Gallery Dec/Jan 2006

Galeria de Laraza warmly invites you to join them for their largest and spiciest fundraiser of the year! 50+ art works, live music, raffle, and Mistress of Ceremonies: Miss Coco Lopez (a.k.a Ray Ferrer) - fabulous diva and entertainer extraordinaria. Plus, this year a longer live auction for fast paced bidding!

Admission: $20-$40 (sliding scale)
Members Free. (Admission includes 2 complimentary drinks.)

Date: Friday, December 8, 2006
Time: 7pm - 10pm
Live Auction: 8pm
Premio Galeria to honor Tere Romo - 8:30pm
Live Auction Part 2: 9pm
Live Auction Part 3: 9:40pm

Free Chocolate by April Banks
December 6, 2006 - February 17, 2007

Gallery Hours: Tues by appt, Wed - Sat, 12 - 5pm, FREE

Wednesday December 6, 6 - 9pm
Opening Celebration & Intersection's Holiday Party, FREE

Thursday January 25, 7pm
Chocolate Tasting with Frederick Schilling, founder of DAGOBA Organic Chocolate, $5-$20

Saturday January 27, 1pm
Conversaton with April Banks, FREE

Wednesday February 7, 7pm
The Chocolate Trade: Discussion about fair trade & chocolate with Tex Dworkin (Global Exchange), Ella Silverman (TransFair USA) & Tom Neuhause (Project Hope & Fairness, Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates), FREE

Thursday February 8, 7pm
Heart Shaped Box: Truffle Making Workshop, $5-$20

In her first solo exhibition, Bay Area conceptual artist April Banks examines the intricate global economy that is driven by the constantly growing demand for cocoa. Control of cocoa/cacao farming has spawned civil wars and caused major shifts in kinship and regional economies. Based on years of research and travel to cacao farms in Ghana and Cuba and to the New York Board of Trade, Banks explores cocoa's global journey from farmer, to trader, to chocolate lover. In addition to the new exhibition featuring photography, sculptural installation, and graphic design, Banks is collaborating with Bay Area artists and artisans to create a "micro chocolate shop" that will offer products inspired by and based on chocolate. This ambitious project grapples with issues of colonization and slavery, fair trade and sustainability, and the complex relationship between the guilt and desire of eating chocolate.

April Banks strives to create work that is simultaneously beautiful and uncomfortable. Drawing from her background in architecture, she began experimenting with combinations of space, photography, sound, video and performance. Through this experience, she found her voice in installation art, creating pieces that are visually beautiful yet ideologically challenging. Her recent work confronts the complexity and irony of desire and guilt and explores our human tendencies and contradictions for our need for beauty. Motivated by travel and observation and immersion into other cultures, she chooses travel experiences to force a change of perspective. Banks has a Master of Science in Environmental Design from Art Center College of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from Hampton University. She has exhibited her work in Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Pro Arts Gallery, African American Museum & Library of Oakland), Chicago, Minneapolis, and Cleveland. This exhibition, Free Chocolate, is her first solo exhibition.

About the Gallery at Intersection

Gallery Hours:
Tuesdays by appointment
Wednesdays through Saturdays, 12-5pm, FREE

THE RED POPPY ART HOUSE

HOLIDAY PARTY & BENEFIT ART AUCTION

an evening celebration of fine arts & performance

Thursday, December 7th

7pm-10:30pm

We would like to extend an invitation to all of you to join us in the last month of 2006 for our Holiday Party. We have planned a warm spirited evening of song, poetry, and dance theater combined with a grand art auction. For those of you that may have missed our fundraising auction last August, this is a fresh opportunity to acquire some exceptional artwork by bay area artists and to help support one of the most unique creative cultural centers in the city of San Francisco.

100% of admissions and all sales will go directly to help support the Red Poppy Art House.

SoEx OFFSITE

SoEx OFFSITE, a series of major commissioned public art projects investigating diverse strategies for exploring and mapping public space, features new work by Ledia Carroll (SF), Glowlab (NY), Packard Jennings (OAK), Neighborhood Public Radio (SF/OAK), Christian Nold (UK), Jeannene Przyblyski (Bureau of Urban Secrets) (SF), and Rebar (SF/OAK).

SoEx Offsite is a series of off-site public art and related programs investigating artists’ strategies for exploring and mapping public space. These strategies can be traced to the Situationist’s derive, the practice of drifting through urban space, and psychogeography, the study of the effects of the geographic environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The year-long series features eight projects utilizing strategies such as simple acts of walking and note taking, to projects employing high-tech and technological apparatuses as a means to disseminate geographical and historical information, to performances, actions, or events. Several projects involve the audience’s participation, enabling the public to engage in acts of urban mapping and reflect on their own experiences in public space. The newly commissioned SoEx Offsite projects were chosen by Southern Exposure’s curatorial committee and staff from a pool of almost 300 international submissions.

ABOUT THE COMMISSIONED PROJECTS

Ledia Carroll uses a field line chalker to draw the perimeter of Lago Dolores, a former freshwater lake, in her Mission Lake Project. The full perimeter outlined with a blue chalk line will mark the shoreline of a now vanished lake in the Mission District that stretched roughly over a five-block diameter from (what is now) Van Ness to Guerrero and 15th to 20th Streets. Following the still visible ancient depression of the lake, Carroll’s graffiti chalk line will make the boundary of Lago Dolores apparent to the public. Mission Lake Project is a social project encouraging Mission District residents, gallery visitors, and tourists to take a walk in a place you may already know to see something not seen before but is true. A lakeside barbeque, perimeter bike race, and guided tours of the underground waterways round out the project.

Glowlab, a New York-based artist-run production and publishing lab directed by Christina Ray, will run NoEx [No Exchange] for SoEx. NoEx is an anti-social-networking project that involves discovering the identity of another without being discovered. It turns recent developments in urban street games and social-networking inside out: this is not group play, there is no winner or loser, speed and technical skills are irrelevant, and there is no prize. This is a one-on-one experience with hints of surveillance, voyeurism, and espionage. It requires only attention and intuition. Via the web, the public is invited to participate in a citywide micro-intervention known only to its participants. NoEx expands the traditional art gallery audience to include the public at large. Anyone may participate in the project by registering online. The project will be promoted through the Glowlab network and social networking sites such as MySpace, Xanga, Digg, and others.

Packard Jennings will design “fake” lottery tickets for his project Lottery Tickets. As a prize, each “Scratcher” will have a unique message that pertains to the unusual and simple pleasures of the local community as told by residents and shop owners. Jennings’ artist-designed lottery tickets will be handed out with other Lottery purchases or upon request from local stores in four different districts of San Francisco. Through short prose and drawn symbols, the scratch-off tickets will direct the participant’s attention to a local event, both accessible and free. The intention is to transform an instant of personal greed into a moment of contemplation about the local environment, community, and culture.

Neighborhood Public Radio will produce Radio Cartography an innovative radio project involving a diverse group of artists, Mission District residents, youth, and Bay Area audiences in the production of media-based public art projects and original radio programming that investigates our experiences in urban space. Radio Cartography will take the form of a home base for the station in a small storefront hosted by SoEx, a portable radio unit that will migrate throughout the Mission District neighborhood, and three distinct projects entitled Talking Homes, City Tours, and State of Mind Stations. Radio Cartography seeks to investigate strategies for exploring and mapping public space using the medium of radio in innovative and non-traditional ways. The project attempts to merge technology-based endeavors with more conventional tactics of walks and performances. This project will launch in November of 2006 and will run through spring 2006. The resulting programming will be accessible on NPR’s website and at locations where distinct portions of the projects take place. This project is generously supported by a grant from the Creative Work Fund.

Hailing from the United Kingdom, Christian Nold will host a series of intensive workshops with local residents in which participants borrow a ‘bio mapping’ device to go for a walk. Bio Mapping is a research project exploring new ways that individuals can make use of gathered information about our own bodies. Instead of security technologies that are designed to control our behavior, this project envisages new tools that allow people to selectively share and interpret their own bio data. The ‘bio-mapping’ device measures wearers’ Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their physical / geographical location using a GPS. The data will be downloaded and used to create an “emotion map” that locates the varying levels of arousal during their walk. By sharing this data we can construct maps that visualize where we as a community feel stressed and excited.

Jeannene Przyblyski and the Bureau of Urban Secrets is producing Comings and Goings: 2 Backwards Journeys Thru Land’s End, a self-guided walking tour weaving together Victorian pleasure, military history, ecology of flora and fauna, and geology. Following the Coastal Trail from Sutro Heights to Sea Cliff—and back again—the 3-mile journey reconceives a narrow band of open space wedged between city and ocean. Each participant will be equipped with a reversible way-finding guide and an audio tour, downloadable as a Podcast from the SoEx website or available as a cd-rom at sites to be announced. The point of embarkation will determine the particular story line that the participant will follow—each roundtrip backwards journey (Sutro Heights to Sea Cliff or Sea Cliff to Sutro Heights) touches upon some of the same moments but casts them differently, reveling in the sensation of history doubling back on itself to color the present with a past that constantly shifts—like the ground beneath your feet.

Rebar, an open source art collective led by Matthew Passmore, Blaine Merker, and John Bela, will collaborate with Snap Out Of It (SOOI) in COMMONspace, an exploration of San Francisco's privately-owned public spaces. Using the Planning Department's map describing the location of fourteen unique sites, COMMONspace will investigate these spaces in terms of accessibility, surveillance, and other explicit rules. REBAR and SOOI will activate these public spaces through a series of paraformances: performance actions that test each site's implicit social codes and engage public participants. Paraformances will begin as playful actions by single individuals and culminate in full-scale 'flash mob'-style occupations that increasingly engage the attention and participation of accidental audiences. Documentation of the site evaluations and paraformances will be published on-line to raise awareness of these spaces and inspire debate regarding their role and function as a part of San Francisco's commons.

This program is made possible through the generous support of the Creative Work Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and Southern Exposure’s Members.

arts expo extravaganza, “commotion2”

COMMOTION CALL FOR ARTISTS & VENDORS

commotion2: an event supporting local artists & vendors

KSW is hosting an arts expo extravaganza, “commotion2” at our space180 mission district home to celebrate the holidays and provide valuable networking opportunities for local api artists.

we are looking for artists/vendors to table at this event with independently-made artwork and goods. the event will be open to the public from 12-5pm on saturday, december 16th, at KSW’s space180 in the San Francisco’s Mission District, conveniently located less than 2 blocks from the 16th Street BART station. we’re still hammering out the details on performers so we’ll be sure to let you know.

there will be a concessions area and we are expecting anywhere from 100-350 attendees over the course of the afternoon (the first commotion event was in february 2006 and drew roughly 200, but was in the evening on a week day; this event is the first time we’re trying it in the holiday season on a weekend afternoon).

there is a sliding scale vendor fee for artists selling their work at a table, from $25 – 50. proceeds from table fees will go to supporting the cost of the event and other KSW programs.

other details:

date: saturday, deccember 16, 2006

time: 12pm-5pm.

location: KSW’s space180, 180 ccapp st @ 17th st, san francisco

cost for attendees(not vendors): $2 suggested donation at the door. no one will be turned away.

TO REGISTER:

please email tables coordinator megan reynolds at megan.reynolds@gmail.com and provide a brief description of your work and what you do; OPTIONAL, feel free to list any past involvement or experience with ksw or other community-based groups. please include (1) a 100-or-less-word bio; (2) a one-line description of what you will be vending, (3) your full contact information (email, phone, and mailing address), and (4) a website link if you have one.

THERE IS A LIMITED NUMBER OF TABLE SPOTS.

each artist/vendor will receive 3 feet of table width. we do have some round tables available. artists are encouraged to bring a small table*, table light, and extension cord. due to the homespun nature of this event, we ask artists to consider including items that are under $50, although it will vary depending on the wares. *artists who can provide their own table may receive a discount on registration fee if requested.

please contact info@kearnystreet.org or call 415.503.0520 with any questions or for more information.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
The 4th Intergenerational Writers Lab (IWL) 2007
A program of Galería de la Raza, Kearny Street Workshop, & Intersection for the Arts

A unique program with three of SF’s oldest arts organizations to thoroughly explore and develop your writing. Accepted applicants will participate in workshops led by accomplished writers, have the opportunity to perform/read work at public events, and be published in a new chapbook.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: RECEIVED BY JANUARY 19, 2007.

SF-based arts nonprofits Galería de la Raza, Kearny Street Workshop, & Intersection for the Arts are seeking applications for a literary program for emerging writers, the 4th annual Intergenerational Writers Lab (IWL) 2007, scheduled to take place March 10 – May 23, 2007. Twelve participants will be selected to participate in the literary program, which will involve workshops, public readings, and a chapbook publication. IWL workshops will be led by 6 writers, including playwright Octavio Solis, essayist and critic Thy Tran, poet Mahru Elahi, and poet & performer Uchechi Kalu. The IWL will include public readings, featuring selected writers, scheduled for March 28, April 25, May 23, and an evening in July, at Galería de la Raza, Kearny Street Workshop & Intersection for the Arts.

The goals of the IWL program include the following:

1)   to provide twelve local emerging writers with the opportunity to challenge, develop, and expand their writing by working with emerging and established writers in a variety of genres;
2)   to contribute to the development of new literary forms and language that incorporate multiple forms of creative expression;
3) to provide emerging writers with the opportunity to connect and work with each other and with established writers in the literary world;
4)   to provide the community with an opportunity to engage with new work and new explorations of form and language;
5)   to contribute to the wealth of independent literary publications by publishing a new chapbook from KSW Press, Galería de la Raza, & Intersection for the Arts that highlights work by exciting new writers committed to exploring new forms and voices.

We are looking for local (SF Bay Area) emerging writers who wish to develop and expand their writing skills by experimenting with new forms and taking risks in creative expression. Selected participants will participate in nine workshop sessions of three hours duration each (all workshop sessions will take place on Saturday afternoons) and will have the opportunity to attend and participate in the four public events at Galería, KSW & Intersection. Writers need not be published, but must demonstrate a consistent pursuit of literary arts and a deep interest in participating in an experimental writing program.

TO APPLY:
Please submit the following:

An IWL 2007 application form (below);

Writing sample, 12 point & double-spaced, not to exceed 7 pages;

A description of why you want to enroll in the IWL program, not to exceed 500 words.

A submission fee of $10 (check or money order made out to Kearny Street Workshop). Please note: submission fees are used to cover artist fees, chapbook publication, and partial and full scholarships. Submission fees may be waived on as-need basis, and per applicant request. To request a submission fee waiver, please contact KSW.

TUITION & SCHOLARSHIPS:
The tuition for accepted IWL participants is $250- 350 sliding scale, with two full scholarships available. Tuition levels will be determined on a case-by-case basis, based on individual participant needs. If you wish to be considered for a partial or full scholarship, please submit an additional description of your circumstances and why you believe you deserve a scholarship.

Please submit all materials to:

Kearny Street Workshop
Attention: IWL 2007
180 Capp Street, Box #5
San Francisco, CA 94110

For more information, please contact either:

Samantha Chanse, Artistic Director
Kearny Street Workshop
415.503.0520
sam@kearnystreet.org
www.kearnystreet.org

Rebeka Rodriguez, Program Director
Intersection for the Arts
415.626.2787 ext106
rebeka@theintersection.org
www.theintersection.org

Marc Piñate, Program Manager
Galería de la Raza
415.826.8009
marcpinate@galeriadelaraza.org
www.galeriadelaraza.org

NAKED
The visual artists of San Francisco¹s Creativity Explored show some skin in a new exhibition that explores the human form

January 11 March 1, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 11 from 7 to 9 p.m.

SAN FRANCISCO It may be winter, but the artists of Creativity Explored are
stripping things down to the bare essentials in a new exhibition of original
artwork entitled "Naked" on display at the Creativity Explored Gallery
January 11th through March 1st. The show opens with a reception featuring
live music and a chance to meet the artists on Thursday, January 11th from 7
to 9 p.m. The gallery is regularly open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 3
p.m., and Saturday from 1 to 6 p.m. All artwork is available for purchase.

Nude figure drawing has been a staple of art education for hundreds of
years, but it was a definite first at this studio for artists with
developmental disabilities. "This population tends to be very protected from
sexuality and nudity," says curator LeighAnn Martin. "So, just to feel OK
about drawing someone naked was huge." In sessions with live professional
art models over several weeks, artists worked on classic exercises for
drawing the human body using charcoal and pen to make quick one to five
minute sketches.

For many, an initial discomfort with the nudity gave way as the lessons in
observation, proportion and alignment progressed. "At first I was
embarrassed," says artist Melody Lima. "But everybody¹s like that, so I
thought, why should I be embarrassed? " For artist Steven Geeter, the rapid
sequence of sketches meant there wasn¹t even time to consider the models in
any way except one. "We were just thinking about the shapes," he says.

Guest artist Miranda Putman who led the figure drawing workshops, says
working from observation was the point of the project. "I wanted to
instigate change in habitual ways of working," she says. "All artists tend
to have their comfort areas things that are easy and familiar to draw.
Beginning to work from life is a challenge for any artist. But then suddenly
you really see how the arm bends and you draw a line that you didn¹t think
you could make and your practice as an artist deepens. That definitely
happened here." The exhibition includes a selection of the artists¹
sketches.

Of course, it wouldn¹t be a Creativity Explored show without a bit of
whimsy. The clothing optional theme takes a humorous turn with Antonio
Benjamin¹s "Nudes with Leg Warmers" and Peter Cordova¹s interpretation of
the famous Avedon photo of actress Nastassja Kinski wrapped only in a large
snake. Cher makes an appearance in the buff courtesy of Thomas Pringle, and
John Patrick McKenzie riffs on the sexual revolution of the sixties in his
text-based portrait of Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

As a special treat for the opening reception on January 11, artist Sara
O¹Sullivan has prepared a Carnival-esque life-size cut out that allows
gallery visitors to have their photo taken "in the raw." Fig leaf included.

For further information about the exhibition, call (415) 863-2108, or visit
www.creativityexplored.org.

Background
Opened 23 years ago, Creativity Explored is a place where art changes lives.
All of the more than 120 member artists at this non-profit visual arts
center are people with a combination of developmental, psychiatric and/or
physical disabilities. Some have lived a life of previous isolation or
institutionalization. The artists come to Creativity Explored from countries
around the globe and speak a wide variety of languages including Spanish,
Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Thai, German, French, Arabic, Farsi and
English. Many members do not speak at all, unable to communicate using
spoken words. At Creativity Explored, visual art is the common language,
providing a means to share culture, experiences and feelings. Creativity
Explored helps its members find their voice through art.

MISSION 17's third annual juried exhibition.

Featuring Work by: Victor Barbieri, Deer Fang, Peter Foucault, Justin Hoover and Patricia Maloney, Jesse Houlding, Bradley Hyppa, Eileen Starr Moderbacher, Moshe Quinn, Kathrine Worel,Edmund Wyss, and Paul Zografakis

December 1st, 2006 - January 7th, 2007

Opening Reception: December 1st, 2006, 6 - 9pm

Juried by Clark Buckner, Cheryl Meeker, Elaine Santos, and Michael Zheng

image by Eileen Starr Moderbacher, "Joy"

Social interaction has become an integral part of contemporary art practice. In recent years, these "relational aesthetics" have been celebrated in several major Bay Area exhibitions, and connected specifically with the nexus between art and social activism, which gave rise in the 60s and 70s to the leading, local "alternative spaces."

But are these social experiments necessarily progressive? Do they in fact present serious challenges to the status quo? Or has their assilimilation to the museum and art history, to the contrary, rendered them implicitly conservative? Do "relational aesthetics" challenge the over valorization of art as an idealized realm set apart from everyday life? Or do they aesthetisize social action and, in the process, neutralize its political force? Do social experiments in art articulate alternative model of social life, or do they present ideological fantasies of social harmony in a world where war and explotation are constants? If social life has become a museum piece, is it not perhaps over?

And what has become of the misanthropic artist, who embodies social conflict in her alienation? What has become of the critical force of the autonomous work of art in its distinction from the world around it?

In this show we hope to raise questions concerning the social dynamics in artwork and call new attention to the antisocial as both a defining feature of modern life, and a locus for social change.

Listening: Living Art from Japan and San Francisco

Featuring Kurt Bigenho, Charlie Callahan, Joshua Churchill, Renee Delores, Takashi Horisaki, Tomoko Iwata, Marisa Jahn, Keisuke Kondo, Takuro Kotaka, Akinori Matsuba, Yoshinori Niwa, Joslin Pollard, Asako Saito, Aki Sasamoto, Chris Sollars, and Ayako Washitake

Curated by Joslin Pollard, Yoshinori Niwa, and Yuka Yokoyama

December 7-16, 2006
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 7, 6-9 PM; Live Performance by Aki Sasamoto at 7:30 PM
Artists Talk: Saturday, December 9th, 3PM. $3-10 sliding scale admission
Closing Reception: Saturday, December 16, 4-6 PM
Gallery Hours: Wednesdays - Saturdays, 1-6 PM

Listening is a Japanese-US program of performative and live art that explores the role of art making as a form of productive and constitutive listening. The program's title, Listening, is an open-ended question that asks the artists and audience to consider the relationship between being and perceiving. The artwork selected for this program explores this theme through process-based, reactive pieces that situate the space and time of each respective city as their artistic medium.

This project consists of two parts: one half taking place in Japan and the other in San Francisco. Listening will facilitate the exchange of two groups of artists from two different countries, who will play out artistic and psychological relationships, transforming and altering their final work. This cultural exchange initially began with the group of American artists traveling to Japan to exhibit visual and performative works with a host of Japanese artists. Conversely, the same group of Japanese artists are now coming to San Francisco to exhibit their work with their American counterparts at The LAB.

This project is generously funded by the Japan Foundation Los Angeles, and part of the Intersection Incubator, a program of Intersection for the Arts providing fiscal sponsorship, incubation and consulting services to artists.