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On Saturday, May 10th from 2-4 pm at The Wattis Institute located at 360 Kansas Street (San Francisco, CA), I will be presenting at Strategies for Survival: Discussions on Artist’s Space in the Bay Area. The event brings together local artists, arts workers, and attending audience members and welcomes a presentation of case studies on various tactics implemented by local art practitioners to maintain studies on varying tactics implemented by local art practitioners to maintain a creative practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. Participants include myself, Erin McElroy, Emma Spertus, and Mark Inglis Taylor. The event is free and open to the public. Light snacks and refreshments will be served. 
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While you’re at The Wattis, please check out the Many Places at Once exhibition featuring works by Martin Soto Climent, Rana Hamadeh, Li Ran, Cinthia Marcelle, William Powhida, Ian Wallace, and Real Time and Space. The exhibition is curated by the graduating class of the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts with the support of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.

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Pictured: Overturn the Artifice, a 2013 Commons Curatorial Residency Exhibition, photo by V. Crown
Pictured: Overturn the Artifice, a 2013 Commons Curatorial Residency Exhibition, photo by V. Crown

ATTN: BAY AREA ARTISTS & CURATORS!!

SOMArts Cultural Center is now accepting applications for the Commons Curatorial Residency program!

Artists/curators selected for exhibition funding receive project grants up to $3,000, exhibition space in the SOMArts Main Gallery, installation, technical and event production support, and community engagement/public relations support valued at $23,000.

Want to learn more? RSVP for the first information session, Monday, September 23, 6:30pm. Please click here for further details.

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Curatorial Statement 

Art serves as reflection. It mirrors what has come before, what exists, and gives inspiration to what may follow. Art is also a conduit to introspection. It raises questions about the relationship between culture, tradition, and location. In the exhibition, Querida Calle 24 | Dear 24th Street, installation artist Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik takes memories and experience to pay homage and gratitude to the well known 24th Street in San Francisco. With the increasing traffic and popularization of the Mission District, Bhaumik seizes the opportunity to form of a visual and a multisensory love letter to the stretch of urban landscape.

The sweet smell of cinnamon leads the viewer to a patterned wall that will please even the most obvious retinal sense. Yet, the longer one stands and observes the walls dusted in the familiar spice and platters enrobed in gold candy wrappers, the senses will subtly shift back and forth to engage in something that can only be experienced. Observation will become delectable and crisp sensations will tickle the nose upon a deep inhale. Impressions will go beyond the gallery walls and storefront. The viewer will be greeted by a Twenty Fourth Street that refuses to be forgotten and remains ever present through its distinct scents and visuals. As a show made with a myriad of parts, it intricately meshes culture, tradition, and history into sensorial consumption. Bhaumik provides an exhibition of the past, present, and future. Our collective recollections and thoughts made into the tangible and the tasty, this artwork will waft and flirt and begs the senses to devour, digest, and reflect.

~ Yours Truly

Artist Bio

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and writer born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles to Indian and Japanese Colombian parents. After receiving her B.A., Cum Laude, in Studio Art from Scripps College, Sita moved to the Bay Area where she holds an M.F.A. in Fine Art and an M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. She currently teaches photography and portfolio development at RayKo Photo Center. Sita has collaborated with organizations such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, SOMArts, 18 Reasons, 826 Valencia, Whitman College, and Cal-State Fullerton. She has been the art features editor for Hyphen magazine, a writer for Art Practical, and Kearny Street Workshop board member. She also spends as much time as possible in the kitchen.

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THE COMMONS CURATORIAL RESIDENCY PROGRAM ~ 2013–14 CALL FOR PROPOSALS

SOMArts Cultural Center’s Commons Curatorial Residency Program contributes to the dynamic cultural ecosystem in the Bay Area by providing space and support for exhibitions that take creative risks, promote cultural connectivity and learning, and instigate accessible, multifaceted participation in the arts. Selected artists and groups receive support consisting of a $3,000 grant, a month-long exhibition in the SOMArts Main Gallery, 80+ hours of  technical assistance, and help with traditional and social media outreach to connect their work with new audiences.  Through this support, Bay Area artists can engage the community, expand their practice and turn vision into reality.

SOMArts is requesting proposals for exhibitions in the Main Gallery for the 2013–14 season. This request is open to artists and independent curators presenting contemporary work in any medium.

Please read through all documents, including the FAQ and eligibility guidelines, carefully. ALL LETTERS OF INTENT MUST BE RECEIVED VIA ONLINE SUBMISSION BY 11:59PM ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2012. No late applications will be accepted, we strongly recommend submitting your proposal at least one week before the deadline.

Source Text: SOMArts Cultural Center Website

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Noritaka Minami, A706 (Wall I), 2011; archival pigment print mounted on aluminum; 30 x 38 in. Courtesy of the Artist and the Kearny Street Workshop, San Francisco.

Humans are resilient. Our anatomy is extraordinary and highly complex. We build, construct, destroy, and synthesize. But human nature involves understanding the biology and mechanisms that provoke us to move and accelerate. In Movement in Many Parts, an exhibition curated by Lucy Seena K. Lin and Weston Teruya, artists investigate human evolution through nature and industry. Their ruminations are shown through organic forms, moving image, photography, drawing, and painting. Each work reminds us of the adage that the totality of many things in concert is far greater than one single part of the whole.

In A1007 (Wall II) (2011), Noritaka Minami asks us to peer into the modular housing built within the Japanese urban landscape. At the start of the series, a viewer is let into a small room with a single, large round window that looks out onto the city and other pods. There is no returning gaze; a viewer sees only the disheveled room of a seemingly busy city dweller. The room could very well be a viewer’s; the window is the only way to see outside and to observe other living things. Stagnancy is apparent through the dull colors of bed sheets and the aging, disintegrating papers on the wall. Even the dated typography of the numbers on the clock suggests a thick layer of dust has settled over things untouched. The scene gives the sense that the busyness of city life has depleted the weary soul that inhabits this space. Minami’sTower (Facade 1) (2011) includes a segment of the exterior architecture that gives a viewer not only a sense of scale but also of how nature has weathered the building’s exterior. The erosion suggests that the original design is obsolete in this fast-paced environment.

While Minami’s photographs depict an environment, Kim Anno’s photographs ponder the effects of climate change and demonstrate how humans may adapt to and work with rising sea levels. Men and Women in Water Cities (2011) shows individuals fully clothed in suits and corporate attire turning their bodies toward a viewer, as though caught in mid-action. The picture plane presents something absurd. Yet, is it as absurd as we think? Anno proposes peculiar but perhaps ingenious ways we might survive despite nature’s disposition, showing what humans may be driven to do when it is necessary to endure. It is this human tendency toward movement that forces resiliency.

Originally posted to Shotgun Reviews on Art Practical, please click here to view.

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Adobe Museum of Digital Media

Click on the image above, have a look around, and please tell me what you think…