Chinatown North Beach Center
February-May 2013

John Adams Campus Library
February-May, 2013

Rosenberg Library
Through April 13, 2013

Afrodescendientes/Afro Cuban Guanabacoa
Photographer Roberto Chile

El Calor del Sol
Steven Daiber and Red Trillium Press

November 13, 2012-April 13, 2013
Rosenberg Library, City College of San Francisco
(Campus is closed for winter break December 20, 2012-January 14, 2013)

These two exhibitions offer a chance to see Cuba from two very different perspectives, from both inside and from the outside. Here in the United States we don’t often get to learn about Cuba’s kaleidoscope of unique history, rich culture and powerful role in the history of the Americas. In 1960 the U.S. instituted a trade embargo against the socialist island nation, a blockade that is still in place, having just been re-insituted by a vote in the United Nations General Assembly. Cuba also maintains some travel restrictions although occasionally, musical groups (including Orquesta Aragon and Septeto Nacional Ignacio Piñeiro de Cuba recent visiors) and others are able to secure both Cuban and U.S. visas in order to perform here. The U.S. embargo limits travel to Cuba to for U.S. citizens to educational and religous purposes. The City College Travel Abroad program leads trips to Cuba during the winter break, click here to learn more.

For the exhibition Afrodescendientes/Afro-Cuban Guanabacoa , prominent Cuban photographer and documentarian Roberto Chile chose to capture life in the community of Guanabacoa in Havana. This collection of photographs was created for the UNESCO International Year for people of African Descent, 2011. In celebration of that year, Afrodescendientes, has been shown in Havana; Madrid, Spain; Buenos Aires, Argentina and in Washington DC.

Over his forty year career as a photographer, Chile has served as the staff photographer (1984-2006) for Fidel Castro, President and Minister of Cuba and has produced bodies of work—films and photography collections—on a range of subjects: Cuban dance, children’s theater, Afro-Cuban religion and Alberto Korda, the photographer who created the famous image of Che Guevara that is seen around the world. Chile has been described as a chronicler of his time, in the words of the Historian of the City of Havana, Eusebio Leal Spengler:

“Roberto Chile has forged a unique image of Cuba, always dignified and luminous. His images make up a universe of faith and spirituality, visible to those who, like him, are able to love. “

El Calor del Sol features artists books from Steven Daiber’s Red Trillium Press Based in Massachusetts, Red Trillium publishes artists books in collaboration with Cuban artists. Daiber travels back and forth between the United States and Cuba and has worked in eight different silkscreen workshops in the city of Havana. Subjects for his books include daily life in Havana, the Cuban Revolution, U.S./Cuba relations, Baseball, gay and transgender life in Havana and daily food rationing—as Daiber travels in Cuba, his experiences, and those of the people he meets and the artists he collaborates with are all possible subjects for his handmade books. Daiber says:

“My work facilitates dialogue between Cuban and foreign artists. Red Trillium Press books create real, metaphorical objects: palaces of the memory in which each element underscores a meaning. The collaborative books co-created with Cuban artists tell their stories of the lived reality in Cuba during the 21^st century.”

Daiber’s recent trips to Havana in 2010 and 2011 included teaching book arts and book collaborations with Cuban artists. Poder (Power), created in 2010, is the first book in a series of three books based on themes Cuban artists feel describe their social and political relationships: power, privacy and waiting. These ideas developed during a number of meetings and conversations in 2007 with the artists. The second book, Privacidad (Privacy), was created in 2011 and the third book, Esperando (Waiting), is planned for  2013.

Cuba Two Views Assignment and Book List

Check back as we add more links!

Cosponsored by the City College Study Abroad Program and the Latin American and Latino/a Studies Department.

October 23, 2012-April 6, 2013
Rosenberg Library, City College of San Francisco

Painting from “Master Works:”

Many art instructors teach students by having them copy paintings, drawings or photographs made by experienced and well regarded artists. Painting from different master art works allows students to carefully study different artistic approaches and to experiment with different techniques before settling into their own style. Painting from master works created over centuries offers an infinite range of imagery, color selection and approaches to painting.

Learn to Paint at City College:

Classes:
Check the Art Department class schedule for painting classes for beginners though advanced painters.

Library Resources:

Database, Books and Magazines
ARTstor Image Database:
ARTstor is an online database that the CCSF Library subscribes to. It offers high resolution access to over a million paintings, photographs, maps and other images. CCSF students can access ARTstor through the Library: www.ccsf.edu/library, then choose Articles and Databases and click on ARTstor. Would you like to see the fine strokes of a painting in detail, or examine a photograph’s details, study the curves or grooves in a piece of sculpture? ARTstor offers rich, lush images in extremely high definition so that you can enjoy the details of a work of art, a map or an architectural site. Members of the CCSF community can download ARTstor images for educational use. Ask a CCSF librarian for more information.

Books:
Every library at CCSF has books on painting and drawing.  To see some of the paintings used in Kay Russell’s classes look at books in the library on these very different artists:

Claude Monet: A French Impressionist painter especially known for his landscapes(1840-1926).

Chiura Obata: A Bay Area Japanese American artist interned with his family during World War II during which he founded the Topaz Art School (1885-1975).

Georgia O’Keeffe: An American Modernist artist famous for her paintings of flowers, bones and the landscape of New Mexico, (1887-1986).

John Singer Sargent: An American portraitist who turned to landscapes later in his life (1956-1925).

Magazines:

The Library subscribes to: Art in America and ARTnews come in and take a look!

Watercolor Exhibition Assignment and CCSF Book List

Botellas Curadas:
Healing Herbs and Home Remedies

In Collaboration with
Equipo Multicisciplinario de Colombia

September 21, 2012-March 22, 2013
Rosenberg Library, City College of San Francisco

Home Remedies are an essential part of health care systems all over the world. It is estimated that up to 80% of the world population depends on herbal remedies as their primary healthcare. Especially in the less developed world, herbs are a vital health resource for both humans and animals, although alternative medicine is accepted to varying degrees globally.

Home remedies are healing recipes that are based on plants and herbs, spices, fruits or vegetables. Around the globe families treat ailments based on remedies that have been passed down through generations.
Maybe you know of a home remedy that your family or friends use?

Home remedies, by definition, have not been scientifically tested. Although when they are, many remedies are shown to have a scientific basis for their efficacy. Many pharmaceutical drugs are in fact based on plants and herbs. The CCSF Library offers many resources for researching the effects of specific plants—beneficial and toxic. As with pharmaceutical drugs (many of which are based on plants) herbs can have both good and bad effects on your health or that of your pet.

The Multidisciplinary Group of Colombia/
Grupo Muliticisciplinario de Colombia 

Grupo Multicisciplinario de Colombia, a group of artists and scholars wanted to investigate the use of herbs in their native Colombia. They collected home remedies by interviewing fellow Colombians across the country. Following the interview process, they compiled a collection of remedies and recipes and transformed them into the Vademécum pages that you see here in the cases. Following their work in Colombia, the Group next traveled to Cuba to interview Cubans about their use of plants and herbs for health and religious purposes. They collaborated with MAC/SAN, The Contemporary Art Museum of San Agustin in Havana for the Havana Bienal. Because of colonization and globalization, the Group found that many of the same remedies were used in both Colombia and in Cuba although each country had its own rich tradition of herbal use from, indigenous, African and European sources.

In Cuba the Group used video and visual art to share their findings—creating an installation at MAC/SAN, a museum without walls, in Havana where they displayed herbs and offered remedies for the public to sample. To emphasize the popular use of herbal remedies in Cuba, MGC created the Ruta Medicinal/Medicinal Path, silkscreening an image of the Botellas Curadas logo (bottled remedies) on the homes or offices of people practicing herbal medicine.

Here in the Bay Area we are lucky to have access to herbal health practices from all over the world. We can easily find Chinese, Ayurvedic and herbs from other cultures in local stores and markets. We can purchase growing plants from nurseries or plant them from seeds. We could easily create a Bay Area Vademécum of global health remedies.

At the display in the Rosenberg Library Norma Villazana-Price’s
Child Development class shares home remedies used by
their families and communities.

 
Bottom Row: Grupo Multicisciplinario at MAC/SAN for the
Havana Bienal, May 2012.

Assignment: Botellas Curadas Healing Herbs and Home Remedies

What Cannot Be Taken Away: Families and Prisons Project was a collaborative dialogue looking at the impact of incarceration on families that took place from 2009-2010.  For 5 months I met weekly with four fathers at San Francisco County Jail #5 in the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) and with four youth who have fathers who are or have been incarcerated and are part of the programs Project WHAT! or Roots (All three programs are run by Community Works West, who made the dialogue structure and project possible).  Not related and never coming into contact with each other, the two groups worked on the same exercises and prompts each week, accumulating ideas, furthering their dialogue and building community in the process.  The workshops centered around processes of reflection, writing, painting, drawing and recorded conversations that were subsequently played for the other group.  During the third month, participants began to design the narrative structures, composition and symbolism present in the pieces.  We then continued our dialogue less frequently – through letters and individual meetings, while I worked from their sketches for the following 3 months.  The timeline, interactive components and resource library offer bits of context to an endemic social problem that has deeply personal effects.

I came to this project through reflections on being a teacher, not through a personal connection to having a parent or child incarcerated.  My interest stemmed from the lack that I was experiencing in schools – the lack of buy-in for students, the lack of compassion and healing as part of learning, and the lack of imagination for dealing with ‘problem’ students.  The treatment of students who step ‘outside the bounds’ reminds me of the current mentality of incapacitation that characterizes the US prison system.  On this, Ruth Gilmore notes, “Incapacitation doesn’t pretend to change anything about a people except where they are.”  Through these mechanisms of separation, our society stokes fear of difference, the unknown, and unseen to create standards of being and living that renders pain invisible except in spectacle.  With an understanding that pain rendered invisible so frequently manifests in violence, WCBTA is an attempt to create an alternative communal education, one that is focused on dialogue, sharing and expression with the intention of positive change and healing.

The power of these portraits lies in each person’s honest confrontation of their experience and the freedom that comes from that.  I continue to be grateful for their wisdom and love – Ben, Cheyanne, Darren, Joe, Liz, Melvin, Sadie, and Vonteak.  Thank you as well to Community Works, Dee Morizono Myers, SOMArts, LEF and Penguin Foundation and the many individual donors.  A special thank you to the Rosenberg Library, Health Education Department, Interdisciplinary Studies, Kate Connell, Donna Willmott, Tim Berthold, Lauren Muller, Amber Straus, Nancy Elliot, Graphic Communications Class, and Lauren Porter for affirming the importance of this process.

-Evan Bissell, 2012
http://www.evanbissell.com

What Cannot be Taken Away Assignment and Book List

BYOB(ag):
Creating Nutritional Awareness/Design for Social Impact

Project: Value Reduction and Stenciling

Class: Basic Design 125A
Instructor: Nancy Mizuno Elliott
Recycling an Assignment:

Last year I stumbled upon this project when perusing the blog Apartment Therapy. It was sponsored by AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) and originated from Moore College of Art and Design. I was compelled to “borrow” the concept; it had the rare combination of being both politically relevant and very cool.

Also, I’m a bit competitive. I had a feeling that first year CCSF design students could handle this project; even though it was initially intended for junior level graphic design students attending a private art program. My hunch was right.

Come into the Rosenberg Library and see what CCSF students produced!

Golden Gate Bridge 75^th Anniversary

Fred Brusati Working on the Golden Gate Bridge

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, a stupendous feat of engineering and design that has been called one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

Spanning the Gate offers a behind-the-scenes look at the complex construction process of this amazing landmark. The project required a multitude of skilled workers – carpenters, electricians, pile drivers, divers, ironworkers – along with many laborers who provided back breaking support work to these craftsmen.

Built hundreds of feet above the dangerously churning waters of the entrance to San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge was an extremely challenging worksite. Several men lost their lives and many others were injured during the four and a half years it took to build the bridge.

 We salute the working class heroes whose skill and dedication brought the dream of spanning the Gate to fruition.

An Exhibit of Photographs from the Labor Archives and Research Center Collection.

Spanning the Gate Assignment and Book List

We’re celebrating the 40^th Anniversary of the publication of this groundbreaking book empowering women with health information about our bodies and our selves.  Since 1971 it has grown in size from the skinny black and white (now yellowed) publication you see on the top of the book pile on the right, to the nearly 2 inch thick publication right below it.  It continues to serve, as The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective says “as a tool which stimulates discussion and action, which allows for new ideas and for change….to change the health care system for women and for all people.” 

Multiple women’s voices make Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS) accessible and representative of many points of view.  It has been translated into 25 Languages—but not just translated linguistically, translated culturally—adapted to the culture of the countries by women in those countries.  For example, for the Serbian edition the “experiences of Bosnian refugees who had been raped during the war shaped their book’s approach to sexual violence and drove home the knowledge that women’s health and lives are tightly linked to the social and political context in which we live.”  The Indian Bengali language version published the first health information in Bengali on safer sex practices in same sex relationship “defying the obliteration of sexuality from the common language.”  The Israeli version brought together Jewish and Arab women to publish 2 books, one in Hebrew and one in Arabic. 

“Each edition more closely mirrored what we teach in Women’s Health Issues” says Robin Roth, longtime City College instructor who chose OBOS as a text book for Health 25 classes because of the comprehensive approach to women’s health and for its progressive feminist perspectives on women’s health issues: reproduction, sexuality, aging, nutrition, exercise, body image, relationships, and gender identification, among many. A quick look at the table of contents for issues over the years shows how the field of women’s health has grown and changed. The first table of contents fills less than a page; more recent editions’ are several pages long. Additional publications on pregnancy and menopause expand women’s access to easily accessible and detailed information on these subjects.

Our Bodies, Ourselves in available in print, Braille, audio, digital and social interactive formats. 

The OBOS  Website:  www.ourbodiesourselves.org  has great information, check it out! Go to the Resources page for more information on women and health.

Search Our Bodies Ourselves 40th anniversary global symposium on www.youtube.com to see inspiring videos.

Special Event: One of OBOS’s authors, Ellen Shaffer, will be speaking at a Women’s History Month event in Roth’s class on April 4^th at 2:30 in MUB 361. The topics are Reproductive Justice and also Health Care Reform. You are invited to attend.

Find out more about Women’s Health:
OBOS Book List and Assignment