CITY STUDIO 2011 FALL CLASS SCHEDULE:

*MONDAYS*

4:30 – 6:30 pm
Mural painting and the Muralist Tradition in San Francisco
Excelsior Boys and Girls Club (EXCELSIOR neighborhood)
163 London Street, San Francisco, CA 94112
Teaching Artist Laura Boles Faw

Students will collaboratively conceive of and paint a mural on a wall of the art classroom of the Excelsior Boys and Girls Club.   Students will research the historical and social context of the muralist tradition in San Francisco while learning painting techniques, composition, and the art of collaboration.  Classes begins September 19

*WEDNESDAYS*

4:30 – 6:30 pm
Ceramic Sculpture – Creating with Clay
SOMARTS (SOMA neighborhood)
934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, 94103
Teaching Artists  Allison Taylor

Students will develop the skills needed to work with clay and the use of clay in fine art vs. high craft. This class will incorporate several different beginning hand building techniques such as: pinch, coil and slab construction. Student’s will also learn ho w to use a potter’s wheel and how to treat the surface of the clay; color, texture, functionality. Classes begin September 21

4:00 – 5:30 pm, plus two Saturdays TBA
3-D Collage: Sculpture as Mash-Up
SCRAP (BAYVIEW neighborhood)
Toland Street, San Francisco, CA, 94124
Teaching Artist  Laura Boles Faw

This course offers students the opportunity to create sculpture from reused materials gathered from SCRAP.  Students will learn a variety of approaches to creating artwork from found objects and materials and in the process will learn to think critically about reuse.  Classes begin September 21

4:30-7:00
City Studio Press – Artists As Journalists
SOMARTS (SOMA neighborhood)
934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, 94103
Teaching Artists  Sally Widdowson

The City Studio Press course will provide students with the skills to develop a critical understanding of communication, media, broadcasting, and digital culture through the lens of art. Students will learn how to create and self-publish a blog, a zine, and a segment for Public Access Television, plus learn the related skills of graphics, audio, video, photography, and more.  Classes begin September 21

4:30 – 6:30 pm
Sound and Light as Music
THE LAB (MISSION neighborhood)
2948 16 th Street, San Francisco, CA  94103
Teaching Artist  Erik Wilson

The gap between sound and video art is more slender than ever with new developments in multimedia software.  Once familiar with the sonic end of the spectrum, students will use similar editing and collage strategies with video to create installation, performance, and screening based work. Classes begin September 21

*THURSDAYS*

4:30 – 6:30 pm
The Moving Image – YouTube Video, Film, and Photography
BAYVIEW OPERA HOUSE (BAYVIEW neighborhood)
4705 Third Street, San Francisco, CA, 94124
Teaching Artist  Meghann Riepenhoff

In this course, students will learn how to make video art pieces and short films that utilize basic camera operation, technical editing skills in iMovie, critical thinking and concept development. Final works will be showcased on a student’s YOUTube channel. Classes begin September 22

4:00 – 6:30 pm
Sound and Light As Music
EAST BAY ASIAN YOUTH CENTER (EAST CENTRAL OAKLAND neighborhood
2025 East 12 th St. Oakland, California 94606
Teaching Artist  Erik Wilson

The gap between sound and video art is more slender than ever with new developments in multimedia software.  Once familiar with the sonic end of the spectrum, students will use similar editing and collage strategies with video to create installation, performance, and screening based work. Classes begin September 22

*FRIDAYS*

4:30 – 7:00 pm
Ceramic Sculpture – Creating with Clay
SOMARTS (SOMA neighborhood)
934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, 94103
Teaching Artists  Allison Taylor

Students will develop the skills needed to work with clay and the use of clay in fine art vs. high craft. This class will incorporate several different beginning hand building techniques such as: pinch, coil and slab construction. Student’s will also learn how to use a potter’s wheel and how to treat the surface of the clay; color, texture, functionality.  Classes begin September 23

4:00 – 7:00 pm
Adventures in Graphics
GALERIA DE LA RAZA (MISSION neighborhood)
2948 16th Street, San Francisco, CA  94103
Teaching Artist  Kim Silva

Graphic design is the creative planning and execution of visual communication.  Students will employ both analog media (drawing with pencil and paper,etc.) and digital media — using up-to-date computer tools like graphics hardware and software, for drawing, painting, layout, typography, scanning, and photography.   Classes begin September 23

I explored the city when I first arrived. Believe it or not, I actually rode every possible kind of public transportation. Every single bus line, every single train, street car, etc. I would get on, ride it all the way to both ends of each route and get to know the city as best I could. It took me two weeks, but soon I had become an expert on San Francisco’s MUNI and what parts of the city inspired me the most.

Now, here I am twenty years later and the city is still a mystery to me in many ways.

As a student at SFAI, I encountered the CITY STUDIO program around 2007. The artist Julio Morales brought a group of City Studio students into an exhibition at the Walter & McBean galleries at 800 Chestnut street where I was working. I was overwhelmed by how this group of kids responded to the art work, saying all the things that I’m certain other people were thinking but were afraid to say.

It was at this time that I began to take an interest in the City Studio program.

The idea of the city as a kind of studio–a space where one can find solitude, social tensions, and create a better and more interesting future–has always intrigued me. The program seemed almost too obvious. Of course…City Studio means quite literally that the City is the Studio.

Was I the only one who got that? No. But when I look back on how I lived in the city when I first moved here, and how I live in it now as an artist, I know that I have a unique vision of San Francisco. My desire is to see the City Studio program expand and let more young people in the Bay Area discover that their city is in fact a studio, and more importantly, help discover that they might actually be artists, and that those things that the kids from Julio’s class said in the exhibition that I mentioned above could be the kinds of things that they say outside the space of the gallery, and speak their minds on the streets…

-Faustino Mendonça, Chinatown, San Francisco, April 2011

Co-developer of City Studio Press: Artists as Journalists

A large component of the new course will be devoted to producing and reporting live streaming news programming from SOMArts Cultural Center. In preparation for our roles as instructors who are inaugurating City Studio Press, Sally Widdowson and myself (Kim Silva) are participating in a video program offered through Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC). BAVC’s public access television, SF Commons, is expanding a unique news system that will broadcast community-produced news, performances exhibitions and neighborhood events from local art and cultural centers. SOMArts, is one of three Neighborhood News Network (N3) sites, training individuals in the community as video broadcasters. The training consists of a series of workshops that is preparing us to assist in producing and reporting live broadcasts from SOMArts Cultural Center. For Sally and I in particular, this is the only formal training we receive before teaching students in fall.

In addition to BAVC training, I attended an intensive public practice practicum at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California organized by Suzanne Lacy and Sara Daleiden. As part of a series of events offered to encourage discourse among L.A. cultural practitioners, the conference highlighted the unique position of Otis’ public practice graduate program; the only educational program in the Southern California region dedicated exclusively to providing artists with advanced skills for working in the public sphere, focusing both on collaborative and individual art production. Educational theorist Christopher Robbins served as the main presenter throughout the weekend, guiding intense conversations between artists and educators on the philosophical underpinnings of critical pedagogy in relationship to public practice in art. My participation enabled me to bring the expertise of those working in the Otis program to my Thesis 2 Collaborative Project cohort and City Studio. Among the many points discussed the following have had the strongest impact on myself, as an educational planner:

• Schools do not have the power that popular culture already does
• Kids are legitimate cultural producers. Help them recognize ways they are doing it already.
• Importance of generational articulation. It shapes the future and how others receive them
• Creation of Media Literacy Curriculum: how they experience life and how their experience is conveyed in media

The BAVC training I am receiving and my participation in the critical pedagogy conference at OTIS have provided me with the skills needed to develop the curriculum for the City Studio Press: Artists as Journalists class and in fall of this year Sally Widdowson and I will have an opportunity to put our knowledge and skills to the test with the first City Studio Press class.

When: April 27th

Where: San Francisco Art Institute, Chestnut Cafe.

Inspired by Paulo Freire’s, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, our group sought to fill a perceived need in our community by reaching out to youth by teaching the skills of journalism and broadcasting through the lens of the artist as teacher.  Freire’s text reminds us that the roles of teacher and student are indeed interchangeable, and that an open mind and open heart are imperative to the success of any educational model.  The creation of City Studio Press has relied on open dialogue not only among its collaborators, but also with the members of our community.  Dialogue plays a key role in this project on several levels.

Internally, the framework of the project has relied on the ability of our working group to collaborate, share individual talents and maintain open communication via emails, weekly meetings and guest speakers in order to move the planning and development forward.  Externally, the group has also created a dialogue with the members of the community for the purposes of gaining trust and facilitating new relationships with artists, teachers, community leaders and SFAI administration to strengthen the project.  In this way, the small group of five students and one instructor has grown into a more productive network of voices.  And finally, through the use of outreach, there has been the important dialogue with the potential students of the City Studio Press: Artists as Journalists course.  Site visits to each of the existing City Studio classrooms has enlightened our group to the actual experiences of working with these students.  Visiting the various classrooms across the Bay Area has given us hands-on insight into the interests of the youth as well as the realistic needs of the classroom.

Ultimately, by developing the curriculum for the City Studio Press class in addition to the citystudio.org website, we hope to encourage the youth of the Bay Area to realize the potential of their own voices and to inspire them to create new dialogues with their own communities.

-Meredith MacKenzie

The different components of the City Studio website function to get students more involved and allow them to have more of a voice and a presence within their community.  The blog is where students can write whatever they want, explain projects, ask others for help with an idea, or expand upon a thought as well as allow viewers to leave comments in response to posts.  The Archive contains student’s projects through images and videos and functions as a constant gallery.  The About section serves as a historical timeline explaining how city studio came about, the people involved, and the grants one can apply for.  The Classes section provides a description of all classes offered as well as a PDF of the class syllabus, serving as an example of what can be applied in other locations.  The Participate section allows interested students to view a PDF of the application online and submit it.  The Footer of the website takes social media sharing into account and includes, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare, allowing students to link information from the website to these other sites, further spreading the word.

www.citystudio.org is based upon ease of access, participation and allowing more people to know about and become active in city studio.  The site’s database and mailing list will grow and generate as a result of viewers landing on the web page.  We hope students will use this as a tool to highlight their projects and take the opportunity to see what others participating in programs in different locations in the Bay Area are creating, to think about future projects and the prospect of collaborating beyond the limitations of their own neighborhood.

-Marly Hammer