PROJECTS & RESIDENCIES

2008

Todd T. Brown

Visual Artist

Todd T. Brown is a visual artist, musician, and community arts organizer. He has been painting for over 19 years. Over the past four years Todd has dedicated himself to developing an interdisciplinary, intercultural, creative center for the visual and performing arts known as the Red Poppy Art House, located in the mission district of San Francisco. He is also one of the founders of the MAPP: Mission Arts & Performance Project, a bi-monthly grass roots arts festival that features more than 60 visual artists, musicians, poets and performers, that perform simultaneously in over 10 improvised locations all set within a residential community.

“I seldom plan a painting. I paint as images and textures occur to me. Most of the time I don't know what lies ahead in the work. It's a conversation with myself, a process of discovering riddles and then interpreting them. I learn about myself in this way, and, for me, that is the most valuable aspect of the work. Of course it's not just about me however. I think, if I go deep enough in that process, I eventually strike something universal, and that's what gives the possibility of the work being meaningful to others"    ~ Todd T. Brown

"The One and Only", 60x64,                                           With "Blue in Lima", University of  media on mixed canvas, 2007                                                                                                                            San Marcos, Lima, Peru. 2006 

Caleb Duarte

Visual Artist

Caleb Duarte, born 1977, migrated from Northern Mexico to the farm working communities of the Central Valley in California. He began to paint at an early age and continued his studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. Duarte has exhibited his work in Pienza Italy, Mumbai India, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Santiago de Cuba, Mexico, Miami, White Box gallery in New York, and LIMN and Jack Fisher galleries in San Francisco. His work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art LTD magazine, Metro Active and was featured on KQED Spark. Duarte has also worked with communities in Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Japan, and the US, exploring the possibilities that art can have in celebrating creative thinking through the arts.

www.calebduarte.com

Nicole Bauguss

Visual Artist

Originally from North Carolina, Nicole Bauguss began painting and studying under her grandmother (an artist and technical draftsman) at a very young age. She attended the Virginia Commonwealth University, finishing with BFA double major in Visual Communication and Design and Art History. With a desire to embody her art, she left a job at the computer doing design and became a builder. Her love of old things and work in historic renovation provided the materials for the next phase in her exploration. Nicole's paintings, sculptures, boxes and furniture integrate stories of the past into our stories of the present, reflecting a universality of human nature. Her specific use of found materials emphasizes the inherent value of the articles, artifacts and debris that some have deemed unworthy and disposable. By simply looking and listening, we can make decisions to rearrange and repurpose these things to enhance their character and make beautiful, functional pieces to enhance our spaces and lives. She challenges the way people experience art by creating pieces that evoke emotional and sensory responses. The textures of the materials and the smell of linseed oil draw crowds into galleries with a memories and stories of their own. Nicole continues to investigate the current issues facing society by conceptually integrating sustainability and eco-conscious practices into questions of how we move through life and what our lives reflect about who we are individually and collectively.

www.riproost.com
www.flickr.com/photos/riproost

The Nice Guy Trio: Root Exchange

Performing Artists

The Nice Guy Trio is Darren Johnston on trumpet, Rob Reich on accordion, and Daniel Fabricant on bass. Together, they create a sound that is both intimate and reflective of their contrasting yet complimentary musical backgrounds, and always with an emphasis on spontaneity. In concert they navigate through a uniquely diverse collection of original compositions and songs from folk traditions all around the globe, from jazz to klezmer to Balkan dance forms, to calypso and beyond.

This season they will be performing in venues, big and small, from Jazz at Chez Hanny and the Café Royale, to The Great American Music Hall and the Yerba-Buena Garden Festival. They will also begin an exciting residency at the Red Poppy Art House, with the Nice Guys + 1 series. This concert series will feature the playing and compositions of a different guest artist alongside the trio each month. Guests will include clarinet master Ben Goldberg, Sameer Gupta on tabla, electric-guitarist John Schott, and more.

Since settling in San Francisco in 1997, Canada-born trumpeter Darren Johnston has built a web of alliances, from avant-garde excursions with the likes of the ROVA saxophone quartet, and the Splatter Trio, to straight-ahead jazz outings with the likes of bassist/composer Marcus Shelby. As a bandleader he is best known for his work with the United Brassworkers Front, whose second CD, “In Between Stories”, was recently released on Evander Music. Another new release in '07, "Reasons for Moving," featured Fred Frith and Larry Ochs, and was released on the Not Two label. Currently, Darren’s focus is on the Nice Guy Trio, his own Darren Johnston Quintet featuring Ben Goldberg, Sheldon Brown, Smith Dobson V and Devin Hoff, and the Evan Francis/ Darren Johnston Quartet." Darren was mentioned in last June’s issue of Down Beat as one of “25 trumpeters for the future.”

www.darrenjohnstonmusic.com

www.myspace.com/darrenjohnston

Rob Reich plays accordion, piano, or guitar with Gaucho, The Golden Melody Band, Kally Price, The Trifles, Sean Hayes, and many other Bay Area bands. His expansive musical sensibility is rooted with a firm belief in melody, improvisation, and group play, with particular interest in the idioms of Klezmer, traditional Jazz and Blues, Rock 'n Roll,
and various Folk Music.

www.robreich.com

Bassist Daniel Fabricant grew up in Ashland, Oregon, where he began playing guitar and trumpet in grade school. Since moving to the Bay Area and transitioning to double bass, he has performed as a freelance sideman with Andrea Marcovicci, Mary Wilson, Spencer Day and others. He recently completed his education degree at SFSU and teaches privately as well as classroom general music.

www.myspace.com/fabdan

"One of the most exciting elements of the Nice Guy Trio, for me, is how each of it's members comes from a very different musical background. When together, we are each pushed out of our comfort zones, and for our troubles we not only grow as individual artists, but together arrive at unique forms of expression that we might not have otherwise. Inspired by this phenomenon, we have decided to develop a series wherein we invite a diverse cross-section of some of our favorite local musicians to join us. Each invited guest also comes from a different musical origin, and yet strives for similar goals to us through their work; creating beauty, spontaneity, personal growth, and music which is simultaneously new, yet hauntingly familiar. Each concert will feature original music from both the Nice Guys, and from the guest artists, as well as some collectively chosen cover material that seems to suit the instrumentation du jour.  Please come and join us, as each concert will prove to be unique unto itself, and each effort a truly collaborative journey."

~ Darren Johnston

Nefasha Ayer: The Space of In-Between

A commissioned work by the San Francisco Foundation's Fund for Artists

Nefasha Ayer, loosely translated from Amharic as “the wind that travels”, explores a transcontinental odyssey of multiple characters who find themselves caught between national identities, cultures, and politics. The project joins together the talented song-writing capacity of Meklit Hadero with guitarist/composer-arranger, Todd Brown, South-Indian Carnatic Jazz composer/saxophonist, Prasant Radhakrishnan, drummer/tablaist, Sameer Gupta, composer/bassist/flautist, Eliyahu Sills, and Ethiopian born hip-hop artist, Gabriel Teodros. Nefasha Ayer weaves together Ethiopian and South Indian melodies/rhythms against a varying backdrop of North American jazz, while Hadero’s voice and song, as the wind that travels, serve as the narrator.

Through its tones and colors, poetic texts and trans-cultural melodic scores, Nefasha Ayer joins the continents of Africa, South Asia, and America to explore the most essential and universal qualities shared among individuals worldwide whose identity no longer fits within the boundaries of one country, culture, or tradition. Whereas one would expect the content of such a project to focus on the social/cultural context of its characters, Nefasha Ayer builds on the internal: the subjective yet universal human desire for home. For these characters, “home” is no longer an external place – for some it never was. Home has taken shape instead as a longing within. This is “the space of in-between.”

As Hadero states,

"When growing up in Brooklyn, my mother would refer to Ethiopia simply as “back home.” Years later, during our first trip to the Horn of Africa, I witnessed her using the very same words to describe the United States, which struck me profoundly. It became instantly clear that there was, in fact, no such place as “back home.” Rather, it was a reference to an in-between, heavy with nostalgia and fluid enough to change from moment to moment, as she herself was capable of doing."

The lyrical content, written both in Amharic and English, follows the story of five characters, each expressing a different part of the story of “in-between”: nostalgia, exile, return, the moment of break-through, and, finally, revealing to others what has been learned. In each song, the wind, which does not belong to any nation, is ever-present as the narrator or a character, constantly calling the listener to move from the external world, through the songs, and into the internal landscape that ultimately grounds the music.

Although there are innumerable works, in almost every discipline, that address the interface of racial and/or cultural groups, immigration, etc, Nefasha Ayer's central focus brings to life a deceptively simple and most elusive quality. Though the stories are told through the lens of Ethiopian musical idioms and language, it is not an Ethiopian story. Rather, Nefasha Ayer explores a living history found universally amongst people of movement, and indeed all human beings, whose life and identity cannot be bound by nation, religion, or cultural tradition. At its heart, Nefasha Ayer - the space of in-between, represents a free-ness from ideological construct and a fluidity of being - moving and livng in constant redefinition.

"In a recent recording project, undertaken during my last trip to Ethiopia, I collected essential raw material for “Nefasha Ayer” by capturing the sounds of various Ethiopian musicians, including my grandmother singing, traditional poets known as Asmari, modern bands, and traditional bands playing music from each major ethnic group in the country. This independent study enabled me to deepen my knowledge of the Ethiopian pentatonic scale, as well as to understand the forward-pushing rhythms, found so often in music from that region."

www.nefashaayer.com

The Artists...

MEKLIT HADERO

Meklit Hadero is an emerging San Francisco-based singer and songwriter who is giving new voice to the experience of a transcontinental identity. Born in Ethiopia and raised in New York, Hadero’s story lays at the heart of her music and songwriting. Over the last year, she was featured twice in the San Francisco Chronicle and is currently in the process of developing her first EP.

www.meklithadero.com

TODD T. BROWN    

Todd Brown is an interdisciplinary artists, more widely known in the Bay Area for his large-scale paintings. Few people know he began study of guitar 20 years ago, and has played ever since. His studies include bass, as well as percussion - within the Afro-Cuban and Haitian traditions. As part of independent research, Todd has toured Northern and Western Africa, South America and the Caribbean, exploring the relationship of music and dance as set within their distict historical cultural/political contexts.

www.artist-toddbrown.com

PRASANT RADHAKRISHNAN

Prasant Radhakrishnan is the founder/composer for the SF-based Carnatic/jazz ensemble, VidyA. He is a former student of pioneering carnatic saxophonist, Padmashri Kadri Gopalnath, and is a saxophonist identified with the South Indian classical (Carnatic) music and jazz disciplines. He has performed solo internationally in both traditions, with two critically acclaimed Carnatic saxophone albums to his credit.

www.prasantmusic.com , www.vidyamusic.com

SAMEER GUPTA

Sameer Gupta has been gaining more and more recognition in the international music and jazz scene. He is the founder of the Supplicants and Kosmic Rennaissance, and has studied percussion since 1985. His most recent and innovative work is with VidyA, combining Indian classical percussion with North American jazz.

www.sameergupta.com , www.vidyamusic.com

ELIYAHU SILLS

Eliyahu Sills studied upright bass at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. Sills later began an in-depth apprenticeship of the ney and bansuri flutes (The ney reed flute is the oldest known melodic instrument.), studying under the guidance of master G.S. Sachdev.

www.eliyahusills.com  

GABRIEL TEODROS  

Teodros is a first generation Ethiopian hip-hop artist out of North West (Seattle). His performance and educational stints range from classrooms to theatres, clubs, protests, prisons to street corners alongside the likes of Zap Mama, Fishbone, KRS-One, The Coup, Souls Of Mischief, Digable Planets, Aceyalone & Abstract Rude, and GZA/Genius. He released his first solo album, Lovework, in early 2007 on Mass Line Records and was recently featured on NPR.

www.myspace.com/gabrielteodros

Nefasha Ayer – The Space of In Between & The Red Poppy Art House

The integration of creative work within organizational development and enterprise

As Directors of the Red Poppy Art House of San Francisco, Meklit and Todd have been in constant dialogue and collaboration with musicians from every corner of the world. This placement, as artist at the intersection of musical lineages - living, working, as well as developing within San Francisco's Mission District (known for its strong immigrant presence), allows for a unique engagement of the complex issues and themes that Nefash Ayer seeks to express.

Nefasha Ayer, which was commissioned through the Red Poppy Art House, is exceptionally significant in that represents the evolution of a new model of “Artists-in-Directorship” with which the Art House is experimenting. The Red Poppy Art House is known for its intimacy and the intensity of creative/artistic out-put. The “Artists-in-Directorship” was devised as a way of insuring that, as the Art House continues to grow, creative work and the creative process will continue to be actively engaged at the highest level of the Art House organization. That which determines the vitality of the organization is not only the artwork on display and the performances and workshops that are offered by its guest artists, but, also, it is the individual creative endeavors of the staff members and directors themselves. There are many stories of organizations that began with tremendous creative force but then lost the heart and spontaneity of the work as they began to grow and succeed, a development which inevitably necessitates a more comprehensive and complex organizational structure. We recognize this profound and honest challenge that is facing the Red Poppy Art House as it moves forward expanding and deepening its programs. The model of “Artists-in-Directorship”, which divides the responsibilities of an executive director into a shared directorship that requires creative out-put of both of its artist-directors as part of their responsibility to the organization, is our experiment in meeting this challenge.

All Nefasha Ayer images by Nate Keck.

Meklit Hadero

Performing Artist

Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-born, US -raised vocalist, whose jazz and Ethiopian roots deeply inform her present style. Having performed in various configurations, she tends toward spare arrangements (acoustic bass and voice), and singing acapella, as a way of communicating a bareness and intimacy between audience and performer. She is a recipient of a 2005 Young Musicians Scholarship from Blue Bear School of American Music and this year she was selected and interviewed by the SF Chronicle, who described her simply as, "Stunning."

Meklit is a vocalist, musician, arts organizer and co-director of the Red Poppy Art House. In 2002, she received her BA in Political Science from Yale University, with an informal focus on social movements. During her Yale years, she received university funding to run a bi-weekly multidisciplinary performance series, which she collaboratively directed for nearly a year. Additionally, she acted as Operations Coordinator and Research Assistant at the Yale Health Emotions and Behavior Lab, helping to implement a large study focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention in urban communities.

After graduating, she moved to Seattle, where she gained experience in the nonprofit sector, working as the Temporary Manager of Programs for the Urban Enterprise Center, an organization working towards economic and community development in Seattle's urban center. In 2004, she relocated to the Bay Area and spent nearly two years learning about the foundation world as part of the staff of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.

www.meklithadero.com

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM

Contact: info@redpoppyarthouse.org

Mail: Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom St., San Francisco, 94110.