Funded Projects

FUNDED PROJECTS AND ARTISTS

Creative Work Fund Recipients 1994-2007

Since 1994, the Creative Work Fund has awarded 186 grants to projects that have been reviewed within five broad artistic categories. In 1995, a single panel reviewed projects in literary and media arts, but literature and media were later reviewed separately. The category “traditional arts” was added in the Creative Work Fund’s sixth year following a program evaluation.

The list that follows is organized by the artistic discipline categories and, then, chronologically. The disciplines appear in alphabetical order as follows:

Literary Arts	Media Arts	Performing Arts	Traditional Arts	Visual Arts

LITERARY ARTS, 1995 {top}

Koncepts Cultural Gallery collaborating with poets devorah major, Genny Lim, Wayne Corbitt, and others, and jazz musician/composer Muziki Roberson to create “This Poetry Thing: A Suite of Poetry and Jazz,” a touring and recording project exploring strategies for presenting poetry in performance.

Poetry Flash collaborating with poet Robert Hass and sculptor Shane Eagleton to create “River of Words,” a twenty-foot carved poetry panel on salvaged wood, which has been featured at local and national events on literature and the environment. The public is invited to take rubbings from the carved poem and images.

LITERARY ARTS, 1998

The African American Museum and Library collaborating with writer Opal Palmer Adisa, photographer Ian Moore and video artist Jonathan Eubanks on an oral history, public readings, and multi-media exhibit about the lives of long-time African-American residents of West Oakland.

Bay Area Radio Drama collaborating with writers Millicent Dillon, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Soto, and Helen Cline, and sound artists Jim McKee and Randy Thom on four 30-minute works, exploring “Locations” for public radio broadcast.

Community Works collaborating with Gloria Frym and students of Galileo High School on a creative reimagining of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, entitled Rose of the Mission, placing Thomas Hardy’s novel in a contemporary setting.

Huong Viet Community Center collaborating with poet Truong Tran and photographer Chong Hoang Chuong to study Vietnamese immigration across generations through interviewing several generations of immigrants, participating in community events, and conducting research in Vietnam. Their photographs and poems appear in The Book of Perceptions, published by Kearny Street Workshop, and sold to benefit the Center’s programs.

Zyzzyva collaborating with Heather Drohan, Paul Stojsavljevic Flores, Chaim Bertman, Robert Mailer Anderson on a new “Zyzzyva Discovery” series of first books by Bay Area and West Coast writers. The project addresses new writers’ need for close attention and creative mentorship from an editor.

LITERARY ARTS, 2001

Community Defense Fund, Inc. collaborating with Lisa Gray-Garcia, Poor Magazine, Dee Gray, Joseph Bolden and Leroy Moore to create a live performance, publication, online presentation and radio broadcast of 12 literary art narratives celebrating the theme “Poverty Heroes.”

East Bay Media Center and Paul Kealoha Blake collaborating with poet Lisa Kahaleole Hall to create a poetic video addressing the Hawaiian Diaspora, incorporating work by visual artists Rocky Jensen and Sharon Nawahine Lum Ho, the music of Zelie Duvachelle, and the hula of Patrick Makuakane.

Hayward Area Historical Society and writer Maria Ochoa collaborating to create Russell City: Our Voices, Our Selves, a book about patterns of immigration to a once thriving small Alameda County town that is now a part of Hayward.

Manifest Press collaborating with translator Christopher Daniels and Brazilian artists Josely Vianna Baptista and Francisco Faria to create On the Shining Screen of the Eyelids, a bilingual book of contemporary poetry and art.

The Native American Cultural Center with poet Abena Songbird and multi-media artist Derek Wilson collaborating to develop Round Dance, a poetry event beginning with a round robin writing project among 15 Native American poets, published on the Center’s web site.

Spoken word poet Beau Sia and three instructors from Youth Speaks—James Kass, Paul Flores, and Mark Bamuthi Joseph—collaborating to create No Man’s Land, a spoken word performance exploring archetypal, cross-cultural, and contemporary concepts of manhood.

LITERARY ARTS, 2004

African Science Institute and spoken word artist and poet Naru Kwina collaborating to create a CD and a 30-minute theater production, “Hip Science: The Human Body 101 LIVE,” combining rap music with scientific information about the human body as a means of giving youth access to scientific information and introducing the sciences as professional avenues for them.

Writer and performer Genny Lim and Asian Improv aRts collaborating to create True Freedom: Anatomy of an American Family, a new short story collection that is informed by a writer’s residency at the Chinatown Beacon Center at Jean Parker Elementary School—the school Lim attended as a child. The project enables Lim to connect her coming of age experiences in the 1950s and ‘60s Chinatown/North Beach neighborhoods to the issues facing the neighborhoods’ immigrant children and families today.

Bay Area Radio Drama, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Earwax Productions collaborating to produce a series of three original hour-long audio compositions juxtaposing Ferlinghetti’s autobiography, commentary, and poetry in a highly personal acoustic exploration of what he terms “the current state of American consciousness.” The pieces are being developed for broadcast on public radio nationally and internationally, and available through the Internet.

Community Works and Margo Perin collaborating to create Only the Dead Can Kill, a book, CD, and web page featuring autobiographical stories created by Perin and inmates in San Francisco County Jail. With Perin as artist-facilitator, inmates are writing about their experiences of childhood, parenting, physical and substance abuse, and criminality, while Perin writes on the same elements in her life story.

Choreographer Alex Ketley of The Foundry and poet Carol Snow collaborating to create “Syntax,” a dance/poetry work of an estimated 40 minutes in length. Poet and choreographer are exploring how dance can serve to underline the experience of language and its structure: “A dance could be choreographed—not to music and not the content of a reading—but to the linguistic patterns of what is read.”

The Poetry Center collaborating with poet Norma Cole to create a gallery installation and a fine press book on the occasion of the Center’s 50th Anniversary. During the Center’s retrospective exhibit at the California Historical Society, Cole is creating a series of vastly different “writer’s rooms” in which she is working and from which she is inviting, responding to, and incorporating into her writing, the comments, perceptions, and contributions of visitors. The Poetry Center is documenting the project’s evolution on video.

Queer Cultural Center and writer Michelle Tea are creating, developing, and presenting “TransForming Community,” based on new writings by six queer, transgender, and intersex literary and spoken word artists, including Katastrophe, Thea Hillman, Lynn Breedlove, Julia Serano, and Marcus Rene Van. “TransForming Community” explores implications of the increase in the number of San Francisco residents who are choosing their own gender identities and demonstrates literature’s potential to launch public conversation about the complex implications of their choices.

Youth Speaks, along with spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, young poets Eli Marienthal, Biko Eisen-Martin, and Chinaka Hodge, and composer John Santos are collaborating to create “Scourge,” a hip hop theater piece critically examining the history of Haiti. The artists are using “a fusion of dance, spoken word, and live music to re-visit the very narrow space between history, myth, and speculation.”

{MEDIA ARTS}

MEDIA ARTS, 1995 {top}

La Casa de las Madres collaborating with filmmaker Jan Millsapps to create, “Episodes,” an interactive CD-ROM about surviving domestic violence, using text and images generated with men, women, and children who have experienced domestic violence and who have helped others survive such situations.

The Rose Resnick Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and fiscal sponsor Intersection for the Arts collaborating with sound artist Ed Osborn to create “The Sound Garden,” a public audio art installation for Yerba Buena Gardens, to be installed in conjunction with the Gardens’ Talking Sign system for the visually impaired.

The Vietnamese Youth Development Center collaborating with filmmaker Spencer Nakasako on Tenderloin Stories. Nakasako invites the Center’s Southeast Asian youth to tell their own stories by shooting hand-held Hi8 film footage of their neighborhoods and homes. The resulting four short videos, collaboratively edited with Nakasako, are shown at community centers, on street corners, and in parks in the Tenderloin as well as being screened at film festivals and on HBO.

MEDIA ARTS, 1999

The Ruth Asawa Fund, media artist Valerie Soe, and parent-artists who helped develop the Alvarado School Community Arts Program are creating a 30-minute video tracing the history of one of the first community-based arts education programs in the country.

Cultural Odyssey’s Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women collaborating with filmmaker Lawrence Andrews to create We Just Tellin’ Stories, a 90-minute film blending fictional and documentary elements, with narrative developed and acted by four women who have participated in the Medea Project.

Media Alliance collaborating with media artist glenda drew and choreographer Pearl Ubungen to create “Makibaka!,” an interactive CD-ROM focusing on the 100th anniversary of the Philippine American-War. The CD-ROM incorporates performances by Ubungen and others, historical materials, and the oral histories collected by high school-aged youth, recruited through Filipinos for Affirmative Action.

San Francisco Camerawork collaborating with the artist team Margaret Crane and Jon Winet on a year-long project exploring the 2000 elections, entitled “Democracy—The Last Campaign,” featuring in the Bay Area an exhibition, a series of public programs, an interactive forum on the World Wide Web, and an issue of San Francisco Camerawork’s national journal. Dale MacDonald and Scott Minneman, researchers at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto are assisting with technology development for the project.

Youth Radio, Marlene Williams, and a team of young media artists, over the course of one year, are creating “Youth Radio on Race and Identity,” a series of public radio programs focusing on the themes, “Rites of Passage,” “Immigrant Stories,” and “Juvenile Justice.” Oscar winner Gary Rydstrom of SkyWalker Sound, Randy Thom of Lucasfilm, also are collaborating with the youth.

MEDIA ARTS, 2001

Casa Segura/Safe House and its staff and clients collaborating with Sharon Daniel to create a web site, posters, and billboards to increase understanding and awareness of the organization in its Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland.

Linda Tillery and four members of the a capella Cultural Heritage Choir collaborating with Michael Fried to document their lives and work as a means of looking at the role of the music of the African Diaspora in American society.

San Francisco human rights organization, Global Exchange, artist Sergio De La Torre, filmmaker Vicky Funari, and the Tijuana women’s organization Grupo Factor X creating an hour-long documentary film about the lives of workers in Tijuana’s maquiladoras, assembly factories.

The Lab collaborating with Chris Salter and Sponge—an association of professional artists and researchers—to develop and present “The SAUNA Project,” a contemplative hybrid space embedded into a public environment that invites the public to examine how we are bombarded with media images, icons, and sounds in the course of daily life.

Southern Exposure Gallery collaborating with video artist Lise Swenson to create Mission Movie, a non-traditional narrative feature film responding to changes in a San Francisco neighborhood and involving Mission-based artists, business owners, community organizers, cultural workers, and gallery representatives in writing and producing the work.

MEDIA ARTS, 2003

The African American Coalition for Health Improvement and Empowerment, and fiscal sponsor Bay Area Video Coalition, collaborating with filmmakers Paul VanDeCarr and Rick Butler to create After Jonestown, a documentary on the legacy of the Jonestown Guyana tragedy and its lingering affects on the Bay Area’s African American community.

The Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention collaborating with filmmaker Susan Stern and End-of-Life Choices to create The Self-Made Man, a film and DVD exploring the philosophical and psychological issues surrounding assisted suicide.

Chinese Performing Arts Foundation and fiscal sponsor Film Arts Foundation collaborating with filmmaker Ruby Yang to create A Moment in Time, a documentary exploring Chinese performing arts, their relationship to Chinese film, and the public following for both genres in San Francisco.

Critical Images, Inc., film makers Lexi Leban and Lidia Szajko, and the clients and staff of the Center for Young Women’s Development collaborating with Shivaun M. Nestor to create www. girltrouble.org, a web site featuring the interactive game “Caught Up,” through which players enter a universe of situations and choices common to poor and incarcerated young women.

Galería de la Raza collaborating with sound installation artist Guillermo Galindo and composer Chris Brown to create “Transmission Mission,” a live multi-channel radio performance that recreates the distinctive aural qualities of the Mission neighborhood.

Locus Arts and Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center collaborating with interdisciplinary artist vu t. thu ha to create an experimental video, Kieu, weaving the story of Viet Namese massage parlor workers in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district with Truyen Kieu (The Tale of Kieu), Viet Nam’s national epic poem.

The Vietnamese Youth Development Center collaborating with Spencer Nakasako to create the video, What Does it Mean to be American?, exploring the perspectives of young Southeast Asians in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District on growing up in the United States.

MEDIA ARTS 2006

The Center for the Art of Translation and filmmaker Joyce Lee collaborating on a 30-minute film that explores growing up bilingual in an American classroom. Lee is collaborating with artists, teachers, and students participating in Poetry Inside Out, a creative writing and literary translation program working with children in bilingual classrooms.

The Center for Sex and Culture collaborating with media and performance artist Carol Leigh on “Art, Advocacy and Identity,” making innovative use of a Pathfinder-based delivery system to organize digital materials that document the stories, artistic expressions, history, cultural roles, and legal and social positions of sex workers internationally.

Circus Center, fiscal sponsor Bay Area Video Coalition, and filmmaker Lisa Denker collaborating on a documentary film with and about Judy Finelli, an influential contributor to the new circus movement, and co-founder of the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. The film tells a life story, celebrates circus history, and explores the Bay Area’s circus arts legacy.

DeafHope collaborating with filmmaker Elizabeth Thompson to create a 20-minute documentary featuring the stories of deaf women survivors of domestic violence. The project addresses the complexities and paradoxes at the heart of domestic violence.

The Legion of Graduate Students of the San Francisco Art Institute and filmmaker Jennifer Kroot creating a 90-minute documentary film synthesizing the work of pioneer underground filmmaker George Kuchar, featuring his current and past students, Hollywood filmmakers who influenced him in the 1950s, and numerous artists who have been affected by his work.

LifeFlow collaborating with sound designer, composer, engineer, and producer Jim McKee and composer and composer and sound designer Barney Jones to produce “Shared Stories,” an online audio installation featuring 20 five-minute stories by and about family members who are caring for elder relatives or aging parents.

The George Mark Children’s House collaborating with media artist Deborah Roundtree to create and test an interactive game customized for children, ages three to 16, who have life-limiting or terminal illnesses. By manipulating the game’s word bubbles, page designs, and multicultural characters, and by adding their own stories and graphics, children living at the George Mark Children’s House are able to create comic books and postcards that tell their stories and share their memories with friends and family.

New Hope Covenant Church collaborating with media artist Valeria Soe and Russell Jeung to create The Oak Park Story, a 60-minute documentary recounting the story of low-income immigrants who, in 2000, won a landmark legal settlement against their landlord. The film, created in partnership with the faith-based organization that created a coalition among the tenants, looks at immigrants overcoming tremendous odds in both their native countries and the United States.

Collaborating with the Oakland Museum of California, John Jota Leaños is creating an interactive net.opera and new media installation, “Imperial Silence: A Days of the Dead Internet Opera” that provides a creative platform for contemporary exploration of the Mexican tradition of Los Días de los Muertos.

Southern Exposure collaborating with artist R. Lee Montgomery and members of Neighborhood Public Radio to create “Radio Cartography,” engaging artists, youth, Mission District residents, and Bay Area audiences in developing original radio programming about exploring and mapping public space.

{PERFORMING ARTS}

PERFORMING ARTS, 1995 {top}

Brava! for Women in the Arts collaborating with playwright Ricardo A. Bracho, a member of Brava’s DramaDIVAS workshop, and dramaturg Cherrie Moraga on a full-length, multi-character dramatic work about the lives and experiences of gay and lesbian youth of color in San Francisco.

Chanticleer collaborating with composer Chen Yi, Women’s Philharmonic, Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company, and Chinese Cultural Productions to create and present a multi-media cantata based on five Chinese folk tales.

Cultural Odyssey and Rhodessa Jones collaborating with the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and Department of Public Works to launch The Medea Academy, a new theater project directed by Jones that serves former female prison inmates. The collaboration culminates with The Medea Academy’s first performance piece, Buried Fire.

Paul Dresher Ensemble and Paul Dresher collaborating with composer Alvin Curran and violinist David Abel on the composition of two new concertos featuring David Abel and incorporating electronic and instrumental music.

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players collaborating with composer Andrew Imbrie and the San Francisco Girls Chorus to create a new, classical contemporary work for young audiences, Songs of Then and Now.

PERFORMING ARTS, 1997

AXIS Dance Troupe, a company of artists with and without disabilities, and choreographer Thais Mazur collaborating with Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, composer Katrina Wreede, set designer Lauren Elder, writer/editor Joan Pinkvoss, historical consultant Ilana Brody, and costume designer Duston Spear on a multi-disciplinary work about the international Women in Black Against War Movement.

Opera Piccola collaborating with performance artist Rinde Eckert on Navigators, a new opera for family audiences about the exploits of three sailors lost at sea. Designer Leiko Yamomoto Pech is assisting Susannah Wood, Michael Garcia, and other members of Opera Piccola with the production.

San Francisco State University’s Drama Department collaborating with playwright Erik Ehn, composer Lisa Bielawa, and epidemiologist Andrew Moss on Phrenic Crush, an original opera exploring the natural and social history of tuberculosis from the nineteenth century to its re-emergence with the AIDS epidemic and among the homeless.

Shadowlight Productions with Balinese puppet master Larry Reed collaborating with storytellers Charlie Thom and Clarence Hostler, visual artists Debora Iyall, Brian Tripp, I Made Moja, and Tim Lee Smith, folklorist Deborah Bruce and puppeteers and designers of ShadowLight Productions on a multidisciplinary work commemorating the California Sesquicentennial and stories of Northern California’s Native Americans.

Zaccho Dance Theater and choreographer Joanna Haigood collaborating with Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir on an interdisciplinary, site-specific piece documenting and interpreting the Underground Railroad. Other collaborators are storyteller Diane Ferlatte, rigging/scene designer Benjamin Young, lighting designer Jack Carpenter, sound designer Lauren Weinger, and dramaturg Kim Euell.

PERFORMING ARTS, 1998

American Conservatory Theater collaborating with the Kronos Quartet on the development and workshop phase of The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, a new piece of music theater by playwright Mac Wellman and composer David Lang. Wellman’s libretto was based on a short story by Ambrose Bierce about a slave owner who disappears in the middle of an open field.

Asian American Theater Company collaborating with Culture Clash, 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, and Latina Theater Lab on an original collection of comedy skits, monologues, and musical numbers about Asian Pacific Islander American and Chicano/Latino identity issues and the intersection of the two communities.

Brava! for Women in the Arts, Ellen Sebastian Chang, Naomi Iizuka, Jorge Cortinas, Tanya Mayo, Sean San Jose, Andrea Thome, Michael Torres and others collaborating with Mission District teenagers to create Mariposa, the Journey Home, an hour-long theater piece about “a day-in-the-life” of Mission District youth.

Cal Performances, University of California, Berkeley, collaborating with composer and pianist Jon Jang, composer and flutist James Newton, and poet Genny Lim on When Sorrow Turns to Joy, a contemporary cantata that seeks to illuminate commonalities between African American and Chinese culture by exploring the lives of artists Paul Robeson and Mei Lanfang.

Magic Theater collaborating with Kenn Watt, the ensemble Fifth Floor, and Charles Mee, Jr. on the creation and development of Summertime, a new play that transposes the story of Euripides’ Hippolytus and its later interpretations by Racine and others into a contemporary American setting.

Thick Description and ensemble member Karen Amano collaborating with jazz composer Francis Wong on an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes that moves Conrad’s novel from Tsarist Russia and democratic Geneva to the student lounge of Columbia University and a San Francisco coffee house in the 1960s.

PERFORMING ARTS, 2000

Filipinos for Affirmative Action collaborating with Pearl Ubungen and Joey Ayala to create Tagulaylay/The Presidio, a large-scale, site-specific work about the Philippine-American war, that premiered in Tennessee Valley at the San Francisco Presidio.

Intersection for the Arts, collaborating with Marcus Shelby, Val Hendrickson, and Reginald-Ray Savage to create an original, musical adaptation of The Lights by Howard Korder.

Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts collaborating with composer/librettist Carla Lucero to create Wuornos, a two-act opera based on the life story of lesbian Aileen Wuornos, a serial killer on death row in Florida.

Oakland Ballet Association collaborating with composer and percussionist John Santos and choreographer Robert Moses to create a new work based on the Danzón tradition from Cuba.

Project Bandaloop, vocal artists David Worm and SoVoSo, and sculptor/climber Lawrence LaBianca collaborating to create a new piece uniting a capella singing, aerial and vertical dance, and sculpture.

Tinker’s Workshop and Nick Bertoni, with fiscal sponsor New Langton Arts, collaborating with composer Laeticia Sonami and East Bay teenagers on The BAGS Project, an interactive, musical environment in which animated kinetic bags, activated by the public, reveal humorous and provocative sonic elements.

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players collaborating with composer Olly Wilson on a chamber work based on paintings by Mary Lovelace O’Neal, who also created new paintings responding to Wilson’s composition.

PERFORMING ARTS, 2002

Berkeley Repertory Theatre artistic director Tony Taccone collaborating with poet and playwright Brian Freeman to create Here and There, exploring the politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa through a work focusing on the life of Simon Tseko Nkoli, an international gay rights activist, and founder of the Township AIDS Project.

The ensemble Campo Santo collaborating with playwright and director Octavio Solis to develop and premiere a two-act play, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, inspired by events surrounding a young Latino couple who went on a robbery spree, holding up San Francisco area bars and nightclubs in the 1980s—a true-life story exposing social, political, and cultural undertones of the City

KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble collaborating with director Ellen Sebastian Chang and composer Mariana Sadovska to create The Rusalki Cycle, an opera weaving together traditional Slavic folk songs with original new music.

The Magic Theatre and its artistic director Larry Eilenberg joining forces with choreographer and dancer Joe Goode on a new piece in the series, “What the Body Knows,” continuing Goode’s exploration of movement and language, and leading to production of Goode’s first play.

ODC/Theater collaborating with composer and musician Wayne Wallace, choreographers Laura Elaine Ellis, Aisha Jenkins, Robert Henry Johnson, and Robert Moses to create a new work based on the Faith Ringgold quilt, “They Came to America.” “Quilt” interweaves music, text, and a movement-based narrative and is accompanied by Wallace’s 10-piece orchestra.

Theatre Rhinoceros collaborating with composer and musician Johari Jabir on a new musical theater piece exploring hair and the role it plays in identity construction—particularly in the Queer and African American communities. HairStory incorporates a musical score by Jabir and narrative based on oral histories and interviews, co-written by Jabir, Doug Holsclaw, and John Fisher.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts collaborating with Christian Burns and Alex Ketley, co-artistic directors of The Foundry, to create The Fleshing Memory, performances and video installations in non-traditional performance spaces within the Center’s facility—such as the loading dock, underground mechanical tunnels, administrative offices, and theater dressing rooms.

The Z Space Studio collaborating with actor and director Margo Hall and playwright Leigh Fondakowski, to create a new work revisiting the tragedy of Jonestown. The artists are working closely with the California Historical Society, which recently acquired extensive Jonestown archives, and with an ensemble of professional Bay Area performers.

PERFORMING ARTS 2005

Collaborating with Alliance Française, playwright Ben Yalom and foolsFURY Theater Company are translating, workshopping, and premiering in San Francisco a work by Fabrice Melquiot, one of France’s most significant young playwrights.

Berkeley Opera collaborating with composer Clark Suprinowicz, playwright John O’Keefe, and artistic/music director Jonathan Khuner to create a new opera about the world of body transformation, cosmetic surgery, and genetic alteration.

The Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco collaborating with composer Gang Situ to create an original opera in the Cantonese tradition, fused with modern western composition and based on Jin Ping Mei, a popular classic novel of philandering, betrayal, and self-destruction.

Creativity Explored and Michael Bernard Loggins collaborating with choreographer Kim Epifano to transform Loggins’ book Fears of Your Life into a multidisciplinary theater performance exploring themes of fear and difference, particularly for individuals with disabilities. Also collaborating are AXIS Dance Company, animator Todd Herman, and visual artist Michael Stasiuk.

Young musicians at The Crowden School collaborating with composer, violinist, and producer Kaila Flexer and master Bulgarian folk musicians Duo Varimezovi on The Xylem Folkestra Project to create a body of new music that incorporates the meters of Bulgarian folk music while embracing forward-looking classical and contemporary classical and jazz devices.

Collaborating with Kronos Quartet, sound artist, composer, and instrument creator Walter Kitundu is developing a composition/installation for the instruments of the string quartet and one or more "phonoharps"—beautifully crafted multi-stringed phonograph turntables capable of simultaneously amplifying the tones of vibrating strings through the stylus as well as the content of a vinyl record. The collaboration honors American jazz great Charles Mingus.

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra collaborating with composer Jake Heggie to create a music drama based on classic legends from Metamorphosis. The finished 20-minute music drama features a period instrument orchestra with soprano and mezzo soloists and is the first new work in Philharmonia Baroque’s history.

Rova Saxophone Quartet collaborating with Bay Area-based Butoh dancer Shinichi Momo Koga on the creation and presentation of a multidisciplinary performance work that brings together master improvisers in dance and music. The performers include Berlin-based Butoh dancer Yuko Kaseki, a longtime collaborator with Mr. Koga.

The San Francisco International Arts Festival collaborating with Bay Area writer and performance artist Paul S. Flores, Cuban rap artist Julio Cardenas, and theater director Danny Hoch, and to create Representa!, an original bilingual work that dramatizes the lives of two young Latino artists who use hip-hop to transcend national political boundaries.

San Francisco Jail collaborating with actress, singer, teacher, and writer Rhodessa Jones, incarcerated women, ex-offenders, and other artists from San Francisco’s multicultural community to create Concrete Jungle, “a magical-realist journey into the heart of the American urban wilderness.” Building on work developed over 16 years by Jones and The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, Concrete Jungle theater workshops and performances seek to help inmates re-enter the community after their release.

Theater of Yugen collaborating with composer and musician Allen Whitman, an ensemble of actors and musicians, and playwright and director Erik Ehn to create a cycle of American Noh plays. The Cycle Plays are performed during the course of one day in the ritual Japanese Noh structure.

Thick Description’s team of artists collaborating with performance artist, singer, and filmmaker Julie Queen to create and produce Ten Dollar Destiny, a multi-media production based on Queen’s research into psychics, fortune tellers, and psychology. The process and finished piece include composers Pamela Z, José Marquez and Ana Machado, playwright Neena Beber, filmmaker Paul Lundahl, and set designer Paolo Salvagione.

Yerba Buena Arts and Events collaborating with bass player, orchestra and ensemble leader, and jazz composer Marcus Shelby to create “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman,” an original secular oratorio for jazz orchestra.

Z Space Studio collaborating with monologist Josh Kornbluth and campus-based Democracy Matters, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization working for campaign finance reform, to develop an evening-length theatrical monologue—the third work in Kornbluth’s “Citizen Josh” series.

PERFORMING ARTS 2006

American Conservatory Theater collaborating with playwright Philip Kan Gotanda on the final development stage of his script, After the War. Set in a boardinghouse in San Francisco’s Japantown in 1946, the play chronicles the return of first and second-generation Japanese Americans to their neighborhood after being forcibly incarcerated in internment camps during World War II.

Circuit Network collaborating with composer Jack Wickert and the ensemble Culture Clash to create “The Mission Tour,” a mobile arts project featuring live performance and a recorded audio tour, presented on the Mexican Bus. The project seeks to reveal the social and political history, diverse cultures, and contemporary life of San Francisco’s Mission District.

CounterPULSE collaborating with Jess Curtis and his company Gravity and with dancers with and without disabilities to create, Under the Radar, a study in the physical limitations and abilities of a range of very different performers, using the vocabularies of contemporary dance, partner-based acrobatics, contact dance, aerial performance, and physical theater.

Dancers’ Group collaborating with choreographer Jo Kreiter and her company Flyaway Productions to develop and present “The Live Billboard Project,” combining aerial choreography with a customized, large-scale billboard to examine the effect of women’s images in public space and the loss of public space to corporate messages.

Dimensions Dance Theater Composer and choreographer Deborah Vaughn collaborating with Anthony Brown to create Cross Currents, exploring migration stories of African Americans to and within the Bay Area and the empowering effect that music and dance have had on those who came to begin a new life in the region.

The Paul Dresher Ensemble and composer Paul Dresher collaborating with mechanical theater artist Matt Heckert, percussionist Steven Schick, and the Paul Dresher Ensemble to create large-scale musical instruments that function as the set and sound-generating sources for a new music-theater work. The project’s scope includes a live theatrical performance as well as presentation of Heckert’s sound sculptures and Dresher’s music in an audience-interactive installation at a gallery or museum.

The Jewish Music Festival collaborating with composer and performer Dan Cantrell, Kitka’s eight female vocalists; Yiddish vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, song writer, and cultural historian Michael Alpert; and Balkan-Romani multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and arranger Rumen Sali Shopov to co-create an evening of new interpretations of Eastern European Jewish and Romani (“Gypsy”) folk songs alongside a new composition by Cantrell.

The Magic Theater collaborating with playwright and performer Brian Freeman on the development of Here and There, exploring gay rights and AIDS activism in South Africa. Based on Freeman’s research in South Africa and London, Here and There tells the interconnected stories of Simon Tseko, Nkoli Zackie Achmat, and Lusikisiki, a rural town in the Eastern Cape.

The Oakland East Bay Symphony and its artistic director Michael Morgan collaborating with composer and musician Jon Jang to create Chinese American Symphony No. 1, paying tribute to the Chinese who built the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The finished symphony features the full orchestra and erhu soloist Jiebing Chen.

ODC/Theater collaborating with choreographer Benjamin Levy, his company LEVYdance, and composer Keeril Makan to develop a new dance theater piece, exploring the experiences of first generation immigrants who came to the United States seeking asylum from oppressive regimes and the experiences of the children they raised “American.” The score for the piece is recorded by Kronos Quartet.

The San Francisco Jazz Organization’s (SFJAZZ’s) All-Star High School Ensemble collaborating with composer and musician John Santos to create Traditions in Transition, a musical suite exploring the past, present, and future of Afro-Latin music. Santos is creating the suite with SFJAZZ’s 20-piece teenage big band, its director Dr. Dee Spencer, arranger John Calloway, and professional local guest artists playing a broad range of traditional folkloric instruments.

{TRADITIONAL ARTS}

TRADITIONAL ARTS, 2001 {top}

Through American Indian Contemporary Arts, dancer Gilbert Blacksmith of Medicine Warriors Dance group and singer Michael Bellanger of All Nations Drum are collaborating with 15-20 youth and adults to create traditional regalia, drums, and drumsticks, and to develop dances and songs for use in performances at local pow-wows and dances.

Collaborating with Asian Improv aRts, storyteller Nancy Wang and her long-time collaborator and artistic partner Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo are researching and developing for performance, narratives of three or more Asians and Asian Americans.

California Academy of Sciences collaborating with Nigerian-born sculptor Geoffrey Nwogu on the rare creation and presentation of a Mbari family of three deity figures. The work resembles a typical Mbari house complex built as part of the ritual customs practiced by a handful of small villages in Igboland, near the township of Owerri.

Green Policy Institute and fiscal sponsor the Tides Center collaborating with sculptor Rubén Guzmán to produce a series of papier-mâché sculptures and installations celebrating many residents of the Fruitvale District of Oakland’s Mexican heritage. Guzmán is sharing traditional practices and techniques that he learned in Mexico City from the internationally-renowned Linares family.

San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies and Professor Danilo Begonia, Pilipino Kulintang master artist Danongan Kalunduyan, and the Ating Tao Drum Circle collaborating to create new performance works based on traditional kulintang music and dance from the Southern Philippines—exploring the boundaries between traditional works and innovation.

SOMARTS collaborating with dancer, percussionist, and choreographer Roberto Borrell, Orquesta La Moderna Tradición—the only danzón ensemble in the United States—and five master artists to develop a multi-disciplinary presentation of Cuban music and dance that traces the history of three genres of Cuban music leading up to modern popular dance music known as “Timba.”

TRADITIONAL ARTS, 2003

Asian Community Mental Health Services collaborating with Taen Linh Saelee and the Mien Needlework Group to create four elaborate traditional costumes, two for adults and two for children, incorporating imported fabric, silver thread, and adornments.

The Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts collaborating with multidisciplinary artist Siu Tuita and with members of the Bay Area Tongan community to create, document, and exhibit the making of Tongan tapa-cloth–or bark cloth–using island-grown plant materials and dyes.

The Fremont Symphony Orchestra collaborating with Hamed Shalizi and members of the Afghan Ensemble to research traditional music of Afghanistan, resurrect the art form, and present it to Bay Area audiences through a series of “Afghanistan: Music of Tradition and Transition” concerts.

La Peña Cultural Center collaborating with bandleader and percussionist Jesus Diaz, Cuban master musicians and dancers to create De Aquí p'Allá Con Clave, a new work featuring Cuban folkloric music and dance alongside contemporary Cuban jazz and timba that draw from the traditional forms.

Melody of China collaborating with Wilson S. Mah of the Loong Mah Sing See Wui and composer Gang Situ to create newly choreographed lion dance routines to freshly composed musical pieces that are played on traditional Chinese instruments.

Members of the Oakland Youth Chorus collaborating with Zimbabwean artist Julia Tsitsi Chigamba to create Bembero Mudengu, (The Celebration of the Basket), a new multidisciplinary presentation of Zimbabwean music and dance tracing the history and diversity of the Shona musical tradition.

The Oñi Ochun Cultural Center collaborating with choreographer Susana Arenas Pedroso to explore the patakin parable tradition of the Yoruba/Lukumi religion, bringing Afro-Cuban storytelling to life through dance, music, and spoken word.

Pacific Islanders’ Cultural Association collaborating with Kawika Hiwahiwa Keawehakuahu’ula Alfiche and Halau Aloha Pumehana o Polynesia to create “Nä Ali’i,” a new performance work about four members of Hawaiian royalty and their affect on the culture’s history.

The Beat Within and Pacific News Service collaborating with visual artist Jason Tréas, who became a prolific, self-taught artist when incarcerated at Folsom and Pelican Bay State Prisons, to create three murals, one at each of the Boys and Girls Club units in the greater Mission District.

TRADITIONAL ARTS 2005

Collaborating with the African American Art and Culture Complex, Nigerian sculptor Geoffrey Nwogu is creating a bas relief installation that captures the form and colors of a typical Mbari house, a project based in the Igbo cultural tradition and philosophy of Nigeria.

California Academy of Science’s Traditional Arts Program collaborating with Afro-Peruvian percussionist Lalo Izquierdo and Bolivian musician Oscar Reynolds to create new musical compositions that combine Bolivian Indian and Afro-Andean music, drawing attention and paying homage to the co-existing Indian and African cultures in the two countries.

Door Dog Music Productions collaborating with Azerbaijani pianist Chingiz Sadykhov and with Afghani, Iranian, Azerbaijani, Kurdish, and Assyrian master artists to create a program combining traditional and newly composed music with poetry, dance, and film. The binding thread among the artists is observance of the vernal equinox or Nowruz, whose pre-Islamic origins are embraced in different ways throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.

DREAM, a professional performing company that grew out of Destiny Arts Center, collaborating with Afro-Cuban folklorist and choreographer Jose Francisco Barroso to create “Full Circle,” an exploration of historic, social, and aesthetic links between Afro Cuban Rumba and African American Hip Hop.

Temple Israel of Alameda collaborating with composer Stuart Brotman and musicians Marlene Segelstein and Joshua Horowitz to create a purely instrumental klezmer style Jewish religious service for chamber trio. Working in styles rooted in 19th and early 20th century Ashkenazi, Jewish cantorial, and klezmer traditions, the artists are developing, composing, preparing, and performing the music with the klezmer ensemble Veretski Pass.

The Unity Council collaborating with visual traditional Mexican artist Rubén Guzmán and youth and elders of the Fruitvale District in Oakland to produce a public artwork, addressing the theme “Strong Women and Community,” celebrating the contribution of Latina residents of Fruitvale to the history and development of the neighborhood.

Traditional Arts, 2007

Asian American Dance Performances collaborating with Cambodian classical dancer and choreographer Charya Burt, Vishnu Tattva Das Odissi Vilas of Sacred Dance of India, and Melody Takata of Gen Taiko to create Of Spirits Intertwined, exploring the rituals that three different Asian dance traditions use to make offerings to their spiritual ancestors. A series of symposia, dance workshops, and outreach projects are part of the work’s development.

Asian Improv aRts collaborating with Melody Takata, Madame Fuima Kansuma, Hideko Nakajima, Tatsu Aoki, and members of Gen Taiko to create a performance on the theme of Shimenawa. Shimenawa is created by binding together multiple threads for strength. and refers to the historic, aesthetic qualities of Japanese culture that Nikkei (people of Japanese descent born outside of Japan) embrace in an effort to maintain and nurture community.

Bay Area Black United Fund collaborating with Bay Area quilters Marion Coleman, Dolores Presley, and Julia Vitero to create 15 quilts that promote personal responsibility for health—focusing, in particular, on risk factors associated with metabolic resistance syndrome, a pre-diabetic condition. The artists are participating in the Bay Area African American Health Initiative (a program of the Bay Area Black United Fund), which is presenting trainings to promote choosing life-affirming activities on a daily basis.

Centro Legal de la Raza collaborating with weaver Martina Jimenez to create, document, and preserve Mayan loom working. During the civil war in Guatemala, the military tried to stop indigenous communities from practicing traditional arts. Now living as a refugee in the United States, Martina Jimenez is encouraging Guatemalan women to participate in preserving their threatened weaving traditions while she is creating and installing five full-size traditional Mayan textiles that celebrate and visually represent the cultural heritage of the hundreds of Mayan workers who meet within the Oakland Worker Center, developed by Centro Legal de la Raza.

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts collaborating with Brazilian Capoeira Master Ubirajara Almeida and with Ghanaian/Anlo Ewe Master Choreographer, dancer and drummer CK Ladzkepo to create Lamentation for Freedom Fighters for the 2009 opening of the Center’s new theater and its 40th anniversary. Joining Mr. Almeida and Mr. Ladzkepo are a cast of artists from Ghana and Brazil along with teens and young adults from Richmond who study at the East Bay Center as apprentices in the West African Music and Dance Ensemble.

Mindanao Lilang-Lilang collaborating with Mellie Lopez, Ph.D., Danongan Kalanduyan, Melinda Lopez, and Cota Deles Yabut to create a folk musical theater piece based on a Maguidanao folktale, “Sultana and the Pearl King.” This story of the tragic love between a mortal woman (the Sultana of Cotabato) and an undersea ruler of the Sulu Sea (The Pearl King) is intended to reveal the mystique of the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines.

San Francisco Gu Zheng Music Society collaborating with percussionist Wang Wei, Matthew Antaky, Tian Yi Cui, Wu Zu Fan, Kwok King Foo, Wong Siu Fung, Weishan Liu, Qien Qi Ming, Wong Bing Pui, Zhao Chun Qi, Michael Santoro, Liu Wei Shan, Li Liang Shen, Eva Tam, Tammy Tan, Chan Ching Wha, Chen Yao, Guan Yi, and Dai Ming Yue on the production, staging, and artistic direction of “The Chinese Opera Project” (working title), bringing together Chinese artists from different regions of China and those regions’ opera traditions, creating a discussion about their musical similarities and leading to a large-scale event.

World Arts West collaborating with Patrick Makuakane to create and present a dance piece inspired by ancient Hawaiian astronomy, “Maui, Turning Back the Sky,” premiering at the 30th anniversary of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. Makuakane is exploring Hawaiian astronomy and the story of Maui, the great ancestral navigator/astronomer who guided all Polynesian ancestors to the Polynesian islands around 3000 B.C.

{VISUAL ARTS}

VISUAL ARTS, 1994 {top}

Berkeley Art Center collaborating with Jos Sances and ten women artists on a portfolio of silkscreen prints to celebrate International Women’s Day. Featured artists are: Kim Anno, Claudia Bernardi, Mildred Howard, Hung Liu, Yolanda Lopez, Juana Alicia Montoya, Ruth Morgan, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Faith Ringgold, and Carrie Mae Weems. The project culminates with an exhibition of the works and sales of boxed sets of the prints to benefit the Berkeley Art Center.

East Bay Habitat for Humanity collaborating with Ruth O’Day to develop ceramic tiles to be applied as mosaics to the walls of a public park in the Sobrante Park region of East Oakland where East Bay Habitat has a major new housing development. O’Day’s work with Sobrante Park organizations and a community design committee is reflected in the tile designs.

509 Cultural Center, collaborating with Barry McGee, creating a site-specific mural series on the inset walls of a building on Howard Street in the South of Market. McGee’s work with local youth and other neighbors is developing images for the mural that represent its location.

Galería de la Raza collaborating with Catalina Govea, Rubin Guzman, Antonio Tovar, and Virginia Benavidez, to document recent immigrants’ daily lives through photographs taken from the immigrants’ perspective. The project is culminating with an exhibit at Galería.

U.C.S.F./Mount Zion Medical Center collaborating with installation artist and cancer survivor Ann Chamberlain and landscape designer Katsy Swan to create a healing garden. Working with hospital staff, physicians, patients, and patients’ families, the artist and designer are shaping a community garden and interior tile installation that offer solace and renewal within a busy, urban medical center.

VISUAL ARTS 1996

Creativity Explored collaborating with James Morgan and Christopher Clark, on “Animals in the Natural Environment,” presented on the World Wide Web and as a permanent collage/painting on the walls of a recreation area at Laguna Honda Hospital. Collaborating artists are Cam Quach, Betty Bernard, and Yolanda Ramirez from Creativity Explored; and James Cunningham, Maura Frias, and Bob Neil from Laguna Honda Hospital.

Dublin Fine Arts Foundation collaborating with Jon Rubin, Larry Sultan, and Harrell Fletcher to explore “mall culture” through extended residencies in a vacant store at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton and the on-site installation, “People in Real Life.”

The Lab collaborating with artists of the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP), including lead artist Aaron Noble, and the tenants of the Mission District’s historic Red Stone Building to create murals in the building’s lobbies. The Red Stone, constructed as a Labor Temple, now houses many arts and community organizations. Participating CAMP artists are: Carolyn Castaño, John Fadeff, Susan Greene, Barry McGee, Ruby Neri, Aaron Noble, Isis Rodriguez, Rigo ‘96, and Chuck Sperry.

Horace Mann Academic Middle School and fiscal sponsor Friends of Photography collaborating with photographer Patrick Hebert to create and permanently display photographic portraits of the school’s students. Students and school-wide committees are working with Hebert to select images to be transferred as photo murals on interior hallways and the school’s exterior.

Mission Neighborhood Centers collaborating with Susan Cervantes to create a new community mural on the facade of the Precita Valley Community Center. Cervantes is engaging the children, youth, and families who use the Center’s daily programs in creating the mural.

VISUAL ARTS, 1997

City and County of San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and fiscal sponsor Programs for People collaborating with photographer Ruth Morgan on a series of billboards and posters about violence prevention. These works highlight “Resolve to Stop the Violence,” a project that engages community organizations in work with victims and ex-offenders.

Precita Eyes Muralists Association, Inc. collaborating with Seyed Alavi and Estria on “What Do You Think?,” a series of temporary murals in the shape of comic strip thought balloons, placed so that they appear to be thoughts rising from the minds of passersby. The artists and teenagers are selecting the messages from comic books and graphic novels.

On Lok, Inc. collaborating with Rene Yung on “Celebration of Aging,” etched and illuminated glass works installed permanently in four of On Lok’s centers for frail elderly adults of San Francisco. The glass works combine texts culled from interviews with the residents alongside images of residents’ hands.

San Francisco Arts Education Project collaborating with sculptor Ray Beldner, landscape architect Loretta Gargan, and students and faculty of Francisco Middle School to create Common Ground, a sanctuary garden in an abandoned courtyard at the center of the school.

Southern Exposure at Project Artaud collaborating with an artist team headed by Julio Morales, architects, urban planners, computer programmers, and young people on Urban Renewal Laboratory. The project culminates with installation of a model city at Southern Exposure, a public forum, a printed catalogue, and a bicycle ride—all exploring current experiments in urban planning. Participating artists are: Raveevarn Choksombatchai, Margaret Crane, Erika Olsen Hannes, Harrell Fletcher/Jon Rubin, Scott MacLeod, Anita Margrill, Julio Morales, Natasha Ogunji, Kevin Radley, Alison Sant, Jacques Servin, Valerie Soe, Richard Sommer, Zane Vella, Fan Warren, and Judy West.

VISUAL ARTS, 1998

Asian Women’s Shelter collaborating with Meera Desai to create three interior murals at the shelter for battered women. The artist is working with the women and children residing at the center and with staff and volunteers.

The Farallon Research Station of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory collaborating with Sam Bower and Meadowsweet Dairy to create a site-specific sculpture on Southeast Farallon Island. Building rubble into a sculptural form, the artists and scientists are enhancing the bird habitat and creating a blind that serves as a blind to facilitate scientific study of Cassin’s auklets, Rhinoceros Auklets, Ashy Storm-petrels, and other cavity-nesting sea birds.

Fruitvale Elementary School collaborating with Carolyna Marks, Xochitl Guerrero, and Roberto Guerrero to create a 2,000-tile “Peace Wall,” for an exterior wall at Fruitvale Elementary School. The artists are working with students, families, school staff and teachers, and community groups engaged in a Healthy Start Project at the school.

Oakland Sharing the Vision collaborating with Suzanne Lacy to create “CODE 33,” a public art project and workshop series for youth inviting their perspectives on Oakland’s community policing initiative.

Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO) and apartment tenants, staff and neighbors collaborating with Ned Kahn to create a public artwork on an exterior wall at the Ceatrice Polite Apartments providing housing for the elderly in the Yerba Buena Gardens neighborhood of San Francisco. Kahn’s 70-foot-high piece conveys the feeling of watching waves churned by wind on the San Francisco Bay.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s architecture department (led by Aaron Betsky) collaborating with Leah Levy, landscape architects, and other collaborators to create Revelatory Landscapes, a combination of museum installation, landscape installation, and public art. The project explores the history, social significance, and natural properties of urban landscapes with landscape architects ADOBE LA, Kathryn Gustafson, George Hargreaves, Walter Hood, and Tom Leader.

VISUAL ARTS, 2000

Artship Foundation collaborating with Ben Trautman and engineer and inventor Ralf Hotchkiss to create mechanical sculptures addressing wheelchair accessibility on the 500-foot-long Artship.

California Academy of Sciences collaborating with Mark Brest van Kempen to create site-specific interpretive signs contrasting the earlier natural history of six San Francisco neighborhoods to their current forms.

Artists from Creativity Explored, including David Jarvey and Michael Bernard Loggins, collaborating with Harrell Fletcher and Chris Johanson to produce a publication and posters about the universe that are being presented in Bay Area grade schools.

The Edible Schoolyard collaborating with Ene Osteraas-Constable to document the gardening of culturally diverse families whose children have contributed to the Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Middle School.

Friends of the Oakland Public Library collaborating with fabric artist Ellen Oppenheimer to engage students at 18 Oakland elementary schools in making quilts for permanent installation in seven Oakland public branch libraries.

Galería de la Raza collaborating with John Leaños, Mónica Praba Pilar, and René Garcia (“Los Cybrids”) to produce three 10' x 24' computer-generated temporary murals, on-line artwork, and an installation about the digital divide and the Latino community.

Gay and Lesbian Historical Society collaborating with E.G. Crichton and Kim Anno to create “Lost and Found,” a mixed-media traveling “museum” of small installations based on Gay and Lesbian Historical Society archival materials and exploring the history of working-class lesbians. “Lost and Found” is being displayed at the James Hormel Center of the New Main Library in San Francisco, the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society, and other sites.

The Persian Center collaborating with Taraneh Hemami to create Hall of Remembrance. Through workshops, interviews, and community meetings the artist is collecting images and text from the Bay Area’s Iranian American community and printing them on mirrors, which are being installed on walls of the central hall of the downtown Berkeley Persian Center.

VISUAL ARTS, 2002

Collaborating with researchers at the University of California San Francisco Mt. Zion Cancer Center and patients at the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, artists Ann Chamberlain, Alison Sant, and Klover Kim are exploring the uses of image, metaphor, and language in medical research and in treatment of and communication with patients. The artists’ research culminates with installations in the research and treatment centers.

Birgit Gehrt collaborating with the staff and teenaged participants of The Body Positive—an agency addressing girls’ and women’s problems with self-esteem and body dissatisfaction–to create “Alterations,” a series of unconventional body garments and sculptures to be exhibited both in a gallery and on Body Positive’s web site.

The Margie Cherry Complementary Breast Health Center and fiscal sponsor the John Hale Health Center collaborating with documentary photographer Anne Hamersky to produce transit shelter and bus interior posters displaying health messages and raising community awareness of breast cancer support programs in Bayview and Hunters Point.

The Labor Archives and Resource Center of San Francisco State University and fiscal sponsor Intersection for the Arts collaborating with Kate Connell and Oscar Melara to create “Our Work Life,” exploring three generations of Bay Area workers through three-dimensional murals incorporating archival materials, mounted in the interiors of five SamTrans commuter buses in spring 2004.

Choreographer Kimi Okada of the ODC Dance Company collaborating with visual artist Claudia Bernardi to create Flight to Ixcan, a performance exploring personal loss in the context of political deaths occurring in Central and South America in the 1970s.

The San Francisco Estuary Institute collaborating with artists Elise Brewster, Susan Schwartzenberg, Robin Grossinger, and the Institute’s scientists to present research about the evolution of the Bay to general audiences through site-specific billboards and bus shelter posters in San Francisco and the East Bay, a web site, and exhibitions at the Lawrence Hall of Science and San Francisco Public Library.

VISUAL ARTS, 2004

The Chinese Historical Society of America and Indigo Som collaborating to create and exhibit “Sweet & Sour Catfish,” new work about Chinese restaurants in the American South—focusing on Mississippi and Alabama, where Chinese restaurants exist, yet less than 1% of the population is Chinese American. The presentation incorporates interviews, archival and other research, photographic documentation, a web log, and an exhibition catalog.

Creative Growth Art Center and Julio Morales collaborating to create a media-based public art project asking, “What is Outside?” Morales and Creative Growth artists are working side-by-side to create projects that ask questions about the nature of “outside” and raise awareness for the work being created by artists with disabilities. Their efforts are culminating with a series of public billboard service announcements, a public lecture, and a DVD publication/catalogue.

Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, its director Holly Alonso, and Ene Osteraas-Constable collaborating to create “California Native,” a permanent art installation that brings alive the intertwined stories of the people and plants that were native to the Fruitvale District of Oakland. Historical research, interviews, and photography are leading to six sculptural installations featuring imagery and text and nestled among the plants in a Native Plants Garden at the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park.

New Langton Arts, Felipe Dulzaides, and David Prowler collaborating on “Double Take,” a new public artwork that features eight site-specific photographic billboards, a map, color catalog, and web page. The artist seeks to “stimulate a subtle, aesthetic experience by subverting the billboard’s assumed intention and focusing on the viewer’s immediate reality.” The billboards are being produced and installed over the course of a year.

Pond and artists Amy Balkin, Kim Stringfellow, Tim Halbur, are collaborating to create an audio tour between San Francisco and Los Angeles, via Interstate 5, illuminating current and historic environmental impacts on communities and land along the route. Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice is assisting with research, plan development, and distribution of the finished work, which includes a two-CD set and an annotated booklet/map of the route—available for purchase and through a Web site.

Project YES!, furniture designer Michael O’Connor and visual artist Carl Augé are collaborating with East Oakland youth to create a piece of signature art furniture—incorporating a reception desk and DJ booth—and a mixed-media visual artwork for the entryway at the youth and community center. The artists and organization seek to reflect the culture, experiences, viewpoints, and creative vision of the young people who participate in the project and the Youth Uprising Center.

The San Francisco Print Collective and artist Steve Lambert are collaborating to create the “Anti-Advertising Agency,” an interdisciplinary, collaborative public art project that examines, through constructive parody and gentle humor, the role of advertising and public art in the Bay Area. The Agency is creating a model business and its artists are producing a series of small-scale projects, exploring the role advertising plays in public space.

The Temescal Merchants Association and artists Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell are collaborating to create The Temescal Amity Works—facilitating and documenting the exchange of backyard produce, conversation, and collective biography within the Temescal Neighborhood in Oakland. For the course of the project, the artists are maintaining a storefront on Telegraph Avenue, managing a “Backyard Crop Sharing Cart”; producing neighborhood exhibitions and gatherings; and creating a series of printed materials.

Visual Arts, 2007

Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation is collaborating with Sue Mark and marksearch (Sue Mark and L. Bruce Douglas) to draw attention to four downtown Oakland parks—Lafayette, Madison, Jefferson and Lincoln Square—through marked walking tours. Following a year of park cleanups and community conversations, the artists is creating between 12 and 28 unique cast bronze sidewalk medallions, 10,000 printed map-guides to the parks, and a Web log.

Kearny Street Workshop is collaborating with Donna Keiko Ozawa, Bob Hsiang, and Christine Wong Yap to create Activist Imagination, a multimedia exhibition investigating Asian American and other activist movements of the last 35 years and envisioning new forms and expressions of activism that may hold meaning and relevance in the future. Archival research and a quarterly open discussion series are informing the exhibit, which is filling the entire Kearny Street Workshop space on the occasion of its 35th anniversary.

Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center is collaborating with Helena Keeffe, engaging long-term patients at the hospital in a series of drawing and printmaking workshops to result in linens and hospital scrubs designed by residents for use in the hospital facility. The completed work is being unveiled in a community celebration and fashion show and documented in a printed booklet with photographs and text.

The Luggage Store (a.k.a. 509 Cultural Center) is collaborating with Rigo ’23 to design and create a stone mosaic entry walkway in Cohen Alley off of Leavenworth Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. The collaboration encompasses work with some of the alley’s neighbors, and with calceteiros (master stonemasons) from Portugal or Brazil. The piece is completing the Cohen Alley Project, through which The Luggage Store has transformed a once blighted alley into an inner-city garden and venue for public art and performances.

Nimbus Arts, with its fiscal sponsor Arts Council Napa County, is collaborating with Rob Keller to create The Enormous Mobile Vintage Trailer Observatory (EMoViTO), addressing the acute need for public education about the plight of the honeybee population, as well as ways humans can change agricultural practices to protect honeybees. Keller and his collaborators are creating an observation beehive by retrofitting a classic aluminum travel trailer with interior Plexiglas hive bodies and equipping it with multimedia educational materials.

Five young artists from the San Francisco Art Institute and five young immigrants from Instituto Familiar de la Raza are collaborating with Sergio De La Torre to create new work that explores current conditions of the Bay Area immigrant community—specifically investigating notions of safety and security. The project, Agit-Van, involves its subjects as creative participants in constructing their stories and completed pieces are being screened guerrilla style—projected through a traveling cinema truck equipped with video and sound equipment.

The San Francisco Public Library and fiscal sponsor Friends of the San Francisco Public Library are collaborating with Kate Connell and Oscar Melara and the artists’ neighbors in San Francisco’s Portola District to produce a set of handmade books, an exhibition, an event, and a Web site exploring their little-known neighborhood in southeast San Francisco that is about to have its own branch library Content for the books is being generated through conversations, oral histories and use of archival materials from Portola residents and librarians, and from the library’s San Francisco History Center.