Adrian Arias, local poet, visual and performing artist visited the Poppy to offer the Professional Development Track a taste of his addiction. Limes. Limes for ceviche. Limes spread on the table. A lime in Adrian’s hand. He walked around the room and beckoned its scent by scraping his nail against the peel. One by one, each person sniffed the lime in his hand. In 2002, Ceviche became an art piece. Why art? Art is to “create an aesthetic, [to] share [a] vision of beauty with somethin...

Caleb Duarte leads a figure drawing class for the Poppy’s Professional Development Track. It started with a conversation: everyone standing around the kitchen, drinking their respective coffees and teas. Then it migrated over to the main room. We had to bring in fold-up chairs as the usual comfy chairs everyone knows at the Poppy were placed in an art-piece, stacked against, with, and on top of each other as a sculpture in front of the red double doors. We sat in a circle in the main r...

Indira Urrutia, co-founder of Mi Cultura Art Project, visited the Poppy’s Professional Development Track to share photos of her epic journey. An image of the bicycles Indira and Marc rode on their four year journey Currently the co-founder of Mi Cultura Art Project, a company that travels to bring artistic education to youth across the Bay Area, Indira Urrutia has taken a long journey to fulfill her life’s passion. Much of what she shared with the Poppy was a particular epic journey she and he...

Puberty: An interview with Caleb Duarte and Mia Eve Rollow, who take on the position of one of the Poppy’s newest debuts.     The Red Poppy Art House has transformed. Yes, the inside of the physical space looks quite different, with what was known as “the coffin”- founder Todd Thomas Brown’s old peekaboo bed/the Poppy’s corner table - was traded for an ADA accessible entryway. But that is not the only transformation the Red Poppy has taken on this year. The directorial position at the Poppy has...

  A look into a project that feeds the creative soul of those suffering from chronic and complex conditions.  Below a grey, San Francisco, summer sky on Wednesday, August 20, 2014, a group of staff from the Red Poppy Art House had the pleasure of sitting with Sasha Silveanu, the Director of Community Engagement at Anne Bluenthenthal and Dance (ABD). Drops from the sky trickled sporadically onto our heads, leaping from our hair and nourishing the wood around us. Silveanu sat upright like a ba...

Most who become involved in the Poppy would agree that the place is special- it is homey, it is full of love and it contains an inimitable spirit. Nancy Appel, a volunteer with the Poppy since 2009 says that the word volunteer is fine, but “that doesn’t necessarily connote the degree of attachment.” One fateful show five years ago, Nancy took the Poppy folks seriously when they said “We’re always looking for volunteers.” “I don’t create art,” Nancy admits. “I conceived this was an artistic c...

Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, a cultural worker in Santa Fe, N.M. , joined PRESENCE , the Red Poppy Art House Development Cohort, on July 30 to discuss authenticity and education. Photo Credit: Ash Haywood Long dark dreadlocks frame a face holding deep brown eyes and an open, full-lipped smile. Taking risks backpacking through Mexico with her children and accepting a nonprofit directorial position, Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz is on a never-ending quest for authenticity. She uncovered that her vulnerabi...

The Red Poppy Art House, named so after lines from Pablo Neruda’s poetry, was graced by an old friend and the spearhead of the first English-language feature-length documentary about Pablo Neruda. “There is a natural impulse, a natural vocation, a natural calling that a poet feels,” relayed Mark Eisner, editor of The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, a man dedicated to uncovering and sharing Neruda’s life and influence, and a member of the Red Poppy family since its infancy. Eisner, also the ...

Nancy Quinn, creator of “The Quinn List,” offers her expertise on creating relationships and speaking on behalf of one’s art and arts organization. On July 16, PRESENCE, the Red Poppy Art House Development Cohort, convened around a canvas-turned-table and welcomed their guest, Nancy Quinn. Quinn has over 25 years of grant writing experience, with a focus on small organizations. One may wonder what exactly does small mean? A small staff? A small physical space? Or a small budget? In the case o...

Interested in learning more about our Resident Artist, Tiffany Austin? Listen to her talk about the glitzy, glamourous and not-so-glamorous moments that have shaped her career on a podcast interview with Running the Voodoo Down. In an episode titled "The Beat Down," Tiffany and other artists talk about an experience all musicians share - getting your butt kicked onstage - and share their thoughts on being out of your element and getting by. Searching for the spirit of the sounds that move...

On June 21, 2014 Candice “Antique” Wicks facilitated a performance workshop at The Red Poppy Art House on recognizing and channeling relational privilege. Candice “Antique” Wicks is an “edutator,” one who blends education with entertainment. Last week, Wicks led a room of workshop attendees into an exploration of how the “text of our lives” shapes our relationships. According to discoveries by neurophysicist Dr. Giacomo Rizzolatti and scientist Dr. Laila Craighero, the chemicals in one’s ...

  Marcus Shelby inspires PRESENCE, the Red Poppy Art House Development Cohort, with his artistic process and snippets of his life’s journey. Following an hour of discussion, Marcus Shelby, composer, teacher, bassist, and Artist In Residence at Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, sat down to play the piano placed against the red curtain and evoked Duke Ellington’s “On A Turquoise Cloud.” Immediately after, his iPod was plugged into the speakers and PRESENCE, the Red Poppy Art House Devel...

Someone asked me the other day what it means to work at the Poppy? Well my response went something like this... Every Wednesday morning we meet. In between the hugs and the catching up we manage to conduct a meeting about the Poppy and more importantly the space as a whole. This is the best part of my week: the breakfast I get to share with these people and the discussions we have. The Poppy is sort of like our unruly child, something that we manage, plan, negotiate and tinker with week by ...

 Greetings Poppy Family,    If you are a fan of the Red Poppy Art House, then this is an important message for you to read.   We've been pouring our hearts and minds into the labor of bringing you the best artistic programming that we are able to offer here in the Bay Area. Now we need you to have our back.   We have some exciting news and big challenges ahead, but first we need to let you know about the financial reality of our little house of magic.   ...

Dear Red Poppy Art House Family, As this year marks our 10 year anniversary, we're taking some time off from regular performance programming to focus our attention on sprucing up the Poppy and to enable collective reflection, imagination, creation, and preparation for new programs. Our doors are still wide open for the Mission Arts and Performance Project (MAPP), Family Art program on weekends and other public events over the summer. In fact, we're currently gearing up for the next MAPP on Au...

  Dear friends of the Poppy,   In 2013, the Red Poppy will celebrate it’s 10 year anniversary! However, before we get there, I want to share a thought: The Red Poppy Art House does not really exist. What does exist is a room within a building on the corner of Folsom Street and 23rd Street in San Francisco. The room has a closet, a bathroom, and a not-so-entirely-random assortment of things, such as speakers, chairs, sound equipment, etc. This room is owned by a landlord, Curt...

RP: Your previous works have been described as "deceptively simple, deeply weird Pop songs”. You are also working on songs based on recent obituaries, however you are taking a pit stop with Brazilian Tropicalismo. What drew you to Caetano Veloso? JH: For the last few years my main focus has been on composing and recording my own pop songs. A couple of summers ago at a wonderful Brazilian music camp, I wandered into a beginning bossa nova guitar class and learned a few jazz chords. Since I hav...

Adam Theis is one of the busiest and most talented musicians in the Bay Area. He is the founder of multiple groups and ensembles including; The Jazz Mafia Symphony (for which he created the groundbreaking Brass, Bows and Beats), Shotgun Wedding Quintet, Realistic Orchestra, Brass Mafia, and the recent Left Coast Strings, which will be performing this Friday, September 28th at the Red Poppy Art House. This ensemble features new works written by Theis for the unique instrumentation of strings ...

Red Poppy Art House is thrilled to launch our new series entitled RED Talk.  RED Talks will consist of a presentation and topic of interest across a wide range of topics.  Does "RED" stand for anything?  Yes.  Really Excellent Discussions. The inaugural RED Talk will be by Stanford Neuroscience Expert Patrick House.  Full description can be found below. Date:  Saturday, June 2nd Time:  10:30 PM - 11:30 PM Admission:  FREE!  Please join us for MAPP! RED Talk Presents Leashed to Your Cat:...

Help Adrian Arias to print and publish his new futuristic book: "Beautiful Trash: The Lost Library" Campaign in Indiegigo: http://www.indiegogo.com/beautifultrash

Currently on view at the Red Poppy Art House is a collection of recent paintings by Maykel Vargas (b. 1977, Cuba) which explores the arcane language of the primitive and the shamanistic. His works are of an Expressionist nature, which explores themes of the mystical and ancestral forces in nature as were represented and worshiped by our indigenous ancestry, or even the African deities, also carried over by our ancestry, which laid the laws that governed the natural world. The paintings are a win...