Dear Mr. H

Well done Mr. H!

I am looking forward to some pictures! There is an on-site pub too? Our class-curated walking tour is tomorrow. (See image below) I am looking into incorporating sound into our stop (the old shoreline of Mission-Bay) Also, because it will be dark Jackie and I have been playing around with shining light through a jar of water with blue dye to make “water” on the ground. If it sounds strange it is because it is. (Jackie pickup some saltwater taffy to pass out too) So sad you are going to miss it! Good luck with your curatorial adventure. I look forward to your excited return.

Much Affection

Josephine



For immediate release:
NAIL 2: Surrounding Area
Friday, November 14, 2008
5-7 p.m.

California College of the Arts' curatorial collective, NAIL, is pleased to present a new mobile, site-specific exhibition, NAIL 2: Surrounding Area. This one-night only event will take the form of a guided walking tour through CCA's San Francisco campus and local neighborhood. The five brief stops along the tour will include local artistic and historical destinations of varying scale and structure - visible and invisible, past and present. Special guest speakers and members of NAIL will show hidden sites of cultural production in the neighborhood, from the former sandy shores of the San Francisco Bay to The Double Play, a pub near the site of the demolished Minor-League Seal Stadium.

The 5pm tour will commence at CCA's main building on 1111 8th Street and will continue for 1.5 miles ending at 16th and Bryant. Surrounding Area is designed to create a site- and time-specific interaction among the guides, audience, community and destinations. The tour will foster conversation and an exchange of information about overlooked and under-recognized places, themes, and projects of the CCA campus and surrounding neighborhood.

For more information please visit notalwaysinlocation.blogspot.com or email us at notalwaysinlocation@gmail.com

Keep in mind Surrounding Area is an outdoor walking tour lasting about two hours. Please dress accordingly.

Trade Secrets - Day One

Hi Josephine (and blog,)

I am here in Banff, Canada attending the Symposium Trade Secrets: Education/Collection/History put on by the Banff International Curatorial Institute.

Despite some airport troubles that threatened to derail the entire trip, I arrived safely in Banff yesterday evening in time to attend the keynote speech given by Richard Flood, Chief Curator at the New Museum. Floods speech/lecture was quite good, albeit dense, and I'll talk about some of the points he made in a moment, but for now I'd like to jump back to the shuttle ride to the center where I tried to lay out for myself the goals I had on this trip.

GOALS:

1) Attend all panel discussions, take good notes, don't be afraid to ask questions  during the question and answer period.

2) Think about Pro Arts' connection to these contemporary curatorial models; answer this question: "How can a community based gallery best provide programming that is relevant to our time and is adding to the critical discourse while still being accessible to its diverse audience? With little to no money?"

3) Identify organizations that may want to partner with. Who is doing interesting things? How can we be a part of that? Is there any opportunity to guest curate at other institutions?

4) Network before and after each panel. Exchange business cards. Identify key people and become friends.

KEYNOTE SPEECH:

Title: When the Electricity Blows, Light a Candle

Key points: The economy is tanked, arts in all sectors are taking a hit, we must learn how to adapt and survive. The key to this is to look at your mission statement and make sure everything you are doing is in service to that mission.

NETWORKING:

So far so good! In the ride to Banff I was in a shuttle with Rosemary Donegan, who just started a new curatorial practice program in Toronto. We spoke briefly about the scene in Toronto right now, which seems very interesting. Also in the shuttle, and also from Toronto was Leah, a reporter for Canadian Art, the big quarterly art publication up here. She is covering the conference for the magazine.

After the Keynote speech, I met up with Leah again and went to the on-site pub. There I met up with Leigh Markopoulos, chair of the Curatorial Practice Program at CCA, and Marcia Tanner, the Berkeley based independent curator behind the exhibition We Interrupt Your Program at Mills, which I remember liking a lot.

After the curators and journalists headed off to their rooms, I stayed at the pub for one more pint and fell in with a group of artists participating in a one month residency called "Reverse Pedagogy." They all seemed to be having a good time and making good work, reinforcing the idea that artist residencies can be more than a little like summer camp. And I think that's a good thing. One of the artists was Mitzi Pederson, a San Francisco artist represented over at Ratio 3. We talked a bit and I encouraged her to submit a proposal to Southern Exposure.

So so far I've done pretty well meeting people, but most of them seem to be from the Bay Area.

We will see what today brings.

I'll send an update tonight, and will try and type up some more of my notes from the Keynote Speech. Also, I didn't get a chance to take any pictures yesterday (because it was dark) but will take some today.

- Mr. H

Mr. H and I have been trying to get away for a night once a month (this Grad School thing is hard on us) Last Month we went to Port Costa where there is a bar called the Warehouse Cafe and a hotel-hostel kind of a place next door called the Burlington Hotel. It used to be a port now it is just strange. Mr. H is so fun to go on trips with. Now I look forward to our get away day.

Wall Paper in our room

This Month we went to the Chancellor Hotel for a night in SF

I am crazy for this Duck!

And back home on the BART

Canning Dilly Beans

I have been wanting to try pickling. One of our favorite pubs always serves a side of pickled carrots with their dishes and I love them. The recipes from mennonite girls can cook (which is for a mix of carrots and dilly beans) sold me on the idea of doing it myself. You can read the super easy instructions here.

The images from mennonite girls can cook.
How Beautiful do these jar look?

I love these peaches as well. Lush.

A Zine From Ava A

We are proud to present a zine from the first awardee of the Lionel Di Giacomo Residency Program. The residency is named after a friend of ours who stayed in our guest room for an extended amount of time to help us with an art show. It is in his honor that we've offered our guest room to friends from out of town to visit the Bay Area and "make new work." What A nice thing to get in the mail! Thanks Ava!

Before My Grandfather met my Grandmother he dated the girl next door. Her name was Silvia, but people called her Via. I found an album he made of her in our family photo trunk (The trunk that was my grandfathers in WWII and survived a house fire) I love her clothes and I like that she grows up in the photos. Here are a few pictures. (My Grandfather is Bill in the first image.)

I

I am crazy about her belt and have been trying to find one like it

Via Inspired Fashion

Looking for a cool flash drive

With all the writing and Power Point I've been up to for grad school these days I decided to buy a flash drive. I was looking for something with a little more design but with 2 gigs running around $20-$30 I didn't want to end up paying a ton of extra money for the little plastic toy wrapped around my drive.

1GB Strawberry Donut USB Flash Drive $24.99 1GB House USB Drive $24.99Tribeca FV00166 1GB Frog USB Drive $13.851GB Tuna Sushi USB Drive $79.99

Mimobot is the master of cool flash drives! These guys from the Friends with You Artist series will run you around $35 for 1 gig.

What I ended up with was this strange little "Panda" from Target (this means no shipping and I could have him NOW NOW NOW.) His head pops off to reveal the drive. 1 gig and he set me back $19.99. He makes a good keychain.