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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

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/repeats, creating hand woven textiles that examine the most basic structure of a human: the human genome. The show will investigate the imagery of the chromosome itself, and how it is translated through the Jacquard loom to make fragments, segments of information. This is the only time the entire edition of 51 individual tapestries will be shown together. Starting at 9pm, local subscribers will be able to package and take home their piece.

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/reconstructing patterns through weaving.

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 9^th, 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.

Ethan and Ben are having an Anthroptic spin-off show at PS122 Gallery in New York Oct. 13th – Nov 4th. Ethan has made big, high-quality prints of the images to hang in the gallery, and with each, he says, “will be some text along the lines of ‘to hear the accompanying story by Benjamin Rosenbaum, call (212)555-5555 ext. 5.’ When that number is dialed, the caller will hear the short story as read by an actor.” Here’s the info: PS122 Gallery 150 First Avenue New York, NY 10009 October 13 – November 4, 2007 Opening party: October 13, tentatively 5-7pm

Anthroptic in print! In These Times Magazine included a short writeup about Anthroptic in their “Artspace” section of their May 2007 issue. It’s an honor to be included along side such progressive ideas. Download the May 2007 issue here. Page 41.

We wanted to give a little recap of our participation in the discussion at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts put on by The Collective Foundation. We were one of 10 projects and organizations that “exemplified a more democratic, people-powered art world and employ strategies of collective contribution, crowd-sourcing, and alternative or informal economies.” It was exciting to find such strong kinship with people from across the country who were all thinking up new ways to support the arts, trying out new methods of funding, and rethinking the artist/commodity world in general. Many of the groups were very new, like us, but a few were more established. It was a really inspiring night. Here are links to the other groups involved: Copy-Art.net Fine Art Adoption Network Cadre Art Grants Service Works InCUBATE Orchard MutualArt Tiny Showcase The Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI)