The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to lease the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium for 20 years to a music promotion company planning big renovations to create an improved concert venue. The agreement will bring the city $100,000 annually, but some workers are left wondering if they will be retained by the new building management.
Category: Arts & Culture
Posted inArts & Culture, Immigration, Labor, Neighborhoods, Public Safety
Sit, lie, get deported? (graphic novel)
Reporting by Shawn Gaynor; illustration by Andrew Goldfarb Sit, Lie, Get Deported? (graphic novel) Read more…
Posted inArts & Culture, Law & Justice
Amid budget cuts and institutional neglect, San Quentin’s arts education volunteers keep working
On a cool Friday night in March, near the corner of Haight and Steiner streets in San Francisco, the hip boutique Tweekin Records hosted an unusual gallery opening of paintings, sketches, poetry and elaborate collages. It was created by inmates at San Quentin State Prison.
Organized by Kate Deciccio, an artist and a mental health and substance abuse counselor in San Francisco, the exhibit featured her own work, along with work by Eddie Sanchez and “Absent” Helean from San Quentin, and by inmates in the John Howard Pavilion at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. — Deciccio’s former employers.
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Posted inArts & Culture
Playwright Octavio Solis: ‘Shake These People Up’
Octavio Solis’ critically acclaimed plays have been produced around the country, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to San Francisco’s Campo Santo and The Magic Theatre. His most recent work, “The Pastures of Heaven,” based on the Steinbeck novel, is in production until June 27 at California Shakespeare Theater.
The transplanted Texan and Sunset District resident has primarily written about El Paso and the Mexican border, but in recent years he has turned his pen to San Francisco, writing about bars, bandits, poetry-writing wolves and his adopted “city of love.”
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Posted inArts & Culture
Black and white graphic novel gets colorful in gallery exhibit
How to illustrate idiosyncratic personalities coping with the monotony of day-to-day life? For San Francisco artist Jamaica Dyer, it’s no longer just black and white. The characters from her black-and-white graphic novel “Weird Fishes” take on a new life with her use of a soft color palette and gentle brush strokes. It is the story about two teenagers named Dee and Bunny Boy who grapple with issues of identity and question reality. An exhibition of her work is on display through June 13 at the Cartoon Art Museum’s Small Press Spotlight.
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Posted inArts & Culture
Dying Northern India art form revived in Bay Area
For the past two years, Devendra Sharma, an assistant professor of communication at California State University, Fresno, has been resuscitating and reinventing a dying Indian folk operatic performance art — Nautanki — in the Bay Area. The opera, characterized by exuberant singing in Hindi about religious, mythological or sociopolitical-themed stories, is a nightlong communal event performed in outdoor venues in northern Indian villages.
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Posted inArts & Culture
Banksy street art pops up around town
International graffiti artist Banksy has been leaving his mark around San Francisco on several buildings. The mysterious street artist is now also a filmmaker and his new film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is playing in several Bay Area cinemas. Although he does not personally sell his artwork, collectors have been paying big bucks for his work at auction.
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Posted inArts & Culture, Neighborhoods
Performer plays on the edge of reality
Maria Watanabe takes the stage in Japantown’s Peace Plaza to sing and dance as the anime character Sailor Moon every Saturday — despite her fear of crowds. She believes her shows are worth the trouble because anime is such an important part of Japanese culture. Watanabe is part of a growing number of otaku (anime fanatics) in the Bay Area and the United States. Over the past few decades, attendance at anime (animated movies) and manga (comic books) conventions has skyrocketed. San Jose’s FanimeCon alone grew from 200 attendees in 1994 to about 15,000 in 2009.
Posted inArts & Culture, News
East Bay children’s theater company makes debut in San Francisco
In its second, and final weekend, the Active Arts children’s theater company is staging its first San Francisco production with “Ramona Quimby” at the Zeum Theater.
Posted inArts & Culture
Kwanzaa celebration focuses on youth
A local Kwanzaa celebration at the African American Art and Culture Complex will highlight Nia, the fifth of the holiday’s seven principles.