Building the Art House

Three Exhibitions on Southeast San Francisco!
Rosenberg Library, City College

Bling Blang, You Bring the Hammer, I’ll Bring a Nail:
Artworkers in Southeast SF
Madeleine Haas Russell Gallery, 2^nd Floor Atrium
April 28-November 2, 2017

Cutting the Rug: Capturing the Night Life
Collaboration with the CCSF Journalism Department
4th Floor Atrium
April 28- October 26, 2017

Digging in: Our Green Spaces
A collaboration with YAX/Youth Art Exchange
3rd Floor Atrium
May 4-November 16, 2017

Can we build a shared cultural life in Southeast San Francisco? Building the Art House answers that question with a resounding yes! And offers a compelling example of how this might look. A multigenerational roster of artists brings this swathe of working class San Francisco to life in the Rosenberg Library at City College of San Francisco. Building the Art House assembles three exhibitions that explore visual art, gardening, and performance. Work comes from the Bayview-Hunters Point, Portola, Excelsior, Visitacion Valley and Ingleside districts. Building the Art House gives insight into the cultural production and gathering places that few outside the neighborhoods are aware of.

At the edge of Southeast San Francisco, City College stands as a resilient emblem of survival in a fast changing city. This convergence of exhibitions and programs at City College invites artists to identify with other cultural producers of Southeast SF. This is an opportunity to explore the regional history and possible future of this vibrant corner of the City. The vision for Building the Art House grew out of the Moving Art House Project, a mobile cultural space created by Kate Connell and Oscar Melara (Book and Wheel Works) in Southeast SF in 2015. In this series, guest curator Emma Spertus brings a new perspective and complementary artists to Book and Wheel’s Southeast SF expertise and extensive creative partnerships.

In addition to the exhibitions on display during the spring and fall 2017 semesters, Building the Art House will include an art fair, a tour, a publication and an artists’ panel in fall 2017.

Bling Blang participating artists:

Adam Weiss, Anne Seeman, Andrew Kleindolph, Anthony Ryan*, Andy Vogt*, Arthur Koch, Caitlyn Galloway, Carey Lin*, Cecilia Peña-Govea, Charles Dabo, Charlene Tan, Diane Olivier, Emory Douglas, Estelle Akamine, Floyd Solder, Gustavo Vazquez, Jarrel Phillips, Keith Scott Ferris, Juan Fuentes, Lisa Magruder, Mark Myers, Matt Christienson, Mel Prest, Micholiano Forks, Nancy Hom, Nathan Watson, Lereneo Neo Ve’ave’a, Phillip Hua*, Refa 1, Ron Moultrie Saunders, Sarah M. Newton, Sarah Smith*, Tine Ferrer, Kate Connell and Oscar Melara

*These artists also contributed commissioned site specific backdrops for the exhibition to hang on top of or sit upon.

Download Building the Art House Press Release

For more information:
Guest Curator, Emma Spertus, espertus@gmail.com or
Library Exhibition Curator, Kate Connell, kconnell@ccsf.edu

          

 

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We Have a Voice! Celebrating Youth Artists in San Francisco

November 18, 2016-May 4, 2017
Rosenberg Library, 3rd floor
Ocean Campus
Library Hours

 

See the work of young artists working with Youth Art Exchange (YAX), a non profit neighbor of City College.

Come to the YAX special event:
On Friday, December 2, SOMArts and YAX host a gallery preview, happy hour, and youth film festival. From 5–6PM, get a sneak peak at the visual, technical, and multimedia arts in the gallery, and enjoy a happy hour with wine and beer (21+), non-alcoholic drinks, and hors d’oeuvres. At 6PM, enjoy nachos and popcorn while being dazzled with a curated collection of youth-produced films on the big screen. More information here!

About the Rosenberg Library Exhibition: Youth Art Exchange sparks a shared creative practice between professional artists and public high school students, furthering youth as leaders, thinkers, and artists in San Francisco. To accomplish this, Youth Art Exchange offers citywide arts, high quality education programming, field trips, events, and more.

Students at Youth Art Exchange represent the diversity of San Francisco. Some come to Youth Art Exchange because of a self-identified love of the arts, or they say they absolutely must get into the Black & White Photography class. Others are looking for something, anything, to do after school. Others are coerced by their friends to come and try something totally new, or are lured by the free snacks. Some are squeezing Youth Art Exchange in with five other clubs, sports or jobs; while others are at Youth Art Exchange anytime they’re not at school and our door is open. They take classes at Youth Art Exchange because their school doesn’t offer arts classes, or not the ones in which they’re interested. They take classes with us because they can get high school elective credit through SFUSD for them and feel like they’re really working- but also having fun, too. They take classes with us because “free” is within their budget.

The majority of students who come to Youth Art Exchange end up staying on for multiple sessions. They stay with us because they make friends from outside of their school and neighborhood, because they explore relevant themes that they come up with themselves, and because they get to know their city better. Finally, they stay because they and the faculty artists leading their classes become each other’s biggest fans.

Our youth are diverse, and what they share in common is motivation, curiosity, and a willingness to put themselves out there and try something new. They help create what Youth Art Exchange is, and it is a place that is safe to do all of those things – to be weird, to be serious, to be unsure but try it anyway. It’s a place where they can learn how to best articulate their ideas and have the space to share them.

Click here for the Assignment and a list of books and more on how to make things.

 

 

 

Compositions: A San Francisco Filipino American Experience

Madeleine Haas Russell Gallery
2nd Floor, Rosenberg Library
Ocean Campus
March 4-October 13, 2016
Library Hours

Please Join us for a reception! 
 Thursday, October 13, 12 noon-2:00 pm
 Madeleine Haas Russell Gallery
 2nd Floor, Rosenberg Library, City College Ocean Campus
 Meet Janet Alvarado and learn more about the work of her father,
 Ricardo Ocreto Alvarado
 Light refreshments, Free

Event co-Sponsored by School of Social Sciences, Behavioral Sciences and Multicultural Studies, TULAY-The Filipino american Student Success Program, Pilipinos for Education Art Culture and Empowerment (PEACE) and the Multicultural Retention Center.
The reception is co-produced by the Alvarado Project.

Compositions: A San Francisco Filipino American Experience is curated by Janet Alvarado. Black and white photographs taken by Alvarado’s father, Ricardo Ocreto Alavarado, fill the Madeleine Haas Russell Gallery on the 2^nd floor of the Rosenberg Library. Ricardo Alvarado documented the Filipino American community in San Francisco during the 1940s and 1950s. Photographs of family gatherings, house parties, street scenes, musical and social events were taken south of Market, on Bernal Heights, in the Western Addition, the Fillmore District, at the Alemany Farmers Market and in the Presidio. The photographer’s warm and observant eye captured a rich, engaged community spread across San Francisco. Commentary from well-known Filipino Americans—Emil Guillermo and musician/composer/educator Melecio Magdaluyo among them, describe the community that Ricardo Alvarado photographed.  An accompanying anthology, Claiming Our Stories, now in the CCSF Library collection, includes essays by contemporary Filipino American writers Oscar Peneranda, Guilo Sorro, Emil Guillermo, Janet Alvarado and others who describe the city’s rich cultural history and contributions Filipinos have made to the community.

Ricardo Ocreto Alvarado took over 3,000. Compositions is Janet Alvarado’s second curatorial project highlighting and contextualizing her father’s work.

Learn more about the Alvarado Project here.

Download: Assignment and Resources for Compositions

Welcome to My Global Hood: What is Environmental Justice?

April 20-November 5, 2010

ArtsChange And the CCSF Library collaborate to present this project created by Richmond, CA youth working with artist-in-residence, Milton Bowens to explore what environmental justice means to youth in Richmond and how the “art making process represents an opportunity to place themselves in the center of the formulation of a world they will inherit…”

How do you define environmental justice?

Here’s how the EPA does it: “Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.”

Read these ebooks online! (Login with CCSF I.D.)

Eco-Justice– the Unfinished Journey

The Human Right to a Green Future Environmental Rights and        Intergenerational Justice

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

More Library Resources on Environmental Justice

Links:
Notes from ArtsChange: Curatorial statement

Milton Bowen’s Website

CCSF Sustainability Report

For more information contact Kate Connell at kconnell at ccsf.edu

Sue Ko Lee and the National Dollar Stores Strike of 1938

March 2-September 10, 2010

Rosenberg Library, 4th Floor Reference Case
A collaboration with the Labor Archives and Research Center at San Francisco State University
Scroll to the bottom to see image credits, copyright and use.

In the 1930s, the garment industry was the largest employer in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Here the workers continued to toil under sweatshop conditions, earning wages ranging from $4 to $16 a week. Sue Ko Lee, a button hole machine operator, worked in the National Dollar Store factory for 25¢ an hour. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) began an organizing drive in Chinatown to stem the flow of work from union shops to Chinese manufacturers and established the “Chinese Ladies Garment Workers Union Local 361.”

Under the skilled leadership of ILGWU organizer Jennie Matyas, a successful union election was won at the National Dollar Stores factory for better wages in 1938. The owner, a prominent Chinatown businessman, promptly sold the facility to Golden Gate Manufacturing, a “new” company headed by the factory manager and another former National Dollar Store employee. The change of “ownership” allowed management to set aside the hard won contract. Seeing this move as an attempt to break the union, the workers went on strike, picketing the factory and its three retail stores in San Francisco for 15 weeks. During the struggle, Sue Ko Lee and the other women workers actively engaged in the strike – walking the line, organizing picket shifts, and speaking out publicly at meetings for the first time. When the white retail clerks supported the strikers and refused to cross the line and shut down the picketed retail outlets for two weeks, the owner finally negotiated with the workers to settle a contract.

“The strike was the best thing that ever happened.
It changed our lives.

-Sue Ko Lee, As quoted in Unbound Voices by Judy Yung

The workers won a 5 percent raise; a forty-hour workweek; enforcement of health, fire, and sanitary conditions; and a guarantee that Golden Gate Manufacturing would provide work for a minimum of 11 months of the year to its workers. Despite these protections, one year after winning the contract, Golden Gate conveniently went out of business. The ease with which garment factories could close shop and relocate, sometimes leaving a substantial debt in unpaid wages, made it a common practice in the 1930s. This tactic remains a constant threat for workers attempting to organize a union even today.

The Dollar Store strike, though it could be seen as unsuccessful since the company closed shop, was critical in that it helped break down racial barriers in San Francisco. After Golden Gate Manufacturing went out of business, the union helped find the workers jobs outside of Chinatown, in what had previously been white-only shops. The strike also led to Chinese workers taking leadership roles in the union.  Sue Ko Lee became a business agent at another garment factory, then secretary of the union local and the San Francisco Joint Board, as well as a delegate to the ILGWU national convention.

Scroll to the bottom to see image credits, copyright and use.

Sources:

Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century. Harvard College, 2004.

Yung, Judy.  Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. University of California Press, 1999.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco.  University of California Press, 1995.

Find more information in the CCSF Library on Women and Labor
Women and Labor Bibliography 2010

Download the Exhibition Assignment
Sue Ko Lee Exhibition Assignment

Photo Credits and Use: First 2 photographs at the top from the collection of Judy Yung. Please contact kconnell@ccsf.edu for more information. All other images from the collection of the Labor Archives and Research Center, SFSU, (415) 405-5571. These images are intended for educational use only. Permission to publish these image must be obtained from the Labor Archives and Research
Center, San Francisco State University. Copyright is retained by the original creator of the work, whose permission must also be obtained for publication. Responsibility for any use of this image rests
exclusively with the user. Please contact larc@sfsu.edu for more information.

10 x 10: The Library’s 100th Exhibition

4th Floor Rosenberg Library, through March, 2010

From Oceania, nature journals and sweaters of resistance to motorcycles, manga and the reading life, we explore it all.

Welcome to the Library’s 100^th Exhibition!
Through the Library Exhibition Program the library has spent the last 10 years exploring ideas and concepts with fascinating Collaborators. 10 x 10 includes snapshots of our collaborative projects—partnerships with CCSF Departments, individual CCSF classes, or local and national organizations.
Together, we have:
Viewed fantastic detailed comics and manga by City College students
Learned the history behind the 1968 Olympic power salute
Studied family photos of San Francisco neighborhoods
Worked closely with United Playaz, Youth Speaks and more…
Contemplated the effects of 9/11
Some of the exhibitions we have revisited are:
CJ8: Voices From Inside, poetry from College Students incarcerated in the San Francisco County Jail (2003)
Klak* Pow! Whine#: Comics, Cartoons and Manga  from City College (2001)
Tapa, the Cloth that Binds Us: Stories from the Oceanic Diaspora (2006)

The Stand: Student Athletes of Color and Their Activism (2007)

And there’s more to come!

For 2009-2010 we’re responding to your comments and invitations to collaborate. We’re addressing these issues and more:
Remembering that an artist can be anyone, anywhere, with different abilities
Determining how to create a career working with motorcycles
Finding free images to use on your posters and flyers
Learning to re-invent the book

We’re displaying ten years of comment books:  You’ve contemplated the issues displayed, critiqued them, in responded to each other’s comments…in multiple languages and even multiple alphabets!

Thanks for working with us. We look forward to many more fruitful collaborations.
Over the last 10 years the Library has added more than 300 new books and DVDs through the Library Exhibition Program.

New Books from the Library Exhibition Program

City Currents Article (scroll down to page 5)

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

Find more information about local ecology!

Library Resources on Biology