Look to Home: Chunming Yu and Rene Yung

May 1- November 6,

Chunming Yu’s painting of extended family homes and villages (to the right) and Rene Yung’s detailed drawings of fruit stones (to the left) intimately describe home culture as life force. Both sets of images depict tightly nested worlds: Yu paints traditional homes studied on extensive travels throughout his homeland, China; Yung’s highly detailed fruit “stones,” or “pits” allude to their complexity as both a record of the past and the origin of new life: portable worlds.  As Americans who were born in China and Hong Kong, Yu and Yung chronicle their hybrid experience of home as protective landscapes that enclose the past and move to seed the future.

Rene Yung says: “I am one of the seeds scattered, and I have encountered so many others, day after day – in the market, on the street, at the airport. in some anonymous lobby, in a school-room, an elevator. there is a moment of recognition, eyes meet fleetingly, or not at all;  the skin breathes in signals of the kindred. we are called americans. we came from different places, for different reasons, to be in this country. we leave behind habits, languages, ways of holding our bodies, families, friends, foods, market smells, traffic patterns, birds and their songs, vegetation, dust, mountains, rivers… in america we talk/walk/eat/dress american, to varying degrees of attendance. beneath the skin, in the blood stream, what had been left behind mingles with what is encountered day to day, in a constantly-shifting mix where seeing and being are porous, kaleidoscopic. it is an impossible task, to wear another’s skin. to see through the other’s eyes, to know what it feels like to be seen that way. the only thing for certain is that we all see differently.

Voices for Justice: The Enduring Legacy of the Latino Press

April 3 – October 16, 2009

Honoring the Bicentennial of U.S. Latino Journalism

A collaboration with the City College Department of Journalism

and Accion Latina of San Francisco.

Voices for Justice:

Latino newspapers have been the voices of their communities across the United States for 200 years.

Drawing from the experiences of the early Mexican and Spanish press, the presence of Spanish-language journalism in the U.S. began in 1808 with the publication of El Misisipí in New Orleans.

By the late 19th century, Spanish-language newspapers had spread across the nation.

These newspapers gave voice to early Cuban and Puerto Rican exiles on the East Coast, to Mexicans who lost their land and country in the annexation of the northern half of Mexico, and to the growing Latino populations, both immigrant and U.S. born.

Today’s Latino media, spanning the Internet, broadcast and print, are building on this legacy, their strength and influence can be seen in the massive national turn out for the Spring 2006 Immigrant Rights marches.

Voices for Justice: The Enduring Legacy of the Latino Press in the U.S. is a project of Acción Latina, a non-profit educational and cultural Mission District organization. It is a national multi-platform project that will bring this hidden history to light in a comprehensive fashion to a wide audience.

The public phase of the project, which encompasses this exhibition, a television documentary, a companion book and interactive website, began August 2008 with the call for a national campaign to celebrate the bicentennial of the first Latino newspaper in the United States.

Images from the exhibition, from the archive of El Tecolote newspaper, a project of Accion Latina–El Tecolote has been documenting Latino life for close to 40 years, including detailed coverage of the Mission District in San Francisco, where the paper is located.

John Hope Franklin

January 2, 1915 – March 25, 2009

John Hope Franklin, pioneering African American scholar and educator died March 25, 2009 at the age of 94.

Quotations by John Hope Franklin From the Duke University website

On being an historian and an activist

“I think knowing one’s history leads one to act in a more enlightened fashion. I can not imagine how knowing one’s history would not urge one to be an activist.”
Emerge
March 1994

“I want to be out there on the firing line, helping, directing or doing something to try to make this a better world, a better place to live.”
Associated Press
October 2005

On the history of African Americans
“In discussing the history of a people one must distinguish between what has actually happened and what those who have written the history have said has happened. So far as the actual history of the American Negro is concerned, there is nothing particularly new about it. It is an exciting story, a remarkable story. It is the story of slavery and freedom, humanity and inhumanity, democracy and its denial. It is tragedy and triumph, suffering and compassion, sadness and joy.”
“The New Negro History,” Crisis
February 1977

The Ecology of Where You Live

March 6- September 4, 2009

The Earth Day theme this year on campus is “Towards Zero Waste.” Sustainable practices are important not just for humans, but for the animals and plants with whom we share the land. As city dwellers,   we often don’t notice the amazing creatures that share our city. This exhibit is a brief introduction.

You can explore more:

Participate in the CCSF Earth Day Celebration

Volunteer with some of the organizations you see listed   under “Websites” on the Resources List.

Enroll in a class in the Biology Department.

Come into the Library and ask a Reference Librarian for                      help finding more information on any of the topics you’re interested in exploring.

Lisa DiGirolamo, Ph.D.

Student projects:

Lacey Hutchens: Drawing of weather cycle and butterfly cycle

Mary Swanson: Photos and help with specimens

Christina Vetterick: Species information

Melissa Weiss: Natural areas display and survey

Once Upon a Culture: The Art of Milton Bowens

The work of Milton Bowens was on display in the Rosenberg Library during February, 2009 as part of the Library’s celebration of African American History Month. Bowens also spoke at the Ocean, John Adams and Mission Campuses. The national theme for this celebration was “Quest for Black Citizenship in the Americas.” As artist citizen, Bowens describes some of the roles of art: “to try to bring about a level of civility to a community in need of inspiration,” and to “keep art a vital part of public education and a tool to help rebuild self-esteem in youth.”

To see more Milton Bowen’s work click here *

Spring 2009 Library Exhibitions

Proper Behavior, Damas Malcriadas…Buen Comportamiento, Ill-Bred Ladies

November 13, 2008-April 29, 2009

The work of artists Rosa M. Valdez and Heidi Forssell is installed in Rosenberg Library.
The artists describe their collaborative exhibition:

As artists and women, we are deeply concerned with the societal value of women. In this exhibition, we seek to address the ways in which women are valued and defined while exploring the tension between external representations of women and real women’s realities. In our work, we each utilize humor and earnestness to delve into preconceptions about women’s roles in society while examining the stereotypical objectification of women. We both aim to throw a wrench at the societal values that distort and misrepresent us in an effort to create critical dialogue and alternative feminine identities for all women.We hope to inspire laughter, curiosity, skepticism, hope and action.

Heidi Forssell

Heidi co-opts the symbology and metaphor of found objects to challenge the attitude they solicit. She works with objects such as high heels, lipstick, and ball gowns that exist as satellites revolving around the issue of gender, love and sex. She subjects these objects to interventions which simultaneously exaggerate and counter their original meanings. The work is repulsively fascinating and comically macabre.

Rosa M. Valdez

Rosa’s draws on her experience as the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her work explores the tense space between cultural expectations of women in her community and the creation of a new feminine identity through the use of photography, video installation, garment-making and image transfer. She utilizes humor and the ridiculous as well as personal and public images to invite viewers to participate in creating alternative spaces for women to define who they are.

The artists ask you t consider these questions as you look at the exhibition:

How much of your identity is defined by your gender?

What messages did you receive as a child about your gender?

What was the source of these messages? (school, home, church, pop culture)

How does your culture affect your behavior as a woman?

What are some great things about being a woman?

Check out these great resources on Women in the Arts:

Library Resources: Women in the Arts Bibliography

Check out Rosa Valdez’ Blog

Check out Heidi Forssell’s Blog

¡Juega Loteria! A Chance to Win Friends and Neighbors

October 6, 2008-March 24, 2009

Celebrating Latino/a Heritage Month

 

Loteria, the Mexican game of picture bingo is beautiful and incredibly flexible. In addition to being a traditional game, it has been adapted as an educational and political tool and in the examples here, as a vehicle for creating a community portrait. It has been used to teach English, healthy ways to live with diabetes, traffic rules, as well as information about the World Trade Organization and the corporations that belong to it. The structure of the game makes it an easy formula for conveying visual information.

Artist Teresa Villegas created the gorgeous and subversive lotería to your right. Her images of “El Destino,” “El Revolucionario,” and “La Telenovela,” update and expand the game with abstract concepts and images from contemporary popular culture.

The artist Carmen Lomas Garza brought the tradition of handmade loterías to the Bay Area from her native South Texas in the mid-1970s. Lomas Garza’s etching of neighbors playing the game shows prizes heaped in the middle of the game table surrounded by participants of all ages.

As long time Loteristas, we first began to adapt the game when we worked together at the Galeria de la Raza. María created a Día de los Muertos lotería in 1977. As a California Arts Council artist in residence, Kate worked with seniors to create the Centro Latino Lotería. She and Oscar Melara developed the concept of using Loteria to describe a community and bring it together, which María then applied to a community she’s close to for the Lotería de Mata Ortiz.

Kate Connell and María Pinedo

Caught Reading: The Intimacy of Books

September 19, 2008-February 27, 2009

Caught Reading, at the Rosenberg Library, features the photographs of André Kertész, a Hungarian photographer who photographed readers between 1920 and 1970, in Europe, Asia and the United States. When his photographs were first published, critics praised the way he’d caught the compelling nature of books and the way that people engaged in this the intimate act of reading in public places, removing themselves from their surroundings and traveling to another world.

Where do you like to read? What do you like to read?

After looking at these photographs, we’re reminded that we have the opportunity to read constantly throughout the day-in the street: signage, headlines, and flyers on computers: in the library, at home, in cafes. And of course there are always books and magazines which we can take anywhere.

Come into the library and take a look at Kertesz’ book On Reading.

Fall 2008 Library Exhibitions

New Poster by Tatiana Gordevitch of the Graphic Arts 68 Class