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The MISSION ARTS & PERFORMANCE PROJECT

The Mission Arts & Performance Project is a bi-monthly collaboration between visual artists, musicians, poets and performers. The MAPP puts art and performance on the street level by using alternative spaces such as private garages, basements, and studios. It’s a block party of the arts for inspiring in ourselves, and others, the desire for a creative existence, an ever widening experience of life.

By transforming garages and backyards into mini-galleries MAPP shows how ordinary spaces can be made extra-ordinary to bring people together to share in a diverse experience of fine art and performance. The garages, as they are unpretentious and open to the street, pose the possibility of exposing the arts to a lot of folks who might not ever enter a gallery or theater. This process helps take the art from the margins of our communities to where it may come to be more widely see and understood as a vibrant and vital force necessary to the health of our society. It is our hope that local residents and others attending the MAPP will be inspired to seek expression of their own experiences and feelings through creative means and join in sharing what they have discovered in the MAPP events to come.

ORIGIN OF THE MAPP

In October 2003, a meeting of artist and performers was called together at the Red Poppy Art House (then called Porfilio Is) to discuss the possibility of a monthly alternative multi-venue neighborhood arts & performance event. That meeting was the spark that caught to flame, the beginning of the “Mission Arts Party”, a name coined in this first meeting, inspired by Adrian Arias’s idea to paint a mural “map of emotions” on the Art House wall. Two months later the first MAP took place with four exhibit spaces; one garage curated by Luis Vasquez Gomez and Koch, and three other spaces; the Art House, Musa Alda’s Little Spot Café (the basement), and Musa’s garage, curated by visual artists Veronica Blanco and Todd Brown, and with the help of Martin Arslanian. With no budget and just basic flyering for promotion, the event was a great success. The MAP quickly doubled its size when, the following month, the Mission Cultural Center opened its doors to co-host a MAP exhibition in their main gallery. Also added to the MAP was the local AutoTech Garage, curated by Danny Stuepenagel. (complete with a salsa band with cars on lifts towering above).

From that time the MAP continued to grow and change. Not long after, the name “Mission Arts Party” was changed to “Mission Arts & Performance Project" with the intentionof bringing the greater focus to process of bringing the arts into the community. Performance took an essential role in generating the energy of the MAPP and constituted a significant difference from what would normally be considered just another “art walk”. Throughout 2004 the MAPP expanded with Raquel De Anda and Clara Cheeves joining in as curators. By mid 2005 the organizing body of the MAPP had grown from 3-4 people to 15 (aprox.). By the end of 2005, the MAPP had succeeded in incorporating three local businesses and a number of resident garden spaces. At the end of 2005 the first radio documentary (by nathanael Johnson) was aired on KALW radio.

Modern dance/performance art - Nadja Haas performs at the Poppy in front of the work of visual artist Caleb Duarte. December MAPP 2005.

October MAPP, 2005

This is a garage! Garage de la Folsom, at 2649 Folsom Street, transformed for one night only into a gallery-performance space. An ordinary space transfofrmed into a space of creative exchange!

he MAPP gets underway early for children in the neighborhood who work together here on a mural outside the Red Poppy Art House. MAY 2005. Organized by Rita Venturini, Begonia Caparros, Susan Mathews, and Paula Blancona.

Pan African roots music with Keenan Webster and Balafo at the December Mapp of 2005. They were joined by emaerging spoken word poets PANAMA and RICO, bringing their own message from the youth of Central America.

MAPP organizer Luis Vasquez Gomez posing beside one of his paintings under the moon on 23rd Street. Pantyhose installation by Sita Bhaumic.

The Red Garage, one of mapp’s favorite little hot spots in 2004, just getting underway in the early part of the night. Curated by visual artist/photographer, Indira Urrutia. Garage made available by Mark Eisner.

When one of the MAPP spaces fell through last minute, MAPP organizers Veronica Solis and Luis Vasquez-Gomez improvised a street exhibit. July 16th, 2005,

Outdoor installation by MAPP artist, Aydasara Ortega, as part of El Jardin (the garden). This was one installation of many in a large-scale garden space made available by local residents, Ursula, Allen and Maya. May, 2005.

MAPP - Little Spot Cafe, December 2003: The first MAPP!

These pictures are from the very first MAPP held in December, 2003. This was the basement of Musa Alda’s Little Spot Café on S. Van Ness and 23rd Street. A great example of taking ordinary storage space and transforming it into an improvised gallery through spotlights and visual art. Curated by visual artist, Veronica Blanco and Todd T. Brown.

Opus003orange

Every MAPP the garage at 2694 Folsom becomes an exploration of one chosen color and related themes. Curated by visual artist, Adrian Arias, these images are from Opus003orange, March MAPP 2005.

The sea and song; RUPA (India/USA) performing live at the Red Poppy Art House as part of a multi-media collaboration with photographer, Lars (USA). July MAPP, 2005.

MAPP organizer Veronica Solisand MAPP performer, Maria Medina , enjoying the energy provided by a neighbor who decided to add his sound system to the event by facing his speaker out the second story window.