megan wilson subtext

2010-03-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

After an almost 9 month hiatus from blogging here, I’m back … Starting Again! The lapse was a conscious choice, rather than a lack of time or interest. It was part of an overall decision to give up much of what I’d become comfortable with as an exercise in reassessing value in my life. I’m calling the project Start Again, based on the phrase spoken repeatedly by S.N. Goenka throughout the Vipassana meditation retreats I’ve attended. These words remind me that life is constantly in flux and rather than dwelling on the past or the future, to be in the moment. Obviously much easier said than practiced, but that’s the point – it’s a constant practice.

The experience was initially quite uncomfortable, but in some ways it was also a relief – like permission to let go of activities/things that had come to feel more like unhealthy traps. I’ve incorporated a number of these practices back into my life for now – as they weren’t necessarily intended to be permanent but many I continue to live without.

So while it may seem that I’d disappeared somewhere in Cambodia – only to return briefly to comment on the Healthcare Bill – a lot has actually been happening. You can check out recent news/updates Here. More posts to come ...

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2010-03-08T13:21:00.001-08:00

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Nope

2009-09-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

IT'S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE!

The Gang of Health Insurance Industry Whores:

Big Four Dem Senators Who Rejected the Public Option in Favor of Big Profits for Corporate America:

Siem Reap: East Mebon, Elephant Terrace

2009-06-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

SIEM REAP: EAST MEBON/ELEPHANT TERRACE

East Mebon:

Siem Reap: Angkor Wat

2009-06-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

SIEM REAP: ANGKOR WAT

Angkor Wat:

Siem Reap: Angkor Thom

2009-06-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

SIEM REAP: ANGKOR THOM

Angkor Thom:

Phnom Penh to Siem Reap

2009-06-19T05:08:00.000-07:00

PHNOM PENH to SIEM REAP

After a week in Phnom Penh we took a bus to Siem Reap to spend a week there, visiting the temples of Angkor. The trip there was five hours of Cambodian music videos and karaoke -- fun!

Phnom Penh: Meals

2009-06-19T02:18:00.000-07:00

PHNOM PENH: MEALS

Green Pepper restaurant -- Khmer food is similar to Thai food, but less spicy -- we were in heaven!

Spicy chocolate fondue at Chinese House

Watermelon and dragon fruit with spicy chocolate fondue

Fusion Cafe -- we ordered a couple of dishes and the food just kept coming

Phnom Chiso

2009-06-19T01:24:00.000-07:00

PHNOM CHISO

We took a side trip to Phnom Chiso, a temple outside of Phnom Penh -- really beautiful:

Phnom Penh: Pride

2009-06-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

PHNOM PENH: PRIDE

Unfortunately my camera died after these 2 pics:

Phnom Penh: Royal Palace

2009-06-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

PHONOM PENH: ROYAL PALACE

The Royal Palace:

Phnom Penh: S21 & Killing Fields

2009-06-15T02:27:00.000-07:00

PHNOM PENH: S21 & KILLING FIELDS

It was surreal to visit S21 and the Killing Fields -- as it is visiting any site of torture as a tourist -- and one that's a major source of income for the city now. We kept thinking of all the new market opportunities that will be emerging at some point ... Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Ciudad Juarez ... or maybe even the Global Atrocity Tour ... all very strange to think about ...

Cambodia: Phnom Penh

2009-06-13T18:47:00.000-07:00

CAMBODIA: PHNOM PENH

Eliza and I arrived in Phnom Penh in mid-May and like Thailand, neither of us had ever been to Cambodia or knew that much about the country. Our knowledge was limited to: 1) the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge; 2) Cambodia too is one of the primary destinations for sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and children; and 3) Angkor Wat is one of the most magnificent sites in the world. Though we only spent two weeks in the country, it became clear that these images of Cambodia were in fact at the core of its identity. The energy in Phnom Penh was heavy and laden with apathy; billboards throughout the city warned of the penalties for abusing children and its greatest points of interest for tourism were S21 and The Killing Fields.

In addition to immersing ourselves in the history of the Khmer Rouge and the work of Somaly Mam, we also attended a Pride event, an art opening and performance at the Chinese House, and Eliza took a Khmer cooking class.

Streets of Phnom Penh:

Ko Samui

2009-06-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

KO SAMUI

We spent 5 days on the island of Ko Samui. It was nice to get some down time on the beach -- swimming in the ocean, reading, and getting massages -- heaven!

ebxxx

2009-06-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK X-TRA

Bangkok: Train Station

2009-06-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK: TRAIN STATION

After our nine days in Bangkok we headed to Koh Sumui.

Bangkok: View from Rooftop

2009-06-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK: VIEW FROM ROOFTOP AT NAVALAI RIVER RESORT

Views from the rooftop of our hotel:

Bangkok: Chao Phraya River

2009-06-07T19:30:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK: BOAT RIDE ON THE CHAO PHRAYA RIVER

We spent an afternoon taking a boat ride on the Chao Phraya River.

One Night In Bangkok

2009-06-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK

Yes, this is THE One Night in Bangkok. Eliza lost some bet we had last spring, which neither of us can remember what it was now. Surprising only because the wager was that the loser would have to plan a night in Bangkok for the winner.

So this was my night in Bangkok:

My directives: 1) Dress nice; and 2) Bring your passport.

And this is where we arrived: the Bed Supperclub. I couldn't have been more surprised or happier by the choice. As always, perfect planning by Ebx.

Exterior of pod

Exterior of pod

Interior

The guy at the table with the red checkered table cloth is part of the nightly performance

First course

Performance

Main course

Performance

Performance

Dessert

Dessert

Bangkok: Wedding Shops

2009-06-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK WEDDING SHOPS

Just off Khao San Road there's a street lined with wedding shop after wedding shop. Most had binders on stands in front with pictures of different varieties of "happy couples" in western and traditional Thai attire.

Bangkok: Coronation Day

2009-06-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK: CORONATION DAY

One night in Bangkok (not THE One Night In Bangkok -- that's a future post) Eliza and I were trying to get a taxi to go to the Patpong area to checkout the go go bars. No one would pick us up. Finally after about 15 minutes, we were in luck. However, once we got in and got off our street, we realized that traffic was so bad that it was going take about half an hour just to move a couple of blocks. We asked the driver how long he thought it would take to get to our destination and he said likely two and a half hours. He kept saying it was not a good night to be going to Patpong. Then we remembered it was Coronation Day. We decided to ditch the idea, chalking it up to divine intervention, as the go go bars would most likely be depressing. The driver was kind enough to not charge us. So we got out and walked through Khao San Road, a total spectacle itself, looking like a combination of a Grateful Dead concert parking lot and SF's North Beach.

We meandered our way through the circus and ended up discovering a whole other world of Coronation Day festivities. Ratchadamnoen Avenue was closed to cars with food booths set up and music stages throughout the area. The wackiest thing we stumbled on was one street that had a large screen showing The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The best thing we saw was the Naval big band stage with men and women officers taking turns crooning.

Khao San Road

Khao San Road

Khao San Road

These braiding booths are set up everywhere, and yes, there are lots of white girls walking around looking ridiculous as a result

Khao San Road

Khao San Road

Coronation Day festivities

Ratchadamnoen Avenue

Coronation Day festivities

Ratchadamnoen Avenue

Ratchadamnoen Avenue

Ratchadamnoen Avenue

Ratchadamnoen Avenue

Bangkok: Wat Pho

2009-06-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK: WAT PHO

Wat Pho is the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. Read more here.

Adventures In Bangkok

2009-06-04T00:36:00.000-07:00

ADVENTURES IN BANGKOK

Eliza and I flew to Thailand in early May and spent nine days in Bangkok. Neither of us had been there before, or even knew that much about the country. Mostly what we knew about Thailand was: 1) It is one of the primary destinations for sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and children; 2) the majority of the country is Buddhist and has many beautiful temples; 3) the country has experienced considerable political unrest over the past year; and 4) the food is known to be far better than the Thai food in the U.S.

In the short period of time that we were there we did in fact see many disturbing scenes of prostitution -- and that was just what was visible on the street. It was heartbreaking to see block after block of women lined up like livestock, seemingly drugged, and the multitudes of old and young bloated, white men milling about and purchasing them up as though they were buying a six-pack of cheap beer -- to be consumed and tossed with as much thought.

The temples we saw were stunning -- especially Wat Pho with the reclining Buddha. The only suggestion of potential political unrest was one day when Silom Street in the Bang Rak district was lined with military, though we never learned what that was about. The food was okay. The few Thai meals we had in restaurants were so spicy it was hard to really taste the flavor. The street food was better. Mostly we had Indian food, which was super good (Bangkok has a relatively large Indian population).

For the most part, Bangkok was very walkable and we enjoyed exploring the city. It also has a great Skytrain.

We stayed at the Navalai River Resort in the Banglamphu district on the Chao Phraya River. Very nice ... with rooftop pool and great breakfast buffet included.

Street near our hotel

Yes, here too.

Love the green bike action

as well as the funky bike action -- Chang beer cans

We love Swensens!

Tuk tuk ride

Tuk tuk

Tuk tuk ride

Always thinking of the kitten

Ronnie wai-ing

Mister Donut -- here too

Taking the riverboat from our hotel to the Skytrain station

From the Skytrain

Sathon district

Bangrak District

MBK Mall

Never!

Jogja highlights: Random 2

2009-06-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

JOGJA HIGHLIGHTS

Dangdut!
When I was in Jogja in 2003 dangdut was all the rage. It was described to me as the "country music" of Indonesia because it originated among the working class. At that time the rage literally was over Inul, the most famous dangdut singer because she accompanied her performances with a raunchy grinding move and that was perceived by Indonesia's religious leaders as pornography. I went to a performance during that trip with my friends Arie and Nadiah. It was a somewhat surreal experience because sure enough it was pretty risque given the culture. Beautiful scantily clad girls would belt out arabic influenced pop ballads while grinding their bodies together with each other or the men onstage and sticking their asses out at the crowd. The audience was filled with hundreds of men (Nadiah and I were the only women), dancing together and holding hands.

Flash forward 6 years: dangdut is still in full swing with nightly performances at the Pariwisata. Eliza and I went with a group of our Jogja friends to enjoy the spectacle. While it's still mostly men, there are a few more women now.

Hanging with friends:

Dinner with Arie at Mila's

Mila's is one of my favorite restaurants in Jogja -- great atmosphere, great food, great mission!

Mie and Ebi (owner of Mila's) at Mila's

Nawang, Eliza and Nano at Via Via!

Sunday afternoon at Mie and Ingvild's (I'm looking through Mie's work -- she's an amazing photographer!!)

Ned Branchi -- one of Australia's best folk muscians! We were very lucky to get a private performance

Out and About:

Drawings on the wall of the tailor's Eliza went to -- love these!

Care-Four Mall

Care-Four Mall

Care-Four Mall

Care-Four Mall

Departure from Jogja:

Entering Jakarta via train

Jakarta

Hotel lobby at Jarkarta airport

Hotel hallway at Jakarta airport

jogja highlights: Random

2009-05-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

JOGJA HIGHLIGHTS

Prambanan
Prambanan is the largest Hindu temple complex in Central Java. It was built around 850 CE by either Rakai Pikatan, king of the second Mataram dynasty, or Balitung Maha Sambu, during the Sanjaya Dynasty. Not long after its construction, the temple was abandoned and began to deteriorate. Reconstruction of the compound began in 1918. The main building was completed in around 1953. Much of the original stonework has been stolen and reused at remote construction sites. A temple will only be rebuilt if at least 75% of the original stones are available, and therefore only the foundation walls of most of the smaller shrines are now visible and with no plans for their reconstruction.

Local Legend:
The legend tells of the story about Prince Bandung Bondowoso who fell in love with Princess Loro Jonggrang, the daughter of King Boko. But the princess rejected his proposal of marriage because Bandung Bondowoso had killed King Boko and ruled her kingdom. Bandung Bondowoso insisted on the union, and finally Loro Jonggrang was forced to agree for a union in marriage, but she posed one impossible condition: Bandung must build her a thousand temples in only one night.

The Prince entered into meditation and conjured up a multitude of spirits (demons) from the earth. Helped by supernatural beings, he succeeded in building 999 temples. When the prince was about to complete the condition, the princess woke her palace maids and ordered the women of the village to begin pounding rice and set a fire in the east of the temple, attempting to make the prince and the spirits believe that the sun was about to rise. As the cocks began to crow, fooled by the light and the sounds of morning time, the supernatural helpers fled back into the ground. The prince was furious about the trick and in revenge he cursed Loro Jonggrang to stone. She became the last and the most beautiful of the thousand statues. According to the traditions, the unfinished thousandth temple created by the demons become the Sewu temple compounds nearby (Sewu means "thousands" in Javanese), and the Princess is the image of Durga in the north cell of the Shiva temple at Prambanan, which is still known as Loro Jonggrang or Slender Virgin

We were lucky to have a crew of guides -- students from local colleges, who offer their services as guides at the temples to practice their English.

Prambanan is also the location of some of the earliest Buddhist temples in Indonesia. Not far to the north are found the ruins of Bubrah temple, Lumbung temple, and Sewu temple. Further east are found Plaosan temple. To the west are found Kalasan temple and Sari temple, further to the west are Sambisari temple. While to the south the Ratu Boko compounds on higher ground.

lunch!

Jamu
Via Via Cafe is one of the best resources for travelers to Jogja. In addition to the great food, local art exhibits, performances, binders of resources, and tours offered, Via Via also provides classes on local culture -- Bahasa Indonesian, cooking, religion and jamu. Eliza and I decided to try the jamu workshop -- very interesting and fun!

Jamu is traditional medicine in Indonesia and uses local herbs and roots for treating a broad range of ailments (read more here). One of the most common uses today is for vaginal drying. As our great guide Wiwit put it, "Men here always want to have a new pussycat."

We started our workshop with a trip to a traditional jamu stand.

Then to the local market to become familiar with the raw ingredients for making our own jamu.

tumeric

Our fabulous instuctor Wiwit

Next to Tyas's home to learn how to make a face mask for better skin and a remedy for more energy.

Wiwit applying the face mask on Eliza

Tyas' mother-in-law teaching us how to make the energy drink.

Mashing up the tumeric

Voila!

Ramayana Ballet at Pariwisata
The Ramayana is one of the two great Hindu epics, the other being Mahabharata. It depicts the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters like the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife and the ideal king. The story is retold in various versions throughout India, Nepal, and Southeast Asia. The best place to see it in Indonesia is at the open air theater outside the Prambanan temple. However, it's only presented there during the dry season. The performance at Pariwisata, while it pales in comparison, is still very good.

Piggy

2009-05-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

jogja highlights: Sangkring Art Space

2009-05-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

JOGJA HIGHLIGHTS: SANGKRING ART SPACE

Nano and Dani took us out for a day of visiting art spaces. One of the new spaces is Sangkring, a spacious gallery on the western outskirts of Jogja. Sangkring is owned by artist Putu Sutawijaya, who is building a much larger space across the road that will be used for artist residencies. During our visit we were happily surprised to run into Samuel Indratama and Putu. They gave us a tour of the residency in progress and shared their latest collaborative project -- a salon series that invites other artists to come and work together painting and making music.

jogja highlights: Blueprint for Jogja

2009-04-28T23:54:00.000-07:00

JOGJA HIGHLIGHTS: BLUEPRINT FOR JOGJA AT TEMBI CONTEMPORARY

It's been inspiring to see all of the new contemporary art spaces in Jogja that have opened since the earthquake. One of these is Tembi Contemporary just south of Jogja. We attended the opening for the current show Blueprint for Jogja last week. Openings in Jogja are welcoming community events with food and drink (generally tea and water - alcohol is only served later in the evening, if at all), and music (either live or DJs).

Jen, Mie, and Wati

BLUEPRINT FOR JOGJA
(21 April - 9 May)
Mella Jaarsma, Lenny Ratnasari Weichert, Samuel Indratma, Arya Panjalu, Sara Nuytemans, Heri Purwanto, Oetje, Marsoyo, Imam Santoso, IndieGuerilla, Agus Baqul, MES56.

Jorge and Jen

Curator's statement:

Blueprint for Jogja

What can a foreign curator say about Jogjakarta? How can an outsider with probably a very romantic idea of what Jogja is, and doesn't even know what reality is Jogja possible is, put up an exhibition that is all about the city? There is no way that he could ever profess an intimate knowledge of a city, which largely resides in his imagination, as a utopia of creativity. It is an imagined space that bears little passing resemblance to its real life counterpart.

The disadvantage I have, as an outsider, was something that I had to overcome. If this is the case, I thought perhaps I could help organise an exhibition that lies on the intersection of my ideal and ideals of artists living in Jogja. Maybe it's not so bad if I can get a group of artists to show us what they see in Jogja and why this city has a special place in their hearts. This is how the exhibition, 'Blueprints untuk Jogja' came about.

But is this ideal imagination of mine so different from the visions of artists who live and work in Jogjakarta?

I like to think of the show as an opportunity for artists to challenge the naivete of my curatorial scope. It features Jogja artists who look into the concept of mapping a city that is often considered as the cultural and creative capital of Indonesia. Jogja is a place that has different meanings for different people. Artists are invited to consider the process in which we can visually represent a place and space and how it can help us understand a particular locale - its history, culture, geography, politics - from both macro and micro levels of engagement.

The word Blueprint often suggests something more than a map. While maps are often considered as 'a visual representation of an area-a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions and themes', the blueprint further suggests itself as a working and imaginative plan for the future. The term is borrowed from disciplines such as architecture and urban planning, and it is used to highlight the role that artists could play in how we can use art to think about how the future of a city can be.

beautiful installation by Mella Jaarsma

The blueprint in this sense is less of a scientific plan; it encompasses playful, imaginative and emotional responses. More importantly, it underscores the inextricable ties Jogja artists have with the city they live and how they can contribute to its continuous significance as a creative communal space for making art as well as fighting, talking, debating, discussing, bitching about art.

great eco-friendly bike work by Arya Panjalu and Sara Nuytemans

If the idea of 'going native', of become a local, is not an alternative that is sincere enough for an outside curator, it is then through a conversation with Jogja artists, to see how they relate to and want to improve on their lived environment, that one could complicate the imagined picture that one has of a place and time not of one's own.

But even this conviction of being an outsider is challenged by an artist I spoke to. He told me that 'later when you've come here more often, you'll become a Jogja resident too'. I’ve never imagined that artists whom I've worked with can speak about community in such an inclusive manner. Then it struck me as I remember that Jogja itself draws its talent pool from all over Indonesia. Many came to study here and never left. The idea of a local identity is not something fixed, one becomes local by participating in its communal life. Jogja as a community is more open than I have imagined it to be.

-- Simon Soon

jogja highlights: Nano Warsono

2009-04-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

JOGJA HIGHLIGHTS: NANO WARSONO'S SIGN FICTION

We were awed and inspired by Nano's first solo exhibition, Sign Fiction at Langgeng Gallery in Magelang. Nano never ceases to amaze me with his dark narratives delivered through seemingly cute, upbeat characters and his unflinching skill -- brilliant!

Nano & Dani in front of large MURAL at entrance to show

jogja highlights: makeup workshop

2009-04-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

JOGJA HIGHLIGHTS: OCTORA'S MAKEUP WORKSHOP AT CEMETI ART HOUSE

As always Jogja's art scene is booming! We have been lucky to see (and participate in) a variety of really great work. I'll be sharing the highlights in a series of posts. The first week we were here we were lucky to be invited to be a part of Octora's Makeup Workshop that was a part of her residency with the Cemeti Art House (Cemeti has been at the foundation of the contemporary arts community here in Jogja since 1988).

About Octora's work for the Cemeti Art House residency:

'Project of Intimacy' (OCTORA)

The body is the prominent subject of almost every thought and idea that serves as the foundation for Oktora's creative works. In considering the sequence of her creative work, the stages of her creative process, we can not ignore the factors of her personal experience. For example, once she studied how to illustrate the human body or torso in the department of painting and sculpture; always with a unique and personal method encouraging, pushing forward her characteristic expression; in the form of perceptions, interpretations, reflections, or revisions of her conceptions of the body. In a very personal way, Octora contemplated her revisions by exploring Yogyakarta on her bicycle for three months. Reclaiming her ability to ride a bicycle in the midst of the busy-ness of the city, after more than two decades of driving a car in Bandung, Oktora expressed her rage like a small child who was continuously adjusting to the physical changes in her body. How the human spirit becomes susceptible when our car places us as a moving shell that is often overprotected while driving. Thus, during the three month residency, Oktora contemplating while bicycling through the urban Yogyakarta neighborhoods; imagining a free body, 'naked', unimpeded, knowing her potential and recalculating her strength. Meanwhile, the body became the shell that protected her spirit.

Workshop in progress

The Landing Soon residency is a period of production, contemplative production, idea production. Often the artists make use of analysis and experimentation to review their entire creative process.

Oktora revised her ideas about the body beginning with the questions: Why must it be continuously protected and defended? Isn't it tiring, weakening and often silly? Why don't we ever 'celebrate' the body? Free it from the social constructions, the indifference with the political, social and economic norms of this country?

Octora collected dozens of kinds of action dolls (dolls that had become bridges for physical personification) from the owners. Oktora wrapped and shaped them one by one with love that was very fashionable and stylish. She collected several women's pants and affixing fashionable, protective accents. Oktora's works leap far away from the discourse of craft fetishes towards craft as a discourse and expression of experience and provocation of norms.

Nindityo Adipurnomo, 2009
Cemeti Art House

Nindityo Adipurnomo and Mella Jaarsma

participants

Ned Branchi

Ned and Benny

baby, baby, baby

Octora

Jogja

2009-04-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

JOGJA

Return to Via Via with Mie and Ingville

awwwwww my reunion with Jogja ashtrays

Great performance by Frau

Our shimmering pink bike

On safari in the mall ...

Return to Indonesia

2009-04-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

RETURN TO INDONESIA

Ubud Bali Indonesia

Back in Indonesia ... it's been three years since my last visit here ... hard to believe! Eliza and I arrived on Bali a week and a half ago to the scent of incense and diesel, and a rush of heat that settled in our bones, making us very happy... and very sleepy (or rather snailey) - not to mention the jet lag. We spent four days in Ubud and three on the coast in Amed. This is my usual routine here - to spend a week on Bali before making my way to Jogjakarta. However, I think next time I'll break the routine and come straight to Jogja. While Bali has the perception of being a relaxing transition space, it's really more like being dropped off at a large tropical outdoor mall. Though I also understand the necessity for it being this way - it's completely tailored to tourist demands and expectations and it's become critical for Indonesia's economy and survival of the island's residents, and those on neighboring islands.

So here we are ... grateful for the opportunity to balance ...

Agung Cottages, Ubud

Eliza after her banana pancakes

Amed

Amed

Amed ... Scrabble tournament ... thinking, thinking, thinking

still thinking ...

still waiting ...

and the drum roll ... please ... no really ... REALLY! ... SNAILEY????!

Really! ... Notice it's now dusk ...

I'll write more about our arrival in Jogja tomorrow. We're off to Sam and Ade's now.

Hack at NYT

2009-03-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Deconstructing the Shoddy Journalism of April Dembosky at the New York Times

Deconstructing the sloppy and unethical journalism of April Dembosky: Yesterday I read the article "Street Art Comes in From the Cold" by April Dembosky, who interviewed me for the piece. I was shocked to see that my words had not only been inaccurately quoted, but taken completely out of context to serve Dembosky's personal viewpoint.

Several weeks ago I received the following email:

Hi Megan,

I am a correspondent for the New York Times in the Bay Area. I'm currently working on a story for the paper about murals in San Francisco and would love to ask you some questions about Clarion Alley. Is there a chance we might chat over the phone sometime today, Monday (preferable) or tomorrow morning?

Many thanks,
April Dembosky

--
April Dembosky
Reporter/Radio producer
San Francisco Bay Area
(c) 415.517.3795
(e) april.dembosky@gmail.com

I responded that I'd be happy to speak with her.

When Dembosky called me the following day, I sensed that she had an agenda. Initially she asked me about Clarion Alley and the philosophy of CAMP. I responded that to my understanding CAMP was created to provide a platform for all artist perspectives and that the "philosophy" was not to have a set "philosophy." She pushed further, asking how CAMP is different from Precita Eyes Mural Project and I reiterated that I couldn't speak for CAMP because CAMP is comprised of many artists' voices and it would be wrong for me to make a blanket statement speaking for anyone but myself, as an artist who has equal weight with every other artist who has painted a mural on the Alley.

I could feel myself getting frustrated because it was clear to me that I wasn't providing the responses she was hoping to get. So I asked her straight up what was her angle for the article. Finally, some clarity. Dembosky filled me in that she was actually writing a piece about the Kerry James Marshall exhibit as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and that she was interested in how murals traditionally painted on the street translate in the museum setting. She felt that a number of artists believe murals created within institutions lose their credibility -- like graffiti reproduced in a gallery. As she said this, I was thinking to myself - ugh, this is such an old and tired subject, already beaten to death in critical discourse. But I was a trooper and went along, hoping to provide her with a broader perspective on the topic.

I communicated that I hadn't seen James Marshall's work at SFMoMA yet and couldn't speak to the piece specifically, but as a big fan of his work, I was really looking forward to it, especially since my dear friend Marina Perez-Wong had been one of the painters for the project.

I told Debosky, again I could only speak to my own experience as an artist who paints public murals/wall paintings - on exteriors and interiors. So this is where my quote actually comes from:

I went on to explain that creating any work is about CONTEXT (which Dembosky seems to only know how to take things out of) and that of course, a work that is created in one environment will have a different context in another. I then said, speaking about MY work (her quote wasn't even accurate) and the installation I had just completed as the Sun Valley Center for the Arts:

"I don't think of them as murals when they're in a gallery or arts institution, I think of them as wall paintings."

The entire conversation took up a good half an hour of my time, and I provided her with additional contacts and told her I was happy to provide additional information if she need it ... etc.

So of course, it felt like such a slap in the face to read Dembosky's article for the New York Times yesterday and see my words not accurately quoted AND taken completely out of context to fit the statement that SHE wanted to make:

Still, some argue that his art violates the philosophy of public art that many San Francisco street artists hold dear.

"I don't even think of them as murals when they're in a museum," said Megan Wilson, a local artist and muralist. "They're just wall paintings."

To April Dembosky:
A correction needs to be made in the Times and you might consider an introductory course in journalism.

Inside/Outside: Artist Environments

2009-03-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

Inside/Outside: Artist Environments
Musuem of Craft and Folk Art

51 Yerba Buena Lane
San Francisco
California 94103

March 6—May 24, 2009

kwik project

2009-03-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

kwik projects #2

Not Rocket Science

2009-03-02T18:43:00.000-08:00

IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE FOLKS ...

Finally a breath of fresh truth!
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1285

ice cream castles in the air

2009-02-24T19:23:00.000-08:00

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air ...

“banks won’t extend credit because good borrowers don’t want to borrow”

2009-02-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

"banks won't extend credit because good borrowers don't want to borrow"

While Megan Wilson is so over all of the cute lists circulating on Facebook ... the reason I continue to use it are for posts such as the following from my friends (they really are friends too, not just "friends") Jim and Jenny in St. Paul:

Account Representatives
Corporate Management
Public Relations

Capital One Corporation
1680 Capital One Dr.
McLean, VA
22102-3407

February 13, 2009

To Whom it May Concern:

We are writing to express our outrage at a communication we received today from your bank. It informed us that the interest rate on our Capital One MasterCard Platinum account, number 5XXX-4XXX-3XXX-0XXX, which we had carefully maintained in good standing for many years, is being raised from 5% to 13.9%. This is unacceptable.

How can an American financial institution act in such an irresponsible fashion at this time of crisis? We will not be using your services any longer. We may now be forced to cancel our plans for an addition on our home, depriving others of their livelihoods. Having a decent -- a fair -- credit rate is critical for our household, other responsible borrowers like ourselves, and for economic activity in the United States of America.

The ready availability of funds backed by we, the tax paying citizens of our Nation, at interest rates lower than ever seen before, should make the provision of credit to regular borrowers cheaper. At $3.5 billion so far, Capital One is in the Top Ten of TARP banks. Instead we see this predatory response. President Obama's call for a new era of responsibility has clearly fallen on deaf ears.

Now we know that the line "banks won't extend credit because good borrowers don't want to borrow" is simply a lie. We hope our elected officials are listening, and we have taken this opportunity to convey copies of this letter to our elected representatives as well as those in the area of your corporate headquarters in Virginia.

To these responsible elected officials we say: It is time to use the proper force of law to stop these out of control banks. Without immediate and targeted intervention, ordinary households and businesses will simply cease to function as economic agents. Cash on hand will not stop this economic collapse. We must have lending on reasonable terms.

Bank loan officials need to immediately be replaced with public officers behind the lending desks, as was done under Roosevelt's Reconstruction Finance Corporation in the 1930s; the same RFC that appointed many bank's officers in those days (read the history of many banks and you will find their founding presidents were RFC appointees). Unfortunately, it took the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations over four years to discover this policy option. Tragically, it appears it may take just as long this time around.

Regardless of any other economic or fiscal policy measures that may need to be taken, acting to get public agents behind lending desks is the only way to prevent today's bank lending strike from continuing to severely damage the United States. Today, any large bank that curtails credit is the equivalent of a hundred small bank runs and collapses in the 1930s. This is what turned the crash of 1929 into the Great Depression: Bank runs. Now we have a bank lending strike, and failure to recognize and combat it can only have the most dire consequences.

The bankers' strike of today is as dangerous as any railroad strike or bank run ever was; it should be broken at once. Perhaps the wealth and manners of the strikers render them beyond our system's ability to combat the threat; in this we can only pray for responsible and courageous political leadership.

To the account representatives at Capital One: Immediately cancel our account and never contact us again. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Please convey this letter to your management, their management, and Capital One's senior management. Nearly tripling a simple consumer line of credit's interest rate, at this time and under these circumstances, is immoral and dangerous, and demonstrates the need for vigorous government intervention in banks' decision-making personnel.

May God have mercy on our Nation.

Sincerely,

Jim and Jennifer Turnure
St. Paul, Minnesota

Cc Representative Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Senator Amy Klobachar, Minnesota
Representative James Moran, Virginia
Senator Mark Warner, Virginia
Senator James Webb, Virginia
Governor Timothy Kaine, Virginia
Attorney General Robert McDonnell, Virginia
President Barack Obama

More Facebook Fun

2009-02-12T07:15:00.000-08:00

MORE FACEBOOK FUN!

This is so NOT SURPRISING. Just in the past week I've learned of 3 breakups via Facebook. I'm continually amazed by the information that people are not just willing, but almost giddy about sharing on Facebook. The "lists" are especially creepy to me -- not because folks are sharing stories about themselves, that part I find touching, funny, and amusing. However, in this fabulously contrived and controlled public forum, it's a wet dream for corporations, government, and anyone with an interest in hacking into your personal info for potentially screwing with you. But then again, it's all in the game and name of FUN! FUN! FUN!

Husband Announces Divorce to Wife Via Facebook

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 10th 2009 at 4:49PM

What is up with the Brits? They can't stop having affairs on 'Second Life,' and now it seems a British husband announced his divorce on Facebook -- of course, this was before he got around to telling his wife he was leaving her. Considering last month's disturbing news about a Staffordshire, England man who murdered his wife after she changed her relationships status on Facebook to single, this latest news is surprising.

Lancashire resident Neil Brady decided to change his relationship status on Facebook -- he announced to everyone he knew that he had, "ended his marriage to Emma Brady." Neil apparently thought his wife Emma wouldn't notice. Emma only found out that she was single after she got a call from a friend in Denmark who asked her how she was handling the breakup. Even worse, someone had commented on Neil's wall saying,"You are better off out of it."

Neil claims his wife had been seeing another man, but we've still gotta call bad form on this one. We don't care how bad your marriage is, your wife deserves the dignity of being dumped in person... and before you tell everyone else about the separation via an update on a social networking site. [From: Daily Mail]

January 2009

2009-01-29T11:24:00.000-08:00

January 2009

My blogging has obviously slowed way down due to many factors. Packing up my home of 13 years and moving it into a storage unit has been hard; first winter holiday without my Dad; lots of movement over the past month (San Diego, Joshua Tree, San Francisco, Sun Valley Idaho, Montana), installing my show at Sun Valley Center for the Arts, and now preparing for the next couple of months in SF and then Southeast Asia. It feels like I've lived a year in a month.

I think the Facebook craze has factored in some too. Since Facebook added the live feed component in August, it seems people aren't reading individual blogs as much and admittedly my interest in blogging waned with the overload of up-to-the-minute "friend" data. It's a pretty fascinating social phenomenon and like many, I find myself loving it and hating it.

I am trying to wean myself from the time suck site and actually read ... books, and write. I find it pathetic that I've gone from writing 3,000-word essays, to writing blogs, to writing messages on Facebook.

Anyway, here are some highlights of the past month:

Bowling with the Barrios women in San Diego. These women bowl, especially Momma Barrios, who has an entire area of their living room filled with bowling trophies!

Scrabblemania at the Blockstrada's:

New Year's Eve in Joshua Tree (thank you Carolyn and Andrea!) Perfect way to bring in the new year:

Packing up and heading out to Idaho:

Snowshoeing in Sun Valley:

Kwik:

Gloria Steinem in Sun Valley:

Installing the show at Sun Valley Center for the Arts. SVCA rocks! Yet another awesome space to work with -- thank you!!! (Eliza and Cindy helping with install -- thank you!)

Opening for the show (curator Courtney Gilbert, me, Eliza, and Cindy):

me and Matt (ceiling collaborator extraordinaire):

The Grass Is Always Greener finished installation. I'll be posting it on my Projects page in the coming weeks:

Mural Art

2009-01-03T15:01:00.000-08:00

MURAL ART

I just received my complimentary copy of Kirakoss Iosifidis' new book Mural Art: Murals on Huge Public Surfaces Around the World. An awesome survey of murals across the globe. I'm honored to have been included with my Bungas mural in Yogyakarta Indonesia.

Thank you for including me Kirakoss!

New Home

2008-12-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

MY NEW HOME

synecdoche at home! take 2

2008-12-16T14:49:00.000-08:00

synecdoche at home!

As part of Home 1996-2008, I hosted a series of curated events. The final event was curated by Maw Shein Win and took place on November 21, 2008.

emcee for the eve: Lael Gold
readings by Carolyn Miller, Jenny Bitner and Maw Shein Win
musical performances by Nathaniel Parsons and Matt Wolka
photos by Lissa Ivy Tiegel

Screening of Mr. Gary

2008-11-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

Screening of Lise Swenson's Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show

As part of Home 1996-2008, I invited filmmaker Lise Swenson to screen her short Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show, which was filmed in my home.

Evelyn Alexander in Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show

Home 1996-2008 inspired media installation artist and filmmaker Lise Swenson to write, and shoot on site of the installation, a short experimental film, Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show. The film takes Wilson's ideas and explores them through the fictional perspective of a self-content shut in. What is external in Wilson's installation is internal in Swenson's film.

On Novemeber 13th, Lise Swenson's Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show screened as part of Home 1996 - 2008.

Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show, November 13th screening

Director Lise Swenson

Evelyn and Megan

Screening party

Screening party

Article Claire Light

2008-11-17T15:13:00.000-08:00

HOME 1996-2008 ON KQED ARTS

Megan Wilson: Home: 1996-2008

By Claire Light | Nov 11, 2008

Not to re-fight old battles, but the domestic sphere as a feminist art concern never lets me be comfortable. On the one hand, raising The Domestic to the level of high-art-worthiness most "masculine" subjects enjoy, is all to the good. On the other, I've been dismayed by the overwhelming rush of women artists of my generation to fetishize the ironically tacky feminine sphere of our childhood. We hit the mid-nineties -- our cultural ascension -- and pseudo-primitivist folk painting, handicrafts, and seventies home decorating colors became a cliché faster than you could say "Margaret Kilgallen at the Whitney." The noise of such blatant bandwagoning eventually had the effect of drowning out the intended dialogue.

But since we went to war (a conjunction to be plumbed another time), the tsunami of fashion victims worshipping orange shag has receded, and left the artists who set the terms of the debate in a high and dry place. High and dry, or rendered and clarified; what a difference half a decade makes. This month, Megan Wilson, an artist so centrally situated within the third-wave domestic aesthetic that the connection can sometimes be hard to see, is offering tours of the high and dry in her installation Home: 1996-2008.

The installation is Wilson's home; her apartment since 1996. Since 2004, Wilson has been turning her space into an art installation -- one never finished and therefore never made public. But now, the victim of an Ellis Act eviction that will have her out of the apartment before the end of the year, Wilson is opening up the space to visitors and giving guided tours, for the entire month of November 2008.

For those who have been following Bay Area arts for the past decade, Home offers an unexpected completion...a closing of a circle you may not have felt was open. For Wilson's prolific and ubiquitous practice tends to abstract and reduce; in each piece or installation the artist picks out one element of the home aesthetic -- a cartoon flower, a cut-paper curlicue, a discrete form in an upholstery pattern -- and repeats that module in a pleasing and decorative format until its origin is completely obscured, and the individual piece approaches the purely formal. Extending these modules over the surfaces of an entire apartment over the course of nearly five years has allowed these ... ideographs ...to accrete geologically. The apartment installation serves as a lexicon of the past decade of Wilson's work. In Home the abstracted finds its way back to context.

Or is further abstracted. What's most noticeable -- and what Wilson, on her tour, first points out -- is the set of curtain-cloth shapes she has cut out and pinned to the walls and ceilings. You've seen these before if you've seen Wilson's work before; here they are in such profusion because of the number of rooms they must decorate. Yes, these decorative items, snipped and abstracted from decoration, have been turned back into decoration. It's a double inversion that takes you back to the same longitude, but a different latitude. You are here in a meta-home: a meta-seventies-childhood-home, a meta-Wilsonian-childhood, and a meta-gallery-of-Megan-Wilson's-ideas.

You'll see other familiar images. On the bedroom door hangs one of the 250 panels Wilson painted with the word "Home" and a flower, distributing them in 2000 to individuals and organizations all over the city who were homeless or about to be. It's not even ironic: Wilson's understanding of the domestic sphere has always extended into public space, and for distinctly political reasons. She has always taken eviction and enclosure personally. That we are no longer facing the internet bubble doesn't mean that artists are no longer getting evicted, or that Wilson herself was ever safe. Another circle closed.

In the bedroom you'll also see the sign-painterly flowers that are, as much as anything, her trademark. These flowers, large and small, perky and melting, tie her bedroom to loci all over the world: hipster art spaces and art-sale-collections in SF, transport bicycles in Yogjakarta, Indonesia, a wall in Manila. In a career that has carefully and deliberately practiced collaboration and exchange, these flowers have become almost a hallmark of Wilson's process of stretching the idea of home to absurd and profound distances.

Wilson says her intention was to eventually show the installation, but she was in no hurry and her perfectionism could have prevented it indefinitely. On the other hand, living in such a profoundly presentational space, dripping with irony, self-awareness, and deliberate reconstruction, must have been difficult. Home's root in feminist Art/Life experimentation resonates strongly for me, but I have to admit that I've always spent more time cringing in sympathy with such artists than analyzing their fortitude. After five years of living in a space meant for other people to view, that no one was viewing, it must be a profound relief to finally invert the space one last time, and make the private public, the domestic professional.

Home serves as a key to a practice that has woven itself into the recent history of community and political art in San Francisco. Do not miss this installation. Do not miss your chance to ask the artist questions. Don't miss seeing her in her fake/real habitat, adjusting herself to your presence, in a context built from the detritus of public and private life.

Home is open for walk-ins Monday-Wednesday 2-5 pm through November 26, 2008. Throughout the month of November, artist Eliza Barrios will be projecting a series of images on the exterior of the building. Email Megan Wilson for more information or for an appointment.

More information on Home at meganwilson.com.

Focus Group: Jeff Foye & Gordon Winiemko

2008-11-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

Focus Group: Jeff Foye & Gordon Winiemko

Gordon and Jeff

As part of Home 1996-2008, I invited artists Gordon Winiemko and Jeff Foye to participate:

Over the summer, Jeff and Gordon were approached by a progressive arts organization to participate in a series about "participation in the political process."

Their response was to emulate one of the most ubiquitous forums for participation our society has to offer — the focus group.

So they staged performative question and answer sessions first with the staff of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, then with friends and colleagues of the artist Kim Abeles, and finally with friends and colleagues of their sponsor org.

On November 7th, just three days after a victory of progressive, grass roots politics, Jeff and Gordon regaled invited guests with their findings.

Presented in the form of an equally performative multimedia presentation, those findings amounted to nothing less than a playful examination of the progressive arts ethic itself.

Photos by Chris Laraway (thank you!)

Gordon preparing night before

hostess preparing night of event

Gordon

Focus Group of Focus Group

Focus Group of Focus Group

Gordon & Jeff

Focus Group of Focus Group

Focus Group of Focus Group

This is bound to be an expression during a Gordon presentation (me and my love, Eliza)

Mission 17 folks

Happy Birthday Sarah! (Lockhart)

Chaim Bertman eating cake

Megan Wilson is blogging about Facebook

2008-11-10T17:18:00.000-08:00

Megan Wilson is blogging about Facebook.

Yes, I'm eating every word I've said about social networking sites ... sort of. "They're such a time suck." (yes, they are) "I don't know how people have the time to spend writing on these sites, sending hugs, or winks, or whatever." (now I know ... you just do -- less sleep, less face-to-face social time, less television, etc.) "It's sooooo high school, nay, junior high." (yes, it is -- it's sort of like passing notes during class) "I pride myself in knowing that it's not easy for others to know what I'm doing at every moment." (hahahahahaha .... full gulp)

YES WE DID!

2008-11-06T18:12:00.000-08:00

YES WE DID!

Open Home

2008-11-06T17:24:00.000-08:00

OPEN HOME 1996 -2008

November 1, 2008

Maw Shein Win looking FABulous!

Amy Berk, Andy Cox, Benjamin & Jude

Ly Nguyen, James Espinas and Kai

Megan, Ly & Kai

The beautiful Amazons

Ella and Peter

Glen Helfand, Megan, Ishan Clemenco, and Cheryl Meeker

Eliza Barrios and Glen

Mario Lemos and friends

Kenneth Lo, Eliza, Matt Wolka, and Maw

Maw and Megan vamping

Eliza and Megan

Glen, Mario, Albert and Francesca Pastine, and Laurie O'Brien

K-Lo and Eliza

crowd shot

Dia & Michael Zheng, and Megan

Michael Schoolnik

San Pancho

2008-10-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

SAN PANCHO

Ebx and I spent our birthdays in San Pancho Mexico. It was a total treat and good R & R before the opening of Home 1996 - 2008.

We spent time with Eliza's good friends Glades & Marco and their two brilliant boys Rio and Gael, as well as many other folks who Eliza got to know last winter when she lived there for a couple of months. We also had the opportunity to paint a mural for the Festival Para Los Muertos (our first collaboration!!). I had been thinking about how I could honor my Dad for Dia De Muertos and this was perfect.

An hour north of Puerto Vallarta, San Pancho is a mix of locals from the area, expats from the U.S. and Europe, and wealthy people who have property there. The community that lives there is relatively tight-knit and committed to education (there are lots of kids), the environment, and arts. Like many places, development and developers are out of control, though given the global economic crisis, that's likely to change for the foreseeable furture.

Our pool for the week.

Eliza and Marco in Marco's jewelry studio/shop. Marco Huizar is the Oscar Niemeyer of jewelry.

Marco's work

My birthday at Chile Rellenos

Eliza's birthday breakfast with her new toy

Eliza's birthday at Cafe del Mar

Eliza and Glades

Mural meeting of Colectivo San Pancho (organizers of the Festival)

Rio and Gael at mural site

Eliza working on mural

Working on mural

Mural in progress (all are invited to add names to honor loved ones that have died)

Introducing ... Chocolate & Strawberry! or KWIK!

Gael, Nicte, and Rio's art show (we collected several pieces!)

Marco delivering our rings!

Our rings

Glades and Eliza

Our new friend "El Gato" (aka Ezak Junior)

CREEPY

2008-10-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

CREEPY
The Other Joe: The Hovering Lieberman Syndrome

God Talk

2008-10-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

GOD TALK

God bless Bill Maher! Ebx and I saw Religulous this weekend and I have to say -- BRILLIANT!

Though I left wondering if maybe Bill and I are connected through some Higher Power: check it out! (scroll down to March 15, 2007)

and then there's THIS.

Coming Soon

2008-10-05T19:51:00.000-07:00

COMING SOON!

Kevin Chen Rocks!

2008-10-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

KEVIN CHEN ROCKS!!!

I was so happy to see the article below in the SF Chronicle. Kevin was my partner (along with Ade Tanesia in Yogyakarta Indonesia) in helping to make the international exchange Sama-Sama/Together happen. And in fact, the project would not have been possible without the unbelievable amount of time and energy that Kevin dedicated (over 3 years) --including being responsible for the four artists of Apotik Komik receiving visas to come to San Francisco. And this was no small feat. Following 2 months of working with Harriet Ishimoto of Nancy Pelosi's office (and learning that they'd been rejected by the US Embassy in Jakarta), Apotik Komik finally received their Visas one week before our exhibition at Intersection opened.

Reading the paragraph about Kevin working every day and night last week to prepare for the current exhibition at Intersection for the Arts, was a major hit of deja vu -- he did the same as we prepared for the Sama-Sama exhibition, and I'm sure every other exhibition.

And as noted in the article, Kevin's art is equally as amazing as his committment to so many artists.

Thank You Kevin!!!

Kevin Chen with Arya Panjalu and Arie Dyanto at the San Francisco Aiport upon Apotik Komik's arrival from Indonesia in 2003

Kevin Chen's job: to make sure show goes on
Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer

In his undergraduate days at Columbia University, Kevin Chen studied under Robert Thurman, the West's pre-eminent scholar on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. Chen didn't follow Eastern spirituality as a career path but applied that mind-set to his work as an art and music programmer at Intersection for the Arts.

Placid, soft-spoken, with a low, late-night-radio kind of voice, Chen brings to his work a combination of sangfroid and compulsive work ethic. At Intersection, the city's oldest alternative arts space, a co-worker describes his "simultaneously frantic/Zen quality."

During a typical workweek, Chen, 36, becomes a two-headed, inexhaustible dynamo. For the current gallery show, titled "Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere*: Youth, Imagination and Transformation," he worked every day and night last week, as late as 3 a.m., mounting the installation with guest artist Evan Bissell. On Friday, he hosted the reception with Bissell. Saturday he met from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. with a panel of literary-competition judges, and then did more time at Intersection. On Sunday, he was up at 10 a.m. setting up and hosting a jazz concert in Intersection's fall series at the deYoung Museum.

Kevin Chen helping Carolyn Ryder Cooley during the installation of Sama-Sama/Together at Intersection for the Arts in 2003

Unlike a curator at large museums and arts institutions, whose job is compartmentalized and circumscribed by union rules, Chen is fully involved in the labor of mounting a show - "down to scrubbing the scuff marks off the floor," says Intersection Executive Director Deborah Cullinan. "Kevin stands side-by-side with the artists we work with in our gallery, literally partnering with them to help them achieve their vision."

The stress amplifies

In the days leading up to a show, Cullinan says, Chen's Zen-like composure starts to fade. "Kevin types really fast and really hard when he is stressed. He also runs up and down the stairs really hard. I think he has the ability to make the building shake. The days following often include a few extra cigarettes and sometimes even a 'chew.' In all the years I've known him, he has worn big, heavy, black boots everywhere."

Born to Taiwanese immigrant parents, Chen was raised in Trenton, N.J. He is short with a boyish physique, and has a gentle smile and a hipster's patch of hair on his chin. Chen is self-effacing, ill-inclined to boast or grandstand and says he just "fell into" this line of work. "I've always been making art and when I moved to Berkeley in '94 to be with a college sweetheart, I found out about this place in Berkeley called Kala Institute."

At Kala, a cooperative artist facility, Chen worked two to three days in exchange for studio access. Soon he was on the payroll - writing grant proposals, organizing classes and teachers, planning and hanging exhibitions. "I found out I was pretty good at it." When Intersection advertised for a program director in 1998, Chen got the job.

He has an obsession with details, a love for the infinite perfectibility of any project. The Bissell show, which runs through Nov. 22, is built around a series of large portraits depicting Bay Area poets, ages 15 to 20. Each portrait is framed by a quote from the poet (e.g., "Writing is a beautiful anxiety"), and each has a corresponding phone number and extension to call and hear the poet's voice. In addition to the portraits at the gallery, there are 14 more in public places, including the 16th Street BART station plaza.

It's a multitiered show and one tier came from a random idea that Chen tossed out to Bissell: "I said, 'I have, like, five boxes of frames that are just gathering dust. Why don't we use these?' " Chen and Bissell decided the frames could hold portraits by each of the young poets, depicting educators or artists who influenced them. Taking it one step further, they turned one corner of the gallery into a workshop, where visitors create their own mentor portraits with crayons, markers and colored pencils.

Chen says he wanted "an evolving, kind of ongoing exhibition - instead of one that's just static from the time it opens." Bissell, who is 25 and grew up in Mill Valley, says working with Chen "has been like being in both grad school and working as an apprentice to a fine craftsman. ... Kevin believes in and respects art, not as stagnant and vacuum-cased monuments - but objects that hold power, excitement and infinite possibility."

Utopian vision

On Sunday night, having opened the Bissell exhibition and hosted the deYoung Museum concert, Chen was home in his Oakland condo/loft, a converted warehouse near Jack London Square. Smoking a cigarette and drinking red wine, he plays Charlie Mingus and John Coltrane on his CD player and introduces his girlfriend, Lucy Lin. Chen moves slowly and his voice is mellow and untroubled - infused with the afterglow of good and satisfying work.

He shows his recent art project, a series of architectural drawings he calls "The View From There." They're "fictional cities," he says, meticulously detailed and drawn with pencils - often under a magnifying glass. Each piece of paper is 2 feet wide by 3 feet high, but Chen's drawings are only 1 inch high, at the bottom of the frame. The rest is blank paper.

There's a fanciful, utopian quality to this miniature work. Chen, who spends so much time representing and enhancing the work of others, is obviously pleased with the result. The drawings are included in two forthcoming group shows: "Double Exposure" at Blank Space in Oakland and "Shifted Focus: An APAture Retrospective" at the Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco.

Chen says he wanted to evoke the feeling of seeing the San Francisco skyline from the Oakland estuary, or the hive of downtown from the top of Twin Peaks. "It's that universal feeling of hope and optimism," he says, "just from having that breather point."

Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere*: Youth, Imagination and Transformation: Through Nov. 22. Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia St., San Francisco. www.theintersection.org.

Kevin Chen's The View From There: Drawings are included in two forthcoming group shows: "Double Exposure," Oct. 25 through Nov. 17 at Blank Space, 6608 San Pablo Ave., Oakland; and "Shifted Focus: An APAture Retrospective," Oct. 25 through Jan. 23 at the Kearny Street Workshop, 180 Capp St., San Francisco. www.blankspacegallery.com, www.kearnystreet.org.

Even Artists

2008-09-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

CHECK OUT THE NEW ARTIST TAILORED SCAM!

Subj:	JOB OFFER
Date:	9/27/2008 6:48:27 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From:	info@Sculptural.com
Reply-to:	michael-jillard1965@hotmail.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Greetings,

My name is Michael Jillard, I am an artist with my wife
Rachel Jillard and we are the owners of Jillard Gallery.
I live in London,United Kingdom, with my two kids
the love of my life my wife Rachel.

I make original Sculptural Paintings and sell Limited
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michael-jillard1965@hotmail.com

Who Needs SNL

2008-09-25T20:25:00.000-07:00

WHO NEEDS SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE ...

John McCain & Sarah Palin Don't Get It

2008-09-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

JOHN MCCAIN & SARAH PALIN DON'T GET IT

BAN 5

2008-09-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

GALLEON TRADE: BAY AREA NOW 5 EDITION
If you're in San Francisco and you have a chance, check out the show!!!

Images from my installation Homeland (photo credit: Eliza Barrios):

Poklong Anading's work is in the foreground, Jaime Cortez's work is to the right.

2008-09-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

REFRAMING HOMELESSNESS: ART FOR WALLS, ROOFS FOR PEOPLE

Please help support the Coalition On Homelessness!!!

Art Auction 2008 : Reframing Homelessness Art for Walls, Roofs for People

September 11, 2008
5:30 to 9:30 pm

admission: sliding scale $10 - $50

SomArts Gallery
934 Brannan Street (between 8th/9th Streets)
San Francisco CA 94103

reception and registration begins at 5:30 pm
silent auction 5:30-9:30 pm
live auction begins at 7:30 pm

buffet dinner
wine and beer will be served

live music and performances by

PERRANOSPEROUS
SIOBHAN ALUVALOT
MOLOTOV MOUTHS
PALE HOARSE

You are invited to bring an article of clothing for live silk screening

For more information please call:
John Thomas H. Do, Development Coordinator,
Coalition on Homelessness at 415 346 3740, ext 307 or development@cohsf.org
468 Turk Street, San Francisco CA 94102

My donation is from the studies that I did for the Flower Interruption:

1 Loyalty 0 Integrity

2008-08-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

01 LOYALTY 00 INTEGRITY 00 HONESTY

The best thing about John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin to be his running mate is that it's further showing how ridiculously lame is the whole republican party.

McCain could be embracing a plastic blowup doll or a paper weight and Republican leaders and pundits would still be gushing over what a great choice he's made.

dingalingadingdong

2008-08-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

DING A LING A DING DONG

Interesting pick for John McCain's running mate!

She doesn't seem to care much about her own children (giving birth in late April to a child with Down syndrome and then putting her career first to accept the position of running mate) -- would she really care about anyone elses?

separated at birth

2008-08-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

ball heads

2008-08-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

china - they lie

2008-08-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

LYING TO WIN

2008-08-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

HOW MANY HOMES DO I HAVE?

IF THE UNITED STATES ELECTS THIS MAN, IT'S

GETTING THE PRESIDENT IT DESERVES.

our world our nightmare

2008-08-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

OUR WORLD OUR NIGHTMARE

Wal-Mart Terrorizes American Employees

2008-08-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

WAL-MART TERRORIZES ITS OWN U.S. EMPLOYEES
Reuters

(Aug. 1) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc is mobilizing U.S. store managers to lobby against Democrats in November's presidential election, fearing they will make it easier for workers to unionize, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if store workers unionize, the paper said.

About a dozen employees who attended meetings in seven states said executives stressed employees would have to pay hefty union dues and get nothing in return, and might have to go on strike without compensation, and warned that unionization could force the company to cut jobs as labor costs rise, the Journal reported.

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who have run the meetings didn't tell those attending how to vote in the November elections, but made it clear that voting for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, would be tantamount to inviting unions in, the Journals said.

Wal-Mart could not be reached immediately for a comment.

Reporting by Purwa Naveen Raman in Bangalore; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe

By David Knowles:

Via The Wall Street Journal we learn that Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, is feeling anxious. It seems that the company is afraid that Barack Obama is likely to be elected the next president. In fact, it's so spooked about the prospect that it's been summoning store managers to meetings in an attempt to scare them about the ramifications of a Democratic administration. The terrifying consequence? If Obama (who supports the Employee Free Choice Act) wins, Wal-Mart employees might unionize.

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees who to vote for in November, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

Wal-Mart's antipathy toward unions is legendary. Over the course of its 48-year history, the company has successfully barred countless attempts by employees to organize for better pay and increased benefits. In fact, the company's aggressive tactics to thwart its employees from receiving better compensation have caught the attention of organizations such as Human Rights Watch, which, in an exhaustive study titled Wal-Mart Is a Poster Child For What Is Wrong With Labor Laws, declared:

Our message is that when the world's largest economy has labor laws that are so weak that it is unable to prevent the world's largest corporation from violating workers' rights to organize, it is troubling.

Indeed, the company is right to feel leery about Obama, who has made his views on Wal-Mart's anti-union stance known in this campaign.

Here's the Illinois senator this past November:

"This is a much broader issue that Wal-Mart, but I think the battle to engage Wal-Mart and for them to examine their own corporate values and what their policies and approaches are to their workers and how they are going to be good corporate citizens, I think, is absolutely vital."

Obama went on to compare Wal-Mart to another mega-chain:

Obama said Costco, a membership warehouse store similar to Wal-Mart's Sam's Club chain, pays its workers more and provides health insurance for more of its workforce than Wal-Mart does.

"If Costco can do that, it means Wal-Mart can do it. And if Wal-Mart does it, then what we're going to see is other companies recognizing that they have some obligations not only to their shareholders but also to their stakeholders, and that's workers and communities in which they're located."

Wal-Mart, whose first quarter profits in 2008 rose 6.9% to a total of $3.02 billion, has not exactly shown the greatest of concern for its employees' well-being. A veritable blizzard of lawsuits have been filed against the company regarding labor relations.

So, will Wal-Mart's management be successful in this bid to keep the company's employees from voting for Obama? Here's how one Wal-Mart employee described the not-so-covert attempt to influence her decision:

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

It's also an ingenious strategy. If Obama is elected, Wal-Mart employees won't be able to vote on whether or not they should get a union. Maybe so. Better still, they finally might get one.

2008-07-24T09:50:00.000-07:00

CHINA'S KACHING KACHING DYNASTY

China Presses Hush Money on Grieving Parents
By EDWARD WONG

HANWANG, China - The official came for Yu Tingyun in his village one evening last week. He asked Mr. Yu to get into his car. He was clutching the contract and a pen.

Mr. Yu's daughter had died in a cascade of concrete and bricks, one of at least 240 students at a high school here who lost their lives in the May 12 earthquake. Mr. Yu became a leader of grieving parents demanding to know if the school, like so many others, had crumbled because of poor construction.

The contract had been thrust in Mr. Yu's face during a long police interrogation the day before. In exchange for his silence and for affirming that the ruling Communist Party "mobilized society to help us," he would get a cash payment and a pension.

Mr. Yu had resisted then. This time, he took the pen.

"When I saw that most of the parents had signed it, I signed it myself," Mr. Yu said softly. A wiry 42-year-old driver, he carries a framed portrait of his daughter, Yang, in his shoulder bag.

Local governments in southwest China's quake-ravaged Sichuan Province have begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake, according to interviews with more than a dozen parents from four collapsed schools. Officials threaten that the parents will get nothing if they refuse to sign, the parents say.

Chinese officials had promised a new era of openness in the wake of the earthquake and in the months before the Olympic Games, which begin in August. But the pressure on parents is one sign that officials here are determined to create a facade of public harmony rather than undertake any real inquiry into accusations that corruption or negligence contributed to the high death toll in the quake.

Officials have come knocking on parents' doors day and night. They are so intent on getting parents to comply that in one case, a mayor offered to pay the airfare of a mother who left the province so she could return to sign the contract, the mother said.

The payment amounts vary by school but are roughly the same. Parents in Hanwang, a river town at the foot of mist-shrouded mountains, said they were being offered the equivalent of $8,800 in cash and a per-parent pension of nearly $5,600.

Flush with tax revenues after two decades of double-digit economic growth, China has used its financial muscle to make Beijing and Shanghai into architectural showcases and to open diplomatic doors in developing nations. At times, the state also acts like a multinational corporation facing a product liability suit, offering money to people with grievances in hopes of defusing protests. Most people, the government assumes, ultimately put profit before principle.

The tactic appears to work, including in the cases of the collapsed schools. Many parents said they signed the contract, even if they were displeased with the terms and still angry at the lack of any real investigation.

"Most of the parents now feel tired of this," said Liu Guanyuan, 44, whose 17-year-old son died here, along with Mr. Yu’s daughter, in the collapse of Dongqi Middle School. "There's a Chinese saying: The people sue the government, and the government doesn't care."

Officials are also using more traditional arrows in their authoritarian quiver: riot police officers have broken up protests by parents; the authorities have set up cordons around the schools; and officials have ordered the Chinese news media to stop reporting on school collapses. A human rights advocate trying to help some parents, Huang Qi, has been jailed.

Local government leaders have repeatedly promised to get to the bottom of why a staggering 7,000 classrooms collapsed in the quake, killing about 10,000 children. But there is little evidence that they have conducted more than a cursory examination, and there are hints of a cover-up. Even as negotiations with some parents continue, local governments have bulldozed the remains of many schools, appearing to close the door on a full investigation.

The issue remains one of the most delicate facing the Chinese government. Many parents accuse local officials of negligence or corruption during the construction of the schools. Some say they still hope the central government will take action, and they plan to go to Beijing to file petitions after the Olympics.

"We don't want to get the government in trouble ahead of the Olympics," Mr. Yu said. "We don't want to hurt the nation's image."
[SUBTEXT: We don't want to be tortured or imprisoned by the Chinese Government]

Mr. Yu was among 11 parents and relatives of dead children from Dongqi who met with a reporter on Monday in a teahouse where shirtless men played mah-jongg. They said they were willing to risk talking to journalists in hopes that the central government would take notice.

Last week, Mr. Yu and about 10 parents were detained by the police during a protest. He said he was interrogated at a police station in the nearby city of Deyang for 12 hours, while other parents from the protest, including a pregnant woman, were beaten.

One woman, Huang Lianfen, said, "The local government has threatened us with beatings or punishment."

Ms. Huang, 33, a factory manager, is the aunt of an 18-year-old boy who died in the Dongqi collapse. She said her brother, the boy's father, was detained by the police last week and had so far refused to sign the contract.

"We're asking not only for compensation, but also for justice," she said.

On Monday, a vice mayor of Deyang, Zhang Jinming, met with the Hanwang parents and delivered the conclusion of his government's investigation, the parents said. The school, he told them, collapsed solely because of the earthquake. He said the case was now closed.

Government offices in Sichuan Province and Deyang ignored a reporter's calls seeking comment. A woman at the police headquarters in Deyang said she was unaware of the protest and detentions last week.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the compensation contract offered to parents from Hanwang. It is written as if the parents were appealing to a beneficent ruler for money.

"From now on, under the leadership of the party and the government, we will obey the law and maintain social order," it says. "We vow resolutely not to take part in any activity that disturbs post-earthquake reconstruction."

Another section is full of praise for the Communist Party: "Natural disaster is merciless, but the world is full of love. The party and the government reached out their hands to us and mobilized society to help us and alleviate our hardships. In this regard, we sincerely appreciate the help and care from the party, government and society!"

The contract does not state the payment amount, which officials discussed orally, the parents say.

One father, Ye Liangfu, said it was unfair that parents of high school students were not getting more than parents of younger children who died.

"Those parents whose kindergarten children died, they're young, they can have another child," he said.

Other parents who said they were asked to sign a contract represented Xinjian Primary School in Dujiangyan, Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan and Fuxin No. 2 Primary School in Mianzhu. Hundreds died in those schools. In each case, as here in Hanwang, buildings around the school remained standing.

"I heard that most of the parents in our school have signed it," said Wang Lan, whose 8-year-old son died in the Xinjian collapse. "We parents can't do anything about it. We're helpless."

Ms. Wang is staying with an aunt in Guangdong Province. She said in a telephone interview that the mayor of her township near Dujiangyan had called her several times to ask her to fly back by July 25 to sign the contract, which is for $10,000 in cash and an unknown pension amount.

Ms. Wang told the mayor the plane ticket was too expensive.

"If it's too expensive, I'll pay back the money to you when you return, even with my own money," the mayor said, according to Ms. Wang. He even offered to send a car to the airport to pick her up, she said.

"I think the higher government must have placed a lot of pressure on the lower government," Ms. Wang said. "They're very nervous and pressed us so urgently to sign the paper."

Ms. Wang said she was told that the ruins of Xinjian Primary School would be cleared away by Aug. 1.

Other schools have already suffered that fate. On Saturday, the remains of Fuxin No. 2 Primary School were cleared out, said Zhang Longfu, whose daughter died there.

"All the parents from the school have signed the agreement, although we're not very satisfied with it," Mr. Zhang said. "We're still thinking of petitioning later."

Several Fuxin parents declined to meet for interviews, a sign of how effective the government's intimidation tactics have been. Those parents were once among the most vocal protesters. A photograph of several of them carrying portraits of their dead children and yelling at a kneeling government official became an intensely resonant image after the earthquake.

The parents from Hanwang say they are also worried that the Dongqi school will be torn down before a real investigation is conducted.

Before sunset on Monday, Mr. Yu walked along a river running past the eastern wall of the school compound. Peering over the wall, one could see piles of bricks and concrete all over the ground. He pointed out the few standing ruins of the main building. His daughter's classroom had been on the fourth floor.

He said she had lived for two days after being buried alive, like some other students. She had even called out to him.

"We could hear them under the rubble," he said. "We passed them milk and water, but it was no use."

He smoked and stared at the debris.

Would the parents try protesting again? he was asked.

"We don't dare," he said.Z

Huang Yuanxi contributed research.

Fever

2008-07-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

It's a fever you can't resist

Thank you Lacy Matsumoto for the review! and Akemi Hiatt for the awesome panorama!

by Lacy Matsumoto, Advertiser Staff Writer

On Hotel Street in Chinatown on a hot, sticky day, the smell of fried noodles and char siu fills the air. Bins full of exotic fruits such as lychee and dragonfruit spill out of the vendors' shops, and shoppers pass quickly by to make their next purchase. Maneuvering between tiny old women holding their groceries, and tourists snapping pictures of the Hotel Street action, the walk to thirtyninehotel's multimedia gallery is full of sensation.

The small door between two bars, NextDoor and Bar 35, creaks as it opens onto the steep staircase. The walls of the stairs are littered on either side with photos and press clippings. With each step up the staircase, the installation comes alive; bright colors flash into your line of vision.

The tall walls are lined with vivid colors, detail and psychedelic images, contemporary and re-worked vintage imagery. Flowers, ranging from a few inches to 3 feet across, are arrayed across the walls, on the DJ booth and bar area. A 4-foot-tall, black-and-white portrait of a woman draws your focus. The entire room is like a vision out of "Alice in Wonderland."

The exhibit, "This Fever I Can't Resist," intends to ignite your mind with its intense visual art.

From a distance, Megan Wilson's paisley patterns and retro flowers, strewn across one wall look like a giant display of multicolored flowers. As you step closer, each detail can be noticed, from intricately placed loops creating petals to precisely cut prints in floral shapes.

Carolyn Castano's creation on the oppositewall radiates with neon green, yellow and orange stripes. The mirrors in the center of the neon flowers reflect the opposite wall's color, and creates an illusion of depth within the flat-surfaced wall. The black-and-white image of the woman is reminiscent of an '80s pop image, or a Warhol piece.

"I've been thinking a lot about the colors and patterns that I see in the city, the urban-scape. I take walks around my neighborhood in Los Angeles and am interested in the way people paint their houses and businesses. Fluorescent colors, neon, hand-painted signs," said artist Castano. "The portrait is inspired by wanting to do portraits of friends, like Andy Warhol, but also like the pop illustrator Patrick Nagel, who made paintings of those chiseled ladies," she explained.

Thirtyninehotel's curator Trisha Goldberg was familiar with the two women's work.

"Trisha used to be a curator here in SF, so I've known her for years," Castano said.

In an interview from her California home, Wilson said of Goldberg: "She's followed my work for a while now. She had asked me who I wanted to work with, and so of course Carolyn came to mind. This installation is the most direct collaboration we've done together," said Wilson.

"I've never been to Hawai'i before this; what I knew about Hawai'i came from watching 'Hawaii Five-0' in the '70s. So we really wanted to present something exotic and tropical," said Wilson. "We decided that we'd utilize the walls separately with a few spaces that would collide, and that we'd both use some of the same fluorescent colors to tie our work together."

Said Castano: "Megan and I have collaborated about five times on public wall installations and gallery exhibits. We kind of know our groove at this point — what the other person likes and where the boundaries are."

Creating these murals was not simple.

"I worked on the installation for one week, from morning until when thirtyninehotel opened or sometimes into the night, even, while events were taking place," said Castano.

Said Wilson: "We ordered the Nova Color paints and had them delivered to the gallery. The textiles I brought and are things I've been gathering over the years. I had to get all the paint for the stripes locally."

Wilson, a San Francisco-based artist in her mid-30s, has been creating art for as long as she can remember. She learned mural painting from her mother.

"My mom painted the first flower mural in my room when I was 3. I guess the fruit doesn't fall too far from the tree," Wilson said with a laugh.

In recent years, Wilson's full focus turned from making art to nonprofit work in the humanities, and she found a balance.

"I'm very detail oriented, and when I'm doing my artwork I get really consumed by it," she said. "I don't think I could do it nonstop. I feel like the work I do with social justice issues is just as important."

Sharing something in common, Wilson and Goldberg use their artistic and creative minds for social issues and concerns. Goldberg, who also works for the Hawai'i State Museum, is in support of building the local art scene and bringing awareness to social issues through her art medium.

Castano, also is in her mid-30s, is based in Los Angeles. She's preparing for a show with a group of artists from L.A. called the LA Art Girls. An artist since 1992, she studied art at UCLA.

"I'm making art, thinking about ideas, and living the dream of an art-filled life," Castano said. "I was 18 when I started, so it was kind of dreamy and not too realistic. Now, I see it as my life. At times it can be a hard path, but other times are very rewarding."

Stepping out onto the open patio of thirtyninehotel, and away from the installation, images of "This Fever I Can't Resist" still linger in the summer heat.

Picture's Worth

2008-07-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

A Picture Is Worth ...

27,000 Words! That's right -- that and about 500 hours. OY!

No, it's not my latest novel ... though it feels like I should be receiving some sort of doctorate degree. The image represents all of the work that's gone into Portola Family Connections' Anchor Institution Community Plan. It's part of San Francisco's Department of Children, Family, and Youth's Anchor Institution Initiative.

As the planning consutltant for the project, I've been working on this since last December --1) Developing a framework and timeline for implementing the planning process; 2) Helping to identify key groups of stakeholders to participate in the process; 3) Working with the Planning Team to draft community needs surveys tailored to each group of participants and analyzing the results; 4) Working with the Planning Team to follow-up on the survey results (we collected almost 500 surveys) with targeted focus groups and meetings; 5) Analyzing the results of the surveys and focus groups to prioritize community needs; 6) Working with Family Connections staff and Board to conduct an organizational assessment, including a staff survey and conducting two focus groups to help address the infrastructural needs for supporting the Anchor Institution Initiative; 7) Drafting the Anchor Institution Community Plan with timeline and action steps.

So for those of you who wonder what I'm doing when I'm not working on my installations or international projects, now you know.

I actually love doing this work; however, I will say this final part of the Anchor Institution process -- tabulating and analyzing the data and developing a community plan based on the results -- has been quite mind altering at times. BUT, the bonus is that when I need to take a break, my thoughts lead me to wacky Web searches on things that I've been wanting to find for years. This weekend, total scores!!!

RUFUS AND CHAKA KHAN:

I've been looking for a download of Rufus and Chaka Khan's song Quandary from the album Camouflage for years. God Bless YouTube! I got this album in the early eighties when it came out and loved this song! Like so much of my music from that era, purchased on casette tapes, it's all disappeared.

SKYY

How amazing is this album cover?!!! WOW! More amazing is that I finally remembered the name of this band that I also loved and played incessantly. I actually subjected my Dad to 6 hours of Skyy while we drove from Billings to Minot North Dakota. I told Eliza this and her response was "Poor Kemp!!!" Indeed! However, I asked him if he could send me a hint from heaven to remember the name of the band, and he did -- right after I asked, the words "call me" (my favorite song by Skyy) strongly came to mind and that's what led me to finally finding my old love. Even in the after-life, my Dad's wacky sense of humor is fully intact.

PLANET PURPLE

Now this might be the best find of the weekend. For years, I would ask people if they remembered the Purple Planet from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. My recollection was that this was the coolest part of the show, which I wasn't that much a fan -- but the Purple Planet was way worth sitting through all of the creepy characters from the Land of Make-Believe. One person said they vaguely remembered this. I was beginning to think that I'd completely made the whole thing up. But NO! Thanks to Google, I know I'm not crazy (at least on this). It really did exist!

BAN

2008-07-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

BAY AREA NOW

Yes, MIA again... I wish that I could just post entries about my travels or the art projects that I'm working on (or should be), or fun social gatherings, or my social/cultural/political critiques that I tend to post most. However processing my Dad's death has been much more challenging than I thought, given that it was one of the most loving, healthy deaths that one could go through. So the waves continue.

On a lighter note, Bay Area Now opens this weekend. Lots of great work!

I will be one of the participating artists of the Galleon Trade: Bay Area Now 5 Edition. Unfortunately, our exhibition doesn't open until September 4th.

Galleon Traders participating in the show are:
Christine Wong Yap + Yason Banal
Jaime Cortez + Maria Taniguchi
Johanna Poethig + Peewee Roldan
Gina Osterloh + MM Yu
Megan Wilson + Poklong Anading

Dyke March 2008

2008-06-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

DYKE MARCH 2008

YES, I DID

2008-06-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

YES I DID!!!

I'm Finally Here!

2008-06-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

I'm Finally Here!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh .... it feels so nice to be home with no travel plans for the foreseeable future -- just settling in and catching my breath after the whirlwind of this past year.

Eliza and I have been having a DVD fest. Starting with The L Word. The first 3 seasons were great, but took a swift downturn with the introduction of Papi's character. The whole "competition" with Shane was so ridiculous! And when I went to drop off the videos, the guy at the counter commented that the first few seasons were really good, but "what's up with Papi? She sucks! She ruined the whole thing." Yup!

Next Up:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly directed by Julian Schnabel. An amazing film based on French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby. It describes what his life is like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition called Locked-In syndrome. It also details what his life was before the stroke.

Photo by Eliza Barrios

On a personal level, I was able to relate to the initial scenes of Bauby's problems with his sight. Earlier this year, I suffered an MS episode that led to the loss of some of the sight in my right eye. It's been hard to describe to people -- I've been describing it as: it would be like having only one contact in. However, the film really caught the experience for me.

Anyway, more on Bauby from Wikipedia:
On December 8, 1995, Elle magazine editor-in-chief Bauby suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and left eye. The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, in July and August of 1996. A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E S A R I N T U L etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and each word took approximately two minutes. It is also how he dictated this memoir. The book also chronicles everyday events and what they are like for a person with locked-in syndrome. These events include playing at the beach with his family, getting a bath, and meeting visitors. The French edition of the book was published in March, 1997. It received excellent reviews and sold 150,000 copies in the first week and went on to become a number one bestseller across Europe. Ten days after the book was published, Bauby died of pneumonia.

We initially watched about 20 minutes of I'm Not There the film directed by Todd Haynes and "inspired by the many lives of Bob Dylan" and I had to turn it off because I found it to be so corny. I tossed it off to my being more literal and preference for narrative. However, the next night, I decided to give it another try -- maybe if I watched more, I'd appreciate it. And I did ... or rather a bit of it. I loved the vignette of Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg (though not as any relation to Bob Dylan), it was beautiful and so well done on every level.

However, the rest of the movie was pretty much a hokey mockumentary of Dylan's life with many scenes that are reenactments from Don't Look Back and No Direction Home. Some things are just better left alone! This was the question for Doug Block in his documentary 51 Birch Street. I'm glad he didn't -- an excellent film!

Don't Do It!

2008-06-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

DON'T DO IT!

This is a great article in the July 2008 edition of Vanity Fair by Christopher Hitchens:

However, the "message" from San Francisco is not coming from its City Government. San Francisco officials continue to lop the City's cultural history and identity with the same model of development that's being incorporated in Manhattan. These city plans could easily be compared to Brazil's Rio de Janeiro in which the urban center becomes a gated community for the wealthy and the surrounding areas become the favelas for the poor, who provide the services and cultural entertainment for those with money.

I'm currently writing an article for publication on the discrepancy between what San Francisco has on paper for tenants' rights and the reality. The truth is that the "laws" that are supposedly in place to protect tenants/residents rights are filled with loopholes that the City uses to protect those with money/power.

Return from the Mural Olympics in Hawai'i

2008-06-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

RETURN FROM THE MURAL OLYMPICS IN HAWAI'I

I got back last week after a rigorous, yet very fun two week installation at thirtyninehotel for my and Carolyn Castano's show This Fever I Can't Resist in Honolulu Hawai'i. We worked with a totally awesome crew of folks, including thirtyninehotel's curator N. Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, owner/executive director Gelareh Khoie, finance director Fatemeh Hajiani, Bar Manager Christian Self, their awesome staff, and artists Nate Balcombe and Allison Uttley.

Carolyn and I decided that we can now officially call ourselves mural atheletes (Nate and Allison are still junior varsity). Check it out:

Part of my final install

Part of Carolyn's final install

GO TEAM!!!

Upcoming Exhibition

2008-05-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

UPCOMING EXHIBITION

And the chinook continues ...

Bahay Barrios

2008-05-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

BAHAY BARRIOS

In February I visited Eliza at her family's home, Bahay Barrios, in San Diego. I was completely blown away by the kinship that I share with Momma Barrios's aesthetic!!! I absolutely love her sensibility of home.

Front entryway

Alter as you walk in. When I told my father that I thought Momma Barrios had him beat in alters, he didn't believe it until I showed him the pictures; his response was: "I think Momma Barrios and I would get along very well."

Detail

"Elvis" and "Armi"

Living room detail

Living room detail

Alter in living room in honor of Momma Barrios's brother Jessie.

The Barrios bowling trophies (most are Momma Barrios's). We went bowling on the Naval base when I was there and she put Eliza and I to shame.

Beautiful wall chandelier

Living room

Living room detail

New Year's alter 2008

Stairway up to 2nd floor

Detail of alter at top of stairs

Eliza's bedroom ... a foreshadowing of Galleon Trade!

Alter on the other side going down the stairs

Wedding photo of Leoncia Oribello Barrios and Efigenio Ruiz Barrios, July 1959

Family room

In honor of the service of Efigenio Ruiz Barrios as Chief Petty Officer for the US Navy

The large image in the background was part of the Mail Order Bride's Market Street Art In Transit project, photographed in this exact spot. The image is of Eliza and her parents.

Detail of the Mail Order Bride's Market Street Art In Transit poster

Dining room

Leony and Gino (Papa Barrios's nickname)! I love this!!!

Kitchen -- amongst other things, Momma Barrios collects magnets.

Homage to Armi

Homage to Armi

Homage to Armi

Do You Trust The Ground You Walk On

2008-05-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

DO YOU TRUST THE GROUND YOU WALK ON?

Photo by Jeremy Brooks

Eliza Barrios' installation at Micaela Gallery in San Francisco's Hayes Valley asks viewers to ponder. Her elegant, poignant, and dizzying site-specific installation incorporates photography, video and her signature use of reflection. One is left lingering, whether it's to ruminate on the social implications of her presentation or to revel in the pure visual pleasure her work delivers, the imprint remains.

The installation is seen from the outside gallery window and I highly recommend viewing it at night!

do you trust the ground you walk on is part of the exhibition Bag' O/Neo: 21st Century Modernism curated by Rico J. Reyes. The show also includes works by Emily Caisip, Pauletta Chanco, Cirilo Domine, John Yoyogi Fortes, Julia Marchand, and Christiane Ostertag.

April 8 - May 18, 2008

333 Hayes Street (between Franklin and Gough)
San Francisco, CA
Tues - Sat 11am - 7pm
Sun 12pm - 5pm

Dad Funeral

2008-04-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

KEMP WILSON: A LIFE WELL SPENT

I've pretty much been MIA since my Dad's funeral a few weeks ago. I've slowly been catching up with life and sleep. I did feel compelled to post the blog below this one since it was near the Pennsylvania primary. One of the things my Dad and I were very passionate about over the past year is Barack Obama and his run for President. So, in honor of my Dad and the country, I'm continuing to work hard to support Senator Obama's nomination and place as our next President (I hope you Montanans reading this will vote for Obama in the upcoming primary! My father was an excellent judge of character and he saw the qualities possessed by Obama as those of someone who can make a significant difference and change in the current machine politics of Washington and perception of the U.S. to the world.)

My Dad's wake and funeral were beautiful! Many friends and family from throughout his life attended and shared their stories. As I've said many times, my father was a kind, generous, and brilliant man. He was also determined to always better himself and provide support and guidance for those around him.

Eulogies at the funeral were delivered by two of my Dad's closest friends -- Judge Tom Olsen, who he had known since high school; and Rich Bruner, who he knew for almost 20 years as part of his close circle of friends in Red Lodge. I loved hearing their stories from my Dad's past.

Judge Olsen shared his memories of the time he spent with my Dad at Montana State University as undergraduates and at University of Montana as law students. He recalled their time together as football players for the Bobcats and as members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. At the end of my father's freshman year, he received his grades and given his love for social acitivities that year, it was no surprise that he received C's and D's. When it came time to present his grades to his parents, who had helped to pay for his tuition, he couldn't provide them with a good explanation for his low academic performance. Their response -- "You can work for the railroad if you need funds for college." My father took this seriously and spent the following three summers working as a gandy dancer for the Great Northern Railway.

Judge Olsen was a year ahead of my father in school and my father followed in his steps to the University of Montana to attend law school. At the end of my Dad's first year, Judge Olsen was present when my father received his grades. He looked over my Dad's shoulder as he read them and what he saw was (and during the eulogy he named each class) every grade was an "A" with honors. He then looked at the column next to the grade and every one of them had a check next to it, which indicated that my father had received the highest grade in the class. My father graduated from law school at the top of his class, which is the reason he was awarded his position as a clerk to Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Judge Olsen then conveyed at the funeral that while the vaults of the University of Montana's Law School are highly secret, it is still believed to this day that my father received some of the highest grades ever given. My eyes (and many others) welled up with tears because I never knew any of this. My father was a man of great humility and never felt the need to show off his accomplishments.

Judge Olsen then went on to recall how my Dad responded to the news in the mid-seventies that he had high blood pressure (my grandfather died at the age of 52 of a heart attack). As Judge Olsen noted, most people would change their diet a bit and start doing some exercise at the local YMCA. Not my father. He started running...12 miles a day. And then he started training for marathons. My parents also became health nuts with regards to our diet and we went from my mother's gourmet cooking and lots of wonderful fatty baked goods to homemade granola, homemade spinach pasta with homemade soy cheese sauce, and whole wheat flour cookies that seemed like they weighed a pound each. My father ended up running 6 marathons before his knees gave out in the early eighties and he had to have both replaced. But that didn't stop him. He started biking...20 miles a day -- to begin with. In the mid eighties my Dad and my Uncle Gary biked from Vancouver B.C. to Mexico in 16 days, averaging 100 miles a day, with 150 miles in one day at their peak (my memory was that this was a month long trip, but while my Dad wasn't one to boast, he did love accuracy, and he corrected me on his last visit). My father was also an avid cross-country skiier, mountain climber, fisherman, and hunter (not for sport -- for food -- and he'd skin, gut, clean, and prepare every animal he killed) up to his final year.

Following Judge Olsen's tribute at the funeral, Rich Bruner took the podium. I was both touched and felt a kinship with Rich by his need to bring out a huge handful of tissues. I had cried so intensely the night before at the wake that Rich shared that he was nervous about his eulogy the next day at the funeral. His homage to my Dad was beautiful and so heartfelt. He shared how he was there when my father received his diagnosis and my Dad actually had to calm the doctors down and let them know that it was okay. He also shared a story about my Dad that I'd never heard. Reflecting on my father's kindness and the fact that my Dad didn't expound much on his nature of being so good-hearted, Rich pushed him further and asked my father if there was ever an instance he could recall in which he had been completely selfless. My Dad sort of tossed it off, but then said well, yes, there was one time. He was driving home from work in Billings and saw an elderly woman with a bag of groceries who had slipped and fallen. He drove by, but realized he couldn't not stop to help. So he did. He made sure she was okay and then gathered up her groceries and walked her home. She invited him in for tea. He followed. She asked him what she could do to repay him. His response was: "My daughter Megan is having a hard time right now, could you please pray for her." Rich continued with his observation that it was so in the spirit of my father to ask someone for their help to pray for someone else as a way of helping him. Of course, this also hit me deeply since he was asking for prayers to help me.

I love you Dad... and that's all I've got.

My Dad and his grandfather Harry Kemp.

Dad

Dad

Dad

Dad with his mother Jean and brother Sande

Dad on the far top left, his brother Sande on the far top right with cousins

Dad

Dad and his father Jeff Wilson

Sande, Kemp (dad), Jeff, and Gary Wilson

Dad -- Red Devils football team

Dad -- #86, Red Devils football team

Dad

Dad and Mom's wedding -- Gary Beisswenger (close friend), Sande Wilson, Dad, Reverend, Beverly (my mom's twin), Gary Wilson, and Mom at desk.

My grandfather & grandmother Templeton, Mom & Dad, and grandmother & grandfather Wilson

Mom & Dad

Mom & Dad's wedding reception

Dad's father, Jeff, Dad, Dad's mother, Jean

brother Gary, Father Jeff, brother Sande, and Dad

Dad, brother Gary, and brother Sande

Dad and Dougal

Dougal

Dad and me

Dad, my brother Brad, and me

Dad, my brother Stewart (in arms), my brother Brad, and me

MyAunt Emily, Dad, My Aunt Gail, and my Uncle Sande

Me, Dad, and my cousin Trevor

My Uncle Gary, Dad, and my Uncle Sande

Dad

Dad

Dad and Linda

Dad

Dad and Linda's wedding -- my brother Brad in front

Dad and Linda at their wedding

Dad and his mother Jean

Me, my brother Stewart, my brother Brad, and Dad

Dad, my brother Stewart, brother Brad, stepsister Heidi, and me

Me and Dad at high school graduation

Double Bill

2008-04-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

DOUBLE BILL

The more things change ... the more they stay the same. This past week Hillary Clinton continued to exude her desperation in the primary campaign by grabbing at whatever tiny threads of insignificance she can in her attempts to unravel Obama's character.

I'm referring here to her remarks on Senator Obama's comments about Americans being "bitter" and turning to close held traditions such as their faith when life seems out of control. Again, I was impressed by Obama's ability to stand by his words, yet admit that he could have communicated his point better. And his statement was right on the mark. I think it's clear that Americans are embittered by the current state of the economy, the health care system, the war in Iraq, the perception of America by others around the globe, the environmental crisis etc. etc. etc. However, rather than acknowleding this truth, Clinton chose to continue with her grade school antics of playing bully.

It also seemed like a reckless move for Clinton to bring up her 8 years in the White House as wife to the president as a demonstration of her experience and ability to lead the country. Really --

DOES CELEBRITY, LEGACY, NAME RECOGNITION = EXPERIENCE?

Fashion Plate

2008-04-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

AND LET'S NOT FORGET ...

Dad's brother Sande, Dad, and his brother Gary at Montana Pride in the seventies
(JUST KIDDING!)

My Dad's always perfect ... and timeless sense of fashion!!!

Kemp Jeff Wilson

2008-04-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

KEMP JEFF WILSON 1939 - 2008

It's been a wonderful, yet challenging year! My Father was diganosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer a year ago. Over the past year our family has spent a great deal of time together, celebrating our happiest moments and acknowledging the difficult times. For me it's been an amazing experience and I've had the opportunity to spend quality time with my Dad laughing, crying and just being together. On April 5th in the early morning, my Dad died. It was very sad and painful, yet I feel such a strong sense of relief that he's out of pain and moved on to his next life. I had a dream that night prior to his death that we were together and I was telling him about different struggles that I was experiencing and his response was "Meg, just laugh." And that was who my father was (and is) -- a very supportive, loving spirit who had the gift and ability to laugh when things became difficult. He was always wise and knew when to laugh and use humor to help people put things into perspective.

When I was a senior in high school, I had to write an essay in my government studies class on the person I admired the most. I chose my dad. I wish that I still had the essay, but I'm sure that many of the things that I admired about him then, are what I admire about him now. My Dad was a man of great integrity and true loving kindness. I remember as a child time when we'd be out somewhere and someone would act pissy. I'd comment on this, and my father would say "Meg, you never know what's going on in someone elses life and it's always better to be kind."

My father loved knowlege and history and was always reading to learn more. He made a career as an oil and gas attorney, but when I asked him on his last visit if he were to do it over again, would he have gone into law -- he said "no," he would have been a journalist -- as he was as an undergrad at Montana State University. One of the things that I'll miss about my father's absence is that he was always the person I could call on for information -- if I had a political or historical question, he was always well read and versed on the subject.

My father was also very committed to family and family history. He's the one who has inspired my interest in this as well, I have become the family archiver and have taken the role with great love and commitment. My father and I often spoke about collaborating on a book about our family history -- since it is such an interesting one -- and I hope to fulfill this project with my father's guidance.

I love you Dad.

Dad with his dad, Jeff Wilson 1939

Dad with his grandmother Ana Wilson, 1940

Dad with his dad, Jeff Wilson, 1940

Dad with his dad, mother and little brother Sande, 1942

Dad with his grandfather, Jack Wilson, 1941

Dad with his grandfather, Harry Kemp, 1940

Dad and his brother Sande, 1944

Dad with his brother Sande and grandfather, Jack Wilson, 1944

Dad with his brother Sande and grandfather, Jack Wilson, 1949

Dad with his brothers Sande and Gary, 1950

Dad, 1957

2008 Olympics

2008-04-04T18:05:00.000-07:00

2008 OLYMPICS IN BEIJING

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese in Beijing have been left homeless due to the destruction that has been launched in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. While images of Chinese wandering the streets of Beijing, sobbing amidst the debris they once called "home" are being viewed on televisions throughout the world, the bulldozers continue with the demolition sanctioned by the Chinese government and millions continue to make plans to attend the 2 week event. The price that is being paid by so many families in Beijing is for a government that cares more about its global image and lining the pockets of an elite few, rather than the majority of its people.

Integrity

2008-03-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

INTEGRITY

The past couple of weeks have been disheartening politically with all of the finger pointing and the exhausting accusations around Senator Obama and his pastor. However, I did find Senator Obama's s speech earlier this week to be very inspiring and a breath of fresh air. As I've noted in the past, Obama showed his maturity and integrity in his ability to be measured, respectful, and compassionate -- something that the United States is SO in need of in its next president. I don't find the degree of these traits in either Clinton or McCain, and instead often the opposite.

I remember watching the last debate between McCain and Romney and cringing with embarrassment for McCain as he behaved like a pre-schooler -- even though I've never been a McCain supporter. He also revealed an edge of anger and hatefulness that I remember thinking if he were to ever hold the presidential office, the country could be in even worse shape than it is now. Clinton too has continued to posess such an air of being high strung in her desperation to do anything to win.

The primary has become tired and I think most of us wish it would just end! Obviously, I wish Clinton would drop out, and just as obvious, that's not going to happen. I suppose it's always an option to move out of the country if she takes the candidacy. Perhaps we could start a campaign for a Free Trade Agreement through which we could freely exchange citizens.

Fever

2008-03-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

THIS FEVER ...

Following my Dad's and Eliza's visits, I've had to refocus on upcoming projects. Carolyn Castano and I have a show, This Fever I Can't Resist, coming up at thirtyninehotel in Honolulu Hawai'i in June so we've both been working on preliminary drawings and ideas.

thirtyninehotel is quite large and also serves as a nightclub. Given our interest in context and space, we've decided to work with fluorescent colors and glow-in-the-dark paints.

Floor plan for thirtyninehotel

Carolyn was recently highlighted in Dwell Magazine for a show that she's in at the Los Angeles County of Art (LACMA), Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement:

Carolyn's preliminary drawing

Yes, my signature flowers ...

More soon ... I have a lot to blog about on the recent developments in the 2008 campaign.

Dad's Dinner Soiree

2008-03-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Revisited

My Dad visited me last week in San Francisco. Of course I love my Dad, but he's also one of my favorite people to spend time with; I have such deep respect for his kindness, compassion and intelligence ... and we laugh a lot together.

Many giggles were had going through old photographs -- the more things change, the more they stay the same!

It was great to share San Francisco with him and to hear more of his stories from when he and my mother lived in SF in the mid-sixties. My Dad clerked for Judge James Browning of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Browning is from Belt, Montana and both he and my dad received their undergraduate degrees from Montana State University and their law degrees from University of Montana -- though 20 years apart.

Dad and mom's SF Flat at Bay and Van Ness -- it's still there!

As part of Dad's visit I threw a dinner party in his honor -- with lots of help from Mz. Eliza! I made lasagna and Momma Barrios made pork adobo that she sent with Eliza from San Diego (thank you Leonicia!). Unfortunately, I forgot to pull the camera out until later in the evening after a number of folks had left.

Eliza and I celebrating my new rice cooker (thank you EBX!!!)

Galleon Traders very psyched about the abobo

Ly (looking beautiful and with baby bump) and I happy to see each other after months

Kevin and Jim

Me and Maryann

Traders!!!

Dad and Barb

Dad and Maryann

Stephanie and Mike

Ayano and me (the trees are finally blooming!!)

Roomies reunited! (we all shared a room in Manila during Galleon Trade)

Christine: hmmmm ... should I have more adobo or lasagna?

Ayano and Dad

Kevin and Michael

Sama-sama!

Dad and I (thank you Christine!)

Sharing stories with Dad from Galleon Trade ...

And the stories continue ...

The morning after the party ... Dad loved everyone he met and made the comment that "you can tell the character of a person by the friends they have." Subtext: both he and I have great characters!

It's hard to see, but Dad has a rosary on his knee that Momma Barrios made for him. She actually made three! But Dad had already packed the other two (and this is one that I actually hijacked). Thank you Momma Barrios, this meant so much to my dad!!! (Thank you EBX for the photos!)

OBAMA

2008-02-24T19:15:00.000-08:00

PRESIDENT OBAMA

It's been a while since I last posted, however I have continued to keep up with Presidential Primaries. I'm thrilled that Barack Obama has swept the last ten primaries and caucuses:

Alaska: 74%
Alabama: 56%
Nebraska: 68%
Louisiana: 57%
Maine: 59%
Vermont: 64%
Maryland: 60%
D.C.: 75%
Wisconsin: 58%
Washington: 51%
Hawai'i: 76%

The more that I watch and listen to Senator Obama, the more convinced I am that he's the best candidate to be our next President.

I've been impressed with Obama's performances during the debates between he and Hillary Clinton. I appreciate his ability to remain calm, listen to the questions posed to him, and then respond thoughtfully. I also admire his practice of staying on track and addressing the debate topics, rather than taking cheap shots at Clinton. Conversely, I've found Senator Clinton's demeanor to be one in which she's practically chomping at the bit to respond and then fires off sound bites. It's also been disappointing to watch her grab at tiny threads of insignificance in an attempt to unravel Obama's character.

One of Hillary Clinton's recent strategies to debase Senator Obama is to dismiss the overwhelming support he's receiving through huge turnouts at Obama rallies. Clinton has continuously repeated: My opponent gives speeches, I offer solutions. It's one thing to get people excited, I want to empower you to live your dreams so we can all go forward togetheR... So there's the difference between us - speeches versus solutions. Talk versus action.

The subtext here is that Senator Clinton, like so many machine politicians before her, can only provide a hollow sound bite with the hope that by repeating it, it means that it's true (the Bush Administration excelled in this approach - until Americans finally began to realize the Emperors weren't wearing any clothes). What is noteworthy about the Obama campaign is that Barack Obama is energizing and inspiring Americans, as well as people around the globe, to be informed, to participate, and to have hope for the future - on a scale that's unprecedented.

I do believe that Obama's appeal has a great deal to do with his charisma and demeanor. However, one shouldn't forget that those traits are invaluable to diplomacy, negotiation, and the implementation of solutions.

One area that has most impressed me about Senator Obama is his perspective on the current administration's arrogance towards every other country in the world and his belief in a new approach to global relations - diplomacy.

I'm so tired of hearing "The United States is the Greatest Country On Earth," and "The United States is the example for the rest of the world." The best messenger of similar sentiments was Hitler - just keep saying it and "the people" will believe and adopt it as truth. Sadly, in both cases, it's worked.

The truth is: The United States Is NOT The Greatest Country On Earth.

However, I guess that it does depend on what's being measured:

The Greatest Country On Earth for wasting its resources - human and monetary - on its inability to admit a mistake?

The Greatest Country On Earth for handing its power over to corporations?

The Greatest Country On Earth for consuming the majority of the world's resources?

The Greatest Country On Earth for being responsible for global warming?

Hmmmmmmm, well I can tell you what the United States is NOT the Greatest Country On Earth for:

1. Peace - The United States ranked 96 out of 121 countries. http://www.visionofhumanity.com/rankings/

2. Literacy - The United States ranked 18 out of 45 countries.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/nov/29/schools.booksnews

3. Murders (per capita) - The United States ranked 24 out of 62 countries. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

4. Health Systems - The United States ranked 37 out of 190 countries.

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

5. The Environment - The United States ranked last out of 21 rich countries.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/11/content_6861546.htm

My point here is not to say that the United States is not a great country, it is in many ways. However, every country has its greatness and should be recognized and approached as such. No one wants to hear: "We're better than you, and in fact, we're the best and we know what's best for you and everyone else"

From what I've observed of the candidates, Senator Clinton reflects the status quo in how she views international relations - the United States know what's best for the world and dictates that. Senator Obama represents a respectful approach that is open to listening to other nations and working with them.

During the Democratic debate on February 21, 2008, Hillary Clinton was asked by Jorge Ramos:

RAMOS: Very simply, would you meet with him or not, with Raul Castro?

Clinton's response was very telling and spoke to the current status quo:

CLINTON: I would not meet with him until there was evidence that change was happening, because I think it's important that they demonstrate clearly that they are committed to change the direction. Then I think, you know, something like diplomatic encounters and negotiations over specifics could take place.

But we've had this conversation before, Senator Obama and myself, and I believe that we should have full diplomatic engagement where appropriate. But a presidential visit should not be offered and given without some evidence that it will demonstrate the kind of progress that is in our interest, and in this case, in the interests of the Cuban people.

Campbell Brown followed up with the following to Obama:

BROWN: Senator Obama, just to follow up, you had said in a previous CNN debate that you would meet with the leaders of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, among others, so presumably you would be willing to meet with the new leader of Cuba.

Obama's response provided a clear core difference between the two:

OBAMA: That's correct. Now, keep in mind that the starting point for our policy in Cuba should be the liberty of the Cuban people. And I think we recognize that that liberty has not existed throughout the Castro regime. And we now have an opportunity to potentially change the relationship between the United States and Cuba after over half a century.

I would meet without preconditions, although Senator Clinton is right that there has to be preparation. It is very important for us to make sure that there was an agenda, and on that agenda was human rights, releasing of political prisoners, opening up the press. And that preparation might take some time. But I do think that it's important for the United States not just to talk to its friends, but also to talk to its enemies. In fact, that's where diplomacy makes the biggest difference.

He continued:

OBAMA: Because the problem is, if we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, I think that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time. And I think that it's important for us in undoing the damage that has been done over the last seven years, for the president to be willing to take that extra step.

More Inspirations

2008-01-30T19:39:00.000-08:00

MORE INSPIRATIONS

I was going through old files and came across these images that I'd taken of these beautiful textiles from Indonesia. Very much an inspiration!

OZ

2008-01-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

OZ

I feel like the U.S. is embodied in all of the bumbling characters on the road to OZ (though, all signs show it's actually on some dirt path rather than the yellow brick):

If I only had a heart -- the United States of America
If I only had a brain -- the United States of America
If I only had courage -- the United States of America

JESUS! MARY! JOSEPH!!! (to be read in loud disbelief with a heavy Irish accent.)

What's sparked this dystopic vision? Reading about the "Stimulus Package" being put forth by the U.S. Congress as the answer to the problems with economy. They should just call it for what it really is -- the "Sisyphus Package" or "Sissyphus Package" -- oh, that's right, the U.S. Congress doesn't have a heart, brain, or courage.

In short, Congress is moving to vote on a plan that will provide rebates of up to $600 to most tax payers, senior citizens, and the unemployed. WOW!!! $600 of money to spend! Which is the key word here -- spend! spend! spend!

And where will most of that money end up?

In the pockets of the CEOs and top execs of large corporations (like Walmart -- since Walmart is the one-stop shopping center -- folks can get their groceries and lots of useless items for a couple of weeks ... maybe). The CEOs and top execs can use all that additional cash to continue playing monoply on their GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card, issued by the United States of America's heartless, brainless, and courageless Congress.

Celebrations!

2008-01-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

CELEBRATIONS AROUND THE WORLD

Two major events yesterday -- one here in the U.S. and one half way around the world in Indonesia.

In South Carolina, Senator Barack Obama won the primary with 55% of the votes.

In Jakarta, former Dictator Soeharto died. Two books that I recommend to learn more about contemporary Indonesian politics are: The End of Sukarno: A Coup That Misfired, a Purge That Ran Wild by John Hughes and Reformasi: The Struggle for Power in Post-Soeharto Indonesia by Kevin O'Rourke

Anti-Soeharto Protests in 1998

Home Is Where The Heart Is

2008-01-25T08:23:00.000-08:00

Home Is Where The Heart Is

My friend and former student Mei-Tsung (Mei was in my and Aaron Noble's painting intensive class at the San Francisco Art Institute, she received her MFA in painting) is back in Taipei and teaching. She sent a link to her most recent project and it's awesome and totally wacky! Thought I'd share:

Home Is Where The Heart Is (at night)

we are so tired from work...

there's a hole on my roof..

we'll find lumbers for you..

the forest isn't that far...

we'll be back before the sunset

i left my mascot in the forest..

i need to find it back...

be good, blacky!

built 2 houses today!!

Home Is Where The Heart Is (day time)

when the morning arrives

let's go find the light nymph

tita-tita-tita-tita-tita-tita

searching in the air

oh, my sweet balcky...

where is the light nymph?

oh?in utopia?

let's go and find out!

huu....here we are!

what's up, blacky?

don't worry!things would go well....

drowning in the endless fantacy.....

finally, knights found utopia, the small green land on rocks, and i finally could end my fantacy.......

Los Jaichackers

2008-01-24T18:34:00.000-08:00

Los Jaichackers

Not to be missed ...

Vote Obama

2008-01-23T23:09:00.000-08:00

VOTE OBAMA IN 2008!!!

Scaling a Minimalist Wall With Bright, Shiny Colors

2008-01-22T21:46:00.000-08:00

Scaling a Minimalist Wall With Bright, Shiny Colors
by HOLLAND COTTER New York Times, Published: January 15, 2008

Joyce Kozloff's "Hidden Chambers" (1975-76) at the Hudson River Museum

YONKERS - "Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975-1985," at the Hudson River Museum, documents the last genuine art movement of the 20th century, which was also the first and only art movement of the postmodern era and may well prove to be the last art movement ever.

We don't do art movements anymore. We do brand names (Neo-Geo); we do promotional drives ("Painting is back!"); we do industry trends (art fairs, M.F.A students at Chelsea galleries, etc.). But now the market is too large, its mechanism too corporate, its dependence on instant stars and products too strong to support the kind of collective thinking and sustained application of thought that have defined movements as such.

Pattern and Decoration, known as P&D, was the real thing. The artists were friends, friends of friends or students of friends. Most were painters, with distinctive styles but similar interests and experiences. All had had exposure to, if not immersion in, the liberation politics of the 1960s and early '70s, notably feminism. All were alienated by dominant movements like Minimalism.

They were also acutely aware of the universe of cultures that lay beyond or beneath Euro-American horizons, and of the alternative models they offered for art. Varieties of art from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as folk traditions in the West, blurred distinctions between art and design, high and low, object and idea. They used abstract design as a primary form and ornament as an end in itself. They took beauty, whatever that meant, as a given.

P&D artists were scattered geographically. Some - Robert Kushner, Kim MacConnel, Miriam Schapiro - were in California. Others - Cynthia Carlson, Brad Davis, Valerie Jaudon, Jane Kaufman, Joyce Kozloff, Tony Robbin, Ned Smyth, Robert Zakanitch - were in New York. As a group they found an eloquent advocate in the critic and historian Amy Goldin, who was immersed in the study of Islamic art. And they had an early commercial outlet in the Holly Solomon Gallery in SoHo.

They all asked the same basic question: When faced with a big, blank, obstructing Minimalist wall, too tall, wide and firmly in place to get over or around, what do you do? And they answered: You paint it in bright patterns, or hang pretty pictures on it, or drape it with spangled light-catching fabrics. The wall may eventually collapse under the accumulated decorative weight. But at least it will look great.

And where do you find your patterns and pictures and fabrics? In places where Modernism had rarely looked before: in quilts and wallpapers and printed fabrics; in Art Deco glassware and Victorian valentines. You might take the search far afield, as most of these artists did.

They looked at Roman and Byzantine mosaics in Italy, Islamic tiles in Spain and North Africa. They went to Turkey for flower-covered embroideries, to Iran and India for carpets and miniatures, and to Manhattan's Lower East Side for knockoffs of these. Then they took everything back to their studios and made a new art from it.

Ms. Kaufman turned 19th-century American quilt designs into abstract nocturnes glinting with sewn-on beads. Mr. Zakanitch went for flowers in monumental paintings based on fabrics remembered from his childhood home in New Jersey. Ms. Schapiro also drew on floral images in a type of feminist-inspired collage she called "femmage." And in her "Gates of Paradise" (1980) she applied domestic crafts materials - lace, ribbons, fabric trim and so on - to a theme associated with Lorenzo Ghiberti.

Ms. Carlson's all-over tweedlike patterns, done with repeated strokes of thick paint, are less specific in their references. And even if Ms. Jaudon doesn't insist on Islamic art as a source for her crisp interlace designs, it surely had some effect. Ms. Kozloff is forthright about the debt she owes to Moroccan and Mexican tile work. Her melding of brilliant colors with a basic Minimalist grid has yielded generous results in public architectural projects, and in her poetic and intensely political recent art.

Mr. Davis and Mr. Smyth lie a little outside the general P&D loop, one doing figurative work and the other mosaics. Mr. Robbin, who lived in Iran as a child, conflates geometric Persian motifs with others from Japanese silk kimonos. For Mr. MacConnel and Mr. Kushner, textiles themselves are a primary medium.

Mr. MacConnel glues pieces of Near Eastern and Southeast Asian fabric together into suspended open-work hangings. Mr. Kushner, who studied with Mr. MacConnel and traveled with Ms. Goldin to the Middle East, originally draped his painted fabric pieces over his own body in performances. One festive piece in the show, "Visions Beyond the Pearly Curtain," is shaped like a chador, cape or kimono, although with its gathered swags and melon-orange curlicues it has the theatrical punch of a rococo opera curtain about to rise.

When Mr. Kushner finished this piece in 1975, P&D was taking off. It had avid collectors in the United States; in Europe it was a hit. Then interest dried up. Worse than that, in America the movement became an object of disdain and dismissal.

There were reasons. Art associated with feminism has always had a hostile press. And there was the beauty thing. In the neo-Expressionist, neo-Conceptualist late 1980s, no one knew what to make of hearts, Turkish flowers, wallpaper and arabesques.

Thanks to multiculturalism and identity politics, we know better what to make of them now; the art world's horizons are immeasurably wider than they were two decades ago (without being all that wide). Besides, to my eye, most P&D art isn't beautiful and never was, not in any classical way. It's funky, funny, fussy, perverse, obsessive, riotous, accumulative, awkward, hypnotic, all evident even in the fairly tame selections by Anne Swartz, the curator for this show.

And not-quite-beauty is exactly what saved it, what gave it weight, weight enough to bring down the great Western Minimalist wall for a while and bring the rest of the world in. Let the art historical record show, in the postmovement future, the continuing debt we owe it for that.

"Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975-1985" continues through Sunday at the Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers; (914) 963-4550, hrm.org.

Obama Obama Obama

2008-01-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

BARACK BARACK BARACK
OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA

Being the political junkie that I am, I've been watching all of the debates and primaries. I know that I've been critical of Barack Obama on this blog in the past; however, I think the issues that I had with him in 2006 were perhaps the result of bad advice at that time by his political team.

Having watched Senator Obama over the past 2 years and learning more about him, I believe that he's the only candidate who can truly lead this country into place where we're no longer hated around the world and where we treat other countries with respect, compassion and, equality. I have a great deal of respect for Obama's past work as a community organizer, which is far more difficult than working in the corporate sector, his work as a teacher, his work as a civil rights lawyer, and his work as a U.S. senator. Hillary Clinton made a remark recently that while leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. are great visionaries, it takes someone in the Executive Office to sign bills into law. With Barack Obama we'd be getting both! Thanks Hillary for reminding us of this.

VOTE OBAMA IN 2008!!!

Inspirations

2008-01-19T21:34:00.000-08:00

INSPRIRATIONS
I've been working on the Home installation, it seems endless ... everytime I finish with one thing, I have a bizillion ideas for something else. Thought I'd share some of my inspirations/influences. I love the way each works with space and creating an experience that's out of the ordinary.

Verner Panton:

Phantasy Landscape, Visiona II, 1970, Cologne, Germany

Circus Building, 1984, Copenhagen, DK

Spiegel Publishing House, Canteen, 1969, Hamburg, Germany

"The Light and the Colour" Exhibition, 1998, Trapholt Museum, Kolding, DK

Verner Panton's Home, Dining room, Binningen, CH

Verner Panton's Home, Entrance Hall, Binningen, CH

Spiegel Publishing House, Swimmingpool, 1969, Hamburg, Germany

Erco Lighting Showroom, 1997, London, GB

Varna Restaurant, 1970, Aarhus, DK

Yayoi Kusama:

West African Homes:

Boy In Wunderland

2008-01-17T07:39:00.000-08:00

BOY IN WUNDERLAND

From my friend Arya Pandjalu in Yogyakarta Indonesia:

Cattle Markers

2008-01-15T19:49:00.000-08:00

CATTLE MARKERS

While I was home in Montana we had to stop by the feed store to pick up some corn for the deer. So I took the opportunity to pick up some cattle markers and look into purchasing a branding iron with our family's brand for a future exhibition I have at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts.

It was fascinating to learn from my dad about the brand registration process. I learned that our family's brand (this goes back to my great, great grandfather, John Vernon Kemp's cattle ranch in Montana in the late 1800's) is only registered to be used on the left flank and right leg of horses. Someone else owns the same brand that can be used on specific parts of cattle. The store itself was awesome:

Unforeseen Forces

2008-01-13T11:16:00.000-08:00

UNFORESEEN FORCES

Yet another bout with the flu. My theory is that it's from flying domestic airlines in the U.S. -- with all of their reductions in services, I think sanitation has probably been another one added to the cuts. Everytime I fly a domestic U.S. airline, I find myself getting sick soon thereafter.

My favorite airline? Singapore!!! So many amenities (and this is just coach), good food, real silverware, etc. And even domestic airlines in other countries so blow away U.S. airlines. When you fly Indonesia's domestic airline Garuda (even if it's just an hour flight from Java to Bali), you're given a breakfast, lunch, or dinner box while you're boarding the plane and then once seated, the hot towels are dispursed.

I've been feeling pretty miserable all week and spent yesterday lying in bed all day with the kitten listening to Arvo Part and meditating. Most appropriate was Part's Miserere, which is my favorite.

However, I did make a point to muster up the little energy that I did have on Friday to head over to the opening at Southern Exposure: Artist Projects by Chris Bell, Elaine Buckholtz, Jenifer Wofford, and Bruce Tomb.

Jenifer Wofford's Drawing for Unseen Forces

We made it there right at the end of Jenifer Wofford's talk about her installation Unseen Forces, which was too bad because I really wanted to hear more about it. However, it looks AMAZING! As you walk into the back gallery, you first encounter several sculpted metal detectors that act as the entrance ways into a large space surrounded by full wall paintings of beautiful, lush, tropical landscapes with three monochromatic grey blocks on the horizon of one wall that could be read as buildings or references to the metal dectors. It was interesting how within this context, without agency, the metal detectors appear so benign in contrast to the affect they generally elicit when used as a form of intimidation and supposed protection -- which tends to be frustration and irritation. While the natural world with its facade of beauty and serenity is the true unpredictable danger. As I once wrote, "Never trust Mother Nature. She is the Queen of Delusion: heart of gold, head of fire, soul of uncertainty."

From Bruce Tomb's (de)appropriation project archive -- I did make it into the archive!

We did get to hear Bruce Tomb speak about his (de)appropriation Project Archive. For 10 years Tomb has been documenting the wall on the outside of his home between 23rd and 24th Streets on Valencia. The wall has become one of the premiere spaces in San Francisco for wheat pasting posters that most often are of a social/political nature. I've loved this space since I first learned about it 8 years ago when we utilized it for Art Strike's Back. Since I've often makes trips over to the area just to see what's up. I've also taken advantage of the space myself to add to the wall. Definately check out the Archive and the space itself!

Unfortunately because I was feeling so ill, I left soon after the talk and didn't have a chance to check out Chris Bell's or Elaine Buckholtz's projects. But I'm definately be going back!

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