I’m happy to announce that I’ve been awarded a 2016-2017 Print Public artist residency at the venerable Kala Art Institute in Berkeley! Information on last year’s Print Public program here.

Details and calendar still TBD, but I’ll likely be working on a public project in and around Kala over the summer and fall of 2016: it will probably involve a lot of neighborhood engagement, research, and illustrations. Since printmaking has long been one of my blind spots as an artist, I’m also thrilled to have access to classes and facilities that will allow me to learn some great new skills and techniques to apply to my project.

My fellow artists for this round of Print Public are Sue Mark (who is continuing the program from before), Ramekon O’Arwisters, Mildred Howard, Drew Cameron, and Kelly Ording + Jet Martinez.

Image below, one of the late, great Susan O’Malley’s Print Public projects, installed by friends and family after her passing.

Silverlens Galleries showed work from my summer “Collapse” show again last week at Art Fair Philippines, Feb 18-21, in Makati.

I couldn’t be there, but dear friend Carlos Celdran sent me a pic of one of my paintings on display at the Silverlens booth:

Collapse V (Seward Highway, Alaska 1964)
acrylic on canvas
40 x 48 inches
2015

While at the Asian Art Museum with my drawing students recently, I found myself enjoying an activity designed to help visitors better appreciate the huge influence of Japanese ukiyo-e prints on European artists beginning in the 19th century. I went in a little skeptical of the “Looking East” exhibition’s potential for the usual fetishization of Asian cultures, but came out of it pleasantly surprised.

I’ve loved Hiroshige’s prints for years, but had never attempted to copy them to understand them better. Sketching this out at one of the activity stations at the museum was unexpectedly fun and genuinely educational.

As I wandered through the exhibition, I found myself attracted to its numerous depictions of aquatic life. This is unsurprising, given that the public art project I’m currently at work on involves sea creatures. This project, sponsored by the San Francisco Arts Commission, is intended to remind people of the consequences of dumping contaminants into storm drains that pollute the bay. Here, some teasers for 3 of the 6 pieces in progress: a leopard shark, some bat rays, and some rockfish, all protecting the storm drains.

My illustrations will be output onto mural textile, and adhered to certain sidewalks in the Mission Bay area of SF. Each mural will be around 4 x 5 feet. As the full designs are currently in revision to adapt to some quirks of the sites where they’ll be installed, I can’t post them in their entirety yet.

Almost immediately after MaxiPad, I had to shift gears and drive down to LA to shoot a new video project with Reanne and Eliza for Los Angeles media org Freewaves‘ annual ‘Long Live LA‘ program. The program commissions local artists to make short videos for public venues, usually addressing a particular health theme. (Since Reanne is LA, Freewaves deemed us “local” enough.) We chose to focus on women and self-esteem, in our own oddball MOB way.

Sneak peek of the 5 videos that MOB is editing right now:

The videos are very different than MOB’s typical output in a number of ways: we’re actually not in the videos ourselves (other than in some peripheral, background way), and we’re definitely not in our usual faux-queen drag. They’re also very short (60 secs) and silent (since they are destined for public space where audio might be intrusive). But they’re also actually very typical of MOB output in the use of humor, absurdity and imagination. And we’ve often had a grand time collaborating with others, so our cast included a lot of our LA and Bay Area friends and family.

The project involved 2 trips to LA for Eliza and I (1 to plan, 1 to shoot). 4 of the videos were shot in LA, and 1 in SF. Reanne did a tremendous amount of the front-end planning and organizing; Eliza and I are doing the bulk of the back-end editing and finalizing. We should be done this week.

Screening dates still TBD: I’ll keep you posted.

After months of noodling and fretting, my biggest performance commission to date went about as smoothly as I could have hoped for. Although it’s already been a while since MaxiPad: Templum de Mysteriis, I’m finally able to look back on the experience with a little more perspective.

Early in 2015, Val Imus at SoEx asked me if I would be interested in a new performance commission attached to the “Public Works” exhibition being held later in the year at Mills College Art Museum. Thus began a series of months of poor Val trying to pin me down about what I intended to do for press/print deadlines, and me trying as best as I could to give her something to go on (while still needing time to sort it out). At that time, I was thinking a lot about padding and protection in relation to women in public space. I really had no idea what to do with these musings, but figured that “MaxiPad” was a campy title that could absorb a lot of…ideas.

Months later, now shackled with this exceedingly dumb title, I ended up coming up with some ideas for a performance that really didn’t seem to have anything to do with padding or protection. Increasingly anxious about what I was to create, to organize my thoughts I generated a list of goals and challenges that would make me happy, not stressed, to undertake.

The piece needed to be collaborative, colorful, ridiculous, political, organized, rehearsed, improvisational, camaraderie-laden and above all, fun. While I would lead the project, I wanted this to be an authentic opportunity to others to step up and make this their own thing. It needed to be a performance piece of about an hour, with multiple stages: a short walk/mini-parade, some choreographed numbers (“dance” too strong a word), and some audience participation.

To this end, I assembled an amazing girl-gang supergroup of art cronies, close friends, and former students, all with the comedic chops and coordination to pull this off flawlessly: Niki and Monica Magtoto, Azin Seraj, Alysoun Quinby, Jessica Gammell, Rebeka Rodriguez, Patricia Cariño, Kim Arteche, Dara Del Rosario, Victoria Ayala and Jeila Saidi.

I gave the supergroup a loose, “demented ladies in togas in cult of the Mysteries” premise, a verdant setting (Oakland’s Morcom Rose Garden), and some organizing principles that they could then take in whatever direction they chose. We scheduled workshops and rehearsals to sort our various ideas out. I made all the costumes and props. I prepared all the snacks for rehearsals. I was production crew, stage-mom and caterer. It was glorious fun.

The day of the performance started with some stress about a potential rain storm, but the MaxiPad deities showed us mercy. We arrived on site in the morning for our first full-cast run-through in the rose garden, then decamped to a friend’s home nearby to primp, eat a little pizza, and to knock back a little tequila to get fully into the MaxiPad spirit.

And we were off and running! In retrospect, I continue to marvel at how smoothly it all went. The MaxiPad-ettes were fabulous, of course, but it was teamwork on multiple fronts: incredible support from SoEx with press, logistics, funds, sound system and morale, and a huge turn-out from friends, family, and good-natured strangers (who had no idea what they’d stumbled into).

I haven’t pestered SoEx enough yet for their comprehensive documentation of the performance, but I’ll update the Projects section of Wofflehouse with this soon. In the meantime, I continue to be grateful for this marvelous experience, working with amazing women, in a crazy little rose garden in Oakland.