Author: Fara

  • SUN PLACE: An Evening of Sound and Image (Performances by Chris Duncan, Sean Smith, Stephanie Sherriff, Maggi Payne and Paul Clipson )

    Sean SmithSun_Place_Poster is a guitarist from San Francisco who has been releasing albums of complex and moving instrumental music for the better part of the last decade. He began releasing albums of solo acoustic guitar in 2003 and currently leads a power trio in avant rock excursions.  https://seansmith.bandcamp.com/

    Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists and musicians on films, live performances, and installations. His Super 8 and 16mm films aim to bring to light subconscious visual preoccupations that reveal themselves while working in a stream of consciousness manner, combining densely layered, in-camera edited studies of figurative and abstract environments, in a process that encourages unplanned-for results, responding to and conversing with the temporal qualities of musical composition and live performance. His work has screened around the world in festivals and at sound & film events such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The New York Film Festival and the Cinémathèque Française. http://www.withinmirrors.org/

    Chris Duncan is an interdisciplinary artist that employs the use of color, repetition, and reflections, along with a wide variety of materials to ponder ideas such as perception and balance, in both conceptual and physical forms. Often in flux between the overwhelming and the minimal, rooted in simple application methods, Chris chooses accessible means of making in hopes to make broader connections beyond the typical art viewer. With accessibility in mind, Chris has also been publishing books, zines and releasing records for over a decade. Under the moniker Hot and Cold, Chris co-published a seven year long, 10 issue series of hand-built art books including well over 100 artists. Under the current moniker Land and Sea, he has teamed up with his partner, Maria Otero, to release monographs and records of artists they believe in. Beyond constructing paintings, drawings, installations with string, and publishing he has also ventured into experimental sound making and people gathering. As THE SUN, under the same premise of his more traditional forms of art-making, Duncan creates sonic happenings that, by design, dismantle the idea of audience and performer, and offer a space for anyone willing, to contribute and participate. Duncan has performed, exhibited, or is the collection of institutions such as Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum in California, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Arts Commission, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis. http://www.artspace. com/chris-Duncan

    Stephanie Sherriff is an interdisciplinary sculptor, performer, and media artist currently residing in the Bay Area. In her process she observes, collects, deconstructs, and recomposes plants, light, sound, video, and scents in order to create abstracted, ephemeral forms and experiences. She received her BA in Studio Art from San Francisco State University and has been the recipient of numerous awards including Best in Show, Excellence in Video, and the Christine Tambyln Memorial Scholarship. http://ssherriff.com/

    Maggi Payne composes music for concert presentation, video, and dance, and is a video artist, photographer, recording engineer, flutist, and Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Her works have been presented in the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Australasia. She received Composer’s Grants and an Interdisciplinary Arts Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; video grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowships Program; and honorary mentions from Concours International de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges and Prix Ars Electronica.

    Her works appear on Innova, Lovely Music, Starkland, Asphodel, New World (CRI), Root Strata, Centaur, Ubuibi, MMC, Digital Narcis, Music and Arts, Frog Peak, and/OAR, Capstone, and Mills College labels. www.maggipayne.com

     

     

     

  • Strike Four Book Release Party

    S4_Cover_webUnpiano Books is pleased to announce the release of a book of collected writings from San Francisco author Mike McGuirk.

    Mike McGuirk has worked as a writer in San Francisco for more than 15 years. His writing has appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Stranger, the Cleveland Scene and SOMA Magazine, and on Rhapsody.com. As an independent publisher, Unpiano Books aims to support and promote lesser-known work with specialized small-run releases both locally and across the country. Most well known for producing art and photo books, this is Unpiano’s first literary release.

    McGuirk’s voice takes many different forms, often wandering somewhere between the legacies of noted drunk Charles Bukowski and music journalist Lester Bangs. The work collected here comprises stories, reviews, rants and even box scores. Always insightful and often about more than what is written on the page, McGuirk’s writing helps us digest difficult topics with a wry sense of humor.

    Come celebrate the release of this new book with music and a drink. The author will be in attendance.

    7-10pm / Music around 8pm

    www.unpianobooks.com

  • ALL MY LIFE – Bruce Baillie Project Fundraiser

    All of my lifeJoin us for a night of films and friends celebrating Bruce Baillie’s work! The Bruce Baillie Project is a collaborative project to help share and preserve Bruce Baillie’s work. We are fundraising to publish a bi-lingual book about Bruce’s films and to organize an international 16mm retrospective of his work.
    Program:
    Quixote, Bruce Baillie, 43 min, 16mm
    One-year journey through the land of incessant progress, researching those sources which have given rise twenty years later to the essential question of survival.
    Study of a River, Peter Hutton, 16 min, 16mm
    The first part of a seasonal portrait of the Hudson River. This section portrays observations of winter over a period of two years.
    Little Girl, Bruce Baillie, 9 min, 16mm
    Academy Film Archive Restoration 2013
    sunflowers (study), Denah Johnston, 3min, super-8
    Stop-motion study of sunflowers in the Tuscan breeze mirrored by laundry on the line.

    All My Life, Bruce Baillie, 3 min, 16mm
    Caspar, California, old fence with red roses