughout the exhibit, and will later be participating in a book fair in Silver Spring, and roaming D.C.’s heavily immigrant-populated areas as a way for the public to explore identity.

>> Irvine’s September Teo González exhibit, as well as its upcoming Regime Change Starts at Home, are both a part of BrushFire. Regime Change runs from October 18 to November 29, and features the work of Shepard Fairey, Al Farrow and Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky). Fairey, known for his street art and screen printings, will display new politically charged paintings and collage works, including the last of three portraits of Barack Obama. The sculpture of Farrow is sure to raise eyebrows—he constructs Christian, Jewish and Moslem religious structures with gun parts, bullets, artillery shells, and human bone. Miller explores the political climate of our coldest continent with his multimedia installation Manifesto for the People’s Republic of Antarctica.

>> Plan B is also holding a BrushFire opening tomorrow, for its newest exhibit of socially charged work, which runs through October 5. A highlight of the event is sure to be the wall of Screaming Presidents by artist Christopher Speron.