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Vote on the winner of the first Present Prize:
a $1K travel grant for a Bay Area artist.

The Present Prize is an intermittent artist grant funded by web hosting fees and awarded by the community of hostees with help from the general public. Each grant period will have a new theme targeting an underfunded area of the creative landscape.

For our first prize, we have teamed up with the Collective Foundation to create a $1K travel grant to a Bay Area artist in order to address a possible reason why Bay Area artists often leave the area after a period of “incubation”. Joseph delPesco, founder of the Collective Foundation speaks eloquently about the reasoning behind this grant theme on the SF Moma blog. (excerpt below)

“Unlike most first-world countries we don’t have a cultural agency at the state or federal level that funds artists’ travel. I have an untested theory that if Bay Area artists had support for mobility that they would be more likely to stay. While the last sentence may sound counter-intuitive, I think one reason artists leave is the relative isolation of the Bay Area in relation to the art centers. More to the point, It appears that most of the artists who have stayed are those who have been able to develop projects and find exhibition opportunities outside of the Bay Area.”

Nominees* for The Present Prize:

Ajit Chauhan, Alison Pebworth, Amanda Eicher, Andrew Venell, Christine Kesler, Lindsey White, Margaret Tedesco, Matt Borruso, and Nathaniel Parsons

We want to YOUR discerning eye!

This stage of the voting is open to all members of the public.  View proposals and give us your preference in randomized arena-style matchups**.  Voting is open until February 28th, 2011. VOTE NOW >>

*Artists were nominated by two groups of hosting clients whose fees contributed to the creation of this grant.  Artists were then contacted to provide short statements about where they wanted to go and why, an image, and a weblink.

** One of the things we were concerned about regarding the voting process was that we wanted to involved the public, but didn’t want it to just be an online popularity contest.  That’s why we decided on the head-to-head matchup style and a proposal-centered presentation.  We hope that this encourages voters to more fully consider the proposals merits rather than simply voting once for their friend and leaving.

Wapke Feenstra.  Former Farmland, Sagarossa, Spain, 2008; pamphlet/poster, 5.88 x 4.16 in. closed, 11.66 x 16.75 in. open.

Welcome Landfill!  A new project by Ted Purves and Elyse Mallouk, Landfill is interested in the funny little pieces of information or material byproducts that are produced by social practice artists.  They are cataloging these pieces of history on their website and have also started an art subscription to allow more people to collect and learn about these projects (at a really reasonable price: $60/year for 4 issues).   The subscription will consist of a Journal along with selected pieces of actual ephemera.   Perhaps a good preview of what the Journal will be like is these two articles on Art Practical highlighting this project.  Here’s a tidbit describing themselves:

Landfill is a project that archives, studies, and redistributes the material byproducts produced by ephemeral artworks. It creates a second venue for projects that largely existed in non-material form, and aims to build a non-linear history of socially engaged art practice.  Landfill exists in three parts: an online Archive, a material Quarterly, and a written Journal.  The Quarterly is distributed to subscribers four times a year.  It contains the Journal and selected pieces of material ephemera.

As part of the Landfill Archive, supplemental materials become conduits for ideas that continue to circulate.  The Archive is an aggregate capable of accounting for the broad range of projects that self-consciously consider their publics, without laying claim to a singular narrative.  It is accessible all the time, for free.

They are looking for submissions. With this new addition, we now have 5 solid art subscriptions in the Bay Area!  Check out the links on the sidebar to learn about them all.   It’s pretty exciting to see how this model can adapt to suit all sorts of work and interests.  It’s not clear if Landfill will use subscription dues solely to create the journal or if they will also be using some of the funds to compensate contributing artists who often rely on grants to accomplish this sort of work.  My guess is for that price they will need most of the money just to accomplish the creation of the physical journal, shipping, and writing.  However, as they grow, perhaps they will consider sponsoring projects to give back to the community of artists they will rely for donations.

Wasteland, a multi-media exhibition curated by Matt Cella, opens this Saturday, February 5th, from 6 to 9pm at SOAP Gallery.

A suburban cabinet of curiosities, Wasteland highlights the work of a generation of artists raised on 80′s and 90′s popular media.

Inspired by the emo-bedrooms and basement dens of teenage America, the exhibition will feature works by Adam Hathaway, Amir Esfahani, Anthony Record, Ben Venom, Carrie Hott, David Horton, Jeremiah Jenkins, Julumarie Joy Cornista, Kristen Roberts, Matt Cella, Mike Decker, Neils Neilson lll, Renetta Sitoy, Robert Burden, Ross Campbell, and Tom Mueske.

Wasteland will run until March 5th. The Gallery is located at 3180 Mission Street, in San Francisco.

SOAP Gallery
3180 Mission St
San Francisco, CA

http://206.130.104.2/soap-gallery/

3 run home run!

World Series Champions

City Hall decked out in orange and black

Art Publishing Now

is a two-day event dedicated to the investigation and showcasing of art publishing practices in the Bay Area. It includes a day of presentations and critical discussions, an after party, an art publishers fair, library and web archive.

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Participate:

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The Library is still seeking submissions!
Deadline October 1st.

The Art Publishing Now Library is a physical and online archive of Art Publishers in the Bay Area. APNL is a self-defined collection; it is open to any project that considers itself an art publisher or a contributor to art publishing in the Bay Area. The library will be installed at Southern Exposure from October to December 2010 and will go on to find a new home in the Bay Area.

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Join the Conversation!

THE SUMMIT is on Saturday, October 9, 2010, 11 am – 6 pm
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Space is limited so be sure to register to attend!

The 2010 Art Publishing Now Summit invites you to join leading creators of print, online, and experimental publications to reflect on the most urgent issues and exciting possibilities in art publishing today. With topics ranging from “Publish AND Perish” to “West Coast Critical?”, the event will include a series of presentations, conversations, and panels intended to yield insight and encourage innovation in Bay Area art publishing.

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Learn about local art publishers!

Sunday, October 10, 2010, 11 am – 6 pm
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

The Art Publishing Now Fair showcases the breadth and depth of art publishing projects in the Bay Area. The fair hosts Bay Area independent publishing and related projects presenting a diverse range of the best in contemporary art publications ranging from periodicals, websites, editions and more.

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Party with us!

Saturday, October 9, 2010, 6-10pm
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Join Art Publishing Now Summit and Fair participants for a get together at Southern Exposure. Purchase food from some of SF’s favorite street food vendors including El Tonayense Taco Truck. Drinks and libations by donation from Trumer Brauerei, BridgePort Brewery, and Spoetzl Brewery.

“Cheek to Cheek” by Bernie Lubell, 1999  at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art

“OutRun” by Garnet Hertz,  South Hall and beyond
FYI this is a video game that you play as you drive around the city.  WHAAAT?

“No Matter” by Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott, 2008  at the San Jose Museum of Art
They hired Second Life players to create digital representations of 40 legendary objects (Icarus’s wings, Yellow Submarine, Holy Grail, pot of gold) which they then handcrafted in real life.

Solar Pump charging station, by Sol Design Lab and Bike Zoo, outside South Hall
Why doesn’t this exist everywhere?

“Le Monde des Montagnes” (The World of Mountains), by Camille Scherrer, 2008 at San Jose Museum of Art
The screen was a live image of the book on the table.  As  you turned the pages, new worlds would apppear from and within the pictures on the pages.

from “Mapping Non-Conformity: From the Global Border to the Border Neighborhood” by Teddy Cruz at MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana)

My mind is exploding with all the things I want to see and do in September.  Here are some highlights:

Stop & Go Rides Again | Intersection for the Arts | 9.11.10: A diverse collection of stop-motion animations by Bay Area and international artists unveil their most recent experiments in animation and comment on everything from the simple beauty of a rubber ball to the history of evolution.

Pop Up Magazine | Herbst Theatre | 9.9.10: Pop-Up showcases the country’s most interesting writers, documentary filmmakers, photographers, and radio producers, together, on stage, sharing short moments of unseen, unheard work.  Tickets go on sale TOMORROW (8/26) at noon.  Last time they sold out in 5 hrs, so be ready if you want to go.

Once Upon a Time, Happily Ever After… *| Lake Merritt, Oakland | Ongoing:  Produced by Scott Oliver, Once Upon A Time, Happily Ever After… is a public art project set at Lake Merritt.  There are three major components: a self-guided audio walking tour (available now) will take listeners to a variety of sites around Lake Merritt while exploring the stories and forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, the lake and its surroundings.; watershed awareness signage (to be installed this winter) will show how Lake Merritt and the surrounding city are intimately connected through ecological phenomena and a complex network of storm drains; and a series of Lake Merritt souvenirs (available starting 9/15) being developed with local students and artists will highlight different aspects of the lake from individual perspectives.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the 01SJ Biennial yet!

01SJ Biennial | Mostly in San Jose, various venues | 9.16 – 9.19: The 2010 01SJ Biennial is predicated on the notion that as artists, designers, engineers, architects, marketers, corporations and citizens we have the tools to (re)build the world, conceptually and actually, virtually and physically, poorly and better, aesthetically and pragmatically, in both large and small ways. 01SJ is about how powerful ideas and innovative individuals from around the world can make a difference and come together to build a unique and distributed city-wide platform for creative solutions and public engagement.

This packed weekend of shows, events, talks, performances and experiences looks amazing.  We may need to move to San Jose for the weekend.

But fellow carless peeps, never fear!  Here are a few great shows closer to our neck of the woods that are associated with 01SJ:

Knowledge Hacking | Worth Ryder Gallery | Opens 9.15: Knowledge Hacking invites artists to use the university research environment as raw material for their work. The three projects selected demonstrate a range of ways in which scientists and artists might share their expertise, to better investigate how we understand and engage with our world.

Teen Age: You Just Don’t Understand | Catherine Clark Gallery | Opens 8/28:  Curated by Ken Goldberg.  Featuring Whitney Lynn of TPG 12 fame (she has another show at Patricia Sweetow Gallery in September as well)

Building Steam : Lynn Koble | Swarm Gallery | Opens 9/18: Curated by Jeff Eisenberg, Aaron Ximm and Swarm Gallery Building Steam is a year-long program dedicated to sound art created by local and national artists.  The first show in this series is by Lynn Koble, whose work reflects her interest in the many forms of constructed and simulated environments – physical, social, psychological, natural – that exist in a technology-saturated world. She is also curious about how people experience, order and disrupt these environments according to systems, both scientific and personal, tangible and virtual.

*disclaimer: Oliver and I helped to fund this project

A1 (Linard) from grahame weinbren on Vimeo.

Weinbren is doing a collaborative event at 01SJ in September

On Saturday we spent a lovely mid-day over at Royal NoneSuch Gallery for the closing party of Alula Editions‘ tenure there with Jason Jägel.   They spent their time working out imagery and refining their printing techniques.  Having just pulled the test prints for their first edition the day before, the results look pretty exciting.

Jason manned the tables.

Helena from Alula Editions

Ann Chamberlain, Untitled Installation 2, 2006. Ink on graph paper, fifty sheets, 8.5 x 11 inches.

A two-day symposium in honor of former SFAI faculty member and artist Ann Chamberlain, People and Places launches a sustained inquiry at SFAI into contemporary public practices. Pursued in conventionally artistic or increasingly hybridized, permissioned or nonpermissioned, and publicly underwritten or privately supported ways, the work of cultural producers in the public sphere is ongoing.

People and Places is structured around a series of open-ended questions relating to this vital strain of cultural activity: What does it mean for a contemporary artist to work in public settings or to solicit exchanges with the general populace? How do notions of “generosity” as a mode of social interaction, of “storytelling” as a project of collective history, and of “community” as a way of defining common ground inform creative strategies of public engagement? How are such negotiations located in particular places and enacted within particular social and political contexts?

Participants:
Andrea Bowers, Glen Helfand, Jessica Hobbs, Walter Hood, Helena Keeffe (TPG #11), Julie Lazar, Malcolm Margolin, Jeannene Przyblyski, Pedro Reyes, Susan Schwartzenberg, and Natasha Wheat

SFAI  Lecture Hall
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
Free and open to the public

It’s FREE! It’s easy to get to! There’s fun eating and drinking places around!

With short films ranging in subject matter from Narcolepsy to Eating to Disasters in 2087, it is sure to be entertaining.

OAKLAND UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
FRIDAY JUNE 18^th – Local Shorts Showcase
Doors open 7:30PM – Films 8:30PM
FREE ADMISSION

Films:
elfmädchen Dir. Mirka Morales 16 min
PAISLEY’S TALE Dir. Harmony Nichol 9 min
DOWN ON THE FARM Dir. Alfonso Alvarez (6 min)
POPP Dir. Imelda Picherit 2 min
LAUNDRY Dir. Danielle Katvan 4 min
OSA: OAKLAND’S GEM Dir./Prod. Jenny Chu 15 min
ROUGH DEMO Dir. Donte Harrison AKA Dr. Cyclops (4 min)
INHUMAN EATING MACHINE Dir. D. Silva (9 min)
WASTELAND Dir. Kathleen Quillian (3 min)
TRADITIONAL INDIGENOUS VALUES Dir. Ruth Villasenor (8 min)
GOLLY THE RAINMAKER Dir. Yoram Savion (6 min)

This quote was found in the Berkeley Rep program for In the Wake by Lisa Kron, which, incidentally, is one of the best plays I have seen in some time.  Go see it!

Chad Jones sat down with Susan Medak on her 20 year anniversary as Berkeley Rep’s Managing Director.  This quote resonated strongly with us because we think along the same lines about the work we produce, the context we provide, and the subscribers that provide the support for it to all happen.

Why do you think you and Berkeley Rep have worked so well together?

“If we have been successful, it’s been in part because we produce what we care about, and what we care about turns out to be an aesthetic that is shared by our community.  This formula wouldn’t work in every community.  We’re in Berkeley, in the Bay Area, and that gives us a certain license to do the kind of work we do.  We have taken responsibility for building an audience and bringing that audience along with us.  We’ve taken a lot of responsibility for helping audiences enjoy the work as much as we do.

Context is all- and that’s my philosophy about everything.  The more context we can provide, the richer the audience’s experience.  Our audiences are intelligent and thoughtful, and we have a lot of respect for them. “

But here we layer up and watch fog tsunamis take over the earth in slow motion.  It’s sortof awesome.

FYI this roundup is totally unfair to people working in video or performance.  The opening show is much too chaotic, crowded, and loud to experience those things.

Jen Susman

Jack Leamy

Emily Dippo made viewers that correlate with walks around the city “to encourage wonder while experiencing the city”

Kim Cook made water bottle backpacks and drawings of their (impractical) usage

Ashley Harris

This is exciting.  City Car Share is teaming up with Spride to develop a system that allows individual car owners to add their cars to the city car share fleet in their unused hours.  This is good in so many ways.  Non car owners get access to many more cars and locations, car owners get paid to help them with the costs of owning a car, yet have control over when they need the car, and life is better for everyone when less cars are owned.  (except car dealers).   People without cars are much more likely to take public transportation, even when the commute is longer and save greenhouse gases like crazy.  Case in point: I am writing this on the Dumbarton Express during my two hour commute to Palo Alto.

Yet before this can go into effect, the law has to change so that insurance companies can allow this to happen.  Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento has introduced a bill (AB 1871) that would amend state car insurance laws to allow personal vehicles to be used in car-sharing programs. Currently, auto insurers prohibit individual policyholders from renting out their personal vehicles.  Read more about this here or view the bill here.

If you want this to happen, contact your legislators and let them know what you think:
Assembly
Senate

Or sign this petition!

It was a beautiful day

Tucker Nichols

Lindsey White

Colette Campbell-Jones