Project Title:  The Temescal Amity Works
Recipient Organization:  Temescal Merchants Association
Fiscal Sponsor:  Pro Arts
Lead Artist:   Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell
Genre and Date Awarded:  Visual Arts, June 2004
To be Presented:  July 2004-December 2005

Ted Purves, Susanne Cockrell, the Temescal Merchants Association, and Pro Arts are collaborating to create The Temescal Amity Works, a community art project that facilitates and documents the exchange of backyard produce, conversation, and collective biography within the Temescal Neighborhood in Oakland, California.  The project is located at 482 49th St., Oakland, CA 94609 and on the web at www.amityworks.org.  It is funded both by the Creative Work Fund and by Creative Capital.

Over a year’s time, the artists are maintaining a community crop sharing program called The Big Backyard and a storefront just off Telegraph Avenue that hosts an open space called Reading Room. They also are producing a host of printed materials, including a community map and an ongoing series of free postcards that document various aspects of the neighborhood’s social economy and environment.

The Big Backyard: While everyone can use a lemon or two off their own tree, rarely does anyone need a whole tree-full…and yet, they cost about 25¢ each in the grocery store if you don’t happen to have a tree of your own. The Temescal Amity Works is attempting to redress this and will harvest and collect any surplus or unwanted fruits and vegetables growing in neighborhood yards. They will come pick it or pick it up. Whatever they collect will be given away for free at the storefront and delivered to people’s homes. They also will be making neighborhood jams, juices and sauces during heavy growing seasons. These will be distributed as widely as possible to interested neighbors, visitors and community groups.

Reading Room: With a belief that more leisure time produces healthy social innovations, the Temescal Amity Works has furnished the Reading Room, an ongoing service experiment located in the storefront. They are building a library of books, films and videos loosely centered on gardening, community history, art in the world, social will, collective action and bio-regionalism. Visitors are welcome at any time to browse the books, watch a video and relax in an extra-long hammock. As a part of the Reading Room, Temescal Amity Works, will be sponsoring a continuing program of neighborhood history and ecology  walks, as well as lectures, discussions, book readings and recipe swaps.

The Temescal area of Oakland was planned as an “orchard” suburb in the 1920s and 30s and there are still many houses with citrus trees in their front and back yards, hundreds of gardens and rosemary bushes.  Blackberry bushes line the creek and plum trees stain the sidewalks.  Today Temescal is a compact and diverse neighborhood near downtown Oakland.  It is a district where long-term African American and Italian American communities adjoined and blended together.  In recent years, this mix has expanded to include Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants and Korean merchants as well as commuters re-locating from San Francisco. Its Merchants Association is composed of neighborhood business and property owners who reflect its diversity. 

Ted Purves’s recent writing and curatorial focus examines the social roles of the artist and viewer as co-participants in active exchange.  In 2002, he organized Generosity Projects, a weekend symposium and three commissioned public projects that examined the emergence of the transfer of useful goods and services as a contemporary medium for art.

Susanne Cockrell’s performance and public work focuses on creating experiences that elevate the everyday into something more wonderful, mysterious and full of possibility. Over the last few years she has generated increasingly interactive projects developing ephemeral points of contact with her audience through use of knitting, shared story-telling, and conversational events.

Ted Purvis

Recent Curatorial Projects

• “Denn man sieht nur die im lichte – Shadow Cabinets in a Bright Country,” Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2003)
• “Shadow Cabinets in a Bright Country,” Apex Art Curatorial Program, New York, New York (2002/2003)
• “The Earth,” organized with “It Can Change,” Potrero Gardens, San Francisco, California (2002)
• “Generosity Projects:  Strategies for Exchange in Recent Art,” CCAC Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, California (2002)
• “San Francisco Sites and Expeditions,” organized with Jen Lovvorn, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, California (2001)
• “Rooms for Listening,” organized with Marina McDougall, CCAC Institute, San Francisco, California (2000)

Recent Publications and Editions

• “Public Strategy” in Denn man sieht nur die im Lichte – Shadow Cabinets in a Bright Country, exhibition catalogue essay, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2003)
• “Viewpoint:  Any Wednesday,” essay, Artweek, vol. 34, issue #1, (February 2003)
• Shadow Cabinets in a Bright Country, exhibition catalogue essay, Apex Art Curatorial Program, New York, New York (2002)
• “Blow Against the Empire,” book editor and critical essay in What We Want is Free:  Experiments with Exchange and Generosity in Current Art, SUNY Press, Albany, New York (forthcoming)
• “Tickets, Trips and Passports:  Thoughts about Travel, Souvenirs and Contemporary Art,” exhibition catalogue essay in Extra Art:  A Survey of Artists’ Ephemera 1960-1999, Smart Art Press, Los Angeles, California (2001)
• “San Francisco Sites and Exhibitions,” exhibition brochure essay in San Francisco Sites and Expeditions, Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco, California (2001)
• “John Hudak, Brandon Labelle, Loren Chasse and Toshiya Tsunoda,” essays in Rooms for Listening, CCAC Institute, San Francisco, California (2000)
• Collected Notes – Observing Birds, artists’ book, eschenau summer press, Knetzgau, Germany (1999)
• “Earthworks on Paper,” exhibition brochure essay, 871 Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco, California (1999)
• “works from there and here,” exhibition catalogue essay in recent works by herman de vries and chris drury, Refusalon Gallery, San Francisco (1999)

Current Academic and Professional Positions

• Adjunct Professor, Graduate Fine Arts, California College of the Arts, Oakland, California
• Visiting Professor, Arts and Consciousness Program, John F. Kennedy University, Berkeley, California

Grants, Fellowships, and Residencies

• Faculty Development Grants, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California (2003, 2001)
• Artist-in-Residence, Drawing Residency Program, San Francisco, California (2000)
• Artist-in-Residence, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, California (1997)

Susanne Cockrell

Community Projects, Public Art, and Related Events

• “Knithoughts,” ongoing interactive project with general public, exhibited at the Kellogg Art Museum in Pomona, California (2001)
• Juror, ARTS UP, Seattle Arts Commission, Seattle, Washington (2000)
• Administrative Assistant, Rosie the Riveter Memorial Project, Richmond, California (2000)
• Project Coordinator for Suzanne Lacy’s public projects:  Underground for the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh (1994); Auto on the Edge of Time, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island (1995); Assistant Director, Roof is on Fire, Oakland, California (1996)
• “Sighting,” public art commission, collaboration with Nina Ackerberg, Market Street Art-in-Transit program, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, California (1994-97)
• “Alterations,” performance/installation, group exhibition, collaboration with Britta Kathmeyer and Suzanne Lacy, “Old Glory, New Story Re-flagging the 21st Century,” originally presented at the Capp Street Project, San Francisco, California (1994) and Santa Monica Museum of At (1995)

Selected Exhibitions

• “The Irresistible Force of Will,” Arts and Consciousness Gallery, John F. Kennedy University, Berkeley, California (2004)
• “The Earth,” group exhibition, Potrero Gardens, San Francisco, California (2002)
• “Flock,” print edition, group exhibition, Arts and Consciousness Gallery, John F. Kennedy University, Berkeley, California (2002)
• “Ephemeral,” group exhibition, Kellogg University Art Museum, Pomona, California (2001)
• “Artists’ Pages from the Djerassi Resident Artist Program,” group exhibition, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, California (2001)
• “Freestyle,” group exhibition, Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco, California (2001)
• Put, Place, Let Go of, 16 mm film, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan (2001)
• “Idiosyncratic Methodologies for Nothing in Particular,” two-person show, ESP Gallery, San Francisco, California (1999)
• “Just This Moment, Just A Moment Ago,” book works, group exhibition, Arts and Consciousness Gallery, John F. Kennedy University, Berkeley, California (1999)
• “Tracking a Certain Calm,” sculpture installation, “New Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection,” group exhibition, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California
• Running up a Hill, 16 mm film projection and print edition work, group exhibition, The Lab and Cinematheque, San Francisco, California (1998)
• “Stable,” New Works by Faculty,” group exhibition, Arts and Consciousness Gallery, John F. Kennedy University, Berkeley, California (1998)
• “LEAP,” performance and print edition, group exhibition, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (1996)
• “Project Paper Road,” group exhibition, Danish Postal Museum, Denmark (1996)
• “Sequence,” group exhibition, San Francisco State University Art Gallery, San Francisco, California (1996)
• “We will Go to Nature,” printed edition (collaboration with Ted Purvis), “Ecstasy, Sickness, Confusion:  Travel-Based Art,” group exhibition, Columbus Art League, Columbus, Ohio (1996)
• “Drawings,” group exhibition, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (1996)
• “Bird Woman,” mixed media sculpture, group exhibition, Solano College, Solano, California (1996)
• Bywandering Fields, 16mm film, Black Maria Film Festival and tour, Jersey City, New Jersey (1994)
• Bywandering Fields, 16 mm film, Ann Arbor Film Festival and tour, Ann Arbor, Michigan (1994)
• “Level; Drawing #1,” installation, group exhibition, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (1994)
• “Logos Interruptus,” video installation, group exhibition, Victoria Room, San Francisco, California (1993)
• “Contemplation of Impurity,” installation, group exhibition, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (1993)
• “Moment of Perception,” installation, group exhibition, Gallery Here, Oakland, California (1993)
• “New Work,” two person show, Barclay Simpson Gallery, Lafayette, California (1993)
• “Acumen. Bent, Persistence, Time,” MFA exhibition, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (1993)

Selected 16mm Film Screenings

• Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan (2001)
• San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California (1999, 2000)
• California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California (1999, 2000)
• Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington (1998)
• Semena De Cine Experiental, Madrid, Spain (1995)
• Millennium, New York, New York (1994)
• Media Arts Center, Seattle, Washington (1994)
• Hirshorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (1994)
• Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island (1994)
• Artists Television Access, San Francisco, California (1994)
• Cleveland Art Institute, Cleveland, Ohio (1994)
• University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa (1994)
• Los Angeles Film Forum, Los Angeles, California (1994)
• Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California (1994)
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (1994)
• Chicago Filmmakers, Chicago, Illinois (1994)
• Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, California (1993)
• Film Arts Foundation Festival, San Francisco, California (1993)
• Interior Landscapes, PMS Postmodern Sisters (1993-01)

Editions and Publications

• February Book, artist book, self-published (2001)
• everything/everywhere/everyday, stamp work edition, self-published (2000)
• beinglikeneverbeforebeingbefore, print, edition of 100, self-published (1999)
• Waiting for Birds, video project, in Earth Project Meeting, 0,0 Editions, San Francisco, California (1998)
• Running up a hill holding camera running, film action #1, ed. of 100, self-published (1997)
• LEAP, photograph/letterpress print, edition of 100, self-published (1996-97)
• A Glossary of Pod Dynamics, artist book, in Contributions to Knowledge #1, 0,0 Editions, San Francisco, California (1996)

Awards

• Gerbode Foundation Purchase Award, San Francisco, California (1998)
• John D. and Susan P. Deikman Fellowship, Djerassi Foundation, Woodside, California (1996)
• Director’s Choice, Black Maria Film Festival, Jersey City, New Jersey (1994)
• Honorable Mention, Ann Arbor Experimental Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan (1994)
• Headlands Center for the Arts, Affiliate Artist Residency, Sausalito, California (1993)
• Barclay Simpson Fellowship and Exhibition, Barclay Simpson Gallery, Lafayette, California (1993)
• Cadogan Merit Fellowship, San Francisco Foundation, San Francisco, California (1991