ArtPad SF - BRAF Benefit Party

Save the Date!!

Friday, May 18, 2012

At the Phoenix Hotel
601 Eddy St.
San Francisco, CA 94109

Future's Past by kate Raudenbush

Future's Past by kate Raudenbush, a photo by Hammon Photography on Flickr.

Here is the beauty of Future's Past, in several different views by photgrapher Mark Hammon.

Help Bring Future's Past to Hayes Valley

In close collaboration with the Hayes Valley Arts Coalition (HVAC) and Hayes Valley community members, the Black Rock Arts Foundation announces plans to install another sculpture in Patricia’s Green in San Francisco. We’re proud to share Future's Past, by Kate Raudenbush, with the San Francisco community. Funding permitting, full details of the installation will be announced soon.

We are still in need of donations to bring this project to fruition! You can help bring Future's Past to San Francisco and support further installations by making a donation to our Civic Arts Program today.

DONATE NOW

In The Music Box, New Orleans Residents Hear Hope

We are so pleased that NPR's "All Things Considered" has published a piece about one of our 2010 grant recipients, the Music Box. The Music Box is an interactive environment built from the remains of an 18th century derelict cottage in New Orleans. This imaginatively reconstructed, and ultimately livable “house”, has become a musical instrument to be played by visitors. Instrumentation will range from the rudimentary banging of wooden boards to more elaborate sounds mechanically triggered by opening doors or pulling levers. In addition to visitors, a range of local and national musicians, including a regional high school marching band, have been invited to play the house for the project’s Block Party series, which are free and open to all.

To read the NPR story, click HERE

Photo: Morgan Sasser/New Orleans Airlift via NPR

THE PAINTINGS OF LEE HARVEY ROSWELL

Blowfish Sushi is pleased to announce the first in a series of ongoing art exhibits curated by Christine Kristen aka LadyBee: Paintings by Lee Harvey Roswell. The opening will take place on Wednesday, February 15 from 6-9 at the restaurant, 2170 Bryant Street, San Francisco. 20% of the profits from this exhibit will be donated to the Black Rock Arts Foundation.

RSVP HERE

Lee Harvey Roswell is a self-taught artist from Freefall, New York, whose work is noted for its blend of angst and humor. Themes of death and entropy, tribulation and futility run amok in his distinctly surreal, sometimes slapstick, sometimes nightmarish world. The result is at once mocking and melancholic.

Lee draws his imagery from the rich sources of vaudeville, silent films, circus and mythology, and blends them in idiosyncratic, often autobiographical situations. He is not bound by conventional space; his characters wander through a skewed world where reality and fantasy collide.

In Lee’s words: “I'm interested in exactly this: creating narratives involving the fantastic images there to be culled forth from those fertile depths of the creative, neurotic-like mind. Concrete objects in mad motion, reflecting all the seductive, terrifying elements of existence. The inarguable forerunner of the senses is the eye. We are primarily an optically reliant species. So, as pictorial illusionists transforming nothing into artifacts of spiritual sustenance, I'm holding the potential painter up, not just as an admirable tradesman, but much, much more. He resides as a high-priest over that all-devouring human reality, a conducting channel through which nothing triumphantly becomes something.”

Lee now lives in San Francisco, and his work is shown, collected and published internationally.

painting: Lee Harvey Roswell

Bliss Dance

Bliss Dance, a photo by Joe Dsilva on Flickr.

Have you seen this fun complilation of Bliss Dance Photos? Thanks to Joe Dsilva for making us smile this morning.

The Raygun Gothic Rocketship Gets a Tune-Up

Following the Port of San Francisco's recent approval of a 1 year extension of the Rocketship installation at Pier 14, the Rocketship crew is planning a maintenance weekend, and would like to invite the public to come out and meet the crew, ask questions, and help make the Rocketship truly a part of the community.

Weather permitting, the Rocketship crew will be onsite this weekend, December 17th & 18th (as needed), from 10 AM till dark. Work will include a rebuild of the plinth, repair of the Rocket Stop audio system, and a general refresh of the installation.

Some of us from the Black Rock Arts Foundation will be stopping by and we hope you will too?

Introducing the Bay Lights Project

Artist's Rendering

We at the Black Rock Arts Foundation would like to tell you about a new, exciting project that's in the works, spearheaded by our very own Advisory Board Member Leo Villareal.

Greatly influenced by his first experiences at Burning Man, back in 1994, Leo has created an impressive body of work of large scale, immersive light sculptures. He continues to dazzle us (literally!) with his groundbreaking use of L.E.D. sequencing technology and pioneering methods of using light as an expressive medium. Check out his past projects. Be ready to be wowed!

Leo impresses us with each of his new endeavors, but this one is sure to outshine (literally!) all the others. We'd like to introduce you to his newest proposal: The Bay Lights.

The Bay Lights from Words Pictures Ideas on Vimeo.

The sculpture will be installed and illuminated over the course of the Bay Bridge’s 75th Anniversary. Similar to the ambitious lighting of the Eiffel Tower for its 100th anniversary, The Bay Lights will commemorate the Bay Bridge's 75th Diamond Anniversary at seven times the scale of the famous Parisian landmark. The installation will live for two years, providing a stunning fine arts experience for the entire Bay Area and its visitors. The 25,000 LED’s will stay in place through the opening of the new East Span in 2013.

Learn more about the project, and about how to support it, at and follow this project on facebook.

Thanks, Leo, for all your past support of BRAF and Burning Man, and for your artistic contributions to our culture!

More About The Bike Bridge

The Bike Bridge - Part 1 from ONE ANT RED on Vimeo.

The Bike Bridge is a monumental sculptural collaboration between artist Michael Christian and 12 young women from 7 different Oakland schools.

The Bike Bridge project is presented by The Black Rock Art Foundation in association with The Crucible.

Black Rock Arts Foundation
The Crucible
Michael Christian

Music by YACHT
Produced by ONE ANT RED

Please help us finish and install this monumental sculpture in Oakland this spring! Donate to the Black Rock Arts Foundation today!

DONATE

Ecstasy's Departure

P1020615, a photo by grace.tang2004 on Flickr.

Ecstasy has left Patricia's Green in San Francisco. We are sorry to see her go! We will miss you Ecstasy, thanks for hanging out with us for such a long time!

Cardboardia - A Country Built Out of Cardboard

Tomorrow is the big day for us to receive your Letter of Intent to apply for a Black Rock Arts Foundation Grant for your off-playa project. We are looking forward to reading all of them.

We thought you might like to see what one of our prior grant recipients is up to. We found this video to be completely charming, and we hope you do too.


Cardboardia, a country built out of cardboard by Zoomin_UK

ARTumnal Gathering 2011 v1

Marian Goodell & Joe Olivier

Nicole Bloss, Katy Boynton, Sidney Erthal and Tomas McCabe

Julia Whitelaw & Laura Kimpton

Freddy Hahne, Jennifer Raiser & David Best

Drs. Brian and Deb Windham

Tom Price and Andie Grace

To see many more fabulous photos by George Post of this event, CLICK HERE

photo: George Post Photography

The ARTumnal Gathering - A Word from our Chairman

At the ARTumnal Gathering Saturday night, where we were celebrating our tenth anniversary, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Larry Harvey addressed the crowd about both the history and forward motion of BRAF.

More photos to come.

photo: George Post Photography

El Radio Fantastique at the ARTumnal Gathering this Saturday

El Radio Fantastique was inspired by a bizarre family tale of a sinister radio that possessed its listeners, bandleader Giovanni DiMorente approaches his music as if turning the dial, transmitting a vibrant spectrum of musical styles, lost in time, yet timeless. This eight-piece ensemble serves up a dizzying cocktail of beautiful darkness and achingly sublime melodies - called everything from junkyard hymns to cabaret grotesque to gypsy soul to New Orleans second line noir. Their tunes are guaranteed to set your soul flying while your heart breaks and your body shakes.

Come join us at the ARTumnal Gathering and enjoy El Radio Fantastique and a fabulous lineup of entertainers.

iPhone app for Bliss Dance

Check out this video from WIRED Magazine about the Bliss Dance iPhone app that allows you to control the lighting on Bliss Dance yourself. How fun is that?

To read more about the Black Rock Arts Foundation bringing Bliss Dance to Treasure Island – Click Here and Here

Seraphim Dance Theatre at the ARTumnal Gathering

Seraphim Dance Theatre is a new Music and Dance performance group, summoned from the collaborative ether, featuring a fresh blend of multidimensional visionary performance art, music and story telling. With precision choreography, dynamic visual art, and live symphonic soundscapes, Seraphim focuses on offering original and inspiring art that is the evocation
of revolution and the human spirit.

The Seraphim show features an all original live and electronic music score by David Block of The Human Experience, teaming up with Vocalist Amae Love who provides her insightful lyrics and melodies to a provide a fiercely soulful live performance. Together they weave psychedelic layers of melody and harmony with organic grooves to create a live electronic symphony brimming with human emotion.

We are looking forward to seeing this exciting new show at the ARTumnal Gathering this Saturday night and hope you will be there to see it with us.

Apply for a Grant from the Black Rock Arts Foundation

BRAF Grantees Across the Years

The deadline for applying for a grant from the Black Rock Arts Foundation is fast approaching...

Attention artists! In an effort to streamline our grant application process, the Black Rock Arts Foundation has initiated a new step to our application instructions. To apply for a grant from BRAF, you will now need to submit a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) before submitting a full proposal. If the grant committee feels your project is a potential fit for our grants, you will be invited to submit a full proposal.

This cuts down on the work involved for both you, the grant applicant, and for our grant review committee. You'll have the chance to give a succinct, one-page overview of your project, and to tell us why you think it's a good fit for BRAF's grants program.

Usually, at this time of year, we begin accepting online grant applications. Instead, we'll accept online LOI's at this time. Online LOI's are due December 1, 2011.

To see if your project qualifies for a BRAF grant, and to read our full grant timeline and application instructions, visit BRAF Grant Criteria .

Please contact Josie at BRAF with questions: josie@blackrockarts.org

Картонск!

A visit with one of our grant recipients

Wish we could be there!

The Nautilus visits the Raygun Gothic Rocketship

Untitled, a photo by AkeLeslie on Flickr.

On Thursday Nov. 3 Sean Orlando and some of the crew from both the Nautilus and the Raygun Gothic Rocketship brought the Nautilus to the Rocketship and had a little party! Sean Orlando gave a talk in the afternoon at Landor and Associates, then they all piled in the sub and drove it down the Embarcadero to the Raygun Gothic Rocketship for a photo shoot/dance party! Fun! Thanks for the photos Ake Grunditz!

The 4th Kind

The 4th Kind, a photo by ProudPinoy on Flickr.

A new look at Bliss Dance. Thank you ProudPinoy for sharing your fabulous photo with us!