When multimedia storyteller Pauline Bartolone reached out about a photo-centered art auction fundraiser she’s hosting for friends detained in Iran, I was ecstatic about the idea. Saturday night’s event at SOMArts Cultural Center has 80 local artists presenting in the name of freeing documentary photographer Shane Bauer and fellow hikers (you can learn more at FreeTheHikers). And buy art–just know that I call dibs on Camille Seaman’s ”Uneditioned,” below.
I try not to post promotional video content with too much frequency, but the latest from the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (“social consciousness through digital culture”) may just have you friending, favoriting and donating. The Tenderloin-based educational and art space can’t be quickly described in terms of reach or single medium, and that’s how I know it’s needed.
Starting tomorrow, it will host Global Game Jam, 48 hours of game dev and experimentation fun. Institute for the Future’s game researcher Jane McGonigal will kick off the weekend, whose schedule promises “WORK!” of the best kind from 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM for the better part of three days.
It may be months away, but I’m most excited for ODC’s creativity symposium with women artists slated for April. The day and a half event “Women Who Frame the World” will bring creators and artists to the Oberlin Dance Company (as in, the Ohio university for which the now Mission-based theater hails). Performer Laurie Anderson, feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan, and novelist Mona Simpson will be presenting, and after seeing ! Women Arts Revolution this week, I’m looking forward to Lynn Herhsman Leeson’s talk in mid-April.
When I wrote about ! Women Art Revolution last year, I anticipated that artist Lynn Hershman Leeson’s documentary would be an education. Despite writing regularly about women in technology and media, I fall with the majority of Americans who are hard pressed to name a handful of female visual and performance artists (Frida Kahlo and Marina Abramović come immediately to mind, but the exercise prompted by the film wasn’t as simple as I expected).
Forty years of footage of the work of historians, creators and curators were compiled for this feature-length look at Feminist Art premiering this week at Sundance. It was fun to learn about activism I didn’t know about (including that practiced by the Guerilla Girls, creators of flyers like the one at right that called for changes in the composition of major exhibitions); intriguing to consider the future of work like Iranian artist Shirin Neshat (whose film Women Without Men was one of the most intriguing of last year’s festival); and devastating to hear about the violence that many of these women faced. I’m glad that the film will be coming to the San Francisco Film Festival this year and have a slew of friends–women and men–I’ll be taking to it.
I’ve long been a fan of photographer Julie Michelle’s set of portraits and stories about San Franciscans and am happy to see a selection of her 170 series shots make their way to SOMArts on Friday night. The full image and bio pairings on i live here:SF are worth a long look (including Wardell’s city-themed vehicle and musings by performance artist Michelle Tea), but should you drop by the event as a first time viewer, Julie’s description may set you up well:
“[The project] is an exploration of the city through the visages and stories of the people who participate, and through it, I have learned so much about San Francisco and its myriad of nano-neighborhoods and micro-climates.”
Storenvy co-founder Janette Crawford turned me onto a show at Bryant Street studio Galley Hijinks that promises bold geometry through November 15, and it’s likely to lure me in the next time I’m in the neighborhood or working at Stable Cafe. Mark Warren Jacques’ I’m Here Now couples ink, graphite and acrylic with unexpected names, including “Work is love made visible” and “Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
Should you be looking for a low-key Friday to compliment Saturday’s costume craziness, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will be introducing two major exhibits (and a mask may actually be fitting). Audience as Subject, Part 1: Medium includes event-focused works (think audiences in medium-sized venues including a theater, TV studio, and city bus) selected by director of visual arts Betti-Sue Hertz. Visitors who come to an opening party to meet the artists will also see select films from Yoshua Okón: 2007-2010 (including Danica Daki!, Isola Bella, right, above, Adrian Paci’s Turn On). Based on the description, there may be a lot to see:
“Yoshua Okón’s video installations are built on improvisational narratives created by the artist and his collaborating performers, mostly non-actors willing to participate in a game of social chance that may easily spiral out of control. Centered around emotionally charged expressions of power and contemplations of fear, death, sex, and nationhood, these works provoke viewers to consider questions of social conduct and the behavior of individuals within systems of social restraint. Okón further challenges viewers to question their own attitudes towards power, ethics, and prejudice, particularly as they relate to class and race. Maintaining a belief that humanity holds within its grasp a complex web of fears and desires, Okón enacts psychological violence charged with absurdity and humor.”
Last year’s ARTCRANK poster show was well worth the 4th Street crowd and jammed bike parking (and not just because it ended with a conversation with legendary cyclist Gary Fisher, the father of modern day mountain biking). Chrome plays host to the free event, and prints by the likes of local designer Celeste Prevost are $30 a pop. Get thee there on Friday night.
Tuesday’s Art & Achievement for All event has a setting (KQED on Mariposa) fitting of its cause (a public forum for SF Board of Ed candidates). The Partnership for Creative Learning will host the arts-themed event for which the most popular excuse on Facebook for being unable to attend is “I’m teaching.”
This afternoon could have you trolling the work of local designers instead of the Internet if you’ve got time to head over to Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley. The CAPSULE design festival by the Missing Piece artist agency will include wares from booty boutique, Custom Industries, Kate Organic, Yokomono Studios, and others.
