Ingrid Burrington grew up in Northern California and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She works in text, photography, performance, and print, and has produced projects both as a free agent and under the guise of semi-fictional think tanks, which have appeared throughout the mid-Atlantic and online. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in printmaking.
In the spirit of the Holidays, we’ve decided to take part in Plaid Friday, an independent business alternative to the big box store “Black Friday.” For this celebration of all things independent - we are offering a $15 dollar discount on this ONE DAY. So get your Holiday shopping done early or resubscribe for another year - but the time to buy is November 27th. You can access this discount through our special page:
Organized by Blankspace Gallery and The Compound Gallery, Plaid Friday is designed to help raise awareness about shopping local and supporting the local economy. While Black Friday encourages monoculture, Plaid Friday celebrates the diversity and creativity of Bay Area independent businesses. There are many East Bay Businesses taking part in this celebration, so to explore all the discounts and festivities, go here:
Happy Shopping! Support Independent Businesses this Holiday Season.
We’re going to be part of this Fair from November 6th through 8th. It’s free and will be neat and fun so come and see us. There will be lots of great exhibitors and there will be editions made on site and sold from Dim-Sum style rolling carts. Hurrah!
We’re proud to announce that the artist for TPG12 is Whitney Lynn!
Whitney Lynn is a multi-media artist who explores the messy intersections between political, military, and civilian cultures. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as Exit Art, New York; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; and the 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA. She is the recipient of travel grants from the College Art Association and the Southeastern College Art Conference and her work has received critical attention from a number of publications including The New York Times, Daily Serving and Style Weekly. Born on an Air Force Base in Williams, AZ, she received her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and her MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Whitney will be exihibiting as part of Southern Exposure’s “Bellwether” exhibition, their inaugural exhibition in their new space on 20th Street in San Francisco’s Mission District. From the website:
The artists in Bellwether engage in multi-layered speculative projections on our ever shifting and uncertain future. Whether by indulging in their hopeful fantasies or examining their trepidation, the artists provide unique and perhaps unconventional tools and methodologies for envisioning and navigating the unknown. Through anticipation and fear, excitement and anxiety, prediction and instruction, the projects in this exhibition begin to give form to the haziness that lies ahead.
Whitney’s project, Bug Out Location, is a sculptural installation that draws inspiration equally from survivalist subcultures and more left leaning do-it-yourself (DIY) movements. She will also be hosting a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Survivalist Training Workshop, which will cover survivalist preparation strategies and sustainability techniques in anticipation of economic, environmental, social, and/or governmental collapse.
Details:
Bellwether
October 17, 2009 - December 12, 2009
Member’s Opening: Friday, October 16, 2009, 8:00 - 10:00 pm
Public Opening: Saturday, October 17, 2009, 4:00 - 10:00 pm
SoEx’s New Location:
3030 20th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
DIY Survivalist Training Workshop: November 21, 2009 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Phases of the Moon good things news
TPG11 “Phases of the Moon” is officially sold out! Thanks to everyone who spread the word and to our subscribers for making this project happen. We make a limited number of back issues because we want each edition to reflect the size of the group at that time, so the only way to guarantee you won’t miss one is to subscribe.
TPG8 art and politics arts funding news
“Arts organizations generate $166.2 billion in economic activity, support 5.7 million jobs, and return nearly $30 billion in revenue to the government each year, according to a 2007 study by The Americans for the Arts.”
With the arts and music among the many industries being hit hard in economic downturn, U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, recently announced plans to hold a series of hearings this Spring to examine how the arts benefit the nation’s economy and schools – and what can be done to improve support for the arts and music fields. Continue reading here >>
thanks lori
State of the Arts TPG artists TPG8 art and politics arts funding bay area events news
Oliver and I thank everyone for coming, introduce ourselves, the State of the Arts project, and Joseph
The first panel settles in (L-R: David Huff’s legs (Pro Arts), Christian Frock (Invisible Venue), Svea Lin Vezzone (Swarm Gallery), Kerri Johnson (Blank Space), Mike Bianco (Queens Nails Projects)
The Artist Respondents move front and center
The goal of the day was to get a bunch of people talking about issues like arts funding, government and the arts, the stimulus, the economy and what that means for artists, and interesting ways that all these areas may interact. This we accomplished. It is incredibly hard to get a bunch of artists and arts activists who already have an incredibly full work load together and come up with some immediate solutions to any problems, so we didn’t leave the meeting with a clear course of action, but I think that is ok. We’re still really early on, and just hearing out different ideas and perspectives is always fruitful.
I came away with a couple of things in particular though:
1. If artists want more money from government, they have to show up to meetings and prove themselves as a constituency and fight for what they want. They could team up with real estate brokers who know how artists turn areas from bad neighborhoods to desirable ones. They can fight for money in all aspects of government. Someone suggested that every single government project could have some sort of artistic element to it. Even if the budgets for this type of work are small, if these jobs are given only to Oakland (or whichever city you live in) artists, the impact could add up. Mike Bianco spoke about the possibility of starting a union. If a union charged some dues, maybe each locality could hire a lobbyist.
2. The stimulus for the NEA, in comparison to a lot of things, is still very small. Lori Zook, from the Oakland Cultural Arts and Marketing Division, suggested that we look not just to the NEA to get our hands on some stimulus money, but also through Education programs and Community Development Programs. She said there are billions of dollars being funneled into those programs. Now, this assumes that you’d have to fit your art into one of those categories, which is not always the easiest things to do. I was talking to my sister about grants and writing for them in general. Grant writers are incredibly adept at not necessarily fibbing about their projects, but just using the language and framework that the granters want to see. Perhaps we need to become creative in thinking of the ways that our work could be framed.
I was just talking to Joseph and he thinks this idea is a little bogus, as art should be funded because it is art and we and others should see the value in doing just that. I believe that, but it seems clear in this country that many policy makers do not believe that. So I’m ending at one of the very first topics/quandries of the discussion: how to make people understand, believe in, and fund art for its simple value as cultural capital.
TPG8 art and politics arts funding good things news
The $50 million for the NEA to distribute was first passed in the House bill, then removed in the Senate bill, and finally brought back in the bill passed by all of Congress. Almost 100000 letters flooded into congress giving support to this tiny portion of the overall stimulus package.
As Americans for the Arts president Robert Lynch writes,
The nation’s 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences generate $166.2 billion annually in U.S. economic activity. They support 5.7 million jobs and provide nearly $30 billion in government revenue. This economic stimulus will minimize the concern that ten percent of arts groups could close this year and helps save thousands of arts workers from losing their jobs.
Hotly contested, called “pork,” “non-stimulative,” and “wasteful” by many republicans led by Sen. Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), Lynch’s statements (see audio recording below) bring into focus the true economic benefits of the arts in this country. This will be a big boon for the NEA and new arts projects. 40% of the money will be dispersed to existing state and regional arts organiztions and agencies and the other 60% will go towards funding new arts projects. (!)
Robert Lynch presents the importance of the Arts to Congress
State of the Arts TPG8 art and politics bay area events news
Building on the discussion that began with our eighth issue, “State of the Arts“, we’ll be hosting a Visual Arts Town Hall Meeting in Old Oakland Saturday February 21st from 3-5. Moderated by curator Joseph del Pesco, the meeting will be a chance for artists, gallerists, political figures and the public to discuss the way government can influence and support local art production. We’ll share opportunities that already exist and try to identify simple steps to creating a more sustainable visual arts community.
Participants will include: David Huff (Program Coordinator/Curator Pro Arts), V Smoothe (“A Better Oakland” blog Editor ), Mike Bianco (Queens Nails Projects), Christian L. Frock (Invisible Venue), Kerri Johnson (Blankspace Gallery) Svea Lin Vezzone (Swarm Gallery) and artists: Amy Balkin, Steven Barich (Artopic.org), Helena Keeffe, Aaron Gach, Chris Sollars, David Stein
Visual Arts Town Hall
465 Ninth St. Oakland, CA 94607
February 21st: 3-5 pm
1st hour: moderated panel of gallerists, arts administrators, and politicos
coffee and snack break
2nd hour: artists from the State of the Arts project take the “stage” and respond to the panel and audience questions and comments
This event is sponsored in part by PSAI Old Oakland Associates and Southern Exposure
UNIQUE LOS ANGELES is an exciting two-day shopping event that showcases independent design talent at great prices. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, the event brings together 200 of the best designers, artists and merchants. AND we are one of those amazing vendors. We are sharing a booth with our good friend Lauren at Sweet Meats and it’s gonna be great.
There are crafting stations, a funny mod bar/lounge, yummy local food, and tons of shopping.
If anyone is in the LA area and wants tickets- we’ve still got some free ones for you! Just email us and we’ll leave them at the front desk for you. But if you do buy tickets, 50% of the proceeds go to Create Now! a LA based non-profit working with at-risk youth.
THE DETAILS:
December 13th and 14th, 11-7
California Market Center (Penthouse - whatup)
$5 Admission (unless you get some free tickets from us!)
It has been decided, and the wheels are in motion. You can order your very own I heart art t-shirt here. All profits from sales of these sweet t-shirts go directly towards artist stipends. So you are doing a good thing with your holiday dollars, meanwhile looking really really awesome.
We will begin shipping t-shirts on December 11th. Get yours!
bay area benefits events news we make stuff
Come out and enjoy the music, food, drinks, late night shopping, carolers, and general good cheer! We, along with 25 other artists, created wreaths to be auctioned off in Hayes Valley storefronts to benefit Opportunity Impact. Opportunity Impact is a non-profit that works with students in the Western Addition during their critical formative years, grades 4-8. They work to develop life skills and provide education in order to create new opportunities and a better future for young people.
The details:
Auction: Friday, November 28th - Friday, December 5th at 9PM
Hayes Valley Block Party: Friday, December 5th, 6-9 PM
Participating artists: Blair Bradshaw, Chris Thorson, Lauren Fleischer, Andrew Venell, Don Ross, Lucky Rapp, Mark Paron, Christopher W. Stokes Inside Modern, Ginny Parsons, Kevin Grady, The Present Group, Justin Trigg, [mm+gf] Ally Trigg and Bethany Snyder, Lori Stein, Storm, Matt Silady, Ed Luce, Ben Collison, Madeline Behrens-Brigham, Nicole Baugass, Gregg Casin, Kirsten Tradowsky, Michael G. Broeker
get your artistic selves a workin
Call For Proposals: Artist Multiples, Limited editions, Projects resulting in multiple parts
What we are looking for:
Proposals for projects that are reproducible in intent. Each piece can be a limited edition, an artist multiple, or either a part of or a document of a larger work. Our current edition numbers are under 100. We choose based on the piece’s Visual, Conceptual, and/or Experiential interest. The project will be made exclusively through The Present Group. We understand that similar themes and images may be used throughout your other work, however you agree not to create the exact project in the same form again.
Continue Reading »
We’re very honored to find out that we (along with 17 other great projects) have been awarded a $3000 Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure Grant!
So our big show (Sept. 5th) is a celebration of that fact too..
Unfortunately the website doesn’t link to all the projects, so I’ll do a bit of that legwork: (any without websites are links to the SoEx site with their description)
Black Boots Ink
Hamburger Eyes
Home is Something I Carry With Me
Hot and Cold
Invisible Venue
News of Common Possibility
Plastic Antinomy Magazine
Practice & Practice
Project Bunch
Receiver Gallery
Right Window
Rowan Morrison Gallery and Artist’s Bookstore
Teaching from Old Textbooks
The Garage
The Present Group
The Spare Room Project
Triple Base Gallery
Underground Art Crew
TPG artists TPG7 bay area good things news
What: One Night Art Show for The Present Group Issue #7 [Maggie Leininger: Text/ile] and The Present Group (almost) 2 year Retrospective
Where: 465 9th Street (9th and Broadway), Old Oakland
When: September 5th, 2008, 5-10PM
We’re excited to announce that we’ll be celebrating the release our 7th Issue: Text/ile by Maggie Leininger with a one night show on”First Friday” September 5th, 2008 in Old Oakland. Leininger uses the woven form as a metaphor for the idea of multiplicity/multiples/
Friday’s opening will also feature a retrospective of past Present Group editions. Over the last two years we’ve created fine art books, a collage and print series as well as a video project and a land art/performance. The public is invited to this free event at 465 9th street in Old Oakland from 5-10PM to explore the works in person. If you’re interested but can’t make it, our website features interactive versions of every past edition along with artists interviews, profressional critiques and annotated links sections devoted to each piece.
Maggie Leininger is an artist based out of Oak Park, IL who is interested in exploring visual relationships between microscopic structures and social systems bydeconstructing/
Voting closed Friday and we had a clear winner.
Maggie Leininger is an artist based out of Oak Park, IL who is interested in exploring visual relationships between microscopic structures and social systems by decontructing/recontructing patterns through weaving. Her piece will be released at the end of the summer 2008.
Got two postcards in the mail from Brian. Also, a note about his front page story in Deadwood, Edition #193
Though the card is a bit beaten up, the one on the left is announcing a show entitled,
“Old Enough to Know Better”
April 1 - May 3
Stevenson Union Gallery
Southern Oregon University
1250 Siskiyou Blvd
Ashland, Oregon 97520
On the right, a show entitled, “It Happened in Lawrence, Kansas”
3-D Prints!
May 4th - May 31st
The Bourgeois Pig
6 East 9th St.
Lawrence, KS
He’s offering Limited Edition Folios Containing 1 Colophon, 4 Random Prints, 1 Pair of 3D Glasses, and a Stick of Gum for $130
On May 4th, Oliver and I will be participating in a talk at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin. I think it will be a good discussion. And there will be a very delicious dinner afterwards for $20 using organic, local ingredients. Click here for more details. Come and cheer on my nervous self! Here’s the promo bit from their website:
Date: 5/4/2008 (Sunday)
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Headlands Center for the Arts
Ticket Info: $10 General Admission
FREE for Headlands Members
Eleanor Harwood, artist; Director, Eleanor Harwood Gallery
Julio Cesar Morales, artist; Co-director, Queen’s Nails Annex
Eleanor Hanson Wise, Co-director, The Present Group
Moderator: Natasha Boas, curator and art advisor
We all hear that the contemporary art market is booming with celebrity artists and star collectors, but what does that mean for the average person? We’ll talk to some Bay Area gallerists and art promoters who have established fresh approaches to the market, and take a look at how aspiring collectors can make informed choices about buying emerging art without breaking the bank. We’ll also talk about how artists can effectively participate in the market, in order to support themselves financially while remaining true to their ideals. Other topics of discussion will include approaches to curatorial practice in for-profit settings; how the art fair circuit contributes to buzz about regional scenes; and art practice and exhibition making as small business enterprises.
What we are looking for:
Proposals for projects that are reproducible in intent. Each piece can be a limited edition, an artist multiple, or either a part of or a document of a larger work. Our current edition numbers are under 100. We choose based on the piece’s Visual, Conceptual, and/or Experiential interest. The project will be made exclusively through The Present Group. We understand that similar themes and images may be used throughout your other work, however you agree not to create the exact project in the same form again.
Appreciation for Selected Artists:
* $500 (This is an honorarium outside of the costs of creating the work-which we cover)
* 4 of the produced work for your own collection or to sell on your own.
* All the contextual information we create for your piece, including artist info, critiques, and video will remain free on-line as long as TPG exists
Deadline:
We have a rolling submissions policy; we review proposals four times a year. The our next review date is ARPIL 9th, 2008. Everyone who applies will be contacted by e-mail.
Download submission guidelines here: http://www.thepresentgroup.com/TPG-submissions.pdf
Click here for more information about The Present Group
Maybe we’re just behind, but we just found out that we were mentioned on the Readymade blog in January!
Thanks Readymade! (Click on image for Link to post)
Also mentioned in the article was a project that is new to me, called 20×200– a la Tiny Showcase fame– it sells prints from artists at pretty darn reasonable prices. The editions are in runs of 200, 20, and 2, with bigger=better=shorter run=a lot more expensive as the main equation. The small ones are only $20, so it’s a pretty sweet entry point.
It is interesting to see how all these projects, businesses, organizations are popping up to figure out ways to support more and more artists while aiming at generating more interest in collecting art at affordable levels. I listed many of these organizations back in the fall (here) when the Collective Foundation brought us all together at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for a little discussion. Are we helping to create a new and different market for art? Or will art become more designy to satisfy the designsponge crowd that wants to fill up its walls? Is that so bad? I am starting to think about all these ideas as I slowly slowly start to prep for a talk I’ll be giving at the Headlands Center for the Arts in May. More about that later.
In other news, this morning we sent off TPG5 out of our home and into the great big United States Postal System. So soon they’ll arrive in your homes. Hip hip hooray!
Everything’s coming up Brian these days.
If anyone’s in Baldwin City, Kansas these days, I’d recommend checking out the Art Affair Gallery at Baker University where there’s a showing of The John Talleur Print Studio residents (Brian’s one of them). And who’s on the postcard you may wonder? ummm…Brian. Here’s a preview of the show in the Baker Orange.
The show runs until March 14th, 2008.
Art Affair Gallery is at the corner of 7th and High St. in downtown Baldwin City
In an article entitled “Strange Fruit”, Frank Tankard from Lawrence.com magazine Deadwood edition interviews the members of Fresh Produce, an art collective out of Lawrence, Kansas as they celebrate their first anniversary. Brian’s third in the interviews.
TPG5 artist Davin Youngs is a busy man. While working up the next issue, he is also showing at Estudiotres in Chicago. The show, entitled, “Thaw” brings the hope that winter doesn’t last forever.
January eighteenth through March seventh - 2008
Opening reception:
January eighteenth - six to ten pm
5205 N.Clark St., Chicago
Almost as good as the real thing. Anu Vikram, critic for TPG3, posted photos from her whirlwind tour of this year’s Venice Biennale.
Xiem Gallery in Pasadena has put on a ceramics show with the theme of Skin. Juried by Paulus Berensohn, and chosen from over 400 entries, Presley Martin (TPG2) has two works in the show.
The show is up from October 13th - November 24th, 2007.
Gallery: 1563 North Lake Avenue Pasadena, CA 91104
Hours: Tuesday- Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 10am-5pm
The Present Group is featured in Estates West magazine’s holiday gift guide. We’re one of twenty Glam Gifts “that won’t wind up collecting dust in the back of Millie’s closet.”
Here’s a link to photos from Ethan’s Anthroptic show at PS122 Gallery in New York:
We had an intimate night of art, food and conversation. It was great fun and delicious. Thanks to Svea at Swarm and to all those who came out to share in the goodness.
We spent the day meeting and talking with a whole host of great people. We’ve discovered that the most successful way to explain our project is one-on-one, so the Expo was a perfect opportunity. We encourage all the artists we met to submit proposals before November 1st.
We are taking part in The 8th Annual Expo for the Artist and Musician on September 15th, 2007. The Expo is the Bay Area’s only grassroots connection fair for independent arts, music and culture — an all-day “Free Culture Fair” featuring more than 120 Bay Area arts organizations, free workshops, children’s activities, our new Community Arts Showcase featuring local music and performance, and hundreds of local artists and musicians. There will be loads of great stuff!
Details: The Expo takes place at SomArts, 934 Brannan St., San Francisco on September 15th, 2007 from 11 am - 6 pm.
