Monthly Archives: October 2012

International Orange

International Orange, the exhibit at Fort Point celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge closes this Sunday, October 28.

We made a visit to the exhibit during its opening weekend and spoke to David Liittschwager, Bill Fontana and many of the artists who created pieces inspired by the bridge.

David Liittschwager used the exhibit to continue his One Cubic Foot project. Listen:

Sound artist Bill Fontana went underneath the bridge to create a live sound and video installation. Listen:

This weekend there are a series of closing events featuring guided tours, live music, food carts, and even a scavenger hunt with prizes created by some of the artists.

Go to www.international-orange.org for more information. And while there take a listen to K-BRIDGE, the virtual radio station created for the exhibit.

Special Delivery 2012

The setting: an abandoned ink factory in West Berkeley that’s been an epicenter of Bay Area street art over the past decade, slated to be refurbished into an office building.

But as luck would have it, the firm that recently purchased the building happened to be headed up by an art enthusiast who sits on the board of the Oakland Museum of California. He noticed that much of the extraordinary graffiti in the factory was done by artists also exhibiting at the Museum.

He invited Endless Canvas, the Bay Area graffiti culture blog and zine, to round up some of the artists to restore their pieces and host a week-long exhibit open to the public.

The exhibit included three stories of art (over 36,000 square feet of space) from more that 45 Bay Area artists. Take a look at some scenes in the video above.

The Silent History

McSweeney’s editor Eli Horowitz recently told us about a new project he’s working on that launched earlier this month. A “strange novel/app thing” called The Silent History:

The Silent History is a novel, written and designed specially for iPad and iPhone, that uses serialization, exploration, and collaboration to tell the story of a generation of unusual children. The app is available as a free download from the App Store; the text itself can be purchased within the app by volume or as a whole.

Check out the teaser video above featuring the voices of Miranda July and Ira Glass.

Learn more and download the app at www.thesilenthistory.com.

The Making of an Art Auction

Root Division, the Mission District arts and arts education non-profit, is a vast network of makers, educators, curators, and artists. They’re holding an art auction later this month to help fund their programs, including their studios program that benefits emerging artists and their youth education program that provides free art classes throughout San Francisco schools. At the heart of each of their programs is community engagement.

The auction takes place on Thursday, October 25. Here’s more info from Root Division:

This fundraising event presents an eclectic mix of artwork from over 100 established and emerging local artists, food by Chef Anthony Myint of Mission Bowling Club, and cocktails by both Otis Lounge and Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem. Proceeds benefit local emerging artists, as well as Root Division’s free after school art classes for Bay Area youth. More info & tickets available online.

Here’s a video about their Youth Education program:

The Making Of… the Homobile

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A Story of Transportation, Civil Rights, and Glitter.

Homobile is a noncommercial, 24/7, queer car service created by Lynnee Breedlove for the LGBT community and others around San Francisco who need safe, dependable rides. The volunteer collective operates with a suggested donation $1 a minute. People text their address with cross street and name to 415-574-5023.

Lynnee Breedlove, founder of Homobiles, was the frontperson of the first American out dyke punk band Tribe 8, which has always stood for queer, transgender, multiracial, and working class visibility,

 

 

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva)
with Julia DeWitt & Nathan Dalton
Mixed by Jim McKee & Andrew Roth

Special Thanks: Armistead Maupin & Christoper Turner, Lynnee Breedlove, Justin Vivian Bond, Lance Horne, Becka Shertzer, Godiva Chocolatier, Pop-Up Magazine, Donna Summer, Le Tigre, Tribe 8, and all the Homobile drivers and their supporters across the Bay Area.

The Making of… Poetry in the Bay Area

California writer, Dana Gioia, takes a look at poetry in California in the new BBC radio special, “After the Goldrush.”

California is the richest, most populous state in America. An economic and technical powerhouse it has also been the engine of artistic development, especially in poetry. The Beats of the 1950s spring to mind – Allen Ginsberg first read ‘Howl’ in San Francisco. Since then many radical ideas pioneered in California have become familiar – Environmentalism, Gay Liberation, the personal computer.

In ‘After the Gold Rush’ Dana Gioia traces how these are reflected in California’s poetry….

He finds that recent developments owe much to what went before, before the Beats, right back to the Gold Rush of the 19th century. People still come to get rich but San Francisco is now one of the most competitive places in the world and no one comes to drop out.

The broadcast features poems from Oakland-based poet Kim Addonizio, Francisco X. Alcaron, and California’s Poet Laureate Emeritus, Al Young, as well as interviews with California historian Kevin Starr and Dan Stone who recently started the magazine Radio Silence, based in San Francisco.

Give a listen here.