EXHIBITS AND WORKSPACE

As both a working studio and gallery space, the Red Poppy Art House exhibits a constant rotation of finished paintings and works in progress.

For viewing of the current exhibit, please visit us during our event hours, Friday and Saturday 7:30pm-11pm, or call the Art House at 415/826-2402 for an appointment. We keep informal hours during the week as, more often than not, there is an artist here working and can let you in (if the door is not already open).

see more on resident artists here.

CURRENT EXHIBIT

2008

Living space is found in the places and moments in between . . .

“Everywhere, there is the rush, the speed of living in the new millennium. Everywhere time is pressed tight to the edges, the dollar barking from corners and gates. How, and where, can life unfold its slow creative length uncorrupted by economic demands? Where can the creative impulse unravel, its moment divined by temperature, mood and light, the hour of day and the collective inclination of its participants? For it is precisely then, in the lingering, that the bell most often strikes, when the creative force casts itself through the open unguarded space and into the center of a room. And it is there, in the sublime moment of creative power that we remember, that there is something moving and living within us that has yet to find its home in this world, and it is from this that we are moved to open new doors for both ourselves as for others. But where are these places? Why are there so few?”

Bay Area Now 5 is Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ landmark triennial festival of visual art, film/video and performance. They explore the issues and ideas that dominate the thinking of Bay Area artists, and how they matter to us.

YBCA's fifth triennial exhibition of Bay Area art explores questions around how to re-imagine a regional survey in the midst of globalization. What continues to draw artists here and makes the Bay Area a unique place to live and work when more and more of us are traversing the globe and becoming international citizens? How does the physical geography of the Bay, both natural and constructed, influence the Bay Area as a site of artistic production? How does the history of this region, including its legacy of social activism, shape Bay Area residents' understanding of themselves and the rest of the world's notion of this place? What are the contrasts between the myths, ideals and realities of the Bay Area and the aspirations of its residents? Bay Area Now 5 (BAN5) asks these questions to explore the many ways artists are influenced by their experiences both inside and outside the Bay Area.

Please visit our installation and performances in the Room for Big Ideas and the Red Poppy Art House in the month of September: Performance Schedule.

For more information about Bay Area Now, visit www.BAN5.org.

Please contact Hetal Patel at hetal@redpoppyarthouse.org if you have any questions.

We look forward to seeing you there.

BAN5 – The Red Poppy Art House Annex – SEPTEMBER 2008

On-site/Off-site and Inside Out
The Red Poppy Art House Meets the RBI

As part of their BAN5 Residency, the Red Poppy Art House (RPAH) explores the concept of The Living Presence of Space as a means of demonstrating the power that small spaces can hold as vibrant centers where artists gather, create, and make their home. Here at YBCA’s Room for Big Ideas (RBI), the Art House presents a month’s program of performances and workshops spanning disciplines and musical traditions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, joining the traditional to the contemporary in an exploration of the ongoing cultural dialogue of our present time. Check the BAN5 calendar for our presentations of Argentine Tango, modern arrangements of a Chilean composer, South Indian Carnatic jazz, Afro-Peruvian song, Peruvian poetry/video Installation, the innovation of modern folk music, a revolutionary chamber ensemble, Ethiopian inspired music of "in-between", a Moroccan/jazz hybrid project, original compositions for Harriet Tubman, and the one and only tango meets ceviche workshop. If you’re looking for an afternoon for the whole family, check for RPAH family art activities.

The Red Poppy Art House

Situated in a residential corner of the Mission District of San Francisco, the Red Poppy Art House functions as an on-site exploration in cultural innovation. With an aesthetic often likened to small cafés found on the backstreets of European and South American cities, the Art House serves as a micro-center for multi-disciplinary artistic development, experimentation, and presentation, all framed within the intimate setting of a 650 square foot commercial locale. Through this context, we seek to make visible the full living of artists, revealing their real and potential influence on the health of our communities through their vital role in addressing and healing cultural divides. We endeavor to make the arts as present, accessible, and familiar as one's neighborhood corner store, integrated into our everyday landscape, immersed in both the richness and the complexity of challenges inherent in our own community as in the greater society at large.

“The Living Presence of Space”

In both the RBI, and on-site at the Red Poppy Art House itself, resident visual artists, Todd Brown, Caleb Duarte, and Nicole Bauguss explore the concept of The Living Presence of Space: the ways in which our handling, our intention, feeling, design and arrangement, of physical space invariably manifests our values, sensitivity, and awareness of the world around us. As a sub-theme, The artists draw on the 5 years experience of the Art House as a particularly small space, investigating the un-replicable power of intimate environments in facilitating exceptional moments of artistic human expression. Within this investigation arises the all-too-apparent fact that such spaces are drastically dwindling in numbers in the context of our modern economy. Unable to meet the impossible demands of exorbitant rents, building codes, renovation costs, accounting systems, and such, artists are forced to go “underground”, fashioning environments out of need, and from minimal resources. Examples of such necessary improvisations can be seen in the RBI installations by Brown, Duarte, and Bauguss, “Make-Shift Gallery Garage” and “Bed, Bath, Stage, and Beyond”. Here the artists show how creative ingenuity can maximize the value of minimum real estate: an artist’s living needs (a bed, bath, and personal items) convert into a stage for (un-permitted) concerts that will serve to pay the artists rent, and a garage that converts into a temporary (un-permitted) exhibition space, such as what is seen in the Mission Arts & Performance Project* (MAPP).

*MAPP: The Mission Arts & Performance Project is a bi-monthly neighborhood inter-cultural arts event where street-level curators transform garages, cafes, studios, gardens, and local businesses into make-shift arts & performance spaces. The MAPP joins together as many as 75 international artists in over 15 locations. (www.sfmapp.com)

A WORKING STUDIO

As the working studio of resident artist, Todd T. Brown, the Art House frequently has many of Todd's works in-progress or on a rotation from other galleries. The Art house is partially funded by the sales of these works. The images below represent a spectrum of Todd's work.

Works by resident artist Todd T. Brown

48x94, mixed media on wood, 2007  

48x96, mixed media on wood, 2006

24x36, mixed media on canvas, 2006. painted live.

48x36, mixed media on canvas, 2006

23x18, mixed media on canvas, 2006. painted live.

10x10, mixed media on canvas, 2006

10x10, mixed media on canvas, 2006

48x36, mixed media on canvas, 2006. painted live.

48x36, mixed media on canvas, 2006. painted live.

90x72, mixed media on canvas, 2005, texts by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Undreaming

48x84, mixed media on canvas, 2005, texts by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Self-portrait of a boy, a man, his dreams and their shadows

40x48, mixed media on canvas, 2005

1. Study of disintegration I

10x10, mixed media on canvas, 2005, texts by Jiddu Krishnamurti and the artist, artist collection

2. Study of disintegration II

10x10, mixed media on canvas, 2005, texts by Jiddu Krishnamurti and the artist

1. Dream of Boats

36x48, mixed media on canvas, 2005, private collection

2. Suspended Journeys III

48x60, mixed media on wood, 2005, private collection

3. Rainy Sea

18x36, mixed media on wood, 2005, private collection

1. Suspended

10x10, mixed media on canvas, 2005, artist collection

2. Boat

20x36, mixed media on wood, 2005, private collection

1. Tango 2005

48x60, mixed media on canvas, 2005, private collection

2. Traspie

36x36, mixed media on wood, 2005, private collection

1. Wiatt Grant Quartet

18x36, mixed media on canvas, 2005, painted live at the Art House concerrt with the Wiatt Grant Quartet. Private collection.

2. Marcus Shelby Trio

30x48, mixed media on wood, 2005, painted live at the Art House concert with the Marcus Shelby Trio. Private collection.

1. Legacy

36x74, mixed media on wood, 2004.

2. Untitled

36x36, mixed media on canvas, 2004, text from Spanish/Arabic dictionary