In Other Words: Artists Talk
Date: March 24 | 2PM | Free
Location: 925 Mission St., #109, San Francisco, CA 94103
The “In Other Words” exhibit comes to a close. Please join us in this candid talk to hear directly from the creative minds that graced our gallery with such fun and thought-provoking art.
Image: Julia Goodman, courtesy of InTheMake.net
Katie Gilmartin (www.katiegilmartin.com) presents work from her series of linoleum cuts entitled “Queer Words.” Although several words in the collection (dyke, fag, faerie) remain venomous epithets in some contexts, they also simultaneously function as fiercely chosen and hard-won terms of pride. To the extent that they become the latter, their power to function as slurs diminishes. Whether retooled epithets, secret codes, or witticisms, each word and phrase carries in some way the traces of the collective struggles and resistance of the queer community, referencing how language is understood according to the definition ascribed to it by the user.
BIO: Katie’s checkered past includes stints as a miserable graduate student, buoyant union organizer, fabulous faux drag queen, bona fide sex researcher, and deeply engaged college professor. She began printmaking at an early age, with delight in the simplicity and productivity of the potato stamp. In grade school she participated in the creation of her first mural, an outlandish dragon whose vast mouth was the entrance to the school library. Failing to recognize this as a cautionary premonition, she abandoned all such frivolousness. For over a decade Gilmartin taught cultural studies, with an emphasis on the study of gender and sexuality, at UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, and New College of California. In 2000, she assumed care of Chrysalis Print Studio in SOMArts, where she teaches printmaking classes and creates her own prints. She has exhibited her work locally at 111 Minna, City Art Cooperative Gallery, Sharon Reaves Gallery, ACCI Gallery, Studio Gallery, Under One Roof, and Artist Exchange. She is based in San Francisco, CA.
Julia Goodman (www.jagoodman.com) works with paper pulp to create sculptural surfaces. In 2009 she came across a collection of 19th Century letters from local families, many of which were written using the technique of cross-writing. Commonly employed to conserve limited paper resources, after a page of writing had been completed, the writer turned the page 90° and added a second layer of text, perpendicular to the first. Goodman presents a series of cast paper works employing this method of writing, shedding light on the disappearing act of handwritten letters and the consequence of the ways we currently communicate through technology.
BIO: Julia earned her BA in International Relations and Peace & Justice Studies at Tufts University in 2001. She began making paper in her backyard in 2003 and completed her MFA at the California College of the Arts in 2009. She has received artist residencies at J.B. Blunk Residency in Inverness, CA, Hollywood Alternative Education and Work Center in Los Angeles, CA, and upcoming ones at Recology in San Francisco, and a residency in Kona, HI. She also completed a studio internship at Dieu Donne Paper Mill in New York City. Goodman has had solo exhibitions at Highways Performance Art Space in Santa Monica, CA and Performance Art Institute in San Francisco, and with collaborator Scott Cazan at Machine Project in Los Angeles, CA, and locally at 18 Reasons, Richmond Arts Center, and 198 Park. She has participated in group exhibitions locally at Fort Gallery, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Oliver Arts Center at CCA, Pro Arts Gallery, Lincart, Triple Base, Rena Bransten Gallery, and Worth Ryder Gallery at UC Berkeley. Goodman has also been a visiting artist at the Exploratorium, Richmond Arts Center, San Francisco State University, CSU Chico, College of Marin, and CCA. She is based in San Francisco, CA.
Emanuela Harris-Sintamarian (www.emahsin.com) lives between two diametrically opposed cultures, from growing up in the totalitarian regime in Romania to living in the U.S., which emphasizes individuality and information. Her large-scale artworks convey a sense of fragmentation and tension that mirror her conflicted sense of identity. She creates new work that utilizes language and graphic imagery borrowed from architecture and cartography to chart the experience of immigrating to this country, and the way language has defined how she has navigated through each chapter of her life.
BIO: Emanuela is an Adjunct Instructor at San Jose State University and San Jose City College. She was born in Bucharest, Romania, where she did my undergraduate studies at the University of Fine Arts. While in college, she received a couple of scholarships in Italy (Instituto Romeno di Cultura-Venice) and France (under the tutelage of Association Culturelle de Saint Remy de Provence). In 1999, she came for the first time to the United States on an one-month student exchange program. Harris-Sintamarian volunteered to assist and participate in opening a basic art program for the children of a Sioux Falls Reservation in South Dakota. In the summer of 2000, she returned to the United States on a scholarship offered by the University of Delaware, where she received my first MFA in Printmaking. In 2005, she received my second MFA in Painting at San Jose State University. Since relocating to the Bay Area in 2002, she has shown at various venues locally, including Jack Fischer Gallery, Frey Norris Gallery, ArtSF, Southern Exposure, Swarm Gallery, Pro Arts Gallery, Triton Museum, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Works/San Jose Gallery, and Anno Domini. She has also shown in New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Philadelphia, as well as Sweden, France, Canada, Austria, Italy and Romania. She is the recipient of the 2013 Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, the 2010 Silicon Valley Arts Council Award and the 2008 ArtShift Award. Harris-Sintamarian has participated in the residency programs at Djerassi, Vermont Studio Center and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art Print Center. She is based in San Jose, CA.
Susan O’Malley (www.susanomalley.org) utilizes simple and recognizable tools of engagement to offer entry into an interaction of everyday life, creating moments that universalize the human experience. She creates a series of new text-based sculptures, posters, and installations, highlighting different aspects of language utilized by the numerous organizations and companies inhabiting the 5M Project. Amusing, poignant, open-ended, and provocative, her pieces call attention to how we use language to communicate simple ideas and complex concepts in the fields of contemporary art, social entrepreneurialism, filmmaking, redevelopment, and business.
BIO: Susan uses simple and recognizable tools of engagement—offering a Pep Talk, distributing flyers in a neighborhood’s mailbox, creating inspirational posters—to offer entry into an understood, and sometimes humorous, interaction of everyday life. O’Malley received her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2006, with her focus on social practice. O’Malley’s work has been exhibited widely in the Bay Area, including at Southern Exposure, Mission 17, Pro Arts Gallery, The Lab, Invisible Venue, Ping Pong Gallery, and CCA’s PlaySpace, as well as nationally and internationally, including Duke University, Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and in Denmark. She is based in San Jose, CA, where she also serves as the curator for the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.
Meryl Pataky (www.merylpataky.com) is a sculptor who works in neon and steel, employing words in her pieces to convey the poignant emotional space that exists between ourselves and others. She presents two wall mounted scultpural metal pieces. One comments upon the tumultuous landscape of start-ups and the ongoing practice of companies moving into offices and having to re-brand the space with new signage and language. The other is a new series of hand-bent metal words spelled out in phonetics, causing viewers to verbally sound out the word to understand what the word is, prompting a physical internalization of language.
BIO: Meryl is an artist working in neon and metal sculpture who received her BFA in Fine Art and Sculpture from the Academy of Art University in 2010. She has exhibited her work locally at a.Muse Gallery, 111 Minna Gallery, Gallery Hijinks, Southern Exposure, Melting Point Gallery, and also at LaBasse Projects in Los Angeles, CA. She has been featured in Betty Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, SFist, SF Weekly, and Juxtapoz. She is based in San Francisco, CA.
Alex Potts (www.alexpotts.net) creates a new interactive language association installation entitled I Understand, utilizing voice recognition software and online language algorithms to explore the associative nature of language. Centered around a wall of speakers, viewers speak a phrase into a microphone, which is broadcast through the speakers. The phrase is simultaneously looked up for associations and then read aloud on top of the original phrase, and this process is repeated several times. Rather than cacophony, the growing number of voices are filtered such that they result in a harmonious choir of speech.
BIO: Alex is a multimedia artist whose work explores the intersection of sonic art, interactive technology, and sculpture. Since moving to the Bay Area from the Midwest in 1998 to study electronic music at Mills College, he has experimented with numerous media while making musical instruments, installations, films, games, sound scores, and interactive books for children. Most recently, he has been developing digital reading content with dynamic text features, which has led him to explore the complexities of language with an eye toward making playful interaction possibilites. He has exhibited his work widely throughout the Bay Area, including Zeum, Berkeley Art Center, Million Fishes Gallery, Pro Arts Gallery, The Lab, Arts Benicia, and nationally at South by Southwest (Austin, TX), Brick Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Sushi Gallery (San Diego, CA), and 1708 Gallery (Richmond, VA). He is based in Richmond, CA.
Cassie Thornton (www.cassiethornton.com) is focusing research on student debt, and identifying creative ways in which debt can be removed from government oversight and private student loan regulation. The amount of money Americans owe on student loans recently exceeded the nation’s credit card debt. Inspired by a video produced by famed sculptor Richard Serra in 1973 entitled “Television Delivers People,” a seminal critique of popular mass media as an instrument of social control, Thornton deftly replaces select language from Serra’s work to recontextualize the video’s message to critique debt as an instrument of social control.
BIO: Cassie is currently focusing her research and work about student debt as psychological material, and she is working to remove it from the student body at the California College of the Arts, psychically and financially. She is currently enrolled in the CCA MFA program with emphasis in Social Practice. She received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2005, and was working in New York City for five years as a educator before moving to California. In New York City, she taught at five different Brooklyn public schools through the Brooklyn Arts Council, was artist in residence through the Brooklyn College Community Partnership, was program coordinator and teaching artist through the Manhattan Art Program, and founder and co-director for the School of the Future, a one-month intergenerational outdoor free school designed for and by teaching artists. She has presented her work at numerous venues throughout New York City, including The Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, MoMA, The Box, Judson Church, Dixon Place, and Secret Project Robot.
Annie Vought (www.annievought.com) is well-known for her recreations of old, handwritten letters in meticulously handcut paper, where the focus on text, structure, and emotion of the letter explores properties of penmanship and expression. She continues this method of artistic exploration through a new series that looks at the growing quantity of inspirational, optimistic, and hopeful messages seen in public and online. In an age of global financial and political uncertainty, she looks at how language can reference the mood of society at large and help provide a framework that counters the daily cycle of bleak and despairing news.
BIO: Annie is an artist whose work explores people’s emotional artifacts, specifically the handwritten letter. She has a far-reaching presence on the web and has exhibited extensively, including New Image Art Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Tarryn Teresa Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Works/San Jose (San Jose, CA), Studio Pepe (Milan, Italy), and locally at The Lab, Pro Arts Gallery, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Blankspace, 21 Grand, Swarm Gallery, Mission 17, Hayes Valley Market, and the Richmond Art Center. In 1999 she co-directed The Budget Gallery, a roving art gallery in San Francisco, as well as Boathouse Gallery. In 2009 Annie received her MFA from Mills College. She was raised in Santa Fe, NM surrounded by the arts. Her father is a painter and her mother and stepfather are musicians. She currently lives in Oakland, CA with her husband and large dog.
Christine Wong Yap (www.christinewongyap.com) presents a series of ink drawings that illustrate various quotes from psychological studies by authors such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Martin E. P. Seligman, and Yi-Fu Tuan on topics such as learned optimism, creativity, and happiness as applied to the lives of artists and those working in creative industries. Initially interested in what keeps artists motivated and resilient in their careers, she began researching the discipline of positive psychology. She shares ideas that might help artists and creatives maintain optimistic outlooks and provide opportunities to better understand the creative process.
BIO: Christine is an interdisciplinary artist working in installations, sculptures, multiples, and work on paper to explore optimism and pessimism. Many of her works can be considered barometers of optimism or pessimism. Influenced by conceptual strategies, phenomenology, and psychology, her output is experimental and idiosyncratic, yet shares economical means and candid appearances. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in New York, Los Angeles, Manila, Osaka, London, Newcastle, and Manchester (U.K.). Recent exhibitions include Irrational Exuberance (Asst. Colors) at Sight School (Oakland, CA), We have as much time as it takes at Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art (San Francisco, CA) and Here and Now at Mills Art Museum, (Oakland, CA). Reviews of her work have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Art Practical and S.F. Camerawork. A recipient of a Jerome Foundation’s Travel and Study Grant, the Center for Cultural Innovation’s Investing in Artists grant, and a Murphy Fellowship in the Fine Arts, she has participated in the Breathe residency at Chinese Arts Centre (Manchester, U.K.), the Woodstock Byrdcliffe residency (Woodstock, NY), the FRED festival (Cumbria, U.K.), the Galleon Trade exchange project (Manila, Phillipines), and the Affiliate Artist program at the Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA). In 2008, she was a collaborator in the Activist Imagination project, which was supported by the Creative Work Fund and a San Francisco Foundation Fund for Artists Matching Commissions Grant. Born in California, Yap holds a BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts. A longtime resident of Oakland, CA, she relocated to New York, NY last year.
