Copernican Evolution

Spontaneous Evolution of the Superorganism

2011-10-05T23:28:00.000-07:00

eeevolving

LIBERTY 101: An introduction to FREEDOM

2011-10-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

RISE

Agriculture Implementation Research & Education A.I.R.E.

2011-09-22T15:11:00.000-07:00

“ To gather the people and plant the fields. “

11.11.11

2011-09-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

11.11.11

fairytale bernal

2011-09-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

unified field theory

2011-09-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

the 6th day

2011-09-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

The 6th day: Feminine Wisdom in the Light of the New Era

Redwoods Walk at Chabot

2011-06-05T19:13:00.000-07:00

William Irwin Thompson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2010-10-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

William Irwin Thompson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CBC News - North - Huge iceberg breaks off Greenland glacier

2010-08-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

CBC News - North - Huge iceberg breaks off Greenland glacier

Google Teams Up with CIA to Fund "Recorded Future" Startup Monitoring Websites, Blogs & Twitter Accounts

2010-08-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

Google Teams Up with CIA to Fund "Recorded Future" Startup Monitoring Websites, Blogs & Twitter Accounts

Transition through the current environmental crisis

2010-07-24T22:33:00.000-07:00

In Transition 1.0 from Transition Towns on Vimeo.

Closing BBQ, Sunday August 15, 1-4pm Lobot Gallery, Oakland CA

2010-06-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

LAPSE

2010-05-29T20:14:00.000-07:00

I will have a piece of sculpture in this group show:

Art Exhibition: Lapse

Dates: May 22-June 18 2010

Place: Lobot Gallery, 1800 Campbell Street, Oakland CA

Curators:Ross Campbell, Jeremiah Jenkins
Artists: Erica Gangsei, Adam Hathaway, Carrie Hott, Gary Hubbs, Claire Jackel, Paul Kos, Sasha Krieger, Mick Larusso, Jennifer Locke, Stephani Martinez, Marshall Maurice, Aaron Rosenstriech, Niki Shapiro, Renetta Sitoy, Natalie Sorenson, Jamie Spinello, Lucrecia Troncoso, Kristen Van Patten, Ben Venom, Jesse Walton, Rebecca Whipple, David Wiley, Ned Wyss.

The exhibition Lapse explores perspectives of time. What is time? What frames perceptions of past and future? What does it mean to be timeless? Artists often play with our linear sense of time, compressing historical and cultural places. As well, through the common desire of excavating the past, envisioning the future, and of adding to the voices that offer differing views of collective and personal memories. The artists participating in Lapse each have varying interdisciplinary practices and areas of interest in the subject of time. The works on display convey senses of time through concept and material, sometimes offering added interpretations to the motivating intents of the artists themselves. What the viewer is confronted with is a multi-directional look at visual representations that challenge the perceptions of a more ordered narrative of place and time.

www.lobotgallery.com

Hope you get a chance to seeeeee

winter flowers, san francisco

2010-02-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

The fate of the public commons

2010-02-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

Selling Food Stamps for Kid’s Shoes By Seth Wessler

2010-02-19T09:05:00.000-08:00

Since she was 16, Eva Hernández has worked a string of low-wage jobs. She’s prepared chicken at KFC, run the register at Dunkin Donuts, packed and sealed boxes at a produce company, and held other similar jobs in Hartford, Connecticut, where she was born and raised. These jobs haven’t paid enough for Eva, now 28, to support herself and her two young daughters. So for almost three years in the last decade, she’s relied on welfare to supplement her income. Most of the time, though, she’s simply found another low-wage job, a task that in this economy is proving almost impossible.
- Seth Wessler for Colorlines

regarding reading shadows on the wall

2010-02-18T10:56:00.000-08:00

"honestly and modestly ... to hold on to the outlines of the shadows which the unknown real objects throw upon the wall ... in spite of everything, the hope is always justified that there may be some degree of correspondence and similarity between the real processes and our idea of them." - Joseph Breuer, Studies of Hysteria, p. 251

doodling in space

2010-02-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

Check out the fluxus...

2010-02-01T21:21:00.000-08:00

Mission Arts & Performance Project

Earthship Biotecture Sustainable Green Buildings - Haiti Earthship Disaster Relief

2010-01-29T17:51:00.000-08:00

Earthship Biotecture Sustainable Green Buildings - Haiti Earthship Disaster Relief

"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," Preval told the Miami Herald. "There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them."

Howard Zinn: How I Want to Be Remembered...

2010-01-29T15:09:00.000-08:00

Question: What do you want to be remembered for?

Howard Zinn: How I Want to Be Remembered... | CommonDreams.orgV

Howard Zinn: I guess if I want to be remembered for anything, it’s for introducing a different way of thinking about the world, about war, about human rights, about equality, for getting more and more people to think that way.

Also, for getting more people to realize that the power which rests so far in the hands of people with wealth and guns, that the power ultimately rests in people themselves and that they can use it. At certain points in history, they have used it. Black people in the South used it. People in the women’s movement used it. People in the anti-war movement used it. People in other countries who have overthrown tyrannies have used it.

I want to be remembered as somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn’t have before.

Activist, Robert Redford shares his leadership decision making process

2010-01-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

Funky Black Angels photo series by Tyrone Brown-Osborne

2009-12-17T09:32:00.000-08:00

Blackness is a construction, my black is different from your black and some people's black might actually be more white than black.

- Thelma Golden

This work explores the subtle nuances that exist beyond the surface of hyper-contextualized identity politics and asks what is essentially ‘individualistic...’ about acts of imitation, repetition and creation? It is an active look at the cultural and social context in which these artists have discovered the tools and identifications to create mature and independent self-actualizations. These photographs and their accompanying text engage the positive representations of individuals in pursuit of self-discovery and personal expression outside a world infused and codified by a culture of automation. This is our challenge and the one any artist faces who struggles against social stagnation. We have all profited from those self-made icons, many of whom later become the most neatly packaged commodities themselves, only to lose there fiercely fought for individuality in the downward spiral of mass consumption. What we see here in these images are people living in the affirmation of their life, they are for all intensive purposes swimming against an formidable current.

In our media dominated culture it has become increasingly difficult to discern the publicly constructed image from the personal truth of the individuals we are compelled to see. One wonders if they are retreating, unknowingly and imperceptibly out of our grasp. And to the measure that it can be said that people are known by their deeds so it can be plainly stated that artists are recognized by their creations. But for any artist to communicate effectively it is an imperative and essential process for that individual to establish a new and personal identity (voice) between themselves and their work, the work of others and a natural and coherent response to their public. But this is a painstaking work to undertake, ones whose outcome is uncertain and will undoubtedly be influenced by innumerable forces, many of which are not readily accessible through speech, but only in the transcribed expression of artistic creation. The primary task of any artist, if it can be done, is to engage life in an open dialogue, however arduous or unseemly the task.

Funky Black Angels are modern, self-described, and self-invented people who neither represent a definable demographic nor a single class of Americans. They are our undiscovered selves; the very dream of who we would have liked to become if the societal pull of dull and lamentable conformity where not placed upon us. We see them everywhere; we listen to them on our i-pods and in our homes on the television and yet they still inhabit the void, even within the larger communities in which they originate. Our culture has taught us to praise them once they have ‘arrived’ and yet they are betrayed by a rigid and inexplicable morality, defeated by the marketplace, which further seeks to reduce the highest possible variable into the least common denominator. To see a Funky Black Angel is to know that personal relevance is still possible, yet their image and its potential for social, political, and cultural redress is not so much a matter of your acceptance of theirs, but of your own.

- Tyrone Brown-Osborne

Climate Change is REAL

2009-12-10T12:03:00.001-08:00

Tuvalu - Islands on the frontline of Climate Change from panos pictures on Vimeo.

G. Cole Allee: Refractions @ Divisadero Community Gallery

2009-11-19T12:57:00.001-08:00

Throughout November 9-December 12, 2009 the Divisadero Community Gallery presents Refractions by G. Cole Allee. The reception will be held December 3rd in conjunction with the Divisadero Art Walk from 5pm-9pm.

Refractions is a composition of photographs and an interactive inquiry which explore the fluid, layered and mutable nature of memory. In this series of traditional c-prints, by dwelling on singularities, banalities and almost obscure differences in light, Allee metaphorically refers to the evasive nature of memory: the way each moment is a replacement/displacement of the next.

In order to understand and incorporate the history of the Divisadero Gallery site, an interactive inquiry into the archaeologies of personal and institutional memory are being conducted. Anyone with experience pertaining to the block/street/neighborhood that the gallery now inhabits are invited to deposit their memories and/or comments through the gallery's mail slot. Comments and insights on memory itself are also welcome. Memories will be compiled and eventually presented back to the street as a "memory map".

G. Cole Allee is an interdisciplinary artist and curator. Her work explores landscape as cultural iconography and the shifting relationships between place, myth and memory; she has been exhibited in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Tokyo. Allee has lived and worked in San Francisco for over a decade, teaching photography to youth in the Mission District and Bayview/Hunter's Point, and to homeless and low-income residents of the city. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007 and is a founding member of MicroClimate Collective, which creates visual arts programming hosted by Climate Theater.

Divisadero Community Gallery is a temporary art space providing solo engagements to emerging and mid-career artists. Due to the site's state of flux, the current curators echo the concept by inviting artists for one month to six weeks of residence time in the gallery while developing work and ideas. In this way, the overarching service provided the community is an invitation into the process of creating; forming reciprocal relationships between artist and their work, artist and passer-by, viewer and process, viewer and art.

The Divisadero Community Gallery is located at 537 Divisadero between Hayes and Fell in San Francisco. Hours are limited or by appointment. Parking is possible but public transportation is central.

(Hu)Man v. Nature

2009-11-11T13:28:00.001-08:00

"When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title." Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836

DIVISADERO COMMUNITY GALLERY, SF, CA

2009-11-11T09:31:00.000-08:00

Long story short, Glenna Cole Allee and I are currently brainstorming to make the fledgling Divisadero Community Gallery a self-sustaining liminal space. Jayna Swartzman, the Divisadero Merchants Association and the Mayor's Office of Workforce and Development have all been instrumental in bringing this "phantom" space to the foreground. Glenna and I hope to add our twists. Keep your ears and eyes open. We hope you can stop by soon.

Until then, here's a little somethin' to read.

Sunday, November 1, 2009 (SF Chronicle)
S.F. art galleries forge into new territories
Sasha Vasilyuk, Special to The Chronicle

Driven by slow sales, high rents and a yearning for experimentation, San Francisco's art gallery owners are leaving traditional art districts like Union Square for unique spaces and new neighborhoods. This summer, Don Soker Contemporary Art left the 22-gallery conglomerate at 49 Geary to take up cheaper rent at a suite in the Financial District. "I realized only 20 percent of my business was from walk-ins at 49 Geary," said Soker, who represents Japanese and European artists as well as some of the local art elite. "I was originally going to move to Minna Street, but I just love it here. There aren't many opportunities like this."

Taking advantage of prices offered by the recession, Soker's gallery now occupies a 10,300-square-foot suite on the 14th floor of 100 Montgomery, the recently LEED-certified 25-story high-rise in the heart of the
Financial District. Sitting behind a wooden desk in the far corner of the all-white gallery, Soker greets visitors with an echo that takes a couple of seconds to reach them. With its white floors, knotty industrial ceiling and strange address, the gallery is quickly becoming a destination, according to Soker. "In September, I had my best month in three years because there is a buzz about this place," he said. "I've moved five times in 38 years, each time because of the economy. But this move feels like it's going to be the best one."

Soker is not the only one experimenting with unusual locations. To local art dealer Anthony Meier of Anthony Meier Fine Art, nontraditional gallery spaces are all he has known. Last month, he won a Planning Commission hearing to maintain a gallery at his home, a recently landmarked 1911 mansion with rusted iron gates and a dark, vaulted entrance at 1969 California St.

Besides offering a way to save on gallery rent, showing art in a home environment also helps Meier sell minimalist conceptual works such as Robert Buck's silk-screens of smoke currently on display. "It's a very different experience viewing art in this home dynamic rather than in a blank gallery space where it may feel more cool," said Meier's gallery director, Rebecca Camacho. "Here, our patrons realize that they can live with this art. It's an environment they can relate to." Cheaper, cooler. Odd spaces and neighborhoods tend to attract certain galleries not only because of cheaper rents, but also for their contemporary, more cutting-edge feel, said David Klein, a broker with NAI BT Commercial who has represented over a dozen galleries. "We're beginning to see a decentralization of galleries," he said. "I think that as art specializes and subspecializes, gallery owners will want to create identities different from other galleries and stake out new
areas of the city."

In the last few years, galleries have become a common site on Valencia and in SoMa and NoPa. Last fall, galleries and businesses along Divisadero Street came together to create Divisadero Art Walk, which gained an almost immediate following. One of its most unique aspects is the Community Gallery, a curated "phantom exhibition" that temporarily takes over an empty storefront.

Project One, an art gallery and DJ lounge, opened up last fall on the unlikely Rhode Island Street. Even Tenderloin is beginning to see some love. This month, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts celebrated its grand opening at a former porn theater at 55 Taylor St. Founded by Josette Melcher, the media arts center moved from SoMa in the hopes of revitalizing the dodgy neighborhood. Art, not crime "I'm really hoping quality people who understand the neighborhood and want to incorporate what's going on here into their programming will follow us," said Melcher. "I don't think anyone wants the center of our city to be dedicated to crime." According to Klein, high downtown rates are making galleries reconsider their location. Even in this economy, the rent at 49 Geary and 251 Post is running $30 a square foot. "There's about a 15 percent difference between Union Square gallery buildings and SoMa, Mission and Divisadero, and that's significant," said Klein. "But galleries don't always have to be in the most expensive spot to be successful."

Catharine Clark, founder of the Catharine Clark Gallery, started thinking about moving out of 49 Geary during the dot-com days when the rents were sky-high. Two years ago, she made the move into a former garage on Minna Street right behind the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. While her rent
isn't cheaper, Clark said she's getting more for it. "I just couldn't believe nobody else was in this location and I could have a street-level gallery," explained Clark. "It was too good to be true." Clark said by moving to SoMa she was able to preserve her past patrons, gain a new audience and establish a clear identity for her gallery. "I think there is a growing realization that one doesn't have to be in an upscale neighborhood to generate interest of serious collectors and that they may actually enjoy finding things in unexpected places," she said.

E-mail comments to business@sfchronicle.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2009 SF Chronicle

Stencil Workshop at White Walls, SF, CA

2009-11-09T10:36:00.000-08:00

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

2009-10-23T12:38:00.001-07:00

Excerpt from CSDS website:

The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, also called the CSDS or informally, just the Centre, is a premier institute of India in the social sciences and humanities. The Centre provides a unique institutional space which seeks to nurture intellectual interests outside the entrenched boundaries of academic disciplines. This simultaneously gives the Centre a sense of intimacy with and distance from universities. Therefore, the Centre has deliberately chosen not to duplicate the structure of university department. This also allows the Centre to support and nurture interdisciplinary modes of enquiry. Over the years, the Centre has also managed to generate and utilize a productive tension between rigorous scholarly work and social movements, between academic commitment and political practices. It has been frequently engaged with contentious contemporary issues which have shaped its academic programme and contributed to struggles for dignity, livelihood and creative self expression. At the same time the CSDS zealously and meticulously guards its own space of reflective distance, theoretical work and research which has no obvious visibility in the public domain.

Since its inception in 1963 the Centre has been a space for new intellectual ideas generated not only by interaction among the faculty but much wider exchange with activists and scholars from India and abroad.

Since its inception, the Centre has been known for its skepticism towards any one conception of modernity and received models of development and progress and has sought ways to make creative use of local traditions in the making of multiple and alternative modernities ... The CSDS has always promoted conversations between and within cultures. It has tried to delink cultural resources from violent expressions of political identities and promoted the idea that dissent is crucial for creative conversation between cultures and societies.

People's Grocery!

2009-10-19T11:26:00.001-07:00

Environmental Frontline Underwater Cabinet Meeting

2009-10-19T10:53:00.001-07:00

Wonderland works on ABC news

2009-10-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

From the Garden to the Table

2009-10-19T10:07:00.001-07:00

From the Garden to the Table

Eating and living green is the only thing you can do in this life that benefits everyone.
—Jeffrey Smith, Founder/CEO

Our Solution

From the Garden to the Table’s (FGTT) eat and live green programs apply a “full-circle” approach to these problems by involving students, parents, teachers, schools, and communities in creating better health and a more supportive and greener environment. FGTT’s solutions include:
Our Solution to Inadequate Nutrition

Adequate nutrition includes accessing fresh healthy foods, learning the knowledge and skills to make healthier choices and prepare meals, and creating an environment that supports green, positive change. FGTT’s eat and live green nutrition programs include:

* Green Teaching Kitchens – Hands-on experience is crucial to skill building. Green teaching kitchens bring students, families, and the community together to make fresh, organic meals in a setting that models the green principles and products that contribute to good health. FGTT’s team of green architects and designers transform existing school space into a green and sustainable teaching kitchen for everyone.
* Health, Nutrition, and Cooking Classes – Instead of quick, fat and sodium filled pre-packaged meals, students are armed with the skills to select, prepare, and serve simple healthy, economical meals for themselves and their families. FGTT’s health, nutrition, and cooking classes develop knowledge and build healthy life-style and career skills in nutrition, food preparation, service and safety. Classes are offered during after school or school-day programs.
* Garden-Based Nutrition – Many studies show youth and families who are engaged in gardening are mode likely to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. FGTT’s team of garden and environmental experts create school- and community-based gardens to teach students and families how foods are grown and harvested. They experience the flavor of fresh organic produce and learn simple garden techniques for home gardens.
* Fresh, Organic School Meals – School breakfasts and lunches fill critical nutritional needs. They combat hunger and nutrient deficiencies by providing more than 50% of the calories and nutrients students need in a day. FGTT designs and produces school meals that not only supply important nutrients, they bring fresh, healthy, appealing options that indulge the senses with fresh, organically grown breakfasts, lunches, and after-school snacks. FGTT also revitalizes the lunchroom to feature a “new media” of art, posters, and murals reinforcing the message of healthy enjoyment of physical activity, fresh food, fruits, and vegetables.
* School Nutrition Policy – The University of California at Berkeley emphasizes the importance of creating an environment that promotes an active lifestyle and healthful food choices to reduce obesity rates and health problems among children and adults. FGTT works with the school and community to develop and implement policies to reduce the use of candy, sodas, and low-nutrient foods as classroom rewards and school or club fundraisers.
* Access to Fresh Organic Food – Access to high-quality fresh produce in low-income communities of color is a critical first step toward improving health. FGTT organizes and conducts a weekly organic community farmers’ market. In addition, classes include regular trips to stores that offer bulk foods and grains and other healthier and economical options.

Our Solution to Inactivity

Regular Physical Activity helps build and maintain healthy bones and muscles and reduces the risk of developing obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In addition, school-based physical activity positively affects students’ performance in both reading and mathematics achievement. FGTT’s eat and live green physical development programs include:

* Morning Tai Chi for Students and Families – FGTT provides active opportunities to help students reach the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each day. The FGTT Physical Development Director teaches Tai Chi to reduces stress, improve health, and prepare students for learning.
* Physical Development Classes – FGTT includes martial arts that provide health-promoting exercise for students and adults. Benefits include better overall health and balance, as well as an improved sense of psychological well-being. FGTT provides White Crane Chinese Martial Arts classes after school and during school to develop physical fitness, discipline, and lifelong activity and health.

Our Solution to Poor Environmental Quality

A clean school and home learning environment are essential to student health and achievement. From the Garden to the Table’s (FGTT) eat and live green programs model and teach about systems, materials, and cleaning practices that lead to better health and a greener environment. FGTT’s solutions include:

* Recycling and Composting Programs – FGTT develops school-based recycling and composting systems to reduce waste and create soil for the garden.
* Promoting Locally, Organically Grown Foods – FGTT contrasts the pesticide exposure, flavor, nutrient value, and benefits of locally grown, organic foods with importing conventionally grown foods. Classes
* Emphasizing Sustainable Packaging and Products – FGTT emphasizes preparing fresh foods and minimizing use of processed and packaged foods. Students and families tour and shop grocers who feature bulk and locally grown products.
* Using Green Cleaning Products – FGTT teaches students and communities about greener, less toxic cleaning products and practices to reduce exposure to harmful chemicals that can trigger sensitivity reactions and asthma.
* Building with Green Building – FGTT builds teaching areas and meal kitchens from green and sustainable paints and materials to reduce health problems, eye irritation, and inflamed skin. Classrooms and classes teach how to access and use these resources for cleaner and less hazardous learning and living environments.

FGTT’s team of professional green designers and architects; organic food producers, restaurants, and grocers; and professional kung fu and t’ai chi instructors deliver eat and live green programs to improve the environment and health of students and the whole community. This model can be tailored to any schools, neighborhood, and city.

© 2009 From the Garden to the Table | Organic green, and sustainable since inception in 1996

A non-profit organization

The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones

2009-10-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Browse Inside this book

Get this for your site

Drop whatever you are reading, go to your local library and take out this book!

a beginning

2009-10-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

Financial Permaculture

2009-09-23T11:02:00.001-07:00

Financial Permaculture from Greg Landua on Vimeo.

Food for people

2009-09-21T14:31:00.001-07:00

The Free Farm Stand from Boris Igor A on Vimeo.

I'm paraphrasing here,..."People needed to be treated like family and you wouldn't charge your family for food."

culture makes me feel human

2009-09-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

lights on from thesystemis on Vimeo.

Utah Phillips tells the truth

2009-09-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

Utah Phillips interview, circa 2004

Timeless basket weaving

2009-09-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

Our first strawberry

2009-09-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

A piece called "Shorn" from Common Fold

2009-09-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

COMMON FOLD

2009-08-24T11:36:00.001-07:00

Common Fold: A Site-Specific Installation by Niki Shapiro
September 3rd – October 12, 2009
Opening Reception: September 3rd 2009, 7-10 pm
Divisadero Community Gallery, SF, CA

Drawing upon folk traditions such as gift exchange customs, origami and basket weaving histories, throughout September 3rd - October 12, 2009 the Divisadero Community Gallery will be transformed into a public archive.

Over the past two years, I have been collecting magazines and catalogs in return for small hand made paper tokens of appreciation. Using potential green house gas emitters as artifacts for investigation, I rip, sort and z-fold glossy, color saturated quarter pages. Armed only with my staple gun, these continuously growing webs link basic behavior pattern with form. Originally an experiment to understand dimensions proposed by string theory models, my process oriented sculptures become examples that juxtapose human ingenuity with mass-produced disposable material.

Visitors attending the opening reception are invited to exchange their Common Fold postcard invitation for a piece of sculpture from the installation to take home. Throughout the exhibition visitors are encouraged to contribute magazines and catalogues through the Divisadero Community Gallery’s drop-mail box for ongoing incorporation.

Located at 537 Divisadero St. in San Francisco between Fell and Hayes Streets, the Divisadero Community Gallery will be open Monday-Friday, 5-9pm, Sunday 12-6pm and is open by appointment. For more information go to www.divisaderocommunitygallery.blogspot.com or www.nikishapiro.com

Beloved Community

2009-01-19T14:46:00.001-08:00

From Blogger Pictures

Inspiration

2009-01-08T12:38:00.001-08:00

Antisemitism + Zionism = Racism squared

2008-12-31T09:40:00.000-08:00

END RACISM NOW!

Then, we can focus on more important things...

Tribute to Odetta: Mother of American Folk Music

2008-12-30T09:13:00.001-08:00

From Drop Box

to learn more about Odetta:

http://folkmusicarchives.org/odetta.htm

FREE: the myth

2008-12-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

From Blogger Pictures

The world is changing. What used to be named FREE is no longer such.

Humans will have to change or be suffocated by the very things we create. We are vulnerable to the inherent characteristics of ourselves- or lack thereof. Without variety there is only one color, only one species. Everything that is not able to fall within the parameters of the homogenous environment dies. We will become our own vortex.

To uncover the myth that there is anything actually FREE, we must think biologically; to try to see the whole rather than colored by species specific needs.

Unless.

Because of our own growth we uncover the misnomer and become re-oriented to our new priorities. Which must include: variety, community and balance.

It is painful to watch my future teeter in the hands of the collective consciousness. And yet, I know, no matter how educated I become, the power of one little ant means nothing. Like watching an ant hill's natural cycle of life to death, I am watching from the sidelines as our hill called earth erodes.

I have great hopes, though. If only because of my own example. My coping mechanisms keep my hands working, drive my education, my need to activate others and change our course - as a whole.

I have selfish reasons for my own need to survive; to be continued to let to see.

past, present ... what is future?

2008-12-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

the magic of photography gives us a window to warp time and space.

From Drop Box

I heart SF

2008-12-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

While walking to the studio over the weekend south on Van Ness, a parade was passing only on the North side of the street... Hey, space is valuable and people need to celebrate.

Festival de la Reina

From Drop Box

Reconnecting

2008-12-05T15:11:00.000-08:00

The U.S. celebrates the 75th Anniversary of Prohibition Repeal

2008-12-05T10:57:00.001-08:00

From Drop Box

WHY do I care? (or, apathy and the artist)

2008-12-05T10:06:00.000-08:00

From Drop Box

I ask myself this question a lot lately.

Mostly because I have been listening to the news. On kpfa and kalw while a thankfully at a job as a temporary admin asst. Everyday events from around the world fill my ears and yet what fills my vision when I look around while on my daily way through the local environs contradicts this moment.

Is it guilt? Is it hyper-sensitive to feel such deep anger at the level of brainwashing the westernized and westernizing human race has experienced? It gives me a headache when I think about it.

It is not our fault. Not any ONE of us. There is not anyone to be angry at. There isn't one finger to point. Every one of us can only work from what we believe to be true.

I have come to rely on the ant hill analogy. It is my solace from judgment - of others and myself.

From Drop Box

I heart SF

2008-12-03T15:12:00.001-08:00

From Drop Box

SF, CA skyline

From Drop Box

While walking home, the city turned purple from this sky.

corporate water footprinting conference to be held in san francisco

2008-12-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

what the fuck is "corporate water foot printing"??

sounds like the corps are bogarting beneficent language again and are planning to meet about divvying up the world's water, too!

doesn't that piss you off????!!!!

the ice is melting....

2008-11-13T10:33:00.001-08:00

From Drop Box

Group Show, Sunday November 16, 5-8pm

2008-11-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

The o Show

From Drop Box

Photograph by Barbara Rothman

Individual and Collective Statements off the x, y and z axis'

Ryan Alexiev
the MicroClimate Curatorial Collective
Jose Isagani de los Reyes
Hiroyo Kaneko
Nanda Palmieri
Barbara Rothman
Niki Shapiro
Mario Trejo
Sarah Willis + Jennifer Rarick

Balancing Perspectives Opening 11.1.08

2008-11-03T11:40:00.001-08:00

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Get out the vote!

2008-10-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

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You are invited...

2008-10-30T09:14:00.001-07:00

From Drop Box

I start my residency in the MicroClimate Project Space this Saturday, November 1. There is soooo much fun stuff going on in the theater surrounding my walk-through space. I hope you get a chance to come hang out.

And, don't forget to bring your growing pile of glossy, colorful mags and catalogs. You can stay and make your own or return for the closing to pick up some FREE art. Doesn't make sense yet. Just think of it as a gift exchange.

From Drop Box