exhibits

&

the working artist studio

“Everywhere, there is the rush, the speed of living in the new millennium. Everywhere time is pressed tight to the edges, the dollar barking from corners and gates. How, and where, can life unfold its slow creative length uncorrupted by economic demands? Where can the creative impulse unravel, its moment divined by temperature, mood and light, the hour of day and the collective inclination of its participants? For it is precisely then, in the lingering, that the bell most often strikes, when the creative force casts itself through the open unguarded space and into the center of a room. And it is there, in the sublime moment of creative power that we remember, that there is something moving and living within us that has yet to find its home in this world, and it is from this that we are moved to open new doors for both ourselves as for others. But where are these places? Why are there so few?”

THE STUDIO

Established as a neighborhood micro-center for artistic and intercultural life in San Francisco, the Art House serves as a meeting ground for artists and creative individuals to gather, forge new relationships, collaborations, and innovative endeavors. Over the course of the Art House's development, we came to understand the unique power of a living artist studio, wherein the works are in constant transformation, affecting the energy of the room. While occasionally we will host formal exhibits of work, more often than not you will find a rotation of works-in-the-making by our resident artists. It is in this informal context that we have found the creative spirit iis most at home.

HOURS

The Art House does not keep regular hours outside of its performance schedule and family art activities. We keep informal hours during the week where ften you'll find the door open. You can also visit us on Saturdays, between 1:30 and 4pm, while children and their families are painting outside on the south wall. To make an appointment, call Todd at 415/846-2369, or the Art House at 415/826-2402.

Artists who have participated in the Art House exhibitions include: Juan Carlos Quintana, Michele Muenig, Carlo Ricafort, Joseph Alter, Angela Brown, Sonya Clark-Herrera, Amanda Eicher, Christian Nagler, Megan Ender, Israel Haros-Poet, Nathan Johnston, Dia Penning, Rachel McIntire, Adrian Arias, Colleen Flaherty, Melissa Day, Kimberlee Koym, Caleb Duarte, Indira urrutia, Ella Noe, Aydasara Ortega, Mona Caron, Maxine Solomon, Judah Thomas, Susana Aragon, Nicole Bauguss, Rafael Lando, Koch, Clara Cheeves, Reiko Muranaga, Daniel Schroyer, Jen Damas, and many more.

"Visionaria", by Keziat

Curated by: Emanuela De Notariis

September 19 - October 18, 2009

Born in Puglia, Italy, Keziat graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Foggia. She has presented her work in Venice, Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Chicago, Rome, Florence, Porto, Reggio Emilia, and Milan.

Keziat expresses her visionary art in paintings, illustrations, cartoons, and video animation. From 1996 until 2003, Keziat mainly created paintings of fantastic and mysterious worlds. Between 2003 and 2007, Keziat focused on intimate, grotesque, and erotic pictures of women. She is currently working on installations of interconnected, narrrative-based artworks. Her latest works; the cube series In-cubi, ink-on-paper illustrations, Dream, the triptych L’Albero dei sogni, and the video animation Memoria di un folle, will be on exhibit from September 19th through October 18th.

To see more of Keziat's work, visit:  www.keziat.net.

"Invisible Passage", mixed media work by Todd T. Brown

July 2009

Image by Peter Varshavsky

Commissioned by the San Francisco de Young Museum's Cultural Encounters Program, Todd Brown's latest work, "Invisible Passage", is now on display at the Red Poppy Art House. The painting, measuring 33 feet by 9.5 feet, is Brown's largest work to date. As a mediation on "collective" history, the painting invokes the complex interweave of human stories/histories that ripple across generations and are playing themselves out in today's world. While "Invisible Passage" clearly references a specific past - that of the "middle passage", as endured by African slaves and their exploiters over the course of more than 400 years, Brown states that this work is intended to encourage us to look more deeply into the present world around us, to see into its layers, layers that seem infinite in number and kind. He proposes the idea that generations do not live in succession, one after another, but, rather, each lives through the next, thereby making past and present a unified field - our stories (histories) have made us, and yet we are all the time engaged in the creative act of remaking the world over - the history to come.

During its stay at the Art House, the two-panel painting will be split between the Art House's two main walls. While this makes for a more challenging view of the work as a whole, it's advantage is the sensation created of being within the painting itself, or at least feeling surrounded by it. Brown is considering developing a full installation within the Art House in the months to come by adding middle sections to the work.

The painting will eventually be looking for a future home/exhibit space. If you have knowledge/access to an appropriate location for this work, please contact Todd at todd@redpoppyarthouse.org.

To see more of Todd T. Brown's work, visit:  http://artist-toddbrown.com/

Meklit Hadero and Todd Brown: Light, Shadow, and the Quiet Song Between

de Young, Kimball Education Gallery

June Artist-in-Residence

"Light, Shadow, and the Quiet Song Between"

The de Young Museum hosts Red Poppy Art House resident artists Meklit Hadero and Todd Brown: Light, Shadow, and the Quiet Song Between through June 27 as part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Artist-in-Residence Program in the de Young’s Kimball Gallery. Hadero and Brown incorporate visual art and musical composition into a sculptural installation that is also a working music studio. The two artists hope to spark the creative process in visitors by immersing them in a fully active creative environment, and inspiring them to think about how they structure their own personal surroundings.

The artistic centerpiece of the residency is an enormous 9.5 x 33 foot painting, incubated by Brown at the Red Poppy Art House, and set to be completed within the month-long inhabitation of the Kimball Gallery. Brown’s additional paintings-in-progress, combined with painting tarps and working materials, cover nearly every available wall and floor space, transforming the gallery into dynamic environment undergoing continuous change, thereby allowing visitors a unique window into the artistic process.

The Kimball Gallery will simultaneously be transformed into a sonic journal, with both Hadero and Brown writing and recording new compositions throughout their tenure. Recordings are drawn from the natural soundscape of the de Young, the museum’s artistic treasures, and from visitors who stop in. As songs develop from recordings, the gallery becomes a composer’s workbook with lyric sheets, chord notations, and ideas collaged onto the walls.

The de Young Artist Studio is presented by Cultural Encounters. The Kimball Education Gallery is free to the public and open during museum hours. Visitors are invited to spend time in the Kimball Gallery from Wednesday through Sunday, 1–5 pm and Friday 6–8:45 pm. For more information, e-mail cinaba@famsf.org or call 415.750.3528. The Artist Studio program is supported by the Fleishhacker Foundation.

Programs

Thursday, June 11th
3 pm
Kimball Education Gallery
Painting Demonstration

Thursday, June 18
3 pm
de Young, Wilsey Court
Music demonstration led by Meklit Hadero and Todd Brown

Friday, June 19
6–8:30 pm
de Young, Wilsey Court
Nefasha Ayer performs, The Space of In Between, a music ensemble created by Meklit Hadero and Todd Brown

Friday, June 26
5–8:30 pm
de Young, Kimball Education Gallery
Closing Reception

http://www.famsf.org/deyoung/calendar/day.asp?categoryid=3

http://www.famsf.org/deyoung/calendar/day.asp?categoryid=3&calendarid=4734&day=6%2F14%2F2009

EVENTS FROM LAST YEAR

BAN5 / RED POPPY ART HOUSE CURATORIAL STATEMENT

September 2008 - YBCA

“The Living Presence of Space”

In both the RBI, and on-site at the Red Poppy Art House itself, resident visual artists, Todd Brown, Caleb Duarte, and Nicole Bauguss explore the concept of The Living Presence of Space: the ways in which our handling, our intention, feeling, design and arrangement, of physical space invariably manifests our values, sensitivity, and awareness of the world around us. As a sub-theme, The artists draw on the 5 years experience of the Art House as a particularly small space, investigating the un-replicable power of intimate environments in facilitating exceptional moments of artistic human expression. Within this investigation arises the all-too-apparent fact that such spaces are drastically dwindling in numbers in the context of our modern economy. Unable to meet the impossible demands of exorbitant rents, building codes, renovation costs, accounting systems, and such, artists are forced to go “underground”, fashioning environments out of need, and from minimal resources.

Examples of such necessary improvisations can be seen in the RBI installations by Brown, Duarte, and Bauguss, “Make-Shift Gallery Garage” and “Bed, Bath, Stage, and Beyond”. Here the artists show how creative ingenuity can maximize the value of minimum real estate: an artist’s living needs (a bed, bath, and personal items) convert into a stage for (un-permitted) concerts that will serve to pay the artists rent, and a garage that converts into a temporary (un-permitted) exhibition space, such as what is seen in the Mission Arts & Performance Project* (MAPP).