December 20, 2013
DeFremery Park, 1965-1970: The Photographs of Kenneth P. Green Sr.
The family of Kenneth P. Green, Sr., staff photographer for the Oakland Tribune, from 1968-1982, recently opened this immensely rich photographic archive for public use, conservation, and dialogue. Green captured on film a profoundly dynamic period in both Bay Area and national history. His images tell a story of community mobilization for change that continues to shape our region's identity and self-perception. DeFremery Park, 1965-1970: The Photographs of Kenneth P. Green Sr., was curated by staff members at the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley, and subsequently on view at the San Francisco Foundation.
1001 Black Men
In 1001 Black Men, Ajuan Mance- professor of English at Mills College in Oakland-pushes past entrenched stereotypes and, drawing on both childhood memories and the faces she sees each day in Oakland, creates images of Black men that reflect the wonderful complexity of African American lives. Beginning with a simple line drawing, black ink on paper, each sketch is an act of remembrance. She uses permanent ink so that nothing offered can be taken back, calling up a face from the "amen corner" of her grandmother's church, a smirk from the kid next door, or even her own curious gaze staring back from the rearview mirror.
Bulletin
Coming up in January 2014
During a fourteen-month residence at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Artist-ion-Residence Taraneh Hemami worked with Anthropology and Social Change graduate students, Sahar Driver and Strider Patton, conducting research as part of her ongoing project, Theory of Survival: Fabrications. Bulletin, on view starting January 15, 2014, will be an exhibition and publications project that will make visible intentionally erased histories of dissent in Iran.
The Billboard Project
In 2013 The Arts at CIIS reached outside the walls of the school and into the streets. This year we featured the work of eight contemporary artists navigating ideas around landscape-a landscape of memory, an emotional landscape, or a landscape of collective history. Artists, both emerging and mid-career, included: Wendel White, Cristina de Middel, Glynnis Reed, Oscar Palacio, Kevin J. Miyazaki, Tomiko Jones, Deborah Jack, Stella Kalaw. This forum allows us to expand our audience while inserting art into a space typically used for advertising.
