Click here on the date of the event to see the live performance streaming Live on Facebook.

Launched in 2003, the Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP) is a homegrown bi-monthly, multidisciplinary, intercultural happening that takes place in the Mission District of San Francisco. On the first Saturday of every even month of the year, the MAPP transforms ordinary spaces, such as private garages, gardens, living rooms, studios, street corners, and small businesses into pop-up performance and exhibition sites for a day/night of intimate-scale artistic and cultural exchange among a kaleidoscope of individuals and communities. This program is funded by the California Arts Council Local Impact Grant. We are excited and grateful to continue our work in presenting unique artistry to the communities that we serve.

In an effort to continue presenting this deeply important program, Red Poppy Art House is presenting our third online MAPP. Visual Art workshop and performances live stream from artist’s homes to your homes on October 3rd, 2020.

Now, more than ever, we need your support to continue facilitating relationships between the artists and our community, and building a sonic bridge between today’s challenging time and a brighter future. Please consider investing in the future of the artists and the important role of the live performing arts in our community.
Make a gift to Red Poppy Art House today!

Red Poppy Art House Needs You

TEAM:

Curator and Moderator:  Dina Zarif / Artistic Director 

Special guest and presenter: Jennifer Friedenbach / Executive Director of Coalition On Homelessness

Tech support: Leeav Sofer

PR and Digital Marketing: Jennie D. Legary

RPAH PROGRAM (ONLINE) October 3rd

“ART INTO AUCTION” BY COH (ONLINE)

“Art into Auction” by the SF Coalition On Homelessness
Jennifer Friedenbach, Executive Director of Coalition On Homelessness will present the Art Auction

Red Poppy Art House is honored to join SF Coalition on Homelessness for their 20th annual Art Auction and Exhibition and Art walk to feature some of the auction artworks to preview in-person at the “Red Poppy’s Window Exhibition”.

The “Window Exhibition at RPAH” will preview works by Jennifer Bloomer, Megan Wilson & Ronni Goodman.

The SF Coalition on Homelessness Art Auction and Exhibition will be a week-long online art auction event, with all artwork available to preview online and featured artwork available to preview in-person in some local venues at the SF Mission District! 

For more information check the Art Auction website at here

COALITION ON HOMELESSNESS

The Coalition on Homelessness organizes unhoused people and front line service providers to create permanent solutions to homelessness while protecting the human rights of those forced to remain on the streets.  The organization has a 30 year history of winning tangible change for our unhoused neighbors, including thousands of units of housing, jobs, treatment, and human rights utilizing a variety of tactics from protest, legislation, ballot initiatives, creative media to legal action. 

Jennifer Friedenbach / Executive Director of Coalition On Homelessness

Committed to a struggle to end mass homelessness by addressing the structural causes and crafting permanent fixes. Her work is about developing consensus on solutions to the homeless crisis centered on the experience and expertise of those who have survived or are still living without housing. Excellent meeting facilitation, policy development, messaging expertise, and unsticking ambivalence and entrenched mindsets. Jennifer is always learning from the brilliance around me and knows how to stay positive. Adept at moving controversy to collective problem-solving. Working in collaboration with many others has led to literally thousands of people in SF stabilizing in housing, rising out of poverty, averting homelessness, and addressing the many side effects of homelessness in order to flourish. However, due to rising rents, alongside immoral inaction on the part of policymakers, her work has a long way to go. Urgent meaningful action is what she works for.

Art Auction 20, Transforming Art into Action will feature over 100 pieces of art, taking place online starting October 1st and ending October 8th.  Many of the art pieces will be displayed in storefronts in the Mission District, and supporters can do their own art walks at any time convenient to them.  This is a major annual fundraiser for the Coalition on Homelessness and is deeply connected with our use of art to communicate complex social problems, whether that be through printing posters with unique art or the production of our twice-monthly street newspaper Street Sheet.  The newspaper serves as a creative outlet for unhoused community members through artwork, poetry, creative writing, and journalism.  The newspaper is sold by impoverished vendors who keep 100% of the proceeds and ensures San Franciscans can hear directly from those who are so personally standing at the intersection of the housing crisis, racism, and the deep structural inequities that drive homelessness.  

View the Art Auction 20 Art Walk Venue Map here

All artwork will be available for preview online

The “Window Exhibition at RPAH” will preview works by Jennifer Bloomer, Megan Wilson & Ronni Goodman. This exhibition is a part of the Art Auction by COH.

“The Stains and Misdirections of Manifest Destiny”

Megan Wilson

Growing up as a fifth-generation Montanan, Megan Wilson was surrounded by the mythology and iconography of the American West, and specifically that of the cowboy. Images of rugged men with their code of stoic endurance, self-reliance, loyalty, courage, and camaraderie, on horseback riding across the plains, wrangling cattle and spitting chew were everywhere – from the paintings of Charles M. Russell, Frederick Remington, and Will James to the landscape itself. However, the reality is the painful and violent history of manifest destiny that annihilated much of the indigenous peoples and wildlife of the West. The 19th-century doctrine gave American settlers the rationale of a ‘God-given destiny’ to expand westward across North America and beyond. Framed in the context of morality, divinity, freedom, and the presumed greatness of a white America, the ideology was used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans from their land, the subsequent genocide of their people, and later, claims to Pacific islands. The mass migration also served industrialists who benefited from the labor force that established in the west to build the railroads, work the land, build the cities, and mine the natural resources. 

Wilson’s latest body of work, The Stains and Misdirections of Manifest Destiny explores and calls attention to the painful history of manifest destiny and its lasting racist, imperialist influence on American social and political ideology today. 

The Stains series uses the traditional craft of quilling (paper filigree) to create intricate drawings that evoke 19th-century quilt patterns set against a stained foundation. The handicrafts of quilling and quilting spread from England to the American colonies and then to the American West. Wilson began quilling as a child when her grandmother passed on the fashionable craft of her childhood to her granddaughter. 

The Misdirections series counters the glorification of the west using revisions of existing historical texts branded into leather hides and stretched over wood placards to create new narratives and new directions for moving forward from a past rooted in the arrogance of manifest destiny. 

Kemp-Greene-Wilson-Metzner is a series of suede works with narratives and ornamentation from Wilson’s ancestral history of pioneer families who migrated from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa to Utah, Idaho, and Montana in the 19th century as a protestant, Mormon, and Jewish settlers, homesteaders, miners, and railway workers.

Megan Wilson’s quilling drawings at Red Poppy Art House are part of the Stains series.

Ronnie Goodman was a self-taught homeless artist and former distance runner living in San Francisco. He was inspired by the beauty of this city and its diversity, balanced with the struggles of human despair. With his brush, Ronnie tried to capture these raw emotions in painted images. Rest in Power Ronnie.

Posters for Change 

Jennifer Bloomer

Jen is an artist, facilitator, and founder of Radici Studios in San Francisco. For the past two decades, she has painted and taught art in Guatemala, India, Italy, Colorado, Eritrea, Thailand, Kenya, and California. Jen has a BA in Latin American Studies, a Post Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting, and a Masters Degree in Expressive Arts Therapy. She has created art with people aged 1 to 81 giving space for them to find their unique creative voice in the world through the arts. Jen’s own activist art can be seen in local murals, at marches for social justice across the country, and across social media. Her work has been shown internationally by Amplifier Art and is included in the Library of Congress archive. Jen believes that the intersection of creativity, connection, and community holds the answer to our personal and collective healing.

Posters for Change / Workshop by Jennifer Bloomer

Create our own posters with simple materials with messages of change we wish to see in our communities and out in the world

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I believe in the power of creativity to create tangible, powerful, change in the world. Art has the ability to go beyond words and move hearts and change minds. My art and workshops aim to energize individuals and communities to reflect, listen deeply to one another and come together as a community to rally for justice, respect, and love.

WORKSHOP:

In this art workshop, we’ll be making posters with messages of change we wish to see in our communities and out in the world. I will share my own brainstorming process and walk you through how to come up with your own images and words to invigorate others about issues you care about. We’ll create our own posters with simple materials you might have around your house. No experience art-making- all are welcome!

Materials: 

• Piece of Cardboard (15″ x 20″ or bigger) 
• Acrylic paint
• Paintbrushes
• Sharpies or Markers

PERFORMANCES (ONLINE) OCT. 3RD

Natalie Cressman and Ian Faquini

A uniquely intimate duo featuring original material in three languages, drawing from the music of Brazil, Impressionism, and the Great American Songbook.

Featuring:

Natalie Cressman – Trombone

Ian Faquini – guitar

Trombonist and singer/songwriter Natalie Cressman and Brazilian composer, guitarist, and singer Ian Faquini have created a uniquely intimate collaboration, drawing from impressionism, jazz, and the great Brazilian songwriting tradition. The duo’s global take on music is largely expressed through the distinct compositional voice of Faquini, with occasional lyrics penned by Cressman. Their original material features songs in three different languages and encompasses a vast spectrum of musical ground. With the warm instrumentation of acoustic guitar and trombone and two-part vocal harmonies hugging the Brazilian-accented Portuguese, Cressman & Faquini weave their musical voices together to create a fully orchestrated sound befitting a much larger ensemble.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Natalie Cressman has spent the past ten years touring the jam band circuit as a horn player and vocalist with Phish’s Trey Anastasio, while also collaborating with many illustrious figures on the New York City jazz scene. When she’s not performing her own music, Cressman can be found collaborating with some of the most illustrious figures in rock, funk, jazz and beyond, which have included Phish, Big Gigantic, Carlos Santana, Escort, Wycliffe Gordon, Nicholas Payton, Anat Cohen, The Motet, and Umphrey’s McGee.

Born in Brasília and raised in Berkeley, Ian Faquini was a member of the renowned Berkeley High School Jazz program before going on to study at the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley and, immediately after graduating, joined the faculty there. He has performed throughout Europe, Japan, Brazil and the United States and has shared the stage and recording studio with such names as Guinga, Brad Mehldau, Chris Potter, Spok, Lee Konitz, Fleurine, among many others.

Aya Safiya and Tano Brock
Traditional music from Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean

Featuring:

Aya Safiya – vocals, violin, laouto 

Tano Brock – vocals, clarinet, laouto

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Aya Safiya and Tano Brock have been musical collaborators for over a decade. They met at a music camp in their teenage years, and began playing Greek and Balkan music together. In 2014, along with Cecilia Peña-Govea and Miguel León, they formed Taraf de Locos, a SF Bay Area group that created a unique blend of Balkan and Afro-Latin music styles. Following an album release and tour with Taraf de Locos, Aya and Tano traveled to Eastern Europe together to discover and study music. They have since been collaborating on a regular basis; continuing to play Greek and Balkan traditional styles, as well as contemporary original music. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Aya and Tano have been frequently performing live-stream concerts from their home studio, both independently and as a part of larger concerts/festivals. 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

With strong messages and emotional vulnerability, Bay Area raised artist Aya Safiya reveals her diverse and complex identity in her singing and songwriting. Her first EP “Aya Safiya,” released in 2018, was a transitional introduction to her electronic singer-songwriter career initiated after decades of working as a Greek/Mediterranean/Balkan-music singer and violinist. Aya was 15 when she first started performing and has since gone on to perform at Greek festivals in the US and in Greece, as well as at venues such as The Great American Music Hall in SF, the Grand Prospect Hall in NYC, and the House of Blues in Boston. She has also taught classes in regional Greek violin and Greek/Balkan singing at community-based music schools such as The Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley, the Sierra Music and Arts Institute in Central California, and Apapachoa in Nicaragua. In July 2020 she released her 2nd EP, “My Other Half.” While the new EP is a continuation of her singer-songwriter project, through it she explores new grounds, incorporating her Japanese-American roots and writing all lyrics in Japanese. Although Aya’s music “lives between the lines of genre and culture,” (Jocelle Koh, Asian Pop Weekly) and “defies standard categorization,” (Mitch Mosk, Atwood Magazine) her intimate, nostalgia evoking songwriting, ethereal singing, and hazy production with help from producer Tano Brock, distinctly conquers a vibe.

Tano Brock is a 24-year-old musician, songwriter, producer, and engineer. Born and raised in San Francisco, CA, Tano began studying and performing music at a young age and had an almost supernatural knack for it ever since he began banging on a drum at only a few months old. Throughout his childhood, Tano accompanied his family to various music camps in California where he was exposed to music from all over the world. At 6 years old, he began studying darbuka, a Middle Eastern drum. He then started studying piano at age 7, and at 12 began teaching himself guitar. In his early teens, he started playing saxophone/clarinet, as well as exploring the world of digital recording and production. At age 18, he released his self-produced debut solo album “Bandit” (2014) – which garnered significant success and launched his career as a composer for synch licensing. In 2019, Tano graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree focused on performance and music production & engineering. During his time at Berklee, he explored his deep affinity with world music traditions, traveling to Turkey to study with master musicians, and to Cuba for recording sessions in Havana. He is currently producing and mixing for various artists of different styles such as: reggaetón artist La Doña, Indie/J-Pop artist Aya Safiya, pop artist Liv Young, multi-percussionist/vocalist Miguelito Leon, and Ecuadorian vocalist Gerson Eguiguren.

Strings of the Near East with Gari & Elana 
Compositions inspired by the traditional music of Greece and Turkey

Featuring:

Elana Brutman —Lyra with Sympathetic Strings

Gari Hagedus — Oud, Saz & more… 

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Gari and Elana will play original compositions inspired by the traditional music of Greece and Turkey and influenced by their own cultural understanding of music. Their repertoire is rooted in sentiment, contemplation and a deep respect and love for distant parts of the world.  

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Gari Hegedus plays violin, viola, and a variety of lutes from Greece and Turkey, including laouto, oud, and saz. Along with playing in Teslim, he also performs with global music group Stellamara, as well as Bay Area groups Janam and The Helladelics. Hegedus has studied with oud master Naseer Shamma and has studied, recorded, and performed with Ross Daly and Kelly Thoma. He has toured with the Mevlevi Dervish Order of America and continues to participate in Turkish ceremonial and devotional gatherings around the country. In addition to being a composer and performer, Hegedus is a talented luthier, repairing stringed instruments of every variety; coaxing sound from sazes, violins, and rebabs; restoring lutes and lyras; making bows; and finding ingenious ways to allow the true voice of an instrument to come forth.

Elana Brutman has dedicated the recent years of her life to the intensive study of the lyra with sympathetic strings, an instrument whose design is based on the traditional Cretan lyra and incorporates elements of the Byzantine lyra and Indian sarangi. She has spent countless hours in deep study with her teacher, Kelly Thoma, in Crete, and has spent many summers in Greece studying with master musicians from Greece, Turkey and Iran.

Power Rumba | Dos BandOLEros
Struggle Makes Our Music Stronger

Featuring:

Alberto Gutierrez – Guitar, Vocals

Raúl Vargas – Cajón, percussion, Vocals

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Dos BandOLEros is a Spanish Rumba Duo founded by Raul Vargas (Makrú) and Muchacho Mandanga in the Bay Area. Mixing Spanish covers and original compositions, Dos BandOLEros offers a really danceable fun show, full of energy and positive messages.

PREVIEW THE MUSIC

Natalie Cressman and Ian Faquini

Aya Safiya and Tano Brock

Gari Hagedus 

Power Rumba | Dos BandOLEros 

 
Time: 11:00 am – 12:30 pm Visual Art Workshop / 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm performances
Admission: Free (donations welcome)

Tune in 10 minutes before each event starts to test your devices for connection.
The event will be streamed live through the Red Poppy Art House Facebook page

Donate