|
 From
left, cast members of The Lights by Howard Korder: Arreta Wang,
Marcus Shelby (composer and performer), Matthew Chavez, and Lara Bruckman;
photograph by Tom Ontiveros
THE CREATIVE WORK FUND FUNDED PROJECTS: 1994-2007
Since 1994, the Creative Work Fund has awarded 186 grants to projects that have been reviewed within five broad artistic categories.
In 1995, a single panel reviewed projects in literary and media arts,
but literature and media were later reviewed separately. The category “traditional
arts” was added in the Creative Work Fund’s sixth year following
a program evaluation.
The list that follows is organized by the artistic discipline categories
and, then, chronologically. The disciplines appear in alphabetical order
as follows:
{LITERARY ARTS}
LITERARY ARTS, 1995 {top}
Koncepts Cultural Gallery collaborating with poets devorah major,
Genny Lim, Wayne Corbitt, and others, and jazz musician/composer
Muziki Roberson to create “This Poetry Thing: A Suite of Poetry and Jazz,” a
touring and recording project exploring strategies for presenting
poetry in performance.
Poetry Flash collaborating with poet Robert Hass and sculptor
Shane Eagleton to create “River of Words,” a twenty-foot
carved poetry panel on salvaged wood. The panel has been featured
at local and national events on literature and the environment where
the public is invited to take rubbings from the carved poem and images.
LITERARY ARTS, 1998
The African American Museum and Library collaborating with writer Opal
Palmer Adisa, photographer Ian Moore and video artist Jonathan Eubanks on an oral history, public readings, and multi-media exhibit about the
lives of long-time African-American residents of West Oakland.
Bay Area Radio Drama collaborating with writers Millicent Dillon,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Soto, and Helen Cline, and sound artists
Jim McKee and Randy Thom on four 30-minute works, exploring “Locations” for
public radio broadcast.
Community Works collaborating with Gloria Frym and students of Galileo
High School on a creative reimagining of Tess of the d’Urbervilles,
entitled Rose of the Mission, that places Thomas Hardy’s
novel in a contemporary setting.
Huong Viet Community Center collaborating with poet Truong Tran and
photographer Chong Hoang Chuong to study Vietnamese immigration across
generations. As informal artists-in-residence at the Center, the
artists interviewed several generations of immigrants, participated
in community events, and then conducted research in Vietnam. Their
photographs and poems were collected in The Book of Perceptions,
published by Kearny Street Workshop, and sold to benefit the Center’s
programs.
Zyzzyva collaborating with Heather Drohan, Paul Stojsavljevic
Flores, Chaim Bertman, Robert Mailer Anderson on a new “Zyzzyva
Discovery” series of first books by Bay Area and West Coast writers.
The project addressed new writers’ need for close attention
and creative mentorship from an editor.
LITERARY ARTS, 2001
Community Defense Fund, Inc. collaborating with Lisa Gray-Garcia, Poor
Magazine, Dee Gray, Joseph Bolden and Leroy Moore to create
a live performance, publication, online presentation and radio broadcast
of 12 literary art narratives celebrating “Poverty Heroes.”
East Bay Media Center and Paul Kealoha Blake collaborating with poet
Lisa Kahaleole Hall to create a poetic video addressing the Hawaiian
Diaspora, incorporating work by visual artists Rocky Jensen and Sharon
Nawahine Lum Ho, the music of Zelie Duvachelle, and the hula of Patrick
Makuakane.
Hayward Area Historical Society and writer Maria Ochoa collaborating
to create Russell City: Our Voices, Our Selves, a book about
patterns of immigration to a once thriving small Alameda County town
that is now a part of Hayward.
Manifest Press collaborating with translator Christopher Danielsand
Brazilian artists Josely Vianna Baptista and Francisco Faria to create On
the Shining Screen of the Eyelids, a bilingual book of contemporary
poetry and art.
The Native American Cultural Center with poet Abena Songbird and
multi-media artist Derek Wilson collaborating to develop “Round Dance,” a
poetry event beginning with a round robin writing project among 15 Native
American poets, published on the Center’s web site.
Spoken word poet Beau Sia and three instructors from Youth Speaks—James
Kass, Paul Flores, and Mark Bamuthi Joseph—collaborating to
create No
Man’s Land, a spoken word performance exploring archetypal,
cross-cultural, and contemporary concepts of manhood.
LITERARY ARTS, 2004
African Science Institute and spoken word artist and poet Naru Kwina collaborating to create a CD and a 30-minute theater production, “Hip
Science: The Human Body 101 LIVE,” combining rap music with
scientific information about the human body. The collaborators are
using rap to give youth access to scientific information, and introduce
the sciences as a professional avenue for them.
Writer and performer Genny Lim and Asian Improv aRts collaborating
to create “True Freedom: Anatomy of an American Family,” a new
short story collection that is informed by a writer’s residency
at the Chinatown Beacon Center at Jean Parker Elementary School—the
school Lim attended as a child. The project enables Lim to connect her
coming of age experiences in the 1950s and ‘60s Chinatown/North
Beach neighborhoods to the issues facing the neighborhoods’ immigrant
children and families today.
Bay Area Radio Drama, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Earwax Productions collaborating to produce a series of three original hour-long audio
compositions. Ferlinghetti will juxtapose autobiography, commentary,
and poetry in a highly personal acoustic exploration of what he terms “the current
state of American consciousness.” The pieces will be broadcast
on public radio nationally and internationally, and available through
the Internet.
Community Works and Margo Perin collaborating to create “Only
the Dead Can Kill,” a book, CD, and web page featuring autobiographical
stories created by Perin and inmates in San Francisco County Jail.
With Perin as artist-facilitator, inmates will write about their
experiences of childhood, parenting, physical and substance abuse,
and criminality, while Perin will write on the same elements in her
life story of being raised by a criminal father.
Choreographer Alex Ketley of The Foundry and poet Carol Snow collaborating
to create “Syntax,” a dance/poetry work of an estimated 40
minutes in length. Poet and choreographer will explore how dance can
serve to underline the experience of language and its structure: “A
dance could be choreographed—not to music and not the content of
a reading—but to the linguistic patterns of what is read.”
The Poetry Center collaborating with poet Norma Cole to create a
gallery installation and a fine press book on the occasion of the
Center’s
50th Anniversary. During the Center’s retrospective exhibit at
the California Historical Society, Cole will create a series of vastly
different “writer’s rooms” in which she will be working
and from which she will invite, respond to, and incorporate into her
writing the comments, perceptions, and contributions of visitors. The
Poetry Center will document the project’s evolution on video
and as a fine-press art book.
Queer Cultural Center and writer Michelle Tea and will create, develop,
and present “TransForming Community,” based on new writings
by six queer, transgender, and intersex literary and spoken word artists. “TransForming
Community” explores implications of the recent surge of San Francisco
residents who are choosing their own gender identities and seeks to demonstrate
literature’s potential to launch public conversation about
the complex implications of these choices. Writers working with Michelle
Tea are Katastrophe, Thea Hillman, Lynn Breedlove, Julia Serano,
and Marcus Rene Van.
Youth Speaks, along with spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph,
young poets Eli Marienthal, Biko Eisen-Martin, and Chinaka Hodge,
and composer John Santos are collaborating to create “Scourge,” a hip
hop theater piece critically examining the history of Haiti. The artists
propose to “use a fusion of dance, spoken word, and live music
to re-visit the very narrow space between history, myth, and speculation.”
{MEDIA ARTS}
MEDIA ARTS, 1995 {top}
La Casa de las Madres collaborating with filmmaker Jan Millsapps to create, “Episodes,” an interactive media piece about surviving
domestic violence. The CD-ROM’s text and images were generated
by men, women, and children who have experienced domestic violence
and who have helped others survive such situations. The finished
work has been used in community education programs.
The Rose Resnick Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired
and fiscal sponsor Intersection for the Arts collaborating with sound
artist Ed Osborn to create “The Sound Garden,” a permanent public
audio art installation for Yerba Buena Gardens, installed in conjunction
with the Gardens’ Talking Sign system for the visually impaired.
The Vietnamese Youth Development Center collaborating with filmmaker
Spencer Nakasako on Tenderloin Stories. Nakasako invited
the Center’s Southeast Asian youth to tell their own stories
by shooting hand-held Hi8 film footage of their neighborhoods and
homes. The resulting four short videos, collaboratively edited with
Nakasako, were be shown at community centers, on street corners,
and in parks in the Tenderloin as well as being screened at film
festivals and on HBO.
MEDIA ARTS, 1999
The Ruth Asawa Fund, media artist Valerie Soe, and parent-artists who
helped develop the Alvarado School Community Arts Program creating a
30-minute video tracing the history of one of the first community-based
arts education programs in the country.
Cultural Odyssey’s Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated
Women collaborating with filmmaker Lawrence Andrews to create We
Just Tellin’ Stories, a
90-minute film blending fictional and documentary elements, with
narrative developed and acted by four women who have participated in
the Medea Project.
Media Alliance collaborating with media artist glenda drew and choreographer
Pearl Ubungen to create “Makibaka!,” an interactive CD-ROM
focusing on the 100th anniversary of the Philippine American-War.
The artists conducted research together and with high school-aged
youth, recruited through Filipinos for Affirmative Action, who assisted
with collecting oral histories for the piece. The finished CD-ROM
incorporates performances by Ubungen and others, historical materials,
and the oral histories.
San Francisco Camerawork collaborating with the artist team Margaret
Crane and Jon Winet on a year-long project exploring the 2000 elections, “Democracy—The
Last Campaign.” The Bay Area component featured an exhibition,
a series of public programs, an interactive forum on the World Wide Web,
and an issue of San Francisco Camerawork’s national journal.
The artist team worked on technology development for the project
with Dale MacDonald and Scott Minneman, researchers at Xerox PARC
in Palo Alto.
Youth Radio, Marlene Williams, and a team of young media artists creating “Youth
Radio on Race and Identity,” a series of public radio programs
focusing on the themes, “Rites of Passage,” “Immigrant
Stories,” and “Juvenile Justice.” This cohesive
body of work was developed over the course of a year through a collaboration
among young radio artists, Oscar winner Gary Rydstrom of SkyWalker
Sound, Randy Thom of Lucasfilm, and Youth Radio staff.
MEDIA ARTS, 2001
Casa Segura/Safe House and its staff and clients collaborating with
Sharon Daniel to create a web site, posters, and billboards to increase
understanding and awareness of the organization in its Fruitvale
neighborhood in Oakland.
Linda Tillery and four members of the acapella Cultural Heritage
Choir collaborating with Michael Fried to document their lives and
work as a means of looking at the role of the music of the African
Diaspora in American society.
San Francisco human rights organization, Global Exchange, artist
Sergio De La Torre, and filmmaker Vicky Funari, and the Tijuana women’s
organization Grupo Factor X are creating an hour-long documentary film
about the lives of workers in Tijuana’s maquiladoras, assembly
factories.
The Lab collaborating with Chris Salter and Sponge—an
association of professional artists and researchers—to develop
and present “The SAUNA Project,” a contemplative hybrid
space embedded into a public environment that invited the public
to examine how we are bombarded with media images, icons, and sounds
in the course of daily life.
Southern Exposure Gallery collaborating with video artist Lise Swenson to create Mission Movie, a a non-traditional narrative feature
film responding to changes in a San Francisco neighborhood and involving
Mission-based artists, business owners, community organizers, cultural
workers, and gallery representatives in writing and producing the
work.
MEDIA ARTS, 2003
The African American Coalition for Health Improvement and Empowerment,
and fiscal sponsor Bay Area Video Coalition, collaborating with film
makers Paul VanDeCarr and Rick Butler to create After Jonestown,
a documentary on the legacy of the Jonestown Guyana tragedy and its
lingering affects on the Bay Area’s African American community.
The Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention collaborating with filmmaker
Susan Stern and End-of-Life Choicesto create The Self-Made Man,
a film and DVD exploring the philosophical and psychological issues
surrounding assisted suicide.
Chinese Performing Arts Foundation and fiscal sponsor Film Arts Foundation
collaborating with filmmaker Ruby Yang to create A Moment in Time,
a documentary exploring Chinese performing arts, their relationship
to Chinese film, and the public following for both genres in San
Francisco.
Critical Images, Inc., film makers Lexi Leban and Lidia Szajko,
and the clients and staff of the Center for Young Women’s Development
collaborating with Shivaun M. Nestor to create www. girltrouble.org,
a web site featuring the interactive game “Caught Up,” through
which players enter a universe of situations and choices common to
poor and incarcerated young women.
Galería de la Raza collaborating with sound installation artist
Guillermo Galindo and composer Chris Brown to create “Transmission
Mission,” a live multi-channel radio performance, recreating
the distinctive aural qualities of the Mission neighborhood.
Locus Arts and Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center are collaborating
with interdisciplinary artist vu t. thu ha to create an experimental
video, Kieu, weaving the story of Viet Namese massage parlor
workers in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district with Truyen
Kieu (The Tale of Kieu), Viet Nam’s national epic poem.
The Vietnamese Youth Development Center collaborating with Spencer
Nakasako to create the video, What Does it Mean to be American?,
exploring the perspectives of young Southeast Asians in San Francisco’s
Tenderloin District on growing up in the United States.
MEDIA ARTS 2006
Filmmaker Lisa Denker and Circus Center are collaborating on a documentary
film with and about Judy Finelli, an influential contributor to the
new circus movement, and co-founder of the San Francisco School of
Circus Arts. Developed through a close artistic partnership between
filmmaker Denker and performer Finelli, the film will tell a life story,
celebrate circus history, and explore the Bay Area’s circus arts
legacy.
Filmmaker Jennifer Kroot and the Legion of Graduate Students
of the San Francisco Art Institute are creating a 90-minute documentary
film synthesizing the work of pioneer underground filmmaker George
Kuchar, featuring his current and past students, Hollywood filmmakers
who influenced him in the 1950s, and numerous artists who have been
affected by his work.
Collaborating with the Oakland Museum of California, John Jota Leaños will create an interactive net.opera and new media installation, “Imperial
Silence: A Days of the Dead Internet Opera.” The project
will provide a creative platform for contemporary exploration of the
Mexican tradition of Los Días de los Muertos.
Filmmaker
Joyce Lee and the Center for the Art of Translation will create “Words
from Another Tongue,” a 30-minute film
that explores growing up bilingual in an American classroom. Lee
will collaborate with artists, teachers, and students participating
in Poetry Inside Out, a creative writing and literary translation
program working with children in bilingual classrooms.
Media and performance artist Carol Leigh is collaborating with the
Center for Sex and Culture on “Art, Advocacy and Identity.” The
project makes innovative use of a Pathfinder-based delivery system
to organize digital materials that document the stories, artistic
expressions, history, cultural roles, and legal and social positions
of sex workers internationally.
Sound designer, composer, engineer, and producer Jim McKee and composer
and sound designer Barney Jones are collaborating with LifeFlow to
produce “Shared Stories,” an online audio installation
featuring stories by and about family members who are caring for
elder relatives or aging parents. A series of 20 five-minute audio
compositions will be presented as an ongoing LifeFlow Internet program
on elder care and portions of the series will be made available as
web casts and sent to radio stations and producers for replication
and further dissemination.
Artist R. Lee Montgomery and members of Neighborhood Public Radio will collaborate with Southern Exposure on “Radio Cartography,” engaging
artists, youth, Mission District residents, and Bay Area audiences
in developing original radio programming about exploring and mapping
public space. While Southern Exposure’s gallery is being renovated
and it is displaced from its venue, it will host a local radio station
in a small storefront on Mission Street and collaborate with the
artists on a portable radio unit and three projects that explore
radio’s distinctive qualities as a locally-based medium.
Media artist
Deborah Roundtree is collaborating with the George Mark Children’s House to create and test an interactive game customized
for children, ages three to 16, who have life-limiting or terminal
illnesses. By manipulating the game’s word bubbles, page
designs, and multicultural characters, and by adding their own stories
and graphics, children living at the George Mark Children’s House
will be able to create comic books and postcards that tell their stories
and share their memories with friends and family.
Media artist Valeria
Soe is collaborating with New Hope Covenant Church and Russell Jeung to create The Oak Park Story, a 60-minute
documentary recounting the story of low-income immigrants who, in
2000, won a landmark legal settlement against their landlord. The
film, created in partnership with the faith-based organization that
created a coalition among the tenants, will look at immigrants overcoming
tremendous odds in both their native countries and the United States.
Filmmaker Elizabeth Thompson will collaborate with DeafHope to create “A
Bird Flies Like Birds,” a 20-minute documentary featuring the
stories of deaf women survivors of domestic violence. The lead
artist hopes to address the complexities
and paradoxes at the heart of domestic violence.
{PERFORMING ARTS}
PERFORMING ARTS, 1995 {top}
Brava! for Women in the Arts collaborating with playwright Ricardo
A. Bracho, a member of Brava’s DramaDIVAS workshop, and dramaturg
Cherrie Moraga on a full-length, multi-character dramatic work
about the lives and experiences of gay and lesbian youth of color
in San Francisco.
Chanticleer collaborating with composer Chen Yi, Women’s Philharmonic,
Lily Cai Dance Ensemble, and Chinese Cultural Productions to create
and present a multi-media cantata based on five Chinese folk tales.
Cultural Odyssey and Rhodessa Jones collaborating with the San Francisco
Sheriff’s Department and Department of Public Works to launch The
Medea Academy, a new theater project directed by Jones that serves former
female prison inmates. The collaboration culminates with The Medea Academy’s
first performance piece, Buried Fire.
Paul Dresher Ensemble and Paul Dresher collaborating with composer
Alvin Curran and violinist David Abel on the composition of two new
concertos featuring David Abel that incorporate electronic and instrumental
music.
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players collaborating with composer
Andrew Imbrie and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, created a new,
classical contemporary work for young audiences. Songs of Then and Now,
was developed and revised by the composer, ensemble and chorus through
open rehearsals and premiered at Cal Performances in October 1998.
PERFORMING ARTS, 1997
AXIS Dance Troupe, a company of artists with and without disabilities,
and choreographer Thais Mazur collaborating with Kitka Women’s
Vocal Ensemble, composer Katrina Wreede, set designer Lauren Elder,
writer/editor Joan Pinkvoss, historical consultant Ilana Brody,
and costume designer Duston Spear on a multi-disciplinary work
about the international Women in Black Against War Movement.
Opera Piccola collaborating with performance artist Rinde Eckert
on Navigators,
a new opera for family audiences about the exploits of three sailors
lost at sea. Designer Leiko Yamomoto Pech assisted Susannah Wood,
Michael Garcia, and other members of Opera Piccola with the production.
San Francisco State University’s Drama Department collaborating
with playwright Erik Ehn, composer Lisa Bielawa, and epidemiologist
Andrew Moss on Phrenic Crush, an original opera exploring
the natural and social history of tuberculosis from the nineteenth
century to its re-emergence with the AIDS epidemic and among the homeless.
Shadowlight
Productions with Balinese puppet master Larry Reed collaborating
with storytellers Charlie Thom and Clarence Hostler, visual artists
Debora Iyall, Brian Tripp, I Made Moja, and Tim Lee Smith, folklorist
Deborah Bruce and puppeteers and designers of ShadowLight Productions on a multidisciplinary work commemorating the California Sesquicentennial
and stories of Northern California’s Native Americans.
Zaccho Dance Theater and choreographer Joanna Haigood collaborating
with Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir on an interdisciplinary,
site-specific piece documenting and interpreting the Underground Railroad.
Other collaborators were storyteller Diane Ferlatte, rigging/scene
designer Benjamin Young, lighting designer Jack Carpenter, sound designer
Lauren Weinger, and dramaturg Kim Euell.
PERFORMING ARTS, 1998
American Conservatory Theater collaborating with the Kronos Quartet on the development and workshop phase of The Difficulty of Crossing
a Field, a new piece of music theater by playwright Mac Wellman
and composer David Lang. Wellman’s libretto was based on a
short story by Ambrose Bierce about a slave owner who disappears
in the middle of an open field.
Asian American Theater Company collaborating with Culture Clash,
18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, and Latina Theater Lab on an original
collection of comedy skits, monologues, and musical numbers about Asian
Pacific Islander American and Chicano/Latino identity issues and the
intersection of the two communities.
Brava! for Women in the Arts, Ellen Sebastian Chang, Naomi Iizuka,
Jorge Cortinas, Tanya Mayo, Sean San Jose, Andrea Thome, Michael
Torres and others collaborating with Mission District teenagers to
create Mariposa, the Journey Home, an hour-long theater piece about “a day-in-the-life” of
Mission District youth.
Cal Performances, University of California, Berkeley, collaborating
with composer/pianist Jon Jang, composer/flutist James Newton, and
poet Genny Lim on When Sorrow Turns to Joy, a contemporary
cantata that seeks to illuminate commonalities between African Americans
and Chinese culture by exploring the lives of artists Paul Robeson
and Mei Lanfang.
Magic Theater collaborating with Kenn Watt, the ensemble Fifth Floor,
and Charles Mee, Jr. on the creation and development of Summertime,
a new play that transposes the story of Euripides’ Hippolytus
and its later interpretations by Racine and others into a contemporary
American setting.
Thick Description and ensemble member Karen Amano collaborating
with jazz composer Francis Wong on an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s
Under Western Eyes. In Amano’s treatment, Conrad’s novel
was moved from Tsarist Russia and democratic Geneva to the student
lounge of Columbia University and a San Francisco coffee house in
the 1960's.
PERFORMING ARTS, 2000
Filipinos for Affirmative Action collaborating with Pearl Ubungen and
Joey Ayala to create Tagulaylay/The Presidio, a large-scale,
site-specific work about the Phillippine-American war, that premiered
in Tennessee Valley at the San Francisco Presidio.
Intersection for the Arts, collaborating with Marcus Shelby, Val
Hendrickson, and Reginald-Ray Savage to create an original, musical
adaptation of The
Lights by Howard Korder.
Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts collaborating with composer/librettist
Carla Lucero to create Wuornos, a two-act opera based on
the life story of lesbian Aileen Wuornos, a serial killer on death
row in Florida.
Oakland Ballet Association collaborating with composer and percussionist
John Santos and choreographer Robert Moses to create a new work
based on the Danzón tradition from Cuba.
Project Bandaloop, with choreographer Amelia Rudolph, vocal artists
David Worm and SoVoSo, and sculptor/climber Lawrence LaBianca collaborating
to create a new piece uniting a capella singing, aerial and vertical
dance, and sculpture.
Tinker’s Workshop and Nick Bertoni, with fiscal sponsor New Langton
Arts, collaborating with composer Laeticia Sonami and East Bay teenagers on “The BAGS Project,” an interactive, musical environment
in which animated kinetic bags, activated by the public, reveal humorous
and provocative sonic elements.
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players collaborating with composer
Olly Wilson on a chamber work based on paintings by Mary Lovelace
O’Neal,
who also created new paintings responding to Wilson’s composition.
PERFORMING ARTS, 2002
Berkeley Repertory Theatre artistic director Tony Taccone collaborating
with poet and playwright Brian Freeman to create Here and There,
exploring the politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa through a work focusing
on the life of Simon Tseko Nkoli, an international gay rights activist,
and founder of the Township AIDS Project.
The ensemble Campo Santo collaborating with playwright and director
Octavio Solisto develop and premiere a two-act play,
The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, inspired by events surrounding
a young Latino couple who went on a robbery spree, holding up San
Francisco area bars and nightclubs in the 1980s—a true-life
story exposing social, political, and cultural undertones of the
City
KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble collaborating with director Ellen
Sebastian Chang and composer Mariana Sadovska to create The Rusalki
Cycle, an opera weaving together traditional Slavic folk songs
with original new music.
Choreographer and dancer Joe Goode joining forces with the Magic
Theatre and its artistic director Larry Eilenberg on a new piece
in the series, “What
the Body Knows,” continuing Goode’s exploration of movement
and language, and leading to production of Goode’s first play.
Composer and musician Wayne Wallace, choreographers
Laura Elaine Ellis, Aisha Jenkins, Robert Henry Johnson, and Robert
Moses collaborating with ODC/Theaterto create a
new work based on the Faith Ringgold quilt, “They Came to America.” “Quilt” interwove
music, text, and a movement-based narrative; and the dance was accompanied
by Wallace’s 10-piece orchestra.
Composer and musician Johari Jabircollaborating
with Theatre Rhinoceros on a new musical theater piece exploring
hair and the role it plays in identity construction—particularly
in the Queer and African American communities. HairStory incorporated
a musical score by Jabir and narrative based on oral histories and
interviews, co-written by Jabir, Doug Holsclaw, and John Fisher.
Christian Burns and Alex Ketley, co-artistic directors of The Foundry,
collaborating with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to create The
Fleshing Memory, performances and video installations in non-traditional
performance spaces within the Center’s facility—such
as the loading dock, underground mechanical tunnels, administrative
offices, and theater dressing rooms.
The Z Space Studio collaborating with actor and director Margo Hall
and playwright Leigh Fondakowski, to create a new work revisiting
the tragedy of Jonestown. The artists are working closely with the
California Historical Society, which recently acquired extensive Jonestown
archives, and with an ensemble of professional Bay Area performers.
PERFORMING ARTS 2005
Choreographer Kim Epifano collaborating with Michael Bernard Loggins
and Creativity Explored to transform Loggins’ book Fears of
Your Life into a multidisciplinary theater performance exploringthat
explores themes of fear and difference, particularly for individuals
with disabilities. Also collaborating are AXIS Dance Company, animator
Todd Herman, and visual artist Michael Stasiuk.
Composer, violinist, and producer Kaila Flexer and master Bulgarian
folk musicians Duo Varimezovi collaborating with outstanding young
musicians at The Crowden School on The Xylem Folkestra Project to create
a body of new music that incorporates the meters of Bulgarian folk
music while embracing forward-looking classical and contemporary classical
and jazz devices.
Bay Area writer and performance artist Paul S. Flores collaborating
with Cuban rap artist Yrak Saénz Orta, theater director
Danny Hoch, and the San Francisco International Arts Festival to
create an original bilingual work that dramatizes the lives of
two young Latino artists who use hip-hop to transcend national
political boundaries.
Composer Jake Heggie collaborating with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra to create a music drama based on classic legends from Metamorphosis.
The finished 20-minute music drama will feature a period instrument
orchestra with soprano and mezzo soloists and will be the first new
work in Philharmonia Baroque’s history.
Actress, singer, teacher, and writer Rhodessa Jones collaborating
with incarcerated women, ex-offenders, and other artists from San
Francisco’s
multicultural community to create Concrete Jungle, “a
magical-realist journey into the heart of the American urban wilderness.” Building
on work developed over 16 years by Jones and The Medea Project: Theater
for Incarcerated Women, Concrete Jungletheater workshops and
performances seek to help inmates re-enter the community after their
release.
Collaborating with Kronos Quartet, sound artist, composer, and instrument
creator Walter Kitundu will develop a composition/installation for
the instruments of the string quartet and one or more "phonoharps"—beautifully
crafted multi-stringed phonograph turntables capable of simultaneously
amplifying the tones of vibrating strings through the stylus as well
as the content of a vinyl record. The collaboration honors
American jazz great Charles Mingus.
Bay Area-based Butoh dancer Shinichi Momo Koga collaborating with
Rova Saxophone Quartet on the creation and presentation of a multidisciplinary
performance work that brings together master improvisers in dance
and music. CollaboratingThe collaborating performers will include Berlin-based
Butoh dancer Yuko Kaseki, a longtime collaborator with Mr. Koga.
Monologist Josh Kornbluth collaborating with Z Space Studio and
campus-based Democracy Matters, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization
working for campaign finance reform, to develop an evening-length
theatrical monologue—the
third work in Kornbluth’s “Citizen Josh” series.
Performance artist, singer, and filmmaker Julie Queen collaborating
with Thick Description and a team of artists to create and produce Ten
Dollar Destiny, a multi-media production based on Queen’s
research into psychics, fortune tellers, and psychology. The process
and finished piece will include composers Pamela Z, José Marquez
and Ana Machado, playwright Neena Beber, filmmaker Paul Lundahl,
and set designer Paolo Salvagione.
Bass player, orchestra and ensemble leader, and jazz composer Marcus
Shelby collaborating with Yerba Buena Arts and Events and the Museum
of the African Diaspora to create “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet
Tubman,” an original secular oratorio for jazz orchestra.
Composer Gang Situ collaborating with the Chinese Culture Foundation
of San Francisco to create an original opera in the Cantonese tradition,
fused with modern western composition and based on Jin Ping Mei,
a popular classic novel of philandering, betrayal, and self-destruction..
Composer Clark Suprinowicz and playwright John O’Keefe collaborating
with director Mark Streshinsky and Berkeley Opera’s artistic/music
director Jonathan Khuner to create a new opera about the world of
body transformation, cosmetic surgery, and genetic alteration.
Composer and musician Allen Whitman collaborating with an ensemble
of actors and musicians, and with playwright and director Erik Ehn to create a cycle of American Noh plays. The Cycle Plays will
be performed during the course of one day in the ritual Japanese Noh
structure.
Collaborating with Alliance FrançaiseFrancaise, playwright Ben
Yalom and foolsFURY Theater Company will translate, workshop, and premiere
in San Francisco a work by Fabrice Melquiot, one of France’s
most significant young playwrights.
PERFORMING ARTS 2006
Composer Anthony Brown is collaborating with choreographer Deborah
Vaughn and Dimensions Dance Theater to explore migration stories of
African Americans to and within the Bay Area and the empowering effect
that music and dance have had on those who came to begin a new life
in the region. The finished work, Cross Currents, will
be performed by Anthony Brown’s Orchestra and dancers from Dimensions
Dance Theater and Dimensions’ Extensions Performance Ensemble.
Composer and performer Dan Cantrell is collaborating with Kitka’s
eight female vocalists; Yiddish vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, song
writer, and cultural historian Michael Alpert; and Balkan-Romani multi-instrumentalist,
vocalist, and arranger Rumen Sali Shopov to co-create an evening of
new interpretations of Eastern European Jewish and Romani (“Gypsy”)
folk songs. The second half of the “Songs of Stateless
Peoples” program will be devoted to a new composition by
Dan Cantrell, co-commissioned by the Jewish Music Festival and
Kitka.
Jess Curtis and his company Gravity will collaborate with CounterPULSE
and with dancers with and without disabilities to create, Under
the Radar, a study in the physical limitations and abilities
of a range of very different performers, using the vocabularies of
contemporary dance, partner-based acrobatics, contact dance, aerial
performance, and physical theater. The work will be developed
in residencies in Germany and England as well as San Francisco, and
will premiere in March 2007 at CounterPULSE’s new facility
in the South of Market.
Playwright and performer Brian Freeman is collaborating with the
Magic Theater on the development of Here and There, exploring
gay rights and AIDS activism in South Africa. Based on Freeman’s
research in South Africa and London, Here and There will
tell the interconnected stories of Simon Tseko, Nkoli Zackie Achmat,
and Lusikisiki, a rural town in the Eastern Cape.
Playwright Philip Kan Gotanda is collaborating with American Conservatory
Theater on the final development stage of his script, After the
War. Set in a boardinghouse in San Francisco’s
Japantown in 1946, the play chronicles the return of first and
second-generation Japanese Americans to their neighborhood after
being forcibly incarcerated in internment camps during World War
II.
Mechanical theater artist Matt Heckert will collaborate with composer
Paul Dresher, percussionist Steven Schick, and the Paul Dresher Ensemble to create large-scale musical instruments that will function as the
set and sound-generating sources for a new music-theater work. After
the live theatrical performance has premiered in 2007-08, Heckert’s
sound sculptures and Dresher’s music will be presented in an
audience-interactive installation at a local gallery or museum.
Composer and musician Jon Jang is collaborating with Artistic Director
Michael Morgan and the Oakland East Bay Symphony to create Chinese
American Symphony No. 1, paying tribute to the Chinese who
built the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The
finished symphony will be performed by the full orchestra with erhu
soloist Jiebing Chen and presented in 2007.
Choreographer Jo Kreiter and her company Flyaway Productions are
collaborating with Dancers’ Group to develop and present “The Live
Billboard Project,” combining aerial choreography with a customized,
large-scale billboard. The project seeks to examine the effect
of women’s images in public space and the loss of public space
to corporate messages.
Choreographer Benjamin Levy, his company LEVYdance, and composer
Keeril Makan are collaborating with ODC Theater to develop a new
dance theater piece, exploring the experiences of first generation
immigrants who came to the United States seeking asylum from oppressive
regimes and the experiences of the children they raised “American.” The
piece will premiere at the celebratory re-opening of ODC Theater’s
venue in 2007 and will feature LEVYdance and a score recorded by
Kronos Quartet.
Composer and musician John Santos will collaborate with the San
Francisco Jazz Organization’s (SFJAZZ’s) All-Star High
School Ensemble to create Traditions in Transition, a musical
suite exploring the past, present, and future of Afro-Latin music.
Santos will create the suite with SFJAZZ’s 20-piece teenage
big band, its director Dr. Dee Spencer, and John Calloway, who will
arrange it for performance by the All-Stars and professional local
guest artists playing a broad range of traditional folkloric instruments.
Composer Jack Wickert and the ensemble Culture Clash are collaborating
with Circuit Network to create “The Mission Tour,” a mobile
arts project featuring live performance and a recorded audio tour,
presented on the Mexican Bus. The project seeks to reveal the
social and political history, diverse cultures, and contemporary life
of San Francisco’s Mission District.
{TRADITIONAL ARTS}
TRADITIONAL ARTS, 2001 {top}
Through American Indian Contemporary Arts, dancer Gilbert Blacksmith
of Medicine Warriors Dance group and singer Michael Bellanger of
All Nations Drum are collaborating with 15-20 youth and adults to create
traditional regalia, drums, and drumsticks, and to develop dances
and songs for use in performances at local pow-wows and dances.
With research and production assistance from the Asian Improv aRts,
storyteller Nancy Wang and her long-time collaborator and artistic
partner Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo are researching and developing for performance,
narratives of three or more Asians and Asian Americans.
California Academy of Sciences and Nigerian-born sculptor Geoffrey
Nwogu collaborating on the rare creation and presentation of a Mbari
family of three deity figures. The finished work resembled a typical
Mbari house complex built as part of the ritual customs practiced by
a handful of small villages in Igboland, near the township of Owerri.
Green Policy Institute and fiscal sponsor the Tides Center collaborating
with sculptor Rubén Guzmán to produce a series of papier-mache
sculptures and installations celebrating the ethnic identity of the Council’s
predominantly Mexican heritage neighborhood. Guzmán is sharing
traditional practices and techniques that he learned in Mexico City
from the internationally-renowned Linares family.
San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies
and Professor Danilo Begonia, Pilipino Kulintang master artist Danongan
Kalunduyan, and the Ating Tao Drum Circle collaborating to create
new performance works based on traditional kulintang music and dance
from the Southern Philippines, and explore the boundaries between
traditional works and innovation.
SOMARTS collaborating with dancer, percussionist, and choreographer
Roberto Borrell, Orquesta La Moderna Tradición—the only
danzón ensemble in the United States—and five master artists
to develop a multi-disciplinary presentation of Cuban music and dance
that traces the history of three genres of Cuban music leading up to
modern popular dance music known as “Timba.”
TRADITIONAL ARTS, 2003
Asian Community Mental Health Services collaborating with Taen Linh
Saelee and the Mien Needlework Group to create four elaborate traditional
costumes, two for adults and two for children, incorporating imported
fabric, silver thread, and adornments.
The Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the
Arts collaborating with multidisciplinary artist Siu Tuita and with
members of the Bay Area Tongan community to create, document, and exhibit
the making of Tongan tapa-cloth–or bark cloth–using
island-grown plant materials and dyes.
The Fremont Symphony Orchestra collaborating with Hamed Shalizi
and members of the Afghan Ensemble to research traditional music
of Afghanistan, resurrect the art form, and present it to Bay Area
audiences through a series of “Afghanistan: Music of Tradition and Transition” concerts.
La Peña Cultural Center collaborating with bandleader and
percussionist Jesus Diaz, Cuban master musicians and dancers and
to create De Aquí p'Allá Con
Clave, a new work featuring Cuban folkloric music and dance
alongside contemporary Cuban jazz and timba that draw from the traditional
forms.
Melody of China collaborating with Wilson S. Mah of the Loong Mah
Sing See Wui and composer Gang Situ to create newly choreographed lion
dance routines to freshly composed musical pieces that are played on
traditional Chinese instruments.
Members of the Oakland Youth Chorus collaborating with Zimbabwean
artist Julia Tsitsi Chigamba to create Bembero Mudengu, (The Celebration
of the Basket), a new multidisciplinary presentation of Zimbabwean
music and dance tracing the history and diversity of the Shona musical
tradition.
The Oñi Ochun Cultural Center collaborating with choreographer
Susana Arenas Pedroso to explore the parable, “patakin,” tradition
of the Yoruba/Lukumi religion, bringing Afro-Cuban storytelling to
life through dance, music, and spoken word.
Pacific Islanders’ Cultural Association collaborating with Kawika
Hiwahiwa Keawehakuahu’ula Alfiche and Halau Aloha Pumehana o Polynesia to create “Nä Ali’i,” a new performance work about
four members of Hawaiian royalty and their affect on the culture’s
history.
The Beat Within and Pacific News Service collaborating with visual
artist Jason Tréas, who became a prolific, self-taught artist
when incarcerated at Folsom and Pelican Bay State Prisons, to create
three murals, one at each of the Boys and Girls Club units in the
greater Mission District.
TRADITIONAL ARTS 2005
Afro-Cuban folklorist and choreographer Jose Francisco Barroso and
DREAM, a professional performing company that grew out of Destiny
Arts Center, collaborating to create “Full Circle,” an
exploration of historic, social, and aesthetic links between Afro
Cuban Rumba and African American Hip Hop.
Composer Stuart Brotman, collaborating with musicians Marlene Segelstein
and Joshua Horowitz, and with Temple Israel of Alameda, to create
a purely instrumental klezmer style Jewish religious service for
chamber trio. Working
in styles rooted in 19th and early 20th century Ashkenazic, Jewish
cantorial, and klezmer traditions, the artists will developcompose,
prepare, and perform the music with the klezmer ensemble Veretski
Pass.
Visual Traditional Mexican artist Rubén Guzmán collaborating
with the Unity Council and youth and elders of the Fruitvale District
in Oakland to produce a public artwork exploringaddressing the theme “Strong
Women and Community.” To explore the contribution of Latina
residents of Fruitvale to the history and development of the neighborhood.
Afro-Peruvian percussionist Lalo Izquierdo and Bolivian musician
Oscar Reynolds collaborating with one another and with the California
Academy of Sciences’ Traditional Arts Program to create new
musical compositions that combine Bolivian Indian and Afro-Andean
music, drawing attention and paying homage to the co-existing Indian
and African cultures in the region.two countries.
Collaborating with Wajumbe Cultural Institution, Nigerian sculptor
Geoffrey Nwogu will create a bas relief installation at the African
American Art and Culture Complex that captures the form and colors
of a typical Mbari house, a project based in the Igbo cultural tradition
and philosophy of Nigeria.
Azerbaijani pianist Chingiz Sadykhov collaborating with Afghani,
Iranian, Azerbaijani, Kurdish, and Assyrian master artists and Door
Dog Music Productions to create a program combining traditional and
newly composed music with poetry, dance, and film. The binding
thread among the artists is observance of the vernal equinox or Nowruz,
whose pre-Islamic origins are embraced in different ways throughout
the Middle East and Central Asia.
Traditional Arts, 2007
Ubirajara Almeida and CK Ladzkepo collaborating with East Bay Center for the Performing Arts
Brazilian Capoeira Master Ubirajara Almeida is collaborating with Ghanaian/Anlo Ewe Master Choreographer, dancer and drummer CK Ladzkepo and the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts to create Lamentation for Freedom Fighters for the 2008 opening of the Center’s new theater and its 40th anniversary. Joining Mr. Almeida and Mr. Ladzkepo will be a cast of artists from Ghana and Brazil along with teens and young adults from Richmond who study at the East Bay Center as apprentices in the West African Music and Dance Ensemble.
Charya Burt, Vishnu Tattva Das Odissi Vilas, and Melody Takata collaborating with Asian American Dance Performances
Cambodian classical dancer and choreographer Charya Burt is collaborating with Vishnu Tattva Das Odissi Vilas of Sacred Dance of India, Melody Takata of Gen Taiko, and Asian American Dance Performances to create Of Spirits Intertwined, exploring the rituals that three different Asian cultural dances use to make offerings to their spiritual ancestors. A series of symposiums, dance workshops, and outreach projects will lead to a May 2009 production of the work.
Marion Coleman, Dolores Presley, and Julia Vitero collaborating with Bay Area Black United Fund
Bay Area quilters Marion Coleman, Dolores Presley, and Julia Vitero are collaborating with the Bay Area Black United Fund to create 15 quilts that promote personal responsibility for health—focusing, in particular, on risk factors associated with metabolic resistance syndrome, a pre-diabetic condition. The artists are participating in the Bay Area African American Health Initiative (a program of the Bay Area Black United Fund), which is presenting trainings to promote choosing life-affirming activities on a daily basis. All three artists are members of the African American Quilt Guild in Oakland.
Martina Jimenez collaborating with Centro Legal de la Raza
Weaver Martina Jimenez is collaborating with Centro Legal de la Raza to create, document, and preserve Mayan loom working. During the civil war in Guatemala, the military tried to stop indigenous communities from practicing traditional arts, and attacked and destroyed villages, killing people and smashing weaving looms. Ms. Jimenez was born into this context and into a weaving tradition of intricate techniques and patterns passed on from mother to daughter for generations. Now living as a refugee in the United States, she has met other Guatemalan women who want to preserve their traditions. They will create and install five full-size traditional Mayan textiles that celebrate and visually represent the cultural heritage of the hundreds of Mayan workers who meet within the Oakland Worker Center, developed by Centro Legal de la Raza.
Mellie Lopez, Ph.D., Danongan Kalanduyan, Melinda Lopez, and Cota Deles Yabut collaborating with Mindanao Lilang-Lilang
Four Filipino traditional artists will collaborate to create a folk musical theater piece based on a Maguidanao folktale, Sultana and the Pearl King. This story of the tragic love between a mortal woman (the Sultana of Cotabato) and an undersea ruler of the Sulu Sea (The Pearl King) is intended to reveal the mystique of the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Playwright and dramatist Mellie Lopez, Ph.D., will join with kulintang master Danongan Kalanduyan and Mindanao Lilang-Lilang as well as musician Melinda Lopez and costume and stage designer Cota Deles Yabut.
Patrick Makuak?ne collaborating with World Arts West
Patrick Makuak?ne and World Arts West are collaborating to create and present a dance piece inspired by ancient Hawaiian astronomy, Maui, Turning Back the Sky, to premiere at the 30th anniversary of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. Makuak?ne will explore Hawaiian astronomy and the story of Maui, the great ancestral navigator/astronomer who guided all Polynesian ancestors to the Polynesian islands around 3000 B.C. The piece will incorporate information from recent scholarship into Hawaiian people’s sophisticated understanding of astronomy and the night sky.
Melody Takata, Madame Fuima Kansuma, Hideko Nakajima, Tatsu Aoki, and members of Gen Taiko collaborating with Asian Improv aRts
Melody Takata, founder and artistic director of Gen Taiko, will collaborate with Asian Improv aRts, NEA Heritage Fellow Madame Fuima Kansuma, minyo and shamisen master artist Hideko Nakajima, and ozashiki shamisen artist Tatsu Aoki to create a performance on the theme of Shimenawa. Shimenawa is created by binding together multiple threads for strength. and refers to the historic, aesthetic qualities of Japanese culture that Nikkei (people of Japanese descent born outside of Japan) embrace in an effort to maintain and nurture community.
Wang Wei, Matthew Antaky, Tian Yi Cui, Wu Zu Fan, Kwok King Foo, Wong Siu Fung, Weishan Liu, Qien Qi Ming, Wong Bing Pui, Zhao Chun Qi, Michael Santoro, Liu Wei Shan, Li Liang Shen, Eva Tam, Tammy Tan, Chan Ching Wha, Chen Yao, Guan Yi, and Dai Ming Yue collaborating with San Francisco Gu Zheng Music Society
Percussionist Wang Wei and the San Francisco Gu Zheng Music Society with Ms. Weishan Liu, several musicians representing three distinct styles of Chinese Opera percussion, opera signers, musicians, and Western artists with specialties in production, staging, and artistic direction are collaborating on the Chinese Opera Project (working title). Traditionally Chinese music and opera is regional, with at least 100 distinct regional styles. The project goal is to bring together through opera many different Chinese artists, creating a discussion about their musical similarities and leading to a large-scale event uniting a cast of musicians and singers from different regions of China.
{VISUAL ARTS}
VISUAL ARTS, 1994 {top}
Berkeley Art Center collaborating with Jos Sances and ten women
artists on a portfolio of silkscreen prints to celebrate International
Women’s
Day. Featured artists are: Kim Anno, Claudia Bernardi, Mildred Howard,
Hung Liu, Yolanda Lopez, Juana Alicia Montoya, Ruth Morgan, Mary Lovelace
O’Neal, Faith Ringgold, and Carrie Mae Weems. The project culminates
with an exhibition of the works and with sales of boxed sets of the
prints to benefit the Berkeley Art Center.
East Bay Habitat for Humanity collaborating with Ruth O’Day to
develop ceramic tiles to be applied as mosaics to the walls of a public
park in the Sobrante Park region of East Oakland where East Bay Habitat
has a major new housing development. O’Day’s work with
Sobrante Park organizations and a community design committee is reflected
in the tile designs.
509 Cultural Center, collaborating with Barry McGee, creating a site-specific
mural series on the inset walls of a building on Howard Street in
the South of Market. McGee worked with local youth and other neighbors
to develop images that represent the area.
Galería de la Raza collaborating with Catalina Govea, Rubin Guzman,
Antonio Tovar, and Virginia Benavidez, to document recent immigrants’ daily
lives through photographs taken from the immigrants’ perspective.
The project culminated with an exhibit at Galería, with the original
prints to be contributed to the Mexican Museum’s permanent
collection.
U.C.S.F./Mount Zion Medical Center collaborating with installation
artist and cancer survivor Ann Chamberlain and landscape designer
Katsy Swan to create a healing garden. Working with hospital staff,
physicians, patients, and patients’ families, the artist and
designer shaped a community garden and tile installation that offers
solace and renewal within a busy, urban medical center.
VISUAL ARTS 1996
Creativity Explored collaborating with James Morgan and Christopher
Clark, on “Animals in the Natural Environment,” presented
on the World Wide Web and as a permanent collage/painting on the
walls of a recreation area at Laguna Honda Hospital. Collaborating
artists were Cam Quach, Betty Bernard, and Yolanda Ramirez from Creativity
Explored; and James Cunningham, Maura Frias, and Bob Neil from Laguna
Honda Hospital.
Dublin Fine Arts Foundation collaborating with Jon Rubin, Larry
Sultan, and Harrell Fletcher to explore “mall culture” through extended
residencies in a vacant store at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton. The artists’ research
resulted in “People in Real Life,” an on-site installation.
The Lab collaborating with artists of the Clarion Alley Mural Project
(CAMP), including lead artist Aaron Noble, and the tenants of the
Mission District’s historic Red Stone Building to create murals in the
building’s lobbies. The Red Stone, constructed as a Labor Temple,
now houses many arts and community organizations. Participating CAMP
artists were: Carolyn Castaño, John Fadeff, Susan Greene, Barry
McGee, Ruby Neri, Aaron Noble, Isis Rodriguez, Rigo ‘96, and
Chuck Sperry.
Horace Mann Academic Middle School and fiscal sponsor Friends of
Photography collaborating with photographer Patrick Hebert to create
and permanently display photographic portraits of the school’s students. Students
and school-wide committees worked with Hebert to select images to be
transferred as photo murals on interior hallways and the school’s
exterior.
Mission Neighborhood Centers collaborating with Susan Cervantes to create a new community mural on the facade of the Precita Valley
Community Center. Cervantes engaged the children, youth, and families
who use the Center’s
daily programs in creating the mural.
VISUAL ARTS, 1997
City and County of San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and fiscal
sponsor Programs for People collaborating with photographer Ruth Morgan
on a series of billboards and posters about violence prevention. These
works highlight a new “Resolve to Stop the Violence Project” that
engages community organizations in work with victims and ex-offenders.
Precita Eyes Muralists Association, Inc. collaborating with Seyed
Alavi and Estria on “What Do You Think?,” a series of
temporary murals in the shape of comic strip thought balloons, placed
so that they appear to be thoughts rising from the minds of passersby.
The artists and teenagers selected the messages from comic books
and graphic novels.
On Lok, Inc. collaborating with Rene Yung on “Celebration of Aging,” etched
and illuminated glass works installed permanently in four of On Lok’s
centers for frail elderly adults of San Francisco. The glass works combine
texts culled from interviews with the residents alongside images of residents’ hands.
San Francisco Arts Education Project collaborating with sculptor
Ray Beldner, landscape architect Loretta Gargan, and students and
faculty of Francisco Middle School to create “Common Ground,” a
sanctuary garden in an abandoned courtyard at the center of the school.
Southern Exposure at Project Artaud collaborating with an artist
team headed by Julio Morales, architects, urban planners, computer
programmers, and young people on “Urban Renewal Laboratory.” The project
culminated with installation of a model city at Southern Exposure, a
public forum, a printed catalogue, and a bicycle ride—all exploring
current experiments in urban planning. Participating artists were:
Raveevarn Choksombatchai, Margaret Crane, Erika Olsen Hannes, Harrell
Fletcher/Jon Rubin, Scott MacLeod, Anita Margrill, Julio Morales,
Natasha Ogunji, Kevin Radley, Alison Sant, Jacques Servin, Valerie
Soe, Richard Sommer, Zane Vella, Fan Warren, and Judy West.
VISUAL ARTS, 1998
Asian Women’s Shelter collaborating with Meera Desai to create
three interior murals at the shelter for battered women. The artist
worked with the women and children residing at the center and with
staff and volunteers.
The Farallon Research Station of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory
collaborating with Sam Bower and Meadowsweet Dairy to create a site-specific
sculpture on Southeast Farallon Island. Rubble was built into a sculptural
form that enhanced the bird habitat and serves as a blind to facilitate
scientific study of Cassin’s auklets, Rhinoceros Auklets, Ashy
Storm-petrels, and other cavity-nesting sea birds.
Fruitvale Elementary School collaborating with Carolyna Marks, Xochitl
Guerrero, and Roberto Guerrero to create a 2,000-tile “Peace Wall,” permanently
installed on an exterior wall at Fruitvale Elementary School. The
artists worked with students, families, school staff and teachers,
and community groups engaged in a Healthy Start Project at the school.
(VISUAL ARTS, 1998)
Oakland Sharing the Vision collaborating with Suzanne Lacy to create “CODE
33,” a public art project and workshop series for youth inviting
their perspectives on Oakland’s community policing initiative.
Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO) collaborating
with Ned Kahn to create a public artwork on an exterior wall at the
Ceatrice Polite Apartments providing housing for the elderly in the
Yerba Buena Gardens neighborhood of San Francisco. Kahn’s 70-foot-high
piece conveys the feeling of watching waves churned by wind on the
San Francisco Bay. The artist collaborated with the apartment tenants,
staff, and neighbors.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s architecture department
(led by Aaron Betsky) collaborating with Leah Levy, landscape architects,
and other collaborators to create Revelatory Landscapes,
a combination of museum installation, landscape installation, and
public art. The project explores the history, social significance,
and natural properties of urban landscapes with landscape architects
ADOBE LA, Kathryn Gustafson, George Hargreaves, Walter Hood, and
Tom Leader.
VISUAL ARTS, 2000
Artship Foundation collaborating with Ben Trautman and engineer and
inventor Ralf Hotchkiss to create mechanical sculptures addressing
wheelchair accessibility on the 500-foot-long Artship.
California Academy of Sciences collaborating with Mark Brest van
Kempen to create site-specific interpretive signs contrasting the earlier
natural history of six San Francisco neighborhoods to their current
forms.
Artists from Creativity Explored, including David Jarvey and Michael
Loggins, collaborating with Harrell Fletcher and Chris Johanson to
produce a publication and posters about the universe: these are being
presented in Bay Area grade schools.
The Edible Schoolyard collaborating with Ene Osteraas-Constable to document the gardening of culturally diverse families whose children
have contributed to the Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley’s Martin
Luther King Middle School.
Friends of the Oakland Public Library collaborating with fabric artist
Ellen Oppenheimer to engage students at 18 Oakland elementary schools
in making quilts for permanent installation in seven Oakland public
branch libraries.
Galería de la Raza collaborating with John Leaños, Mónica
Praba Pilar, and René Garcia (“Los Cybrids”) to
produce three 10' x 24' computer-generated temporary murals, on-line
artwork, and an installation about the digital divide and the Latino
community.
Gay and Lesbian Historical Society collaborating with E.G. Crichton
and Kim Anno to create “Lost and Found,” a mixed-media traveling “museum” of
small installations based on Gay and Lesbian Historical Society archival
materials and exploring the history of working-class lesbians. “Lost
and Found” was displayed at the James Hormel Center of the
New Main Library in San Francisco, the Gay and Lesbian Historical
Society, and other sites.
The Persian Center collaborating with Taraneh Hemami to create Hall
of Remembrance. Through workshops, interviews, and community
meetings the artist collected images and text from the Bay Area’s
Iranian American community and printed them on mirrors, which were
installed on walls of the central hall of the downtown Berkeley
Persian Center.
VISUAL ARTS, 2002
Collaborating with researchers at the University of California San Francisco
Mt. Zion Cancer Center and patients at the Carol
Franc Buck Breast Care Center, artists Ann Chamberlain, Alison Sant,
and Klover Kim are exploring the uses of image, metaphor, and language
in medical research and in treatment of and communication with patients.
The artists’ research
will culminate with installations in the research and treatment centers.
Birgit Gehrt collaborating with the staff and teenaged participantsof
The BodyPositive—an agency
addressing girls’ and women’s problems with self-esteem and body dissatisfaction–to
create “Alterations,” a series of unconventional body
garments and sculpturestobe exhibited
both in a gallery and on Body Positive’s web site.
The Margie Cherry Complementary Breast Health Center and fiscal sponsor
the John Hale Health Center collaborating with documentary photographer
Anne Hamersky to produce public art displaying health messages and
raising community awareness of breast cancer support programs in Bayview
and Hunters Point. Transit shelter and bus interior posters will feature
images and words of breast cancer survivors living in the immediate
community.
The Labor Archives and ResourceCenter of San Francisco
State University and fiscal sponsor Intersection for the Arts collaborating
with Kate Connell and Oscar Melara to create “Our Worklife,” exploring
three generations of Bay Area workers through three-dimensional murals
incorporating archival materials, mounted in the interiors of five
SamTrans commuter buses in spring 2004.
Choreographer Kimi Okada of the ODC Dance Company collaborating with
visual artist Claudia Bernardi to create Flight to Ixcan,
a performance exploring personal loss in the context of political
deaths occurring in Central and South America in the 1970s.
The San Francisco Estuary Institute collaborating with artists Elise
Brewster, Susan Schwartzenberg, Robin Grossinger, and the Institute’s
scientists to present research about the evolution of the Bay to
general audiences through site-specific billboards and bus shelter
posters in San Francisco and the East Bay, a web site, and exhibitions
at the Lawrence Hall of Science and San Francisco Public Library.
VISUAL ARTS, 2004
The Chinese Historical Society of America and Indigo Som collaborating
to create and exhibit “Sweet & Sour Catfish,” new work
about Chinese restaurants in the American South. Their presentation will
incorporate interviews, sound recordings, archival and other research,
photographic documentation, a web log, and an exhibition catalog. “Sweet
and Sour Catfish” will focus on two parts of the country, Mississippi
and Alabama, where Chinese restaurants exist, yet less than 1% of
the population is Chinese American.
Creative Growth Art Center and Julio Morales collaborating to create
a media-based public art project asking, “What is Outside?” Morales
and Creative Growth artists will work side-by-side to create projects
that asking questions about the nature of “outside” and
raising awareness for the work being created by artists with disabilities.
Their efforts will culminate with a series of public billboard service
announcements, a public lecture, and a publication/catalogue.
Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, its director Holly
Alonso, and Ene Osteraas-Constable collaborating to create “California
Native,” a permanent art installation that brings alive the
intertwined stories of the people and plants who were native to the
Fruitvale District of Oakland. Historical research, interviews, and
photography will lead to six sculptural installations featuring imagery
and text and nestled among the plants in a new Native Plants Garden
at the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park.
New Langton Arts, Felipe Dulzaides, and David Prowler collaborating
on “Double Take,” a new public artwork that features eight
site-specific photographic billboards, a map, color catalog, and web
page. The artist seeks to “stimulate a subtle, aesthetic experience
by subverting the billboard’s assumed intention and focusing on
the viewer’s immediate reality.” The billboards will be produced
and installed over the course of a year, with the last one being displayed
in conjunction with New Langton Arts’ 30th anniversary.
Pond and artists Amy Balkin, Kim Stringfellow, Tim Halbur, are collaborating
to create an audio tour between San Francisco and Los Angeles, via
Interstate 5, illuminating current and historic environmental impacts
on communities and land along the route. Greenaction for Health and
Environmental Justice will assist with research, plan development,
and distribution of the finished work. The finished piece will include
a two-CD set and an annotated booklet/map of the route.
Project YES!, furniture designer Michael O’Connor and visual artist
Carl Augé are collaborating with East Oakland youth to create
a piece of signature art furniture—incorporating a reception desk
and DJ booth—and a mixed-media visual artwork for the entryway
at a new youth and community center opening in November 2004 in Oakland.
The artists and organization seek to reflect the culture, experiences,
viewpoints, and creative vision of the young people who participate
in the project and the Youth Uprising Center.
The San Francisco Print Collective and artist Steve Lambert are
collaborating to create the “Anti-Advertising Agency,” an
interdisciplinary, collaborative public art project that examines,
through constructive parody and gentle humor, the role of advertising
and public art in the Bay Area. The Agency will create a model business
and its artists will produce a series of small-scale projects, exploring
the role advertising plays in public space.
The Temescal Merchants Association and artists Ted Purves and Susanne
Cockrell are collaborating to create The Temescal Amity Works—facilitating
and documenting the exchange of backyard produce, conversation, and collective
biography within the Temescal Neighborhood in Oakland. The artists will
maintain a storefront on Telegraph Avenue, manage a “Backyard Crop
Sharing Cart”; produce neighborhood exhibitions and gatherings;
and create an ongoing series of printed materials.
Visual Arts, 2007
Kate Connell and Oscar Melara collaborating with The San Francisco Public Library
(Fiscal sponsor: Friends of the San Francisco Public Library)
Artists Kate Connell and Oscar Melara are collaborating with neighbors in San Francisco’s Portola District to produce a set of handmade books, an exhibition, an event. and a Web site exploring a little-known neighborhood in southeast San Francisco that is about to have its own branch library. Content for the books will be generated through conversations, oral histories and use of archival materials from Portola residents and librarians, and from the library’s San Francisco History Center. The work will be presented when the Portola Branch Library opens in summer 2009.
Sergio De La Torre collaborating with the San Francisco Art Institute
Five young artists from the San Francisco Art Institute, five young immigrants from Institute Familiar de la Raza, and artist Sergio De La Torre will create new work that explores current conditions of the Bay Area immigrant community—specifically investigating notions of safety and security. The project, Agit-Van, will involve its subjects as creative participants in constructing their stories. The completed pieces will be screened guerrilla style—projected through a traveling cinema truck equipped with video and sound equipment.
Helena Keeffe collaborating with Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center
Artist Helena Keeffe will engage long-term patients at Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in a series of drawing and printmaking workshops that will result in linens and hospital scrubs designed by residents for use in the hospital facility. The completed work will be unveiled in a community celebration and fashion show in summer 2008 and documented in a printed booklet with photographs and text.
Rob Keller collaborating with Nimbus Arts (Fiscal sponsor: Arts Council Napa County)
Addressing the acute need for public education about the plight of the honeybee population, as well as ways humans can change agricultural practices to protect honeybees, artist-apiarist Rob Keller is collaborating with Nimbus Arts to create The Enormous Mobile Vintage Trailer Observatory (EMoViTO), an observation beehive. Keller and his collaborators are retrofitting a classic 1955 aluminum travel trailer with interior Plexiglas hive bodies and equipping it with multimedia educational materials.
Sue Mark and marksearch collaborating with Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation
Sue Mark, part of the artist team marksearch (with L. Bruce Douglas), and Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation are collaborating to draw attention to four downtown Oakland parks—Lafayette, Madison, Jefferson and Lincoln Square—through marked walking tours. Following a year of park cleanups and community conversations, the artists will create between 12 and 28 unique cast bronze sidewalk medallions, 10,000 printed map-guides to the parks, and a Web log.
Donna Keiko Ozawa, Bob Hsiang, and Christine Wong Yap collaborating with Kearny Street Workshop
Artists Donna Keiko Ozawa, Bob Hsiang, and Christine Wong Yap are collaborating with Kearny Street Workshop to create Activist Imagination, a new multimedia exhibition investigating Asian American and other activist movements of the last 35 years and envisioning new forms and expressions of activism that may hold meaning and relevance in the future. Archival research and a quarterly open discussion series will inform the exhibit, which will fill the entire Kearny Street Workshop space on the occasion of its 35th anniversary.
Rigo ’23 collaborating with The Luggage Store (a.k.a. 509 Cultural Center)
Rigo ’23 will design and create a stone mosaic entry walkway in Cohen Alley off of Leavenworth Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. He will collaborate with The Luggage Store’s co-artistic directors Laurie Lazar and Darryl Smith, some of the alley’s neighbors, and with calceteiros (master stonemasons) from Lisbon, Portugal. The piece will complete the Cohen Alley Project, through which The Luggage Store has transformed the once blighted alley into an inner-city garden and venue for public art and performances.
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