Tag: visual art
Closing Reception for Frontrunners
What: Closing reception for Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy & Cadogan Awards Exhibition
When: Friday, September 16, 6:30–9PM, awards at 7PM, music at 8:00PM
Where: 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)
How Much: Free admission, cash bar
Help us celebrate the meritorious achievements of our currently exhibiting Frontrunners! The awards ceremony begins at 7PM, followed by a celebration which includes a performance by local band Yesway at 8:00PM, DJs, and food for purchase from the Taco San Bueno truck.
Yesway – “Woahcean” from Dominic Santos on Vimeo.
During the awards ceremony, $3,500 Fellowship tuition awards, plus one additional $3,500 Juror’s Choice tuition award, will be presented to all exhibiting artists.
Frontrunners (on view through September 16th) is a survey of new work from the 23 recipients of the competitive Jack and Gertrude Murphy Fellowships and the Edwin Anthony and Adelaine Bourdeaux Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts, administered by The San Francisco Foundation.
Video: The Tailored Body, an Artist Talk by Currently Exhibiting Artist Rachel Mica Weiss
On on August 30, 2011, SOMArts and The San Francisco Foundation hosted a series of live artist talks called Lesser But Vital Practices to accompany Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy & Cadogan Awards Exhibition. The talks honed in on where our currently exhibiting artists find their inspiration and how these practices, be they artistic or otherwise, filter into the production of their artwork.
The talks were so fascinating, we asked participating artists to record them for our online audiences to enjoy. The Tailored Body by Rachel Mica Weiss is the first released, but stay tuned for five more talks scheduled for release in the coming weeks.
You can meet Rachel Mica Weiss and talk to her about her work in person at the closing reception on September 16th, or ask her a question through our interactive video Q&A channel.
This video was created by SOMArts volunteer, Christina Brossa.
Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship Awards Exhibition
What: Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship Awards Exhibition
When: August 17, 2011 – September 16, 2011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday, 12 – 7PM. Saturday 12 – 5PM.
Where: 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)
How much: Free Admission
SOMArts Cultural Center and The San Francisco Foundation present a focused look at the future of the Bay Area visual and media arts landscape. Frontrunners is a survey of new work from the recipients of the competitive Jack and Gertrude Murphy Fellowships and the Edwin Anthony and Adelaine Bourdeaux Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts. The exhibition identifies young artists whose work connects directly to the pulse of emerging trends and showcases the work of promising visual artists from regional Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) programs working across disciplines.
The exhibition will include an accompanying artist talk & social, Lesser But Vital Practices (August 30th, 5:30 – 7:00PM). Moderated by SOMArts Curator & Gallery Director Justin Hoover, exhibiting artists will discuss the evolution of their artistic practice through the exploration of individual and cultural identity. A selection of these talks will be released on the SOMArts YouTube channel in early September.
The public is invited to celebrate with the Fellowship winners at a special closing reception (September 16th, 6:30 – 9:30PM) featuring a performance by the local band Yesway. During the awards ceremony at 7PM, $3,500 Fellowship tuition awards, plus one additional $3,500 Juror’s Choice tuition award, will be presented to all exhibiting artists. For more info about the closing reception, click here.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS INCLUDE
Andrew Chapman, Stanford University
Li Chen, San Francisco Art Institute
James Coquia, California College of the Arts
Christine Elfman, California College of the Arts
Joel Frudden, San Francisco Art Institute
Stephanie Halmos, California College of the Arts
Joey Izzo, San Francisco State University
Adam Katseff, Stanford University
Michael Koehle, Mills College
Senalka McDonald, California College of the Arts
Kate Nartker, California College of the Arts
Toyin Odutola, California College of the Arts
Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, University of California, Berkeley
Kari Orvik, University of California, Berkeley
Maya Pasternak, California College of the Arts
Christine Peterson, California College of the Arts
Yulia Pinkusevich, Stanford University
Michelle Ramin, San Francisco Art Institute
Amy Rathbone, University of California, Berkeley
Helene Schlumberger, California College of the Arts
Sofia Sharpe, Mills College
Elia Vargas, San Francisco State University
Rachel Mica Weiss, San Francisco Art Institute
ABOUT THE MURPHY & CADOGAN FELLOWSHIPS
The Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships, administered by The San Francisco Foundation, provide a varying number of annual tuition awards of $3,500 to MFA students in support of exploring and developing their artistic potential in digital art, illustration, film/video, hybrid practice, installation, mixed media, painting, photography and sculpture.
ABOUT THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION
The San Francisco Foundation is the community foundation serving the Bay Area since 1948, granting more than $800 million over the past ten years. Through the generosity and vision of our family of donors, both past and present, The San Francisco Foundation awarded grants totaling $76 million in fiscal year 2010. By focusing on policy, advocacy, community organizing, and systems change, the Foundation addresses community needs in the areas of community health, education, arts and culture, community development, and the environment. In response to the economic downturn, The San Francisco Foundation is focusing funding on safety net partners, job creation and training, and foreclosure response and neighborhood preservation for the next two years.
The Book: Free Closing Event With Dance Installations
What: Closing reception for The Book, a multimedia, installation-performance and exhibition.
Performances By: Avy K Productions
When: July 29, 6:00 – 9:00PM
Where: SOMArts Main Gallery (934 Brannan Street, between 8th and 9th).
How Much: Free admission, cash bar
Exhibition Dates: July 1 through 29, 2011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday 12:00 – 7:00PM, Saturday 12:00 – 5:00PM
The Book is a series of contemporary dance based performances and accompanying gallery exhibition created by Commons Curatorial Residency recipients, Avy K Productions. The Book will be both epic and evolving in scope. In addition to a free opening and closing event, The Book will include three ticketed performances (July 7, 14, & 21) and incorporate more than twenty artistic collaborators.
Join us for the closing event to see how Avy K has activated and altered the look and feel of the Main Gallery over the course of the exhibition, and help us celebrate the denouement of the first-ever performances in the Main Gallery based in the language of the theater. The closing event will feature ambient dance installations by Avy K performers.
About The Book:
The Book is an installation-performance series accompanying an ongoing exhibition based in experimental non-theater dance. Each performance is a random page from The Book, and each invites a different guest artist to enter the structure, created by Avy K Productions and collaborators, in order to destroy it and give it new life. Avy K brings together artists of different media to create improvisational multidisciplinary performances involving contemporary dance, live painting, evolving installation, video projection, and live music.
Click here for more detailed information about The Book.
The Book is made possible through support from the SOMArts Commons Curatorial Residency, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Bert Bergen in The Ramp Gallery
What: I Am Your Portal, You Are My Voice
Where: The Ramp Gallery
When: July 18 – August, 17, 2011
I Am Your Portal, You Are My Voice is a solo exhibition by multi-media artist and performer Bert Bergen in the Ramp Gallery, a secure all-access exhibition space located in the SOMArts lobby. A set of paintings (gouache, thread and graphite on cotton paper) and several pieces of sculpture (expoxy, automotive paint on wood) will be exhibited through August 17th.
According to Bergen, “I amalgamate seemingly divergent mystical, religious and occult perspectives to form a conceptual foundation that informs my performances and visual art. Humanity’s need for faith in some connection between itself, this world, and what lies beyond is a constant source of fascination. I treat myth and ritual as spiritual tropes that are manipulated for their ability to simultaneously evoke rapture and horror when illustrating an ecstatic reality.”
Bergen was born on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound of Washington State and raised by atheist libertarians in the surrounding rural areas. He focused on photography and gender studies while attending the Evergreen State College, WA and received a Bachelor of Liberal Arts Degree. He later relocated to San Francisco and took classes at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts Graphica Department to learn screen-printing.
Bergen has had solo exhibitions in San Francisco at The SFMOMA Windows, Adobe Books, and The SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery. His work has been included in group exhibitions at ISE Cultural Foundation Gallery (New York, NY), Shizuoka University of Art and Culture Japan, Civilian Arts Project (Washington, DC), ArtScape (Baltimore, MD), and Southern Exposure (San Francisco, CA).
Where Are They Now? A Look at Past Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship Award Winners
As we gear up to host Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy and Cadogan Awards Exhibition (August 17 – September 16) we thought it would be fun to take a quick look at how three past Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship Award winners continue to make waves in the Bay Area.
Eleanor Harwood, 2004 Recipient
Since receiving her MFA in painting from California College of the Arts, Harwood participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions throughout the Bay Area while working with Adobe Books to jump-start her curatorial practice. In 2006, she founded the Eleanor Harwood Gallery, showcasing a variety of San Francisco’s underrepresented artists. Encouraging visual artists, writers and musicians to experiment and take risks in their practice, Harwood’s space has been used as a vehicle for pushing local creatives in new directions.
Amy Balkin, 2002 Recipient
Balkin is a graduate of Stanford University currently utilizing her arts practice as a means of addressing critical questions such as how humans create, interact with, and impact the social and material landscapes we occupy. Since winning the Fellowship in 2002, Amy has gone on to create notable projects such as Invisible 5, an audio tour of California’s Interstate 5 which uncovers environmental impacts and ghosted landmarks. Images from Invisible 5 are included in the photo grid above. Another ongoing project, Public Smog, includes a conceptual gesture in which Balkin buys and withholds carbon gas emission credits in order to help create a temporary clean air park. She also purchased land near Tehachapi, CA for the project, This is the Public Domain, a permanent international commons. Amy is currently apart of Bay Area Now 6, an exhibit at YBCA showcasing the identities and connections of Bay Area Artists to national and international art communities.
Leonie Guyer, 1983 Recipient
A 1989 painting MFA from the the San Francisco Art Institute, Guyer has exhibited at a variety of notable Bay Area spaces including YBCA, Mills College, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, and Cheryl Haines Gallery. Guyer has continued her passion for the arts by educating Bay Area artists both at the California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute. Currently, Guyer is represented by Bay Area gallery, Triple Base.
About the Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships
Administered by The San Francisco Foundation, these Fellowships provide a varying number of annual tuition awards of $3,500 to MFA students in support of exploring and developing their artistic potential in digital art, illustration, film/video, hybrid practice, installation, mixed media, painting, photography and sculpture.
The Book performance with Ken Ueno & Matt Ingalls
What: Performance 2 of 5 for The Book, a multimedia installation-performance and exhibition
Performances By: Avy K Productions & guest artists Ken Ueno & Matt Ingalls
When: July 7, 2011, mingle with artists 7:30 – 8:00PM, performance 8:00 – 9:00PM
Where: SOMArts Main Gallery (934 Brannan Street, between 8th and 9th)
How Much: $10 in advance, $12 at the door, cash bar
July 7th marks the second of five performances for The Book, a series of contemporary dance based performances and accompanying Main Gallery exhibition created by Commons Curatorial Residency recipients, Avy K Productions. In addition to a free opening & closing event, The Book will include three ticketed performances (July 7, 14, & 21) and incorporate more than twenty artistic collaborators. Along with dance installations by Avy K Productions, this page of The Book will feature two sound artists whose trademarks are improvisation and experimentalism.
About Guest Artists Ken Ueno & Matt Ingalls:
Ken Ueno is a composer, vocalist, improviser, and winner of the 2006-2007 Rome Prize and the 2010-2011 Berlin Prize. In addition to Heavy Metal sub-tone singing and Tuvan throat singing, he is also informed by European avant-garde instrumental techniques, American experimentalism, and sawari or beautiful noise, an aesthetic in traditional Japanese music. Ken’s artistic mission is to champion sounds that have been overlooked or denied so that audiences reevaluate their musical potential.
Matt Ingalls is a composer, clarinetist, concert producer, and computer music programmer. Often incorporating elements of improvisation, his music is heavily influenced by his long involvement in computer music. His solo improvisations explore extended clarinet techniques that interact with the acoustic space, often as combination tones. Matt is the founder and co-director of sfSound, a new music series, ensemble, and internet radio station devoted to new ideas and traditions of experimental music, performance art, live electronic music, Bay Area composition, and the various facets of contemporary improvisation.
About The Book:
The Book is an installation-performance series accompanying an ongoing exhibition based in experimental non-theater dance. Each performance is a random page from The Book, and each invites a different guest artist to enter the structure, created by Avy K Productions and collaborators, in order to destroy it and give it new life. Avy K brings together artists of different media to create improvisational multidisciplinary performances involving contemporary dance, live painting, evolving installation, video projection, and live music.
Click here for more detailed information about The Book.
The Book is made possible through support from the SOMArts Commons Curatorial Residency, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The Book: Exhibition & Performance Series
What: The Book – a multimedia, installation-performance
Who: Avy K Productions/Erika Tsimbrovsky & Vadim Puyandaev (Commons Curatorial Residency Recipient 2010/2011)
Free Opening Reception and Performance: July 1, 6:00 – 9:00PM featuring dance installations by Avy K Productions and guest artist Carol Swann
Ticketed Installation-performances with guest artists:
- July 7 with Ken Ueno and Matt Ingalls, mingle with artists 7:30 – 8:00PM , performance 8:00 – 9:00PM
- July 14 with Jesse Hewit, PC Muñoz, and Tommy Shepherd, mingle with artists 7:30 – 8:00PM , performance 8:00 – 9:00PM
- July 21 with Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney and Philip Huang, mingle with artists 7:30 – 8:00PM , performance 8:00 – 9:00PM
Free Closing Reception & Performance: July 29, reception 6:00 – 9:00PM, featuring dance installations by Avy K Productions
Exhibition Dates: July 1 through 29, 2011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday 12:00 – 7:00 pm, Saturday 12:00 – 5:00 pm
Where: SOMArts Main Gallery (934 Brannan Street, between 8th and 9th)
SOMArts Cultural Center presents The Book, a multidimensional, multimedia installation and the the first Commons Curatorial Residency of the 2011-2012 season. The Book, an installation-performance based in experimental non-theater dance that allows the viewer to freely move within the work and willingly participate during, before, after and between performances, addresses the investigative process of a meditation on the inner world of the artist and the artist’s relationship with a rational society and a technological age.
In The Book artists and audience members allow their personal stories to enter the performance space, creating a collective public diary. The Book is a kaleidoscope of sketches, snippets of thought, debris of feelings, traces of movement, and echoes of sounds that were once heard.
Each performance is a random page from The Book, and each invites a different guest artist to enter the structure, created by Avy K and collaborators, in order to destroy it and give it new life. Guest artists include: Jesse Hewit, Philip Huang, Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, PC Muñoz, Tommy Shepherd, Carol Swann, and Ken Ueno with Matt Ingalls, along with Avk K collaborators/performers: Aleksey Bochkovsky, Daniel Bear Davis, Sean Feit, Izmail Galin, Kristen Greco, Grundik Kasyansky, Kristina Kirshner, Vitali Kononov, Lucas Krech, Rob Kunkle, Mihyun Lee, Justin Morrison, Daisy Phillips, Vadim Puyandaev, Erika Tsimbrovsky, Ronja Ver, Andrew Ward, Paul Clipson, Andrew Way and Elena Zhukova.
The Book and Avy K Productions is one of four recipients of a 2011-12 Commons Curatorial Residency at SOMArts. Selected artists and curators receive funding support and access to one of the largest and most beautiful gallery spaces in the heart of the city in order to expand their practice, engage the Bay Area’s many cultural communities, and turn vision into reality. Avy K Productions was awarded the SOMArts Commons Curatorial Residency for July, 2011.
Advance tickets the The Book performances can be purchased here.
About Avy K Productions
Founded by long-time collaborators Erika Tsimbrovsky (choreographer/performer) and Vadim Puyandaev (visual artist/performer), Avy K Productions brings together artists of different media to create improvisational multidisciplinary performances involving contemporary dance, live painting, evolving installation, video projection, and live music. Avy K employs improvisation to unite different artists under a common idea and to achieve real communication among media, as opposed to one medium serving another. Avy K’s work has strong visual elements—sets and costumes take on a life of their own, breathing and dancing with the performers as the space evolves, and aesthetic principles from painting composition are used in developing movement codes. Avy K uses the principles of visual art but the tools of physical movement and improvisation; Avy K can be described as an experimental visual non/theater of dance. Avy K premiered their work in the Bay Area with The Garden (2007) at NOHspace, San Francisco, and Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University, followed by Scrap-Soup (2008) and Nocturnal Butterflies (2009), at Theater Artaud, San Francisco. More information on Avy K can be found at www.avyk.org.
Erika Tsimbrovsky (Choreographer/performer) is an innovator in the field of improvised dance performance. Born in Kazakhstan, she studied modern and contemporary dance in Belarus, Moscow, and Amsterdam. In Israel, where she lived for twelve years, she co-founded the award-winning experimental performance group EVM Laboratories to research the interaction between diverse media structures and to develop specific improvisational performance techniques. Avy K Productions is the San Francisco-based incarnation of her and visual artist Vadim Puyandaev’s 16-year collaboration.
Vadim Puyandaev (Visual artist/performer) has worked as a painter, sculptor, and designer for over twenty years and has been participating in multi-media dance performances since 1998. His fine art has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Russia, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, France, Spain, Canada, and the US. Puyandaev has also produced numerous pieces of monumental art, including a commission to design a bridge over the Red Sea as well as to design a sculpture ensemble for the entrance to the city of Eilat in Israel. With Tsimbrovsky, he is a founding member of the creative collectives EVM Laboratories (Israel) and Avy K Productions (US), dedicated to investigating what emerges in performance at the nexus of different genres. http://www.puyandaev.net
