Michele Guieu/Eric Meyer/Ivan Sigg: collaborative mail art

I sent my envelope to Eric (San Diego - Paris).



Eric transformed it and sent it to Ivan Sigg (Paris - Paris)...



Who transformed it too and sent it back to me (Paris - San Diego)!

Thank you Eric and Ivan for this exciting collaborative work made "just because". I love this and I hope we'll do that again soon!

Daniel Ruanova: Defend Security / Videos of the Talk

I took some videos of Daniel Ruanova's talk at Seminal Projects in March 2009. It was on the occasion of his show "Defend Security: Constructs of a People Fearing Society". Daniel lives and works in Tijuana.









Daniel Ruanova

Seminal Projects
2040 India Street
Little Italy
San Diego, CA 92101
619 696 9699

Notes (on Kettner Blvd)

"Security for All - MXCITY" at Agitprop

Héctor Ivan Delgado, "Waiting for the Title"

Tomorrow is the last day of the show "Security for All". Last Saturday, I took some pictures in the dim light of the always surprising Agitprop gallery in North Park. (It seems to me that Agitprop should have a website where the activities of this stimulating art laboratory are compiled!).
"Security for All": artists Héctor Ivan Delgado (MX), Orlando Diaz (MX), Judith Pedroza (MX), Rodrigo Sastre (ARG) (I do not have a picture of his animation piece "South"!).
contact (Judith Pedroza): jude.pedroza@gmail.com

Héctor Ivan Delgado, "Waiting for the Title"
Orlando Diaz, “Structures of Protection", watercolors/drawings




Pedroza, "There is a house by the sea", charcoal, paper house, balloons.


Orlando Diaz, “Structures of Protection", watercolors/drawings







Agitprop
2837 University Ave. , North Park
(entrance on Utah Street)
San Diego
619.384.7989
contact: agitprop.events@gmail.com

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
UPDATE - thank you Justin for the info!
There is a website
and a Facebook page
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jason Sherry and Neil Kendricks in conversation at Seminal Projects

Jason Sherry and Neil Kendricks

Saturday I went to Seminal Projects to see Jason Sherry's show "Time Space Trials and the Packrat Dirge (or the Theme from Human Interest Story)" and to listen to the conversation between him and Neil Kendricks. I took a video.














Seminal Projects
Jason Sherry
Time Space Trials and the Packrat Dirge
(or the Theme from Human Interest Story)
March 27 - May 2, 2009

Thinking About my Father

My father died in a mountain accident in 1996, he was 60. He fell from the trail. It was the first summer of his retirement. He worked a lot until he retired and he talked about all the things he would be able to do once he'd retired. He did not get the time.

I realized I needed to do the things I wanted to do (even more than before). I decided to go to the places I had meant to go to for years. I was an artist and a freelance graphic designer, and I could organize my time. I was 34, I had no children. I spent almost everything I earned at the time in travels. I went to places by myself, I met the people I wanted to meet.

Since then, I believe I live more in the present (I guess I was already on that path before). I enjoy my choices. I have no regrets. I left Paris after spending more than 20 years there, without dwelling too much on what this separation would mean for my artistic career and what it would mean to start over far away from what I've known for years.
I left, that's all.




After Paris, moving to Texas...


...and then to Virginia


Shenandoah National Park, VA

I do not think years ahead.
I am truly enjoying what I have, my family, my friends and the fact that I am lucky enough to do what I absolutely love to do: working on my images and participating in interesting exhibitions. I am healthy enough. It is a miracle.

The best friend of a very good friend of mine, 40, is fighting a nasty brain cancer right now. She goes to the hospital every other day. Her daily life completely shifted almost overnight. Me, I can go see exhibitions, walk in the streets, take pictures.

When I was 28, I was lucky to be given the opportunity to be the creative director of a team of 20 people in a large corporate design company, Landor, in Paris. This great experience gave me the chance to see what power means from the inside. And how power was such an important ingredient. I saw and learned a lot. The relative power I had at that time - and the money - did not bring any more peace or happiness to me. I quit after two years, and I had no desire to look for anything like that again. Being freed from the race for power rather early, I spent my time doing other things.

For example, during the following summers, I spent some weeks in the mountains at 6000 feet, with a team of archeologists, helping to catalog scattered engraved rocks. I was not paid for that work. But I totally loved it. There was no goal in doing this, only the pleasure to be in that mountain I loved and to be part of an exciting adventure for a period of time. Learning, seeing, sharing.






Bandelier National Monument, NM


Las Golondrinas, NM

Shortly after that period, I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for three months. I was interested in seeing petroglyphs and Anasazi dwellings. With maps, good shoes and water I visited quite a few sites (sometimes helped by a ranger giving me some advice about being alone in the middle of nowhere). About the petroglyphs, I knew that an extensive research was conducted by Polly Shaafsma, a research associate of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology of the Museum of New Mexico. I called her and met her. She proposed to me to come with her and she showed me beautiful petroglyphs in remote canyons. Those are amazing memories.

I knew that in the College of Santa Fe there was a very good printmaking center. I went there and they liked my work enough (I brought some images with me) that I was able to come every day for quite a long period of time, and I just paid for the material (paper and ink). There, I met very interesting artists, like Stan Berning, who, at the time, was working on giant prints - on a giant press. I very much enjoyed the experience. And I went back the following year.


Three Rivers, 17 miles north of Tularosa, NM

I also wanted to go back to Arizona (an area I went to a few years before with my sister). I exchanged some house sitting in Santa Fe for a free borrowed car. I went South, via Albuquerque. I got lost in White Sand Dune at night, spent an amazing evening with the photographer Bernard Plossu and his wife in their house in Las Cruces, went to Cochise Stronghold, and Bisbee, and a few ghosts towns, was stopped several times by the border patrol ("What are you doing alone around here?"). In Roswell, where I saw the most amazing storm skies, I inquired about an artist residence and visited the place.

I did all this just because I wanted to and because, amazing luxury, I could do it.

I have no plans. But I try to make each day count. It does not mean I am always doing stuff. It means watching a lot, too.

Art Produce Gallery invites you to participate in "OurSpace/Creative Exchange", a community gift exchange

"Territories series: landscape # 6", 2009,
acrylic on wood panel, 4x4 inches


"Territories series: landscape # 7", 2009,
acrylic on wood panel, 4x4 inches

An interesting project initiated by Lynn Susholtz, director of Art Produce Gallery. Here are two small pieces I painted for the project. Any object has to fit in a 6.5x6 inches plastic bag.

From Lynn Susholtz, director of Art Produce Gallery:
Space/Creative Exchange stems from the idea of the Potlatch, a public ritual/festival/feast involving a gift exchange practiced by some indigenous cultures. Potlatch was a community celebration of important events, but also a redistribution and reciprocity of wealth. Once banned by Canadian and US governments, it was considered a wasteful and unproductive custom, not associated with “civilized” values. As artists and community activists we wish to reconsider this custom as an antidote to the Internet-based virtual exchanges and market-driven connections so abundant today. It is our belief that real objects exchanged in a real space, in a real community, can initiate real connections between people and communities.
All gifts will be small enough to fit in a baggie and will be accompanied by a tag with your name and a message to the receiver of your gift. Gifts will be collected or dropped off at Art Produce Gallery through the end of May. A photo of you and your gift will be displayed in the gallery throughout the exhibit.

During the month of June, everyone who dropped off a gift will be able to receive a gift at the Art Produce Gallery. Please contribute something small, something you created, something found or something meaningful.

Our Space/Creative Exchange is a component of the art exhibit portion of "Voices: Mapping the Hood" at Art Produce Gallery, from May 17 to June 28, 2009. Create a gift in the gallery at the North Park Arts Festival, May 17, from 11:00 to 4:00 pm.

OurSpace/Creative Exchange is a project of “Art at the Core: Building Community”, a community movement in North Park and City Heights that utilizes art as a catalyzing force for positive change. Our goal is to increase access, engagement and participation in the civic process through community cultural development.

For more info, contact Lynn:
Lynn@artproducegallery.com

Art Produce Gallery
3139 University Avenue
San Diego, CA 92104

Art@theCore