1AM GALLERY
SAN FRANCISCO,CA
NOVEMBER 13TH
OPENING REC: 7-1030PM
co-sponsors: PABLO gallery, Kularts, Bindlestiff Studios, & Fabric8
PLEASE COME OUT TO SUPPORT THIS UPCOMING EXHIBIT. GATHERED ARE SOME AMAZING ARTISTS FROM THE PHILIPPINES, NORWAY AND ALL OVER THE U.S. ALSO THERE WILL BE A SOUND INSTALLATION COMPONENT ORCHESTRATED BY "BALIKTAD" THAT WILL BLOW YOU AWAY.
Tabi Tabi Po is a group exhibition that explores the rich and colorful creatures of Filipino Folklore through Urban Contemporary art, featuring artists who are either Filipino or have Filipino ancestry. The Kapre, Manananggal, Dwende, Tikbalang, and Aswang will be some of the creatures that will be brought to life in this exhibit. This exhibit will explore the cultural significance of Filipino folklore- its' myths and reality. The exhibit is a multi-media installation, incorporating sound, structures, murals, indigenous craftwork, film documentary, and 2-d art, with over 40 artist participants.
*Percentage of proceeds will be donated to relief efforts in the Philippines who have been affected by Typhoons Ondoy(Ketsana) and Pepeng(Parma)
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
SPUR Young Urbanists: [Literature] in the city (SF) 11/10/09
From the Beat movement and City Lights to McSweeney’s, San Francisco has been shaped by its literary history. But this history does not simply lie in the texts produced by the writers—it was also a history produced in the city’s fabric, in literary movements that defined and influenced people and place. Join us in exploring the role of literature in shaping our local cultural understanding of Urbanism and policy-making. The SPUR Young Urbanists welcome writer Stephen Elliott of the San Francisco Writer's Grotto and editor of The Rumpus, writer and City Lights editor Elaine Katzenberger, Filipino American poet and professor Barbara Jane Reyes and poet Matthew Zapruder, the forum moderator, for an evening that explores [Literature] in the City. SPUR's Young Urbanist program is generously supported by the Koret Foundation.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
KULARTS: Upcoming Events
BAI LIZA SAWAY
DUGSO Sacred Dance ~ Workshop-Lecture Performance
1 - 2:30PM Sat. Oct 31
Admission: $25 advance, $30 @ the door
Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.
Bai Liza Saway is an indigenous leader from the Talaandig tribe, and a resident of Sungku, Lantapan, Bukidnon. She is a Council Member of the Mindanao Peoples Caucus. She is known as Bai Nanapnay, a name given to the woman leader of the Talaandig indigenous community; her work is based on “the understanding of the harmonious relationships of plants, animals, human beings and the spirits.” A founder of Talaandig Mothers for Peace and the wife of a tribal chief, Saway has been leading the quest for the rights of the tribe to self-determination and self-governance in their ancestral domain, where their families have lived for centuries.
Find out more about the Talaandig Tribe here.
Watch a video of the Sungco Talaandig Tribal Grounds on youtube.
PeliKULa! Pin@y Film Series
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103
3-8pm, Sun Nov 1
Admission: $7 ($10 includes $3 donation to Typhoon Relief)
Tickets: https://www.brownpapertickets.
Info: http://kularts.org
Join Kularts for its second PeliKULa! Pin@y Film Series. Honoring All Soul's Day by exploring the dark corners of the human psyche...
Shorts Program
3-5PM
No. 4
Director: Benito Bautista
Retired Japanese-American Couple, Kazuo and Mitsuko, are held hostage for a day when a manic stranger, Kilo, decides to invade them in their newly-purchased airstream. Starring Philippine award-winning actor, Raymond Bagatsing.
Kundiman
Director: Noel Shaw
Kundiman probes the psyche of Tess, a nurse whose life is fragmented by repressed memories of brutality and torture. Spiritual redemption collides with spiritual disintegration in this short film mystery. Featuring Bindlestiff Studio's own Alex Torres!
Last Full Show
Director: Mark V. Reyes
Teenage student, Crispin, gets his kicks after school by cruising the dark underbelly of the Manila gay scene - an old movie theater frequented by other cruisers. The joys, sorrows, and dangers of forbidden love are explored in this poignantly-crafted short film.
A Clip from Last Full Show
God Only Knows
Director: Mark V. Reyes
In a decaying Philippines slum, an innocent journey to the market turns into devastation for single mother Maria and her 10-year-old son Santiago.
Trailer for God Only Knows
With Video Introduction by Noel Shaw
Q&A Panel with Mark V. Reyes and Benito Bautista.
Moderated by R.J. Lozada
Feature Presentation
6-8PM
Ang Pamana: The Inheritance
Director: Romeo Candido
Canadian balikbayan Johnny inherits a family farm in rural Bulacan where winged, half-bodied vampires, blood-sucking monsters disguised as humans, and tobacco-smoking giants frolick to scare the living daylights out of the farm's human inhabitants. Featuring Phoemela Baranda, entertainment anchor of ABS-CBN's TV Patrol.
With Video Introduction by Romeo Candido
Monday, October 26, 2009
PAWA Arkipelago Reading Series: Saturday 11/07/09 at 2 pm
Please join us for the next reading in the PAWA Arkipelago Reading Series
Where: The Bayanihan Center 1010 Mission Street @ 6th Street, San Francisco
When: Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Who: Writers Justin Chin, Sarah Gambito, and Marianne Vilanueva. Musical guests Myrna del Río and Bo Razon.
This event is free and open to the public!
Justin Chin is the author of three books of poetry and three books of essays. His most recent poetry collection, Gutted (Manic D Press), received the Publishing Triangle's 2007 Thom Gunn Award for Poetry.
Sarah Gambito is the author of the poetry collections Delivered (Persea Books) and Matadora (Alice James Books). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, Field, Quarterly West, Fence and other journals. She is Assistant Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Fordham university and co-founder of Kundiman, a non-profit company that promotes Asian American poetry.
Marianne Villanueva has published three collections of short fiction: Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx Press) Mayor of the Roses (Miami University Press) and The Lost Language (published 2009 by Anvil Press of the Philippines). She has been shortlisted for the O. Henry Literature Prize and nominated for the Pushcart. Most recently, she was a finalist for the 2009 Annual Donald Barthelme Fiction Prize. Her recent work has been published in The Chattahoochee Review, Cafe Irreal, The Santa Fe Writers Project, Isotope and The White Whale Review.
Singing in English, Spanish, and French, Myrna Del Rio is a show-stopping singer capable of delivering heart-felt ballads, boleros, and blues that really swing. She was a featured vocalist in renowned drummer Francis Clay's band, Syncopation, and was also a member of Domingo & Friends, a popular Rhythm & Blues and Soul band led by Domingo Balinton. Ms. Del Río was featured in the 1st and 2nd Annual Jazz Las Casas Festival and at the 3rd Annual Festival Internacional de Jazz in Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico in 2004 and received rave reviews in the press.
Bo Razon completed Master Classes in Cuban Music and Folklore at the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba in 1997. He has performed with major international and local artists; given seminars, workshops and clinics in Afro-Latin music theory and applications; written numerous magazine articles and has written scripts and directed programs and documentaries for television and public media. He released a cd of original music in 1998 entitled "Biyahero" under BMG Records Pilipinas.
Where: The Bayanihan Center 1010 Mission Street @ 6th Street, San Francisco
When: Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Who: Writers Justin Chin, Sarah Gambito, and Marianne Vilanueva. Musical guests Myrna del Río and Bo Razon.
This event is free and open to the public!
Justin Chin is the author of three books of poetry and three books of essays. His most recent poetry collection, Gutted (Manic D Press), received the Publishing Triangle's 2007 Thom Gunn Award for Poetry.
Sarah Gambito is the author of the poetry collections Delivered (Persea Books) and Matadora (Alice James Books). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, Field, Quarterly West, Fence and other journals. She is Assistant Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Fordham university and co-founder of Kundiman, a non-profit company that promotes Asian American poetry.
Marianne Villanueva has published three collections of short fiction: Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx Press) Mayor of the Roses (Miami University Press) and The Lost Language (published 2009 by Anvil Press of the Philippines). She has been shortlisted for the O. Henry Literature Prize and nominated for the Pushcart. Most recently, she was a finalist for the 2009 Annual Donald Barthelme Fiction Prize. Her recent work has been published in The Chattahoochee Review, Cafe Irreal, The Santa Fe Writers Project, Isotope and The White Whale Review.
Singing in English, Spanish, and French, Myrna Del Rio is a show-stopping singer capable of delivering heart-felt ballads, boleros, and blues that really swing. She was a featured vocalist in renowned drummer Francis Clay's band, Syncopation, and was also a member of Domingo & Friends, a popular Rhythm & Blues and Soul band led by Domingo Balinton. Ms. Del Río was featured in the 1st and 2nd Annual Jazz Las Casas Festival and at the 3rd Annual Festival Internacional de Jazz in Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico in 2004 and received rave reviews in the press.
Bo Razon completed Master Classes in Cuban Music and Folklore at the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba in 1997. He has performed with major international and local artists; given seminars, workshops and clinics in Afro-Latin music theory and applications; written numerous magazine articles and has written scripts and directed programs and documentaries for television and public media. He released a cd of original music in 1998 entitled "Biyahero" under BMG Records Pilipinas.
Ben Cabrera "Bencab" at the Andrew Shire Gallery (Los Angeles)
Andrew Shire Gallery,
3850 Wilshire Blvd., #107,
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Exhibit runs through November 21, 2009
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday
11am-6pm
Andrew Shire Gallery
EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT
Humanities: Ben Cabrera, Ahmad Zakii Anwar & Putu Sutawijaya
October 24 - November 21, 2009
3850 Wilshire Blvd. #107.,
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Director: May Chung, Susan Baik
Tel: (213) 389 2601,
Fax: (213) 389 3205
Email: info@andrewshiregallery.com
Web site: http://www.andrewshiregallery.com
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am-6pm
This October, Andrew Shire Gallery brings a group of Southeast Asia's most highly acclaimed painters to Los Angeles for the first time.
Southeast Asia has long been recognized by the international art community as a vital and unique hub in global contemporary art practice. In the past few years, contemporary Southeast Asian art has also rapidly gained an international following in the market.
The exhibition 'Humanities' introduces the work of Ben Cabrera, Ahmad Zakii Anwar and Putu Sutawijaya. These three artists come from three different countries and three different generations of artists, yet all have achieved broad acclaim through the Southeast Asian region, leading the way in figurative painting.
Ben Cabrera, or 'Bencab', as he is better known, is one of the youngest artists to be recognized as a National Artist of the Philippines, a rare and prestigious accolade. Born in 1942 in the Philippines, Bencab emerged as a fresh and powerful force in the Social Realist movement which dominated Filipino art in 1970s and 1980s, moving on to become one of the Philippines' most esteemed figurative artists. Ahmad Zakii Anwar was born in 1955 in Johor, Malaysia, began exhibiting in the 1990s in Malaysia, and has gone on to carve out a formidable reputation throughout the region and beyond, holding successful exhibitions in Singapore, Jakarta, Hong Kong and New York. Putu Sutawijaya, a Balinese artist based in Yogyakarta, was born in 1971, and is a leading light within a fast-rising generation of contemporary Indonesian artists.
The body has many different aspects and meanings in Southeast Asian cultures, ancient, historical and modern, which inform and enrich the practice of figurative art in the region. The exhibition 'Humanities' investigates the different ways in which three major artists explore the human body as a central theme of their artistic vision. Drawing from international, eastern and regional figurative art traditions, Bencab, Ahmad Zakii Anwar and Putu Sutawijaya have each created a powerful physical language in their painting. In their work with the human body, we find theatre and spirituality, struggle and harmony between the inner and cyclical forces of life.
3850 Wilshire Blvd., #107,
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Exhibit runs through November 21, 2009
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday
11am-6pm
Andrew Shire Gallery
EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT
Humanities: Ben Cabrera, Ahmad Zakii Anwar & Putu Sutawijaya
October 24 - November 21, 2009
3850 Wilshire Blvd. #107.,
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Director: May Chung, Susan Baik
Tel: (213) 389 2601,
Fax: (213) 389 3205
Email: info@andrewshiregallery.com
Web site: http://www.andrewshiregallery.
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am-6pm
This October, Andrew Shire Gallery brings a group of Southeast Asia's most highly acclaimed painters to Los Angeles for the first time.
Southeast Asia has long been recognized by the international art community as a vital and unique hub in global contemporary art practice. In the past few years, contemporary Southeast Asian art has also rapidly gained an international following in the market.
The exhibition 'Humanities' introduces the work of Ben Cabrera, Ahmad Zakii Anwar and Putu Sutawijaya. These three artists come from three different countries and three different generations of artists, yet all have achieved broad acclaim through the Southeast Asian region, leading the way in figurative painting.
Ben Cabrera, or 'Bencab', as he is better known, is one of the youngest artists to be recognized as a National Artist of the Philippines, a rare and prestigious accolade. Born in 1942 in the Philippines, Bencab emerged as a fresh and powerful force in the Social Realist movement which dominated Filipino art in 1970s and 1980s, moving on to become one of the Philippines' most esteemed figurative artists. Ahmad Zakii Anwar was born in 1955 in Johor, Malaysia, began exhibiting in the 1990s in Malaysia, and has gone on to carve out a formidable reputation throughout the region and beyond, holding successful exhibitions in Singapore, Jakarta, Hong Kong and New York. Putu Sutawijaya, a Balinese artist based in Yogyakarta, was born in 1971, and is a leading light within a fast-rising generation of contemporary Indonesian artists.
The body has many different aspects and meanings in Southeast Asian cultures, ancient, historical and modern, which inform and enrich the practice of figurative art in the region. The exhibition 'Humanities' investigates the different ways in which three major artists explore the human body as a central theme of their artistic vision. Drawing from international, eastern and regional figurative art traditions, Bencab, Ahmad Zakii Anwar and Putu Sutawijaya have each created a powerful physical language in their painting. In their work with the human body, we find theatre and spirituality, struggle and harmony between the inner and cyclical forces of life.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sarita Eschavez See at Eastwind Books of Berkeley 11/21/2009
November 21, 2009 Saturday 3:00 pm
APEX Express Radio 94.1 and Eastwind Books of Berkeley present
Sarita Eschavez See discusses The Decolonized Eye: Filipino American Art and Performance.
at Eastwind Books of Berkeley
Address: 2066 University Ave. Berkeley, CA 94704
For more information Eastwind Books Berkeley 510-548-2350, www.asiabookcenter.com, books@ewbb.com
From the late 1980s to the present, artists of Filipino descent in the United States have produced a challenging and creative movement. In The Decolonized Eye, Sarita Echavez See shows how these artists have engaged with the complex aftermath of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines.
Focusing on artists working in New York and California, See examines the overlapping artistic and aesthetic practices and concerns of filmmaker Angel Shaw, painter Manuel Ocampo, installation artist Paul Pfeiffer, comedian Rex Navarrete, performance artist Nicky Paraiso, and sculptor Reanne Estrada to explain the reasons for their strangely shadowy presence in American culture and scholarship. Offering an interpretation of their creations that accounts for their queer, decolonizing strategies of camp, mimesis, and humor, See reveals the conditions of possibility that constitute this contemporary archive.
By analyzing art, performance, and visual culture, The Decolonized Eye illuminates the unexpected consequences of America’s amnesia over its imperial history.
Sarita Echavez See is associate professor of Asian/Pacific Islander American studies at the University of Michigan.
232 pages | 25 b&w illustrations, 13 color plates | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | November 2009 University of Minnesota Press
APEX Express Radio 94.1 and Eastwind Books of Berkeley present
Sarita Eschavez See discusses The Decolonized Eye: Filipino American Art and Performance.
at Eastwind Books of Berkeley
Address: 2066 University Ave. Berkeley, CA 94704
For more information Eastwind Books Berkeley 510-548-2350, www.asiabookcenter.com, books@ewbb.com
From the late 1980s to the present, artists of Filipino descent in the United States have produced a challenging and creative movement. In The Decolonized Eye, Sarita Echavez See shows how these artists have engaged with the complex aftermath of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines.
Focusing on artists working in New York and California, See examines the overlapping artistic and aesthetic practices and concerns of filmmaker Angel Shaw, painter Manuel Ocampo, installation artist Paul Pfeiffer, comedian Rex Navarrete, performance artist Nicky Paraiso, and sculptor Reanne Estrada to explain the reasons for their strangely shadowy presence in American culture and scholarship. Offering an interpretation of their creations that accounts for their queer, decolonizing strategies of camp, mimesis, and humor, See reveals the conditions of possibility that constitute this contemporary archive.
By analyzing art, performance, and visual culture, The Decolonized Eye illuminates the unexpected consequences of America’s amnesia over its imperial history.
Sarita Echavez See is associate professor of Asian/Pacific Islander American studies at the University of Michigan.
232 pages | 25 b&w illustrations, 13 color plates | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | November 2009 University of Minnesota Press
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Stephanie Syjuco: Copystand
Artist Stephanie Syjuco in London, at NewYorkTimes.com and Guardian.co.uk.
Michelle Cruz Skinner: In the Company of Strangers (Bamboo Ridge Press)
Michelle Cruz Skinner, In the Company of Strangers.PRE-ORDER NOW! BOOKS WILL BE SHIPPED AFTER THANKSGIVING.
Sixteen deceptively simple stories comprise Michelle Cruz Skinner’s much-anticipated follow-up to Balikbayan and Mango Seasons, many of them about Filipinos tongue-tied and alienated in the motherland, or scattered across the map of heartaches and homesickness in the company of strangers called countrymen, family, lovers. A book of quiet gems definitely worth the wait. - R. Zamora Linmark, author of Prime Time Apparitions and The Evolution of a Sigh
The essential subject of these captivating stories is memory, but memory filtered by what cannot–or even should not–be said. The corrosive effects of a secret history, the burdens of understanding, are limned through stories both spare and lyrical. In a way, these stories tell a kind of love story: the love of a daughter for a heritage that, even while suppressed or denied, can never be erased. - Marianne Villanueva, author of Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila and Mayor of the Roses: Stories
Michelle Cruz Skinner shows us again that exile sometimes captures the body and sometime the heart; she writes closely about love and life in a family and we see that distance, longing, and desire all can contribute to the things misplaced in translation. - Ron Carlson, author of Five Skies and The Signal
Evocatively written. Deftly offers how life can unfold as a series of uncertain transitions. But redemption can surface when one realizes through these stories how much we share with each other. - Eileen Tabios, author of Novel Chatelaine
***
The release of In the Company of Strangers will be celebrated with a launch reception and reading at Punahou School (information provided below), followed three weeks later by a reading and reception at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.
Book Launch and Reading
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
6:30 p.m. reception and book signing
7:00 p.m. reading by Michelle Cruz Skinner
Luke Lecture Hall
Wo International Center
Punahou School
FREE and open to the public
Michelle Cruz Skinner teaches at Punahou School. She was born in Manila and raised primarily in Olongapo City, Philippines. A short story from her first collection was selected for the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and her second book was nominated for the 1996 Philippine National Book Award. Her work has been adapted for stage and public radio and she has read extensively at universities and conferences, both in the Philippines and on the mainland.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Fashioning Domesticity, Weaving Desire: Visions of the Filipina (Los Angeles)
Fashioning Domesticity, Weaving Desire: Visions of the Filipina
October 14, 2009 – February 8, 2010
In the Experimental Gallery
Guest Curators: Pearlie Rose Baluyut and Agnes Bertiz
“Fashioning Domesticity, Weaving Desire: Visions of the Filipina" exhibition explores the canonical visions of the early to mid 20th-century Filipina as civilized and/or wild. Through the juxtaposition of traditional textiles and ethnographic photography, as well as objects of personal adornment and popular print culture, this exhibition addresses the fashioning of domesticity and the weaving of desire as political strategies of polarization. Interrogating the body as a (dis)embodied landscape activated by the braided contexts of colonialism and democracy, the exhibition acknowledges that central to this binary of conquest and governance is the co-existence, reflection, and collision of the “modern” and “primitive.”
Sponsored by The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
October 14, 2009 – February 8, 2010
In the Experimental Gallery
Guest Curators: Pearlie Rose Baluyut and Agnes Bertiz
“Fashioning Domesticity, Weaving Desire: Visions of the Filipina" exhibition explores the canonical visions of the early to mid 20th-century Filipina as civilized and/or wild. Through the juxtaposition of traditional textiles and ethnographic photography, as well as objects of personal adornment and popular print culture, this exhibition addresses the fashioning of domesticity and the weaving of desire as political strategies of polarization. Interrogating the body as a (dis)embodied landscape activated by the braided contexts of colonialism and democracy, the exhibition acknowledges that central to this binary of conquest and governance is the co-existence, reflection, and collision of the “modern” and “primitive.”
Sponsored by The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
Sean Labrador y Manzano, CONVERSATIONS AT A WARTIME CAFÉ @ McSweeney's
CONVERSATIONS AT A WARTIME CAFÉ.
- - - -
Sean Labrador y Manzano is a single father, a poet of postcolonial eroticism, and independent scholar. He believes in poetic justice: that one day soon he can pay all his bills (child support, student loans, credit cards, etc) through writing. In the mean time he ambles from gig to gig to gig. The experience of underemployment compels him to contemplate at wartime cafés (as all cafés are wartime cafés during a time of war) the benefits and contradictions of military reenlistment.
Read more.
- - - -
Sean Labrador y Manzano is a single father, a poet of postcolonial eroticism, and independent scholar. He believes in poetic justice: that one day soon he can pay all his bills (child support, student loans, credit cards, etc) through writing. In the mean time he ambles from gig to gig to gig. The experience of underemployment compels him to contemplate at wartime cafés (as all cafés are wartime cafés during a time of war) the benefits and contradictions of military reenlistment.
Read more.
Submissions: BOA Editions, Ltd. Lannan Translation Series
BOA will accept submissions for the Lannan Translations Series during the month of November, 2009. Please read and follow the guidelines when submitting.
The Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico is funding six new collections of contemporary international poetry published by BOA Editions in 2009-2011. The funds support production costs and author and translator royalties. BOA Editions is grateful to the Lannan Foundation for its support of poetry and the art of translation.
Guidelines are here.
The Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico is funding six new collections of contemporary international poetry published by BOA Editions in 2009-2011. The funds support production costs and author and translator royalties. BOA Editions is grateful to the Lannan Foundation for its support of poetry and the art of translation.
Guidelines are here.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Artist Spotlight: Mike "Dream" Francisco
From Hip Hop Lives:
WRITING IS MY LIFERead more.
by MIKE DREAM
Writing is my life. I am a graffiti writer. Whatever people say about the terminology, I write. I've been writing since somewhere around '83...
I went through a consciousness phase in the writing, realizing that 'art for art's sake' was weak and that there was power in the message. I began to understand the roots of my own culture. My Filipino heritage taught me about the struggles and sacrifices of my people for equality in this country, opening my eyes to the racism that surrounds our lives, and all of our brothers and sisters of color. My pieces started to have more content and substance...
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Many Great Events Upcoming
See the Hyphen blog for info on upcoming Typhoon Ondoy relief fundraisers and other events.
Call for Submissions: Maganda Magazine
Click on image to enlarge, for more info:
Deadline is 12/31/2009. Visit the Maganda Magazine blog here.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
GROWING UP FILIPINO II MORE STORIES FOR YOUNG ADULTS
GROWING UP FILIPINO II
MORE STORIES FOR YOUNG ADULTS
Edited and Collected by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
PALH, 2009, softcover, $21.95
PALH, 2009, hardcover, $29.95
PALH
PO Box 5099
Santa Monica, CA 90409
Tel/fax: 310-452-1195
Email: palh@aol.com; palhbooks@gmail.com
Available from Baker & Taylor, Amazon.com,
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults is the second volume of the Growing Up Filipino series by PALH. In this collection of 27 short stories, Filipino and Filipino American writers explore the universal challenges and experiences of Filipino teens after the historic events of 9/11. The modern demands do not hinder Filipino youth from dealing with the universal concerns of growing up: family, friends, love, home, budding sexuality, leaving home. The delightful stories are written by well known as well as emerging writers. While the target audience of this fine anthology is young adults, the stories can be enjoyed by adult readers as well. There is a scarcity of Filipino American literature and this book is a welcome addition.
CONTRIBUTORS: Dean Francis Alfar, Katrina Ramos Atienza, Maria Victoria Beltran, M.G. Bertulfo, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Amalia B. Bueno, Max Gutierrez, Leslieann Hobayan, Jaime An Lim, Paulino Lim Jr., Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor, Dolores de Manuel, Rashaan Alexis Meneses, Veronica Montes, Charlson Ong, Marily Ysip Orosa, Kannika Claudine D. Peña, Oscar Peñaranda, Edgar Poma, Tony Robles, Brian Ascalon Roley, Jonathan Jimena Siason, Aileen Suzara, Geronimo G. Tagactac, Marianne Villanueva
"This collection of twenty-eight stories--of growing up Filipino in the Philippines, in the United States, in Canada--presents adolescents grappling, with some confusion and anxiety, about their place as affected by social and cultural mobility that separate and also enclose them. These are stories of discoveries about the young self at the brink of adulthood; of longing for a once-comfortable past, of fears arising from present economic hardships which threaten the future; of loneliness in family gatherings and in school, of racism, single parenthood…These are impeccable stories in range of subject matter and modes of narration: part of the story of the Philippines and wherever Filipinos live; part of the world's story." -- Linda Ty-Casper, Novelist
"Every story in this collection authentically captures the interdependence of society-at-large and some individual's growth, within extended families, both natural and ritual." --Leonard Casper, Professor Emeritus, American Studies, Boston College
"When read collectively, these stories become an embodiment of the Philippine mosaic, to highlight the fluidity of Filipino/American identity." --Rocio G. Davis, Associate Professor of American Literatures, University of Navarre
Kularts, Arkipelago and PAWA Present Merlina Bobis (SF) 11/14
The Solemn Lantern Maker
by Merlinda Bobis
(Bantam Delta US, 2009)
Book Launch, Reading & Signing
3pm, Sat NOV 14
Co-Sponsors: Arkipelago Books, Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA)
FREE!
Ten-year old Noland, a mute lantern maker, imagines an angel falling from the sky. But it is only an American tourist caught in a drive-by shooting. Manila, where the magical and the seedy collide: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and prostitution, dreams of friendship and the global war on terror. This raw and hard-hitting tale is delicately spare in its prose, with room for silences.
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission St @ 6th St, SF
by Merlinda Bobis
(Bantam Delta US, 2009)
Book Launch, Reading & Signing
3pm, Sat NOV 14
Co-Sponsors: Arkipelago Books, Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA)
FREE!
Ten-year old Noland, a mute lantern maker, imagines an angel falling from the sky. But it is only an American tourist caught in a drive-by shooting. Manila, where the magical and the seedy collide: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and prostitution, dreams of friendship and the global war on terror. This raw and hard-hitting tale is delicately spare in its prose, with room for silences.
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission St @ 6th St, SF
Monday, October 19, 2009
Kularts Presents Merlinda Bobis (SF): 11/13 and 11/15
River, River by Merlinda Bobis
8pm, Fri Nov 13
6pm, Sun Nov 15
Admission: $16-20 @ the door, $14 Advance, $ 12 Student/Senior
Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/79728
Filipina-Australian writer and performance artist Merlinda Bobis performs her latest dramatic work, “River, River”, based on her 1994 short story, “Fish-Hair Woman,” a story of magical realism, terror, and sadness, as part of her 2009 world tour.
Synopsis:
Estrella Capili, the Fish-Hair Woman, uses her twelve-meter hair to pull corpses from the river in Iraya, a militarized village in the Philippines. The river has become the dumping ground of victims of summary executions. Each time a body is thrown into the river, the water changes flavour: from river sweetness to brine, then later, to lemon grass. Is this myth? A trick of memory? An attempt of the village to story itself out of grief? Estrella remembers a night with no moon but lit by fireflies. She is taken by the soldiers to the river to retrieve a body from the water.
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission St @ 6th St, SF
8pm, Fri Nov 13
6pm, Sun Nov 15
Admission: $16-20 @ the door, $14 Advance, $ 12 Student/Senior
Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/79728
Filipina-Australian writer and performance artist Merlinda Bobis performs her latest dramatic work, “River, River”, based on her 1994 short story, “Fish-Hair Woman,” a story of magical realism, terror, and sadness, as part of her 2009 world tour.
Synopsis:
Estrella Capili, the Fish-Hair Woman, uses her twelve-meter hair to pull corpses from the river in Iraya, a militarized village in the Philippines. The river has become the dumping ground of victims of summary executions. Each time a body is thrown into the river, the water changes flavour: from river sweetness to brine, then later, to lemon grass. Is this myth? A trick of memory? An attempt of the village to story itself out of grief? Estrella remembers a night with no moon but lit by fireflies. She is taken by the soldiers to the river to retrieve a body from the water.
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission St @ 6th St, SF
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Scenes from the 10.17.09 PAWA Arkipelago Literary Series
YouTube videos from the 10.17.09 edition of the PAWA Arkipelago Literary Series featuring Neela Banerjee, Luis Francia, Alejandro Murguía, Jean Vengua and musical guests Bo Razon and Carlos Zialcita can be found here.
Flickr photos from the 10.17.09 edition of the PAWA Arkipelago Literary Series featuring Neela Banerjee, Luis Francia, Alejandro Murguía, Jean Vengua and musical guests Bo Razon and Carlos Zialcita can be found here.
Flickr photos from the 10.17.09 edition of the PAWA Arkipelago Literary Series featuring Neela Banerjee, Luis Francia, Alejandro Murguía, Jean Vengua and musical guests Bo Razon and Carlos Zialcita can be found here.
Call for Submissions: Kartika Review
Kartika Review is accepting submissions for upcoming issues of our online Asian American literary magazine.
We accept: fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction (memoir, reportage, essays, letters), poetry and visual art by Asian American artists.
We are a quarterly journal We read submissions all year. Simultaneous submission are okay, but please notify us immediately if your work has been accepted elsewhere.
Full submission guidelines, including the email addresses for submitting work, are available at our website: http://www.kartikareview.com/submit.html
Kartika Review serves the Asian American community and those involved with Diasporic Asian-inspired literature. We scout for compelling Asian American creative writing and artwork to present to the public at large. Our editors actively solicit contributions from established virtuosos in our community in hopes their works here will inspire the next generation of virtuosos. We also want to promote emerging writers and artists we foresee to be the future powerhouses of their craft. Ultimately, Kartika strives to create a literary forum that caters to and celebrates the wordsmiths of the Asian Diaspora.
We accept: fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction (memoir, reportage, essays, letters), poetry and visual art by Asian American artists.
We are a quarterly journal We read submissions all year. Simultaneous submission are okay, but please notify us immediately if your work has been accepted elsewhere.
Full submission guidelines, including the email addresses for submitting work, are available at our website: http://www.kartikareview.com/
Kartika Review serves the Asian American community and those involved with Diasporic Asian-inspired literature. We scout for compelling Asian American creative writing and artwork to present to the public at large. Our editors actively solicit contributions from established virtuosos in our community in hopes their works here will inspire the next generation of virtuosos. We also want to promote emerging writers and artists we foresee to be the future powerhouses of their craft. Ultimately, Kartika strives to create a literary forum that caters to and celebrates the wordsmiths of the Asian Diaspora.
INTRO TO MOVIETELLING (NEO-BENSHI) WITH DENNIS SOMERA
Tuesdays, Nov 3 – Dec 15, 7-9pm (no class Nov 24)
KSW @ PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St., SF
Join KSW for a unique workshop in Movietelling/Film Narration. This art form has a long history in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, as well as western nations where silent films have called for narration and/or translation. Film narrators—called Benshi in Japan, Pyonsa in Korea—not only narrate the on-screen happenings, but seamlessly incorporate the poetic and political, as they hold the power to reinterpret the visual scene. Experimental poets in the Bay Area, including Dennis Somera, have rediscovered the practice and have been creating “neo-benshi”/movietelling work for several years.
In this workshop, participants will have the chance to recontextualize or balance their own narratives with an altered poetic language and inject it where a film’s “realism” might not have originally allowed. Reinscribing a story/narration/poem on a film is in turn taking back some of the control, the autonomy, the voice—a subversive, if not revolutionary art as action. The act of movietelling/film narration is taking what has been forced upon us through popular culture and shifting, turning, tweaking, or transforming it into something autonomous. Participants can translate not only the language of another culture or an auteur but retell their own stories, bringing more interactivity to an art form that typically has its interaction limited to suspension of disbelief or a one-way bridge (spoon-feeding into the audience). Check out Dennis' latest piece here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Through six meetings, participants will first find films and particular scenes that best visually and sometimes sonically tell/represent their own story/poem: deriving the visually poetic and symbolic from the film and bringing their own autonomous narratives and poetics in their writing. With help from a video technician, participants will excerpt scenes from their chosen film into a small 3-5 minute piece they can then write into, toward and around. They will also have time to workshop their writing and have exercises to help elicit improvisational sound skills in preparation for actual performance. The last workshop meeting will be devoted mostly to rehearsal, practice, repetitions and feedback so we can explore the best performance choices. Finally, Kearny Street Workshop will present participants in a movietelling event to the public.
About the instructor: Dennis M. Somera has been performing to mostly his own text tending toward poetry since 1996 at venues such as Oakland’s Asian-Am.: Ohana Open Mic, KSW’s APAture and poetry readings, The Lab and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and many more in the the Bay Area. He has performed movietelling/film narration across the country in New York City at the Bowery Poetry Club and Galapagos Art Space as well as the University of Miami and the Miami Beach Cinemathique. He has studied and performed commedia del arte plays with Teatro Ng Tanan and The SF Mime Troupe’s summer intern program. He revels in collaborating with other artists, genres (such as film), disciplines beginning with dancer’s and experimental musicians in his creative writing: poetry MFA at Mills College. He has taught writing and performance workshops to teens with Meridian Gallery, Youth Speaks, World Savvy, California Poets in the Schools and a movietelling/film narration workshop at the University of Miami.
Registration fee is $200. To register by check, please send check or money order to: Kearny Street Workshop, PO Box 14545, San Francisco, CA 94114-0545. Or pay online at www.kearnystreet.org. Please include your full name and contact info.
Kwatro Kantos: Dia De los Muertos 09 at MCCLA (SF)
Bring Back the Dead
The Calavares of Jose Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla
Exhibition Dates: October 15 - November 21
Gala Reception: Monday, November 2 6:00-10:30 pm, $5, children free
Main Gallery Altar & Installations by:
Kwatro-Kantos (England Hidalgo, Marcius Noceda, Carlo Ricafort, Lian Ladia and Mel Vera Cruz), Larry Reed & Favianna Rodriguez, The Rivera Family, Martin Zuniga and more.
IntiRaymi Gallery: The Grand Cemetery of J.G. Posada & M. Manilla Calavares - a memoriam for the dead
MISSION CULTURAL CENTER FOR LATINO ARTS
2868 Mission st., San Francisco, CA (24th bart exit)
415.643.2775
VENUE
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission st., San Francisco,CA (24th Bart exit)
DATE
October 15 - November 21
Artists' Reception: Monday, November 2
MORE INFO
info.kwatrokantos@gmail.com
LINKS
http://kwatro-kantos.com
http://www.missionculturalcenter.org
The Calavares of Jose Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla
Exhibition Dates: October 15 - November 21
Gala Reception: Monday, November 2 6:00-10:30 pm, $5, children free
Main Gallery Altar & Installations by:
Kwatro-Kantos (England Hidalgo, Marcius Noceda, Carlo Ricafort, Lian Ladia and Mel Vera Cruz), Larry Reed & Favianna Rodriguez, The Rivera Family, Martin Zuniga and more.
IntiRaymi Gallery: The Grand Cemetery of J.G. Posada & M. Manilla Calavares - a memoriam for the dead
MISSION CULTURAL CENTER FOR LATINO ARTS
2868 Mission st., San Francisco, CA (24th bart exit)
415.643.2775
VENUE
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission st., San Francisco,CA (24th Bart exit)
DATE
October 15 - November 21
Artists' Reception: Monday, November 2
MORE INFO
info.kwatrokantos@gmail.com
LINKS
http://kwatro-kantos.com
http://www.missionculturalcenter.org
Friday, October 16, 2009
Poetry All Day Tomorrow 10/17/09 in SF
It begins at 10:00 am with Luis Francia’s writing workshop at the Bayanihan Center. Info is here.
It continues at 2:00 pm, with the PAWA Arkipelago reading, which features Neela Banerjee, Luis Francia, Alejandro Murguía, and Jean Vengua. Musical guests Bo Razon and Carlos Ziálcita. Info is here.
It continues at Litquake. I will be reading for SPD at the Marsh Cafe at 8:30 pm with Cedar Sigo, Kaya Oakes, Kiala Givehand, Alex Tremblay-McGaw, Ashley Redfield, and Kaila Wilkey. Info is here.
It happens concurrently at Litquake at Fabric8 at 8:30 pm, with Luis Francia, Aimee Suzara, Rona Fernandez, Jenesha “Jinky” de Rivera, Eileen Tabios, Benito M. Vergara, Jr. Info is here.
Who’s coming?
Thursday, October 15, 2009
PEP Book Launch 10/16/09 (SF)
From Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales:
Hi Family and Friends!
Please come out to celebrate my second book!
You're invited to the PEP Book, Volume II Launch!
It's this Friday, October 16th, 2009
6-8pm
Humanities 587 (SF State)
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
FREE FOOD AND ENTERTAINMENT! KID FRIENDLY EVENT!
Co-Sponsored by Phoenix Publishing House International, Asian American Studies Department, and Pin@y Educational Partnerships, Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor.
Come and celebrate with PEP as we launch Volume II of our Source Book. Details below!
If you can't make the event, please visit www.pepsf.org or www.phoenixphi.com for more book information
Hi Family and Friends!
Please come out to celebrate my second book!
You're invited to the PEP Book, Volume II Launch!
It's this Friday, October 16th, 2009
6-8pm
Humanities 587 (SF State)
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
FREE FOOD AND ENTERTAINMENT! KID FRIENDLY EVENT!
Co-Sponsored by Phoenix Publishing House International, Asian American Studies Department, and Pin@y Educational Partnerships, Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor.
Come and celebrate with PEP as we launch Volume II of our Source Book. Details below!
If you can't make the event, please visit www.pepsf.org or www.phoenixphi.com for more book information
REVIEW: Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization By Neferti X. M. Tadiar
Neferti X. M. Tadiar reviewed at the Feminist Review. An excerpt:
Tadiar writes poetically at times and offers beautifully detailed and researched explanations of the dangers and losses we face as the world undergoes a new transformation: globalization. Given the current economic and political struggles we face, Tadiar’s examination of the post-colonization period of the Philippines and the knowledge it offers about the process we are undergoing is particularly timely as well as brilliant. She brings heart to her explanations as she illustrates the role of literature and poetry in providing a picture of effects of these changes on the subaltern.
Read more.
Tadiar writes poetically at times and offers beautifully detailed and researched explanations of the dangers and losses we face as the world undergoes a new transformation: globalization. Given the current economic and political struggles we face, Tadiar’s examination of the post-colonization period of the Philippines and the knowledge it offers about the process we are undergoing is particularly timely as well as brilliant. She brings heart to her explanations as she illustrates the role of literature and poetry in providing a picture of effects of these changes on the subaltern.
Read more.
louderARTS, NY: Typhoon Ondoy Fundraiser with Sarah Gambito 10/19/09
Click on image to enlarge, for more info:
http://louderarts.com/index.php?option=com_eventlist&view=details&id=76:slam&Itemid=62
http://louderarts.com/index.php?option=com_eventlist&view=details&id=76:slam&Itemid=62
Lumpia Cook-Off in SF (Typhoon Ondoy Fundraiser) 10/21-22/09
From Ting Aurelio:
Lumpia Cook-Off
When: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 7:00 PM - Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:00 AM
Where: Space Gallery 1141 Polk St San Francisco, CA 94109 (415) 377-3325
Cost: $7.00 - $10.00
More info here.
Lumpia Cook-Off
When: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 7:00 PM - Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:00 AM
Where: Space Gallery 1141 Polk St San Francisco, CA 94109 (415) 377-3325
Cost: $7.00 - $10.00
More info here.
Merlinda Bobis at Sonoma State University (11/09/09)
AWARD-WINNING WRITER MERLINDA BOBIS has just launched her new novel THE SOLEMN LANTERN MAKER and will speak on her play in a lecture-performance
PASSION TO PASYON: PLAYING MILITARISM
November 9, 2009, 12:00 noon. Schulz 3001
Sonoma State University
To keep a place alive in your heart, it must dwell in your mouth.
The Fish-Hair woman trawls with her twelve-meter hair the corpses from the river in a militarized village. Trauma is body memory symbolized by hair that cannot stop growing, like the continuous thread of storytelling. The body and its oral mode reinstates in history not only the disappeared bodies, but also the erased lives of the victims of war.
This lecture traces how the 1987-1989 total war waged by the Philippine government against communist insurgency has been embodied in text and performance by writer-performer Merlinda Bobis using actual events, creative writing, theatre and music, and the Pasyon, the Philippine Holy Week tradition of singing The Passion of Christ. Inspired by her militarized home region Bikol, Bobis wrote the short story Fish-Hair Woman, which she has expanded into a novel, then adapted into the play River, River. What happens to the “passion of a village” in this journey from the original trauma to various stages of storying and embodiment? How are the bodies and stories of war erased and retrieved? How does language become the site of disappearance and retrieval? How can the body become an agent of recovery and redress?
Merlinda Bobis has received various awards for her writing, among them the Prix Italia, the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, and the Philippine National Book Award. She has published novels, short stories and poems. Her plays have been performed/produced in Australia, Philippines, Spain, China, France, Thailand, and the Slovak Republic. Author’s website: http://www.merlindabobis.com
PASSION TO PASYON: PLAYING MILITARISM
November 9, 2009, 12:00 noon. Schulz 3001
Sonoma State University
To keep a place alive in your heart, it must dwell in your mouth.
The Fish-Hair woman trawls with her twelve-meter hair the corpses from the river in a militarized village. Trauma is body memory symbolized by hair that cannot stop growing, like the continuous thread of storytelling. The body and its oral mode reinstates in history not only the disappeared bodies, but also the erased lives of the victims of war.
This lecture traces how the 1987-1989 total war waged by the Philippine government against communist insurgency has been embodied in text and performance by writer-performer Merlinda Bobis using actual events, creative writing, theatre and music, and the Pasyon, the Philippine Holy Week tradition of singing The Passion of Christ. Inspired by her militarized home region Bikol, Bobis wrote the short story Fish-Hair Woman, which she has expanded into a novel, then adapted into the play River, River. What happens to the “passion of a village” in this journey from the original trauma to various stages of storying and embodiment? How are the bodies and stories of war erased and retrieved? How does language become the site of disappearance and retrieval? How can the body become an agent of recovery and redress?
Merlinda Bobis has received various awards for her writing, among them the Prix Italia, the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, and the Philippine National Book Award. She has published novels, short stories and poems. Her plays have been performed/produced in Australia, Philippines, Spain, China, France, Thailand, and the Slovak Republic. Author’s website: http://www.merlindabobis.com
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Miscegenating the Discourse: Mixed Race Asian American Art and Literature (Chicago)
http://www.mixedracestudies.org/wordpress/?p=1282
Miscegenating the Discourse: Mixed Race Asian American Art and Literature
Jessica Hagedorn In Conversation with Wei Ming and Laura Kina
As part of The President’s Signature Series 2009-2010
2009-10-22 at 18:00 CDT (Local Time)
DePaul University Art Museum
2350 N Kenmore
This event is co-sponsored by Asian American Studies, The Cultural Center, English, The President’s Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, OMSA, and The Women’s Center.
What does it mean to be a Mixed Asian American Writer/Artist?
Mixed Race Studies scholar Wei Ming Dariotis, Assistant Professor Asian American Studies San Francisco State University, and Laura Kina, DePaul University Associate Professor Art, Media, & Design, Vincent dePaul Professor & Director Asian American Studies, will take on identity, categorization, and issues specific to Asian American mixed heritage populations in their dialogue with award winning writer, screenwriter and performer, Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters, Dream Jungle, The Gangster of Love, Danger And Beauty, and editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World. Her next novel, Toxicology, will be published by Viking Penguin in 2011.
This event is free and open to the public.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
PAWA at Litquake on October 17
Join us for the Phase 3 of Litquake's Litcrawl, this Saturday from 8:30-9:30 PM at Fabric8, 3318 22nd (cross st Valencia), SFPAWA & Arkipelago Bookstore Present:
Of History & Myths — Writings from Philippine-American Authors
Emcee and curator Karen Llagas, Anthem Salgado
Readers: Luis H. Francia, Aimee Suzara, Rona Fernandez, Jenesha “Jinky” de Rivera, Eileen Tabios, Benito M. Vergara, Jr.
SF Filipino American Jazz Festival Events
COOL BLACK BALL
Little Brown Brother at Rasellas Jazz Club
The Cool Black Ball is a pre-halloween costume event showcasing the live entertainment section of Fillmore Street and its rich history. Filipino American jazz musicians were part of the scene when the Fillmore was considered the "Harlem of the West". Participants in the Cool Black Ball include all restaurants and music venues including Yoshi's, Rasselas Jazz Club, Sheba Piano Lounge and Bruno's. Dress in your cool, classy, sexy, and hip all black fashions of the 1920s thru 1950's. It's a "Block Party" - just like "Back in the Day.... "
Cool Black Ball
October 17 8:30 pm
www.coolblackball.com
LBB CD cover
SF Filipino American Jazz Festival 2008 Artists Little Brown Brother will perform songs from their new CD "Soul Shadows" www.cdbaby.com/cd/littlebrownbrother
Rasselas Ethiopian Restaurant and Jazz Club
1534 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA
www.rasselasjazzclub.com
CHARITO
Performing at Yoshi's Oakland October 27
Charito Yoshis Oakland
The Japan-based jazz diva Charito is now a presence on the global scene. Her recent albums, featuring powerful collaborations with Ivan Lins and the Manhattan Jazz Orchestra, have shown the world just how talented this Filipina songstress is. Her eagerly-awaited newest release is a collection of songs by the great French composer Michel Legrand. On the CD, entitled Watch What Happens, Legrand himself plays the piano, scats and performs with Charito on four songs.
Her concerts this year have included appearances at the Manila International Jazz Festival in February, and the Sydney Jazz A Vienne Festival where she is currently performing. Before coming to Oakland Yoshis, she will perform at the world-famous Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood, CA. She will appear there again in December as part of the 5th Annual Los Angeles Fil-Am Jazz Festival.
Charito - Yoshi's Oakland Oct 27 8 pm
510 Embarcadero West
Oakland, CA 510-238-9200
www.yoshis.com/oakland Now Available! Tickets for this performance
Little Brown Brother at Rasellas Jazz Club
The Cool Black Ball is a pre-halloween costume event showcasing the live entertainment section of Fillmore Street and its rich history. Filipino American jazz musicians were part of the scene when the Fillmore was considered the "Harlem of the West". Participants in the Cool Black Ball include all restaurants and music venues including Yoshi's, Rasselas Jazz Club, Sheba Piano Lounge and Bruno's. Dress in your cool, classy, sexy, and hip all black fashions of the 1920s thru 1950's. It's a "Block Party" - just like "Back in the Day.... "
Cool Black Ball
October 17 8:30 pm
www.coolblackball.com
LBB CD cover
SF Filipino American Jazz Festival 2008 Artists Little Brown Brother will perform songs from their new CD "Soul Shadows" www.cdbaby.com/cd/littlebrownbrother
Rasselas Ethiopian Restaurant and Jazz Club
1534 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA
www.rasselasjazzclub.com
CHARITO
Performing at Yoshi's Oakland October 27
Charito Yoshis Oakland
The Japan-based jazz diva Charito is now a presence on the global scene. Her recent albums, featuring powerful collaborations with Ivan Lins and the Manhattan Jazz Orchestra, have shown the world just how talented this Filipina songstress is. Her eagerly-awaited newest release is a collection of songs by the great French composer Michel Legrand. On the CD, entitled Watch What Happens, Legrand himself plays the piano, scats and performs with Charito on four songs.
Her concerts this year have included appearances at the Manila International Jazz Festival in February, and the Sydney Jazz A Vienne Festival where she is currently performing. Before coming to Oakland Yoshis, she will perform at the world-famous Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood, CA. She will appear there again in December as part of the 5th Annual Los Angeles Fil-Am Jazz Festival.
Charito - Yoshi's Oakland Oct 27 8 pm
510 Embarcadero West
Oakland, CA 510-238-9200
www.yoshis.com/oakland Now Available! Tickets for this performance
Monday, October 12, 2009
PAWA Arkipelago Reading Series: Saturday 10/17/09 at 2 pm
Please join us for the next reading in the PAWA Arkipelago Reading SeriesWhere: The Bayanihan Center 1010 Mission Street @ 6th Street, San Francisco
When: Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Who: Writers Neelanjana Banerjee, Luis Francia, Alejandro Murguía, and Jean Vengua. Musical guests Bo Razon and Carlos Ziálcita.
This event is free and open to the public!
Neelanjana Banerjee’s poetry and fiction have appeared in the The Literary Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, Nimrod, A Room of One’s Own, Desilit and the anthology, Desilicious. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 2007 and was a Hedgebrook fellow in 2008. Banerjee has worked in mainstream, ethnic and independent media for the past ten years. She edits the Books and Literature section for Hyphen (an Asian American magazine based in the San Francisco Bay Area) and is currently a teaching artist with the San Francisco WritersCorp. She is a co-editor for Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 2010).
Luis H. Francia is the author of, among other titles, the poetry collection Museum of Absences, the semiautobiographical Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, and the forthcoming chapbook The Beauty of Ghosts. He is the editor of Brown River, White Ocean, an anthology of Philippine literature in English. He teaches at New York University and Hunter College.
Alejandro Murguía is the author of two collections of short stories, both of which received The American Book Award, Southern Front (Bilingual Review Press 1991) and This War Called Love (City Lights Books, (2002). He is also the author of the non-fiction The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California (University of Texas Press 2002). A long-time literary activists in the Bay Area, he is the co-editor of Volcán: Poetry from Central America (1984); the translator of Angel in the Deluge by Rosario Castellanos (1993), and the founder and editor of Tin-Tan Magazine (1975-79). He is currently a professor in Raza Studies at San Francisco State University.
Jean Vengua's poetry has been published in many print and online journals and anthologies, including Going Home to a Landscape, Babaylan, x-stream, Interlope, Returning a Borrowed Tongue, Fugacity 05, Sidereality, Moria, and Otoliths, and in her chapbook, The Aching Vicinities (Otoliths). With Mark Young, she is editor of The First Hay(na)ku Anthology and Hay(na)ku Anthology, Volume 2. Jean's essays, articles and reviews on literature and music have been published in many journals including Jouvert, Geopolitics of the Visual (Ateneo Univ. Press), Pinoy Poetics, Our Own Voice, Seattle's International Examiner (Pacific Reader), and CultureCatch.com.
Bo Razon completed Master Classes in Cuban Music and Folklore at the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba in 1997. He has performed with major international and local artists; given seminars, workshops and clinics in Afro-Latin music theory and applications; written numerous magazine articles and has written scripts and directed programs and documentaries for television and public media. He released a cd of original music in 1998 entitled "Biyahero" under BMG Records Pilipinas.
Carlos Ziálcita, harmonica player and vocalist, has been part of the San Francisco Bay Area music scene for three decades as a performer, promoter, educator, and radio announcer. His recordings include Train Through Oakland in 2000, Evolution, released in 2004 and Soul Shadows, released in 2009 with the jazz fusion group Little Brown Brother. He is the Producer and Executive Director of the San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival.
SULU SERIES: Showcase for Filipino American History Month - This Sunday, Oct. 18th (NY)
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=89217839&blogId=514029568
On Sunday, October 18, 2009
On Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Sulu Series proudly presents:
A Showcase In Honor of Filipino American History Month
::Lisa M Ascalon::
::Ed Menchavez::
::John Flor-Sisante::
::Laura Canio::
::Taospuso::
::Sarah Gambito::
::Blue Mellon Pop::
Guest Curator: Hanalei Ramos
THE SULU SERIES
Doors open at 8PM
Cover:
$8 General Admission
$5 Students
THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 Bowery
(Between Houston & Bleecker)
New York, NY 10012
212.614.0505
F-Train to 2nd Avenue
6-Train to Bleecker
Luis Francia: Imelda Is Less Than Terrific
[This article is posted here in its entirety with the author's permission.]
INQUIRER Global Nation
THE ARTIST ABROAD
Imelda Is Less Than Terrific
By Luis H. Francia
INQUIRER.net
NEW YORK—The musical Imelda, on its last week at an Off-Broadway theater and produced by the venerable Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, has as its secondary title, “A New Musical.”
Certainly it is new as this is its New York premiere. But new in terms of its approach to the subject? Hardly; not to those who have followed Imelda’s rise and fall—and rise again, it seems, if that wrongheaded tribute to her by the Cultural Center of the Philippines is any indication. (What could they have been smoking?) The creation of Sachi Oyama (book), Nathan Wang (music), and Aaron Coleman (lyrics) and directed by Tim Dang, Imelda examines the psychological arc of its eponymous subject’s life, from her ingénue Miss Tacloban days to her dramatic ascent as the wife of Ferdinand Marcos and equally dramatic and forced exit from Malacañang in 1986.
Accurate enough as far as that goes, but the psychological portrait achieved is sketchy. In many respects the musical provides little to no insight. At one point, Imelda, decrying the brutalities wreaked by martial law, tells Ferdinand the “ugliness” has to end. I looked on in disbelief. The scene buys completely into the delusional myth—one of many wrought by the Marcoses—that she genuinely cared for the poor. That would come as news to the great unwashed, whom she has spent her adult life distancing herself from. The musical winds up portraying her essentially as a victim, with its implicit appeal to our sympathy.
This is one lady neither I nor the country should cry for. I must confess it is extremely difficult for me to harbor any sympathy for an aging ex-beauty queen, pampered would-be czarina, and now purveyor of a jewelry line who lives in the very lap of luxury, and trumpets to all that she owns the country. There is some truth to what the musical proffers, but it is far from the only, or even the most important truth, about her and Ferdinand’s tenure as a manqué queen and king of a crippled kingdom.
And even that sliver of truth is conveyed in predictable, campy style. Of course there had to be a song about the shoes, with funny lines—“Why the thrills for my espadrilles …/ Talk of shoes. What a pain! I am here to entertain!”—but how utterly predictable! A down-at-the-heel kitschy number that no longer elicits uproarious or even modest laughter. I suppose there must be some irony in the way that Imelda is now seen: as some over-the-top figure known mainly for her shopping excesses and her skewed pronouncements, someone to laugh at, when she so very much wanted to be treated with respect and herself be seen as a figure of international prestige. (When one reads on the musical flyer that Imelda was “an ambitious woman who wanted to put her country as an equal player on the world stage,” one realizes how contemporary Philippine history has been glaringly, if not deliberately, misread.)
The public persona that is “Imelda,” on which this musical is mostly built—the lampoonable but likeable Imelda, in other words—gives the real Imelda a pass and largely absolves her of any complicity in the shipwrecking of the state she and Ferdinand hastily fled in 1986. Those were glorious late-February days, when an aroused citizenry had had enough of the conjugal dictators’ rapacious ways. Make no mistake: Imelda was a full-fledged partner in an enterprise that turned the national treasury into their personal piggy bank and increased significantly the country’s foreign debt; made a mockery of civil liberties; instituted crony capitalism as a lamentable, regular feature of governance; wasted millions of dollars on grandiose projects; and politicized the military, with disastrous results.
The luggage she brought to Hawaii contained by the way a gold crown and three tiaras of precious gems—now there’s a campy item worthy of note, plump with symbolic promise! The musical renders her as a tabula rasa, an Eliza to Marcos’s Professor Higgins—a one-note relationship. Mel Sagrado Maghuyop is all menacing sneers and glower while as Imelda Jaygee Macapugay is simultaneously effervescent, flaky, and sharp, with a Pollyanna attitude that grows more determined and grimmer as the bodies pile up. The relationship between Ninoy Aquino—Brian Jose is a dead-ringer—and Cory (Liz Casasola) is similarly flat.
All evidence pointed to a darker, more complicated relationship between Meldy and Ferdy: the musical alludes to this, when at one point she tells him that he, weakened by lupus, now needs her, but this promising opening is dropped almost as soon as it pops up. The characters do include a nuclear peasant family, a stand-in for the masses that serves a counterpoint to Imelda’s climb to the top: effective but unfortunately not milked for all its worth. The finale is surprisingly dark and on target, where Imelda defiantly proclaims “I am the Philippines!”—a clear reference to Louis XIV’s ‘L’etat, c’est moi!” This could have been the starting point of a richer, more layered musical—political cabaret that could have examined the corruption and the decadence of the Marcos era, with wit, camp, satire, and biting commentary, one the talented cast, I have no doubt, could have pulled off. Imelda pulls us in several directions, and never convincingly in one.
There is an interesting side story to this production, which illustrates the hold, real or imagined, Imelda is perceived to have, even from afar—like the omnipresent malevolent eye in Lord of the Rings. Last summer Pan Asian Rep’s founder and artistic director Tisa Chang invited me to lunch and asked me to write a short piece on the real Imelda, to be included in Playbill, the standard program given out in theaters. The piece didn’t necessarily have to relate to the musical. Nor could it, as I hadn’t seen the work or heard anything about it. I made it clear that I wasn’t a fan of Imelda, which she seemed not to have any problems with. Our convivial lunch ended with me agreeing to think about it and to let her know if I did in the end wish to write something. There was to be no fee of any kind, so this would be gratis.
I had written an account of Imelda’s 1990 New York trial, for a number of publications. She was eventually acquitted, on her birthday no less, leading her to quip that the verdict must have been a gift from the dead dictator ensconced in heaven (hope does spring eternal). I included a modified version in my book Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago. To my mind, it was a sober discussion of the trial, a summary of the background to the federal case against her, and some biographical context (Imelda’s that is). It wasn’t a diatribe, not a rant, nothing slanderous or libelous. No dish. I thought, Perfect! A musical on Imelda premiering in New York, accompanied by a piece on her New York trial (and tribulations).
I promptly e-mailed Ms. Chang, offering the excerpt, but she must have gotten cold feet, for without even reading the material she nixed the very idea that she herself had proposed. She suggested that a piece on the 1990 trial would not be kosher. I protested, stating that this amounted to censorship; she denied that it was, adding that La Imelda and her family had been invited to come and watch the musical. Furthermore, the theater had an obligation to maintain an “even-handedness.” Ah! The cat was out of the bag. This was not going to be provocative theater, after all. I wondered, again in an e-mail to Ms. Chang, why I had to worry about Mrs. Marcos’s feelings, when “she never worried about mine, or those of a whole nation that forced her to flee. And rest assured she won’t ever worry about yours.” I suppose Mrs. Marcos can sleep soundly, knowing that certain quarters in New York are ever protective of her armored psyche. Hark! I believe I hear someone in the distance singing a song about feelings…
Copyright L.H. Francia
INQUIRER Global Nation
THE ARTIST ABROAD
Imelda Is Less Than Terrific
By Luis H. Francia
INQUIRER.net
NEW YORK—The musical Imelda, on its last week at an Off-Broadway theater and produced by the venerable Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, has as its secondary title, “A New Musical.”
Certainly it is new as this is its New York premiere. But new in terms of its approach to the subject? Hardly; not to those who have followed Imelda’s rise and fall—and rise again, it seems, if that wrongheaded tribute to her by the Cultural Center of the Philippines is any indication. (What could they have been smoking?) The creation of Sachi Oyama (book), Nathan Wang (music), and Aaron Coleman (lyrics) and directed by Tim Dang, Imelda examines the psychological arc of its eponymous subject’s life, from her ingénue Miss Tacloban days to her dramatic ascent as the wife of Ferdinand Marcos and equally dramatic and forced exit from Malacañang in 1986.
Accurate enough as far as that goes, but the psychological portrait achieved is sketchy. In many respects the musical provides little to no insight. At one point, Imelda, decrying the brutalities wreaked by martial law, tells Ferdinand the “ugliness” has to end. I looked on in disbelief. The scene buys completely into the delusional myth—one of many wrought by the Marcoses—that she genuinely cared for the poor. That would come as news to the great unwashed, whom she has spent her adult life distancing herself from. The musical winds up portraying her essentially as a victim, with its implicit appeal to our sympathy.
This is one lady neither I nor the country should cry for. I must confess it is extremely difficult for me to harbor any sympathy for an aging ex-beauty queen, pampered would-be czarina, and now purveyor of a jewelry line who lives in the very lap of luxury, and trumpets to all that she owns the country. There is some truth to what the musical proffers, but it is far from the only, or even the most important truth, about her and Ferdinand’s tenure as a manqué queen and king of a crippled kingdom.
And even that sliver of truth is conveyed in predictable, campy style. Of course there had to be a song about the shoes, with funny lines—“Why the thrills for my espadrilles …/ Talk of shoes. What a pain! I am here to entertain!”—but how utterly predictable! A down-at-the-heel kitschy number that no longer elicits uproarious or even modest laughter. I suppose there must be some irony in the way that Imelda is now seen: as some over-the-top figure known mainly for her shopping excesses and her skewed pronouncements, someone to laugh at, when she so very much wanted to be treated with respect and herself be seen as a figure of international prestige. (When one reads on the musical flyer that Imelda was “an ambitious woman who wanted to put her country as an equal player on the world stage,” one realizes how contemporary Philippine history has been glaringly, if not deliberately, misread.)
The public persona that is “Imelda,” on which this musical is mostly built—the lampoonable but likeable Imelda, in other words—gives the real Imelda a pass and largely absolves her of any complicity in the shipwrecking of the state she and Ferdinand hastily fled in 1986. Those were glorious late-February days, when an aroused citizenry had had enough of the conjugal dictators’ rapacious ways. Make no mistake: Imelda was a full-fledged partner in an enterprise that turned the national treasury into their personal piggy bank and increased significantly the country’s foreign debt; made a mockery of civil liberties; instituted crony capitalism as a lamentable, regular feature of governance; wasted millions of dollars on grandiose projects; and politicized the military, with disastrous results.
The luggage she brought to Hawaii contained by the way a gold crown and three tiaras of precious gems—now there’s a campy item worthy of note, plump with symbolic promise! The musical renders her as a tabula rasa, an Eliza to Marcos’s Professor Higgins—a one-note relationship. Mel Sagrado Maghuyop is all menacing sneers and glower while as Imelda Jaygee Macapugay is simultaneously effervescent, flaky, and sharp, with a Pollyanna attitude that grows more determined and grimmer as the bodies pile up. The relationship between Ninoy Aquino—Brian Jose is a dead-ringer—and Cory (Liz Casasola) is similarly flat.
All evidence pointed to a darker, more complicated relationship between Meldy and Ferdy: the musical alludes to this, when at one point she tells him that he, weakened by lupus, now needs her, but this promising opening is dropped almost as soon as it pops up. The characters do include a nuclear peasant family, a stand-in for the masses that serves a counterpoint to Imelda’s climb to the top: effective but unfortunately not milked for all its worth. The finale is surprisingly dark and on target, where Imelda defiantly proclaims “I am the Philippines!”—a clear reference to Louis XIV’s ‘L’etat, c’est moi!” This could have been the starting point of a richer, more layered musical—political cabaret that could have examined the corruption and the decadence of the Marcos era, with wit, camp, satire, and biting commentary, one the talented cast, I have no doubt, could have pulled off. Imelda pulls us in several directions, and never convincingly in one.
There is an interesting side story to this production, which illustrates the hold, real or imagined, Imelda is perceived to have, even from afar—like the omnipresent malevolent eye in Lord of the Rings. Last summer Pan Asian Rep’s founder and artistic director Tisa Chang invited me to lunch and asked me to write a short piece on the real Imelda, to be included in Playbill, the standard program given out in theaters. The piece didn’t necessarily have to relate to the musical. Nor could it, as I hadn’t seen the work or heard anything about it. I made it clear that I wasn’t a fan of Imelda, which she seemed not to have any problems with. Our convivial lunch ended with me agreeing to think about it and to let her know if I did in the end wish to write something. There was to be no fee of any kind, so this would be gratis.
I had written an account of Imelda’s 1990 New York trial, for a number of publications. She was eventually acquitted, on her birthday no less, leading her to quip that the verdict must have been a gift from the dead dictator ensconced in heaven (hope does spring eternal). I included a modified version in my book Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago. To my mind, it was a sober discussion of the trial, a summary of the background to the federal case against her, and some biographical context (Imelda’s that is). It wasn’t a diatribe, not a rant, nothing slanderous or libelous. No dish. I thought, Perfect! A musical on Imelda premiering in New York, accompanied by a piece on her New York trial (and tribulations).
I promptly e-mailed Ms. Chang, offering the excerpt, but she must have gotten cold feet, for without even reading the material she nixed the very idea that she herself had proposed. She suggested that a piece on the 1990 trial would not be kosher. I protested, stating that this amounted to censorship; she denied that it was, adding that La Imelda and her family had been invited to come and watch the musical. Furthermore, the theater had an obligation to maintain an “even-handedness.” Ah! The cat was out of the bag. This was not going to be provocative theater, after all. I wondered, again in an e-mail to Ms. Chang, why I had to worry about Mrs. Marcos’s feelings, when “she never worried about mine, or those of a whole nation that forced her to flee. And rest assured she won’t ever worry about yours.” I suppose Mrs. Marcos can sleep soundly, knowing that certain quarters in New York are ever protective of her armored psyche. Hark! I believe I hear someone in the distance singing a song about feelings…
Copyright L.H. Francia
STOP MAKING SENSE! With Luis Francia (Writing Workshop, SF)
STOP MAKING SENSE! Poetry Workshop with Luis Francia
Saturday, October 17, 2009
9:30am-12:30pm
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA
Mean without meaning to.
Chance upon delight, mystery, paradox,
and other linguistic revelations as, given free rein,
words can lead you to broad and unexpected spaces/places.
In approaching the writing of a poem,
this morning workshop emphasizes play, lyricism,
and an openness unbeholden to narrative.
Worry not about the latter: its texts are indelibly written in the everyday.
Worry not about your grandmother, your sexuality,
your roots, all the peculiarities of your life.
They will never leave you.
For those just starting to write poetry. All interested in exploring and writing welcome. Bring paper and be ready to do some writing exercises.
Student sliding scale $20-$30 / Regular sliding scale $35-$45
(Fee includes breakfast and snacks)
9:30 am: Welcome, Breakfast
10:00 am Workshop
2:00 pm (free event): PAWA Arkipelago author Reading Series featuring: Neela Banerjee, Luis Francia, Alejandro Murguía, Jean Vengua, & music performed by Chris Planas, Carlos Ziálcita
Luis H. Francia’s poetry collections include Museum of Absences and The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems. His semiautobiographical Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago won both the 2002 PEN Center Open Book and The 2002 Asian American Literary Award. His poetry theater piece, The Beauty of Ghosts, premiered at Topaz Arts in 2007. He edited Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Philippine Literature in English, and is co-editor of Flippin’: Filipinos on America, and Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. He is the author of the Introduction to Penguin Classic’s Doveglion: Collected Poems by Jose Garcia Villa. He teaches at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Studies program.
For more information e-mail PAWA: pawa@pawainc.com
To register online:
http://app.formassembly.com/forms/view/52172
or go to the following sites and follow the links:
http://www.pawainc.com/events.html
or
http://pawainc.blogspot.com
Saturday, October 17, 2009
9:30am-12:30pm
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA
Mean without meaning to.
Chance upon delight, mystery, paradox,
and other linguistic revelations as, given free rein,
words can lead you to broad and unexpected spaces/places.
In approaching the writing of a poem,
this morning workshop emphasizes play, lyricism,
and an openness unbeholden to narrative.
Worry not about the latter: its texts are indelibly written in the everyday.
Worry not about your grandmother, your sexuality,
your roots, all the peculiarities of your life.
They will never leave you.
For those just starting to write poetry. All interested in exploring and writing welcome. Bring paper and be ready to do some writing exercises.
Student sliding scale $20-$30 / Regular sliding scale $35-$45
(Fee includes breakfast and snacks)
9:30 am: Welcome, Breakfast
10:00 am Workshop
2:00 pm (free event): PAWA Arkipelago author Reading Series featuring: Neela Banerjee, Luis Francia, Alejandro Murguía, Jean Vengua, & music performed by Chris Planas, Carlos Ziálcita
Luis H. Francia’s poetry collections include Museum of Absences and The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems. His semiautobiographical Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago won both the 2002 PEN Center Open Book and The 2002 Asian American Literary Award. His poetry theater piece, The Beauty of Ghosts, premiered at Topaz Arts in 2007. He edited Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Philippine Literature in English, and is co-editor of Flippin’: Filipinos on America, and Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. He is the author of the Introduction to Penguin Classic’s Doveglion: Collected Poems by Jose Garcia Villa. He teaches at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Studies program.
For more information e-mail PAWA: pawa@pawainc.com
To register online:
http://app.formassembly.com/forms/view/52172
or go to the following sites and follow the links:
http://www.pawainc.com/events.html
or
http://pawainc.blogspot.com
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Filipinas' stories take stage on Oahu
From the Honolulu Advertiser:
Filipinas' stories take stage on Oahu
By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
Filipinas' stories take stage on Oahu
By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
Amalia Bueno realized she had a big hit brewing when someone sent her original e-mail back to her telling her to go see the show. People are so excited to see "Flip Out!" they've been e-mail blasting across the country to friends and family. Bueno has had calls and inquiries about tickets from San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Manhattan. It's a lot of anticipation for a small four-woman show from Hilo playing in a public school auditorium in Honolulu.Read more.
"This show has taken on a life of its own," Bueno said.
Bueno, a Hawai'i poet, writer and producer, went to Hilo last month to see the show, a storytelling performance by three Filipino-American ladies in their 60s, or Pinay lolas, as Bueno affectionately calls them. She loved the show so much, she saw it twice, at two different venues. "I just had to help bring them to Honolulu in October for Filipino-American History Month," she said.
The three women, Angie Libadisos, Lorraine Godoy and Sandra Claveria tell stories of their lives centered on the theme "Three Filipinas made in America, made to survive!"
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Tony Robles at the Poetry Foundation Blog
In his introduction, Tony tells us that the Filipino Building Maintenance Company was the name of his father’s janitorial company. “I provided my father the free labor he needed and my father provided me with the lessons I needed to become a writer. The Filipino Building Maintenance Company is where I learned to write.” In “Son of A Janitor,” he describes the creative process behind cleaning a toilet bowl:
My favorite method was “The Beethoven” … because it could be both graceful and rigorous, depending on my state of mind. I would use the toilet brush like the conductor of an orchestra; slow and graceful with a calm rippling effect – etching an invisible melody, which seemed to outshine the other porcelain in the bathroom.
Read more.Thursday, October 8, 2009
PAWA Arkipelago Reading Series: Saturday 10/17/09 at 2 pm
Please join us for the next reading in the PAWA Arkipelago Reading SeriesWhere: The Bayanihan Center 1010 Mission Street @ 6th Street, San Francisco
When: Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Who: Writers Neelanjana Banerjee, Luis Francia, Alejandro Murguía, and Jean Vengua. Musical guests Chris Planas and Carlos Ziálcita.
This event is free and open to the public!
Neelanjana Banerjee’s poetry and fiction have appeared in the The Literary Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, Nimrod, A Room of One’s Own, Desilit and the anthology, Desilicious. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 2007 and was a Hedgebrook fellow in 2008. Banerjee has worked in mainstream, ethnic and independent media for the past ten years. She edits the Books and Literature section for Hyphen (an Asian American magazine based in the San Francisco Bay Area) and is currently a teaching artist with the San Francisco WritersCorp. She is a co-editor for Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 2010).
Luis H. Francia is the author of, among other titles, the poetry collection Museum of Absences, the semiautobiographical Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, and the forthcoming chapbook The Beauty of Ghosts. He is the editor of Brown River, White Ocean, an anthology of Philippine literature in English. He teaches at New York University and Hunter College.
Alejandro Murguía is the author of two collections of short stories, both of which received The American Book Award, Southern Front (Bilingual Review Press 1991) and This War Called Love (City Lights Books, (2002). He is also the author of the non-fiction The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California (University of Texas Press 2002). A long-time literary activists in the Bay Area, he is the co-editor of Volcán: Poetry from Central America (1984); the translator of Angel in the Deluge by Rosario Castellanos (1993), and the founder and editor of Tin-Tan Magazine (1975-79). He is currently a professor in Raza Studies at San Francisco State University.
Jean Vengua's poetry has been published in many print and online journals and anthologies, including Going Home to a Landscape, Babaylan, x-stream, Interlope, Returning a Borrowed Tongue, Fugacity 05, Sidereality, Moria, and Otoliths, and in her chapbook, The Aching Vicinities (Otoliths). With Mark Young, she is editor of The First Hay(na)ku Anthology and Hay(na)ku Anthology, Volume 2. Jean's essays, articles and reviews on literature and music have been published in many journals including Jouvert, Geopolitics of the Visual (Ateneo Univ. Press), Pinoy Poetics, Our Own Voice, Seattle's International Examiner (Pacific Reader), and CultureCatch.com.
Chris Planas, of Filipino and Mexican ancestry, grew up in Hawaii. He has been playing the guitar for over 30 years. Among many, his styles include jazz, blues, contemporary and salsa. In addition, he is also a vocalist, composer, writer and also has taught at UC Berkeley and at Berkeley City College.
Carlos Ziálcita, harmonica player and vocalist, has been part of the San Francisco Bay Area music scene for three decades as a performer, promoter, educator, and radio announcer. His recordings include Train Through Oakland in 2000, Evolution, released in 2004 and Soul Shadows, released in 2009 with the jazz fusion group Little Brown Brother. He is the Producer and Executive Director of the San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival.
Bindlestiff Events
Check our Bindlestiff's events calendar here.
- Kularts underCOVER October 15, 2009 from 8pm to 10pm – Bayanihan Center Benefit for Victims of Typhoon Ondoy Bayanihan Community Center
- ALIVE n KICKIN October 24, 2009 at 9pm to October 25, 2009 at 2am – 3411 Lounge Sat. Oct 24th at 930pm 3411 Lounge 3411 MacArthur Blvd @35th Ave in Oakland
- Stories High 11 November 5, 2009 at 8pm to November 21, 2009 at 10pm – Climate Theater
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Harana Exhibit at Andalu 10/05 - 11/02 (SF)
Click on image to enlarge, for more info:
Harana at Andalu Photo Exhibit
Andalu Restaurant is hosting a kick-off reception for the month-long exhibit of photography shot during the filming of Harana documentary in the Philippines.
Exhibit runs from October 5th to November 2nd. Proceeds of sale go towards the completion of the documentary.
To view the photography online: www.haranathemovie.com/exhibit.html
Free admission
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Art Insite Magazine article on Melissa Nolledo BY ALLEN GABORRO
Ironically, becoming what Eugene, Oregon artist and photographer Melissa “Mimi” Nolledo termed “an artist-artist” was originally not a life ambition for her. Yet, as the daughter of the late award-winning writer Wilfrido Nolledo, Melissa has followed in her beloved father’s footsteps and become a highly versatile and talented artist.
The Manila-born Nolledo is the product of two cultures, the Filipino and the American. As would be the case with any Filipino expatriate artist living in the United States, Nolledo derives a great deal of artistic inspiration from both sides of the Pacific. Having lived in the US since 1989, she has well adapted to her home away from home and carved out her own artistic niche in the challenging environment of American society.
But Nolledo has not turned her back on the memories that flow from her Filipino upbringing. It was an upbringing that she owes a great creative debt to for it was the period that opened Nolledo’s young mind up to artistic energies that will influence her for the rest of her life. Nolledo describes her youth and the role that the arts played in it in this way: “I was born in Manila, and raised in a family of writers. My father, Wilfrido Nolledo, is a well-known, much-loved Filipino fiction writer in English. Growing up, I was surrounded by a lot of creative types: artists, painters and writer, all friends of my Dad. I was exposed to creative writing at an early age.”
Nolledo spent much of her childhood in the Philippines which was then toiling under the Marcos dictatorship. As a University of the Philippines (UP) student, Nolledo was thrust into the world of student activism. She was driven by the conviction that she could have a bearing on the student movement. Nolledo’s activism has been transposed to the numerous community-based activities that she engages in today.
Nolledo was a writer for the student movement’s newspaper publication. Following college, she worked as a writer for a Filipino newspaper. Nolledo developed her keen photographic eye from these job experiences and brought her camera skills to the United States.
Nolledo excels at fusing photography into her digital artworks. This combination has generated for her, vivid and animated forms of creative illustrations. At the heart of Nolledo’s creative process lies a methodology of trial, variation, and transformation. She conducts the process by treating her photos in such a way as to produce a new, innovative image. Nolledo in addition, incorporates planes of color, varying degrees of light and darkness, and contrasts of shade. The end result is that her digital artworks call to mind the bewildering vibrancy of Surrealist aesthetics.
About digital art, Nolledo articulates her personal view of the form: “Digital art is a combination of many different techniques. ‘Woman Cradled,’ one of the pieces for which I’ve gotten a lot of amazing reactions, incorporates photography, painting and digital manipulation. The possibilities with digital art are endless: it’s such an open form of creativity that allows artists to continue improving on existing styles, while creating new ones.”
One can also discern an almost Buddhist quality in Nolledo’s digital art. Indeed, Nolledo’s enigmatic images touch upon her inner state of mind: “Working on digital images — processing, probing, constantly exploring colors, light and shadows — gives me a sense of peace, balance and appreciation for diversity and cohesion. My constant desire is to create a happy union of elements in my art echoes my philosophy that we should strive to live as one with the community around us.”
In her 2007 digital art exhibit, “Chromatext Reloaded,” Nolledo applied the proven techniques of her art. In “Chromatext Reloaded,” intricate color schemes and an amalgamation of distinctive and abstract designs give rise to a synergetic relationship between form and content.
The Chromatext composition “But for the Lovers” consists of a semi-montage of dreamlike images that could be construed as psychoanalytic interplay. It was as if Nolledo, in the tradition of Salvador Dalí, was transferring, consciously or unconsciously, her own dreams to her art.
“Lily in the Sea” is even less representational than the other works in the “Chromatext” exhibit. While many artworks possess a wholeness and exactitude about them, “Lily in the Sea” carries with it a profound depth of meaning that distances itself from any final conclusions. The two consistent aspects in the triple-blocked, psychedelically colored painting are to be found in the trio of eyes that charge it with self-contemplative value, and in the swirling, circular motion that overprints the ocular images.
Nolledo‘s latest artistic endeavor is her 2009 “Fire and Ice” digital art exhibit. In the exhibit, she expands her digital art horizons by utilizing fractal flames in her pictures. “Fire and Ice” is the most recent addition to Nolledo’s ongoing project of surveying a variety of light and color effects in her art, the art that takes flight not merely as a dynamic exploration of creative ideas, but also as a mirror to her pensive inner being: “The images I create are often reflective of particular moments in my life or certain events in the world around me.”
Like any good abstract artist, Nolledo’s artistic sensibilities transcend the observable. Prosaic art audiences tend to reserve endorsement points for works that contain something of a grand narrative, a unified and linear meaning. But this is to operate on the cursory belief that what you see is what you get in Nolledo’s art.
If one is to do any justice to Nolledo’s productions, then one must be prepared to explore the hidden landscape of manifold interpretations that lie beneath her works. Equally important is that it makes sense artistically to look for interpretative relationships in Nolledo’s abstractions from a distant perspective than in close proximation. Therefore, if we think of her illustrations more as a collection of tessellated mosaics than as works that are centered and logical, then we will be directly confronted with the sublimity and genius that is inherent in her art.
ALLEN GABORRO
The Manila-born Nolledo is the product of two cultures, the Filipino and the American. As would be the case with any Filipino expatriate artist living in the United States, Nolledo derives a great deal of artistic inspiration from both sides of the Pacific. Having lived in the US since 1989, she has well adapted to her home away from home and carved out her own artistic niche in the challenging environment of American society.
But Nolledo has not turned her back on the memories that flow from her Filipino upbringing. It was an upbringing that she owes a great creative debt to for it was the period that opened Nolledo’s young mind up to artistic energies that will influence her for the rest of her life. Nolledo describes her youth and the role that the arts played in it in this way: “I was born in Manila, and raised in a family of writers. My father, Wilfrido Nolledo, is a well-known, much-loved Filipino fiction writer in English. Growing up, I was surrounded by a lot of creative types: artists, painters and writer, all friends of my Dad. I was exposed to creative writing at an early age.”
Nolledo spent much of her childhood in the Philippines which was then toiling under the Marcos dictatorship. As a University of the Philippines (UP) student, Nolledo was thrust into the world of student activism. She was driven by the conviction that she could have a bearing on the student movement. Nolledo’s activism has been transposed to the numerous community-based activities that she engages in today.
Nolledo was a writer for the student movement’s newspaper publication. Following college, she worked as a writer for a Filipino newspaper. Nolledo developed her keen photographic eye from these job experiences and brought her camera skills to the United States.
Nolledo excels at fusing photography into her digital artworks. This combination has generated for her, vivid and animated forms of creative illustrations. At the heart of Nolledo’s creative process lies a methodology of trial, variation, and transformation. She conducts the process by treating her photos in such a way as to produce a new, innovative image. Nolledo in addition, incorporates planes of color, varying degrees of light and darkness, and contrasts of shade. The end result is that her digital artworks call to mind the bewildering vibrancy of Surrealist aesthetics.
About digital art, Nolledo articulates her personal view of the form: “Digital art is a combination of many different techniques. ‘Woman Cradled,’ one of the pieces for which I’ve gotten a lot of amazing reactions, incorporates photography, painting and digital manipulation. The possibilities with digital art are endless: it’s such an open form of creativity that allows artists to continue improving on existing styles, while creating new ones.”
One can also discern an almost Buddhist quality in Nolledo’s digital art. Indeed, Nolledo’s enigmatic images touch upon her inner state of mind: “Working on digital images — processing, probing, constantly exploring colors, light and shadows — gives me a sense of peace, balance and appreciation for diversity and cohesion. My constant desire is to create a happy union of elements in my art echoes my philosophy that we should strive to live as one with the community around us.”
In her 2007 digital art exhibit, “Chromatext Reloaded,” Nolledo applied the proven techniques of her art. In “Chromatext Reloaded,” intricate color schemes and an amalgamation of distinctive and abstract designs give rise to a synergetic relationship between form and content.
The Chromatext composition “But for the Lovers” consists of a semi-montage of dreamlike images that could be construed as psychoanalytic interplay. It was as if Nolledo, in the tradition of Salvador Dalí, was transferring, consciously or unconsciously, her own dreams to her art.
“Lily in the Sea” is even less representational than the other works in the “Chromatext” exhibit. While many artworks possess a wholeness and exactitude about them, “Lily in the Sea” carries with it a profound depth of meaning that distances itself from any final conclusions. The two consistent aspects in the triple-blocked, psychedelically colored painting are to be found in the trio of eyes that charge it with self-contemplative value, and in the swirling, circular motion that overprints the ocular images.
Nolledo‘s latest artistic endeavor is her 2009 “Fire and Ice” digital art exhibit. In the exhibit, she expands her digital art horizons by utilizing fractal flames in her pictures. “Fire and Ice” is the most recent addition to Nolledo’s ongoing project of surveying a variety of light and color effects in her art, the art that takes flight not merely as a dynamic exploration of creative ideas, but also as a mirror to her pensive inner being: “The images I create are often reflective of particular moments in my life or certain events in the world around me.”
Like any good abstract artist, Nolledo’s artistic sensibilities transcend the observable. Prosaic art audiences tend to reserve endorsement points for works that contain something of a grand narrative, a unified and linear meaning. But this is to operate on the cursory belief that what you see is what you get in Nolledo’s art.
If one is to do any justice to Nolledo’s productions, then one must be prepared to explore the hidden landscape of manifold interpretations that lie beneath her works. Equally important is that it makes sense artistically to look for interpretative relationships in Nolledo’s abstractions from a distant perspective than in close proximation. Therefore, if we think of her illustrations more as a collection of tessellated mosaics than as works that are centered and logical, then we will be directly confronted with the sublimity and genius that is inherent in her art.
ALLEN GABORRO
movie review of "Kaleldo" BY ALLEN GABORRO
Filipino movie director Brillante Mendoza is coming off one of the greatest achievements ever garnered by a filmmaker in the Philippines. For the film “Kinatay,” Mendoza was awarded the Best Director award at the prestigious 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Like “Kinatay” and Mendoza’s other well-known work, the award-winning “Serbis,” his film “Kaleldo” (Summer Heat or in Kapampangan, “Summer“) is stimulating and provocative.
“Kaleldo,” Mendoza’s first full-length cinematic production, does not possess the level of passion or energy that flows through “Kinatay” and “Serbis.” The director does invest into his film’s visual narrative a natural setting that gives it a discreet charm and poignancy. And where those two other films of Mendoza come across loud and clear thanks to their vivid style and subject-matter, “Kaleldo” is a comparatively more subtle and delicate world of its own.
Again, part of the beauty of Mendoza’s film is its natural backdrop which compliments the human story that is expressed in it. “Kaleldo” is set in Pampanga, Philippines where the province’s relatively subdued rural expanses provide a change of scenery from the noisy, crowded metropolis of Manila. This more idyllic background serves to enhance the inner tension and tautness that pervades throughout the movie.
“Kaleldo’s” storyline develops around three sisters and their domineering father Mang Rudy, played by veteran actor Johnny Delgado. Jesusa, Cherry Pie Picache’s character, is Mang Rudy’s fully-realized lesbian daughter. She is slated to be victimized by her father’s anger and disappointment throughout the film despite her total devotion to his health and well-being.
There are also Grace and Lourdes, portrayed by Juliana Palermo and Angel Aquino respectively. All three sisters embody natural sources of energy: water, wind, and fire. The most difficult role is reserved for Jesusa, the eldest sister. She represents water (danum) in that she suffers in silence in spite of her father’s treatment. Things get complicated when Rowena, Jesusa’s partner, comes to live with the family so she can help take care of Mang Rudy. Her foreign presence creates tension between the sisters as well as between Jesusa and her father.
The three actresses earn their artistic keep in their treatment of their metaphoric characters. The youngest of the three, Grace, played by Juliana Palermo, represents wind (angin). Like the wind, she is capricious and arbitrary. Palermo gains a great deal of traction in performing Grace’s character with a combination of feminine heft and good looks. Angel Aquino’s Lourdes begets a conflicted character who turns her sexual instincts into a necessity as she sleeps with a bank official in order to secure a financial loan for her father. Lourdes is both crude and subtle as the substance fire (api) can be at the same time.
Cherry Pie Picache’s character Jesusa, as I mentioned before, represents water (danum). Invariably caught in the firing line of her father’s displeasure, Jesusa maintains the hope that one day he will step forward and show his love and approval of her for she, probably more than her two sisters, has been acting as the martyr of the family all along in addition to being a sexually-marginalized subject. And Jesusa does this in all too familiar terrain for Filipina women: Mang Rudy is emblematic of a milieu in which males traditionally call the shots. What has changed however is that Mendoza’s ability to capture on celluloid the feminine spirit—Picache’s understated but solid performance can attest to this—in the face of this milieu proves that the Philippines is beginning to move closer towards achieving a more gender-equal society.
With his beloved Pampanga as his tableau, Mendoza tells the type of story that will never come to an end, a story that is a refreshing and engrossing morality play on the excesses and deviations of human relationships. It is the type of human story that is recognizable to Filipinos for its culturally-provocative power and strong emotional content. That is Brillante Mendoza’s general point in “Kaleldo.” To shed a new socio-cultural, sexual, and emotional light on Filipino social and cultural traditions.
ALLEN GABORRO
“Kaleldo,” Mendoza’s first full-length cinematic production, does not possess the level of passion or energy that flows through “Kinatay” and “Serbis.” The director does invest into his film’s visual narrative a natural setting that gives it a discreet charm and poignancy. And where those two other films of Mendoza come across loud and clear thanks to their vivid style and subject-matter, “Kaleldo” is a comparatively more subtle and delicate world of its own.
Again, part of the beauty of Mendoza’s film is its natural backdrop which compliments the human story that is expressed in it. “Kaleldo” is set in Pampanga, Philippines where the province’s relatively subdued rural expanses provide a change of scenery from the noisy, crowded metropolis of Manila. This more idyllic background serves to enhance the inner tension and tautness that pervades throughout the movie.
“Kaleldo’s” storyline develops around three sisters and their domineering father Mang Rudy, played by veteran actor Johnny Delgado. Jesusa, Cherry Pie Picache’s character, is Mang Rudy’s fully-realized lesbian daughter. She is slated to be victimized by her father’s anger and disappointment throughout the film despite her total devotion to his health and well-being.
There are also Grace and Lourdes, portrayed by Juliana Palermo and Angel Aquino respectively. All three sisters embody natural sources of energy: water, wind, and fire. The most difficult role is reserved for Jesusa, the eldest sister. She represents water (danum) in that she suffers in silence in spite of her father’s treatment. Things get complicated when Rowena, Jesusa’s partner, comes to live with the family so she can help take care of Mang Rudy. Her foreign presence creates tension between the sisters as well as between Jesusa and her father.
The three actresses earn their artistic keep in their treatment of their metaphoric characters. The youngest of the three, Grace, played by Juliana Palermo, represents wind (angin). Like the wind, she is capricious and arbitrary. Palermo gains a great deal of traction in performing Grace’s character with a combination of feminine heft and good looks. Angel Aquino’s Lourdes begets a conflicted character who turns her sexual instincts into a necessity as she sleeps with a bank official in order to secure a financial loan for her father. Lourdes is both crude and subtle as the substance fire (api) can be at the same time.
Cherry Pie Picache’s character Jesusa, as I mentioned before, represents water (danum). Invariably caught in the firing line of her father’s displeasure, Jesusa maintains the hope that one day he will step forward and show his love and approval of her for she, probably more than her two sisters, has been acting as the martyr of the family all along in addition to being a sexually-marginalized subject. And Jesusa does this in all too familiar terrain for Filipina women: Mang Rudy is emblematic of a milieu in which males traditionally call the shots. What has changed however is that Mendoza’s ability to capture on celluloid the feminine spirit—Picache’s understated but solid performance can attest to this—in the face of this milieu proves that the Philippines is beginning to move closer towards achieving a more gender-equal society.
With his beloved Pampanga as his tableau, Mendoza tells the type of story that will never come to an end, a story that is a refreshing and engrossing morality play on the excesses and deviations of human relationships. It is the type of human story that is recognizable to Filipinos for its culturally-provocative power and strong emotional content. That is Brillante Mendoza’s general point in “Kaleldo.” To shed a new socio-cultural, sexual, and emotional light on Filipino social and cultural traditions.
ALLEN GABORRO
Monday, October 5, 2009
FLIP OUT! STORYTELLING PERFORMANCE 10/25/09 (HI)
From Amalia Bueno:
In celebration of October as Filipino-American History Month in Hawaii, three Filipinas share their life stories by exploring and exploding myths about growing up Filipino in Hawaii. Sandra Claveria, Lorraine Godoy and Angie Libadisos recapture profoundly moving and diverse dreams, disappointments and achievements. With honesty, humor and at times irreverence, they cut deep into the jugular with the uncanny ways they made to survive. And now, what about their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren? What legacy will they pass on? What is Filipino? What is future? Come to the show and find out!
FLIP OUT! STORYTELLING PERFORMANCE
Date: Sunday, October 25, 2009
Time: 1:00 p.m. & 4:00 p.m.
Cost: $12 (For tickets, call 988-2215 or email msakiko@hawaii.rr.com)
Place: Kawananakoa Intermediate School 49 Funchal Street (corner of Pauoa Street & Funchal in Nuuanu)
Presented by the Hawaii Repertory Theatre. Sponsored by the Wailea Village Historic Preservation Community, the University of Hawaii at Manoa American Studies Department and the National Federation of Filipino-American Associations Region XII, Hawaii Chapter.Read Amalia Bueno's article, "Why We Must Tell Our Stories" from the Fil-Am Courier.
Joaquin J. Gonzalez at Eastwind Books of Berkeley 10/10/09
October 10, 2009. Saturday at 3:30pm. Filipino American Faith in Action Author event with Joaquin J. Gonzalez at Eastwind Books of Berkeley 2066 University Avenue.Filipino American Faith in Action draws on interviews, survey data, and participant observation to shed light on this large immigrant community. It explores Filipino American religious institutions as essential locations for empowerment and civic engagement, illuminating how Filipino spiritual experiences can offer a lens for viewing this migrant community’s social, political, economic, and cultural integration into American life. Gonzalez examines Filipino American church involvement and religious practices in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Phillipines, showing how Filipino Americans maintain community and how they go about sharing their traditions with the larger society.
Current Exhibitions at the Togonon Gallery (SF)
http://www.togonongallery.com/exhibitions.html
(Sorry to have missed posting the 10/01/09 artist talks, but these exhibits are ongoing until 10/28/09):
Solo Exhibition: STRUGGLE - The Art of Servando Garcia Paintings and Sculpture
Artist: Servando Garcia
Exhibition: October 1-28, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Artist Talk: Thursday, October 1, 2009
Togonon Gallery is pleased to present Struggle:The Art of Servando Garcia in a solo exhibition. This is Garcia's third solo exhibition at Togonon Gallery.
In an unusual move, the show will include what the artist refers to as his "failed" paintings as well as his "successful" ones. Garcia is obsessed with notions of ontology and expression. He uses a variety of formal means to create an emotive spatial tension in his work. In this exhibition, the paintings depict different visions of a single scene on multiple canvases, lending a view into his emotional and actual painting process. Garcia's paintings move from the representational to minimal to almost surreal. They are close-ups of his process-- true examples of the challenge to create his work.
Exhibiting nationally and internationally, Garcia is concurrently featured in two other exhibitions: "Echo of A Whole" at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (CAF), Santa Barbara, California and “A Communion of Saints: Santa Barbara and San Antonio at the David Shelton Callery, San Antonio,Texas. Servando Garcia obtained his BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute in 2000 and his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. He lives and works in the Bay Area.
Solo Exhibition: CeWEBrities - The Virtual Red Carpet , New paintings
Artist: Ariel Erestingcol
Exhibition: October 1-28, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Artist Talk: Thursday, October 1, 2009
Togonon Gallery is pleased to present Ariel Erestingcol for his second solo exhibition at the Gallery.
Erestingcol's portraits comment on the process of fame and media, utilizing plastic beads to construct hyper-familiar composite portraits of individuals made famous by their Internet status. Tom, the founder of MySpace, is a prime example of this kind of subject seen in his Internet persona, rendered in a life-size, pixilated, plastic bead portrait. The exhibition's central piece is a billboard, the 20th-century, urban auto-centric medium, comprised of 18 cewebrities’ portraits. Erestingcol creates his work within the context of painting, always inserting alternative media such as craft item into the work. A native to Los Angeles, his art reflects the ebb and flow of mass media images and the stories that created the sensation. Ariel Erestingcol achieved his Masters of Fine art from California Institute of the Arts and his Bachelor's from San Francisco Art Institute. His work is in the collection of the Crocker Art Museum, in Sacramento, California. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
http://www.togonongallery.com/
(Sorry to have missed posting the 10/01/09 artist talks, but these exhibits are ongoing until 10/28/09):
Solo Exhibition: STRUGGLE - The Art of Servando Garcia Paintings and Sculpture
Artist: Servando Garcia
Exhibition: October 1-28, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Artist Talk: Thursday, October 1, 2009
Togonon Gallery is pleased to present Struggle:The Art of Servando Garcia in a solo exhibition. This is Garcia's third solo exhibition at Togonon Gallery.
In an unusual move, the show will include what the artist refers to as his "failed" paintings as well as his "successful" ones. Garcia is obsessed with notions of ontology and expression. He uses a variety of formal means to create an emotive spatial tension in his work. In this exhibition, the paintings depict different visions of a single scene on multiple canvases, lending a view into his emotional and actual painting process. Garcia's paintings move from the representational to minimal to almost surreal. They are close-ups of his process-- true examples of the challenge to create his work.
Exhibiting nationally and internationally, Garcia is concurrently featured in two other exhibitions: "Echo of A Whole" at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (CAF), Santa Barbara, California and “A Communion of Saints: Santa Barbara and San Antonio at the David Shelton Callery, San Antonio,Texas. Servando Garcia obtained his BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute in 2000 and his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. He lives and works in the Bay Area.
Solo Exhibition: CeWEBrities - The Virtual Red Carpet , New paintings
Artist: Ariel Erestingcol
Exhibition: October 1-28, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Artist Talk: Thursday, October 1, 2009
Togonon Gallery is pleased to present Ariel Erestingcol for his second solo exhibition at the Gallery.
Erestingcol's portraits comment on the process of fame and media, utilizing plastic beads to construct hyper-familiar composite portraits of individuals made famous by their Internet status. Tom, the founder of MySpace, is a prime example of this kind of subject seen in his Internet persona, rendered in a life-size, pixilated, plastic bead portrait. The exhibition's central piece is a billboard, the 20th-century, urban auto-centric medium, comprised of 18 cewebrities’ portraits. Erestingcol creates his work within the context of painting, always inserting alternative media such as craft item into the work. A native to Los Angeles, his art reflects the ebb and flow of mass media images and the stories that created the sensation. Ariel Erestingcol achieved his Masters of Fine art from California Institute of the Arts and his Bachelor's from San Francisco Art Institute. His work is in the collection of the Crocker Art Museum, in Sacramento, California. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
http://www.togonongallery.com/
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