MCC Mural “Our Survival depends on being creative”

-  by Alex Tan & elisa diana huerta

 “…shifting the emphasis away from stories of oppression, and onto stories of possibilities, both theoretically and practically.”  –Lekkie Hopkins

 “Our survival depends on being creative.”- Gloria E. Anzaldua

 As participants in the visioning, creation and day-to-day workings of the Multicultural Community Center, we have been thinking a lot about what it means to celebrate and center our own stories,  to create our own spaces and to recognize and be inspired by the seeds planted by the third world Liberation front, from 1969 to the present.

Importantly, the call for the MCC in 1999 coincided with a call for a mural and an expansion of Ethnic Studies, rendering visible the interconnected need for spaces that foster artistic expression, community gathering and intellectual knowledge production.   As we grow and shift as a Community Center, our story remains one of survival, rootedness, resilience and creativity.

 We have excelled in moving forward in honest and resourceful ways, and in doing so we continually create and maintain spaces for knowledge that challenges dominant discourses of individualism and isolation in the University.  We create an alternative narrative of what is necessary and needed on this University and create a solid network of support.  We nurture a type of thinking and an alternative curriculum centered around community, healing, creation and collective movement.

 We seek to celebrate our connections, our growth and all of the possibilities yet to be imagined.  We seek to celebrate the creativity that grounds our beings and our work.

 A tribute to June Jordan, Mario Savio, Bettina Aphteker, Caesar Chaves, Richard Aoki,Richard Aoki, Ron Takaki, Barbara Christian, and many others…

20 Original Designs only $3 each

Choose letters of design

SOLD OUT: Card letter C, D, E, F, J, M, O, Q, S

Set of 10 only $25

Choose letters of design

Organic Paper Custom-Made Envelopes 

One of a Kind Hand Made only $2 each

 Set of 3 Greeting cards with Custom Made Envelopes only $12

Choose letters of design

Posters with Matt Borders

Practice Your Aim Series 8″ x 8″ with Bold Black Matt Borders 10″ x 10″

$18 each

Mayari  3″ x 17″ with Classic Gold Matt Borders 5″ x 19″

$15

Tula 9″ x 12″ with Antique Gold Matt Borders 11″ x  14″

$25

Ready for Framing.

On this Holiday Season, Support Independent Artists!

Tuloy Po Kayo from Pueblo Nuevo Gallery on Vimeo.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, October 27, 2011 SOMA COmmunity celebrates new mural at the Filipino Education Center (San Francisco, CA) – Kularts and the Filipino American Community Foundation (FADF) is proud to announce the completion of a new 25×80 foot mural, entitled Tuloy Po Kayo, located at the Filipino Education Center/Bessie Carmichael Middle School with a community celebration on Friday, November 18, 2011, from 4 to 7 pm.

“Tuloy po Kayo,” is Filipino for “welcome.” Designed by internationally-acclaimed muralist Cece Carpio, and painted with Miguel Bounce Perez and other volunteer artists, the mural represents the Filipino community’s shared experiences, history, and culture. Join the festivities with performances by Bessie students, hip hop group Power Struggle, DJs, music, and more.

All are welcome to join artists Cece Carpio and Miguel Perez as they celebrate this enormous accomplishment. Lead artist Cece Carpio was commissioned for this project based on her years of experience working with communities throughout the design process and distilling their ideas into a coherent vision. She says of her process, “I put it all together, sure. But the community; they are really the ones to guide me, to give me the visuals and the ideas. I draw upon their wisdom.”

To prepare for this mural, Carpio led an arts workshop with Bessie Carmichael students, where the children created drawings on themes of self-identity, family, and community. Using the children’s input as her guide, Carpio led a community meeting at the Bayanihan Center to gather more feedback and flesh out ideas. Once a final sketch was in hand, community members came back once more – this time, to paint their mural on the wall with a celebratory paint day. Kularts Director Alleluia Panis, who organized the paint day, knows that it’s vital to keep the community engaged at every step. “It’s their wall, they own it,” she says. “The mural is a powerful validation and an every day reminder for the young Pilipino American students that our experiences, our values and our way of life matter. Welcome to MY home.”

The final work includes several layers of meaning. In the center, a “balangay” (boat) and “araw” (sun) convey the significance of the Filipino peoples’ ancient sea faring ways and the overseas journey of immigration to the US. Cleverly, the poles of the balangay form a star-shape – when viewed with the two star-shaped parol lanterns at each end of the mural, the stars and sun evoke the Filipino flag. The parol lanterns themselves are important symbols of light and blessings, evoking holiday traditions widely celebrated among Filipinos: here in SOMA, the annual Parol Festival brings thousands to Jessie Square each December. Against a foreground of waves and a background of sky, the mural includes many children and family groups, playing traditional games or strolling down city streets. Throughout, the composition creates links between San Francisco’s busy city life and memories of Filipino landscapes.

Tina Alejo, director of Galing Bata, says the mural is “illustrative of the relationships and interactions that defined the evolution of the FEC into the community that it is today. For instance, the two figures rising up to brace the sun illustrate the struggle to create the FEC and to maintain it amidst heavy cuts to education and arts funding.” As a nod to ancient literacy and the importance of education, the mural’s bottom edge contains the “baybayin” alphabet, a pre-colonial written language of early indigenous Filipinos – a western translation is also included. The mural was created through a collaboration of the Filipino American Development Foundation, Kularts, Inc., the Galing Bata bi-lingual school program, and the Filipino Education Center/Bessie Carmichael School with funding from the Yerba Buena Community benefit District.

All are welcome to join these community organizations at the festivities on November 18, 2011, 4-7pm in the Filipino Education Center/Bessie Carmicheal Middle School playground. The school is located at 824 Harrison St in San Francisco.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES From the islands of the Philippines to the streets of Brooklyn, Cece Carpio paints people and places on the edges of survival. Using acrylic, ink, aerosol and installations, her work tells stories of immigration, ancestry, resistance and resilience. She documents evolving traditions by combining folkloric forms, bold portraits, and natural elements with urban art techniques. She has produced and exhibited work in the Philippines, Hawaii, Fiji Islands, Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Italy, Norway and throughout the United States. She is currently assisting Juana Alicia Ariaza with the True Colors Mural Project in Berkeley City College, in collaboration with Earth Island Institute. She can often be found collaborating with her crew, Trust Your Struggle, teaching, and traveling around the world in pursuit of the perfect wall.

Miguel Perez received a BFA in Communication Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and currently works as a freelance designer and muralist. He is co-founder of Pueblo Nuevo Gallery, a community art space in Berkeley, California. He also paints and organizes murals and gallery installations with the Trust Your Struggle Collective which has completed grass-roots mural tours across the United States, Mexico, and Central America. His art work and murals have been exhibited publicly and in galleries throughout the US, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia and Mexico.

ABOUT KULARTS Kularts is the nation’s premier presenter of contemporary and tribal Pilipino arts. Founded in 1985, Kularts aims to inform and expand the understanding of American Pilipino culture through works that address contemporary issues in the community; to preserve the spirit and integrity of ancient Pilipino art forms through research, education and documentation; and to nurture the artistic development of Pilipino American artists. Kularts proudly serves the San Francisco Bay Area, home to the largest number of Pilipinos outside of the Philippines.

For more information, visit www.kularts.org. ### For more information and visuals, please contact: Claire F. Meyler Kularts program@kularts.org (415) 239-0249 www.kularts.org

Trust Your Struggle Collective & 2930 Telegraph Present

Celebrate You

Opening Reception & Collaborative Mural Creation
First Friday November 4th
2pm – 10pm

2930 Telegraph Studio
Oakland Ca

Join the Trust Your Struggle Collective as we Celebrate You.

We are strong believers of using art to communicate, collaborate and unify. In light of the recent activities across the United States, we would like to show our support for those who have put themselves on the line, been arrested, camped out, and marched for all of us. We feel this moment is a reflection of frustration that so many people feel. In this, we think back to the history of Movements across the United States and Internationally, when the People remembered the Power they hold as the Majority and stood firm in their beliefs.

We honor those who have inspired us through their Actions to create Change.

We Celebrate you!

2930 Telegraph is a non-commercial storefront space featuring collaborative projects.
Co-facilitated by Evan Bissell and Brett Cook, 2930 shows multi-disciplinary work whose process supports personal and social transformation. The space is located at 2930 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, CA (between 29th and 30th) and is visible from the street.

On The Wall is a dynamic exhibition comprised of both Latino and
Asian Pacific Islander emerging artists. Through the mediums of spray paint,
installation and video,the featured artists examine the current issues of
the immigration debate, such as shifting identities, cultural ownership and
community building. On The Wall is the last exhibition of the year-long
series, PICTURING IMMIGRATION,which included exhibitions and public
events examining immigration from a variety of perspectives.

The exhibition will feature a large-scale installation and public billboard
by the Trust Your Struggle collective, a group of visual artists and
educators, based in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. The group
is dedicated to social justice through art and works in conjunction with
several other collectives, producing engaging exhibits and community events.
This presentation at Galería culminates the 2008 Trust Your Hustle Mural
Tour, which started in July in Brooklyn, New York and has traveled until now
through Atlanta, New Orleans, Austin, Flagstaff,Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

For the exhibit at Galería de la Raza,the Trust Your Struggle group will
join forces with multi talented video artists selected by Kearny St.
Workshop, creating a vibrant venue of art, thought, and
cross-cultural community activism.

For nearly fifty years Carlos Villa has explored the meaning of cultural diversity in his art and in doing so has expanded our awareness of what we consider as “multicultural.” What began in his early career as an attempt to understand his own heritage–a complexity of Filipino traditions with its layered strains of Asian, African, Indian and Oceanic cultures, along with influences of a Western artistic tradition–became over time an exercise in creating his own visual anthropology to represent his personal background, and, in a broader sense, the dynamics of intercultural weaving.

- Preston Fletcher

UH PRESS RELEASE

Carlos Villa of the San Francisco Art Institute will visit the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Art Department this week as the department’s Artist-In-Residence, October 10-14, 2011.

Villa, a visual artist and long-time community resource teacher and producer in San Francisco, California will deliver two lectures on his symposia “Worlds in Collision” and his personal journey from a “singular discipline trajectory to interventions and actions that would allow me to become a viable conduit between minoritized artist communities and the artist mainstream.” His talks are scheduled for 6 p.m., Wednesday, October 12 in UCB 127 on the UH Hilo campus, and 5 p.m., Thursday, October 13 at the Volcano Art

Center Niaulani Campus. Both lectures are free and open to the public.

Villa’s visit coincides with the Art Department Gallery presentation “Halo-Halo: Bay Area Artists of the Philippine Diaspora.” The exhibit will feature a mix of mature and emerging San Francisco Bay Area Filipino-American artists who work in a range of traditional and community based conceptual or experimental strategies to directly address questions of Filipino and Filipino-American identity and community or more subtle messages conveyed in the use of embedded or implied relations.

The presentation’s underlying theme is heritage awareness developed in ways that will inspire and challenge viewers to expand their vision of the contemporary Philippine Diaspora. Featured artists: Eliza Barrios, Cece Carpio, Christopher de Leon, Arvin Flores, John YoYogi Fortes, James Gan Yan Garcia, Mik Gaspay, Mail Order Brides/MOB, Marcius Noceda, and Maria Vilotte.

The Villa residency supports the 2011 Filipino American Heritage Month calendar of events on the UH Hilo campus. His visit and related activities are made possible with support from the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund, the Howard and Yoneko Droste bequest, Student Activities Council (SAC); the Art Department, MAAPS, and the Chancellor’s Diversity Committee at UH Hilo.

For additional information, contact Professor Michael Marshall at (808) 974-7524 or mdmarsha@hawaii.edu . For those requiring special accommodations, contact (808) 933-0816 (V), (808) 933-3334 (TTY) or uds@hawaii.edu.

We could not be more excited to announce that the Trust Your Struggle Philippines Mural Tour is on for summer 2011! We will be departing mid-June to spend over a month collaborating and building solidarity with people’s organizations and cultural workers in Manila, the Cordilleras and Palawan. Here’s part of the growing list of confirmed organizations in the archipelago we’ll be learning from and painting murals with:

• League of Filipino Students

• College Editors Guild

• ANAKBAYAN

• Official Student Publication of Palawan State University

• Palawan Conservations Corps

• Dap-ayan ti Kultura iti Kordilyera (DKK)

• Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP)

• Ugatlahi

We are also especially thankful for stateside support from Estria Foundation, who shares our artistic vision for grassroots international solidarity work. In addition to working with organizations based in their communities, we’ve also timed it just right to be able to attend People’s Art: Shaping the Society of the Future – International Conference on Kulayan Art-programessive Culture, July 4-6 in Manila, hosted by the International League of Peoples Struggles Assembly (ILPS). We can’t wait for this life changing opportunity to gather and build with people’s artists from all over the world outside of the belly of the beast.

We want to send our warmest gratitude for your support and patience as we’ve made preparations for our farthest mural tour yet. Some artists survive off of wealthy benefactors, and some ride off of fame. TYS runs on the steam of love and support from our communities at home and abroad. This means you! We don’t operate on big budgets or pay ourselves for this work; the funds we raise merely cover painting supplies. It is because of you that we have been able to bring our message and art all across the US and throughout the globe. Your love, support and generosity is truly appreciated.

For those of you who supported Trust Your Struggle through the purchase of artwork, pins or tee shirts: The long wait is over! We will be shipping them out to you soon. Thanks so much for your patience.

Of course a TYS Mural Tour isn’t legit without documentation! We want to share this amazing journey with you! Look out for newsletters, blog posts, and video documentation from the Philippines. Follow us as we exchange and share stories with the peoples and communities in the Philippines and paint them on the walls.

Thank you for riding with us! Let’s turn it up once again! Again, we thank you.

Trusting Our Struggle,

TYS Collective

“Love and Anarchy,” a group art exhibition featuring works
by Cece Carpio, Kira Curtis, Fernando Marti, and Jermaine Rogers.

Ictus Gallery
July 23rd – September 1st, 2011
Opening Reception: Saturday July 23rd, 6 pm – 10pm
Closing Reception: Thursday Sept. 1st, 6pm – 10pm
1769 15th St. @ Albion (Between Valencia and Guerrero)
San Francisco, CA, 94013
Gallery hours: Tuesday- Saturday 12pm-5pm and by appt.

Ictus Gallery presents an installation of indoor graffiti mural art, posters, paintings and prints celebrating all things that deviate, defy and yet carry each other.

We can define our days as we choose, and infuse the most fraught of situations with emotion. And out of that alchemy can come the transformation of a soul, a block, a city and beyond. In the works of Cece Carpio, Kira Curtis, Fernando Marti, and Jermaine Rogers, we see this kind of celebration of renegades, who resist the constructs of power but do so with all encompassing love that builds rather than tears down.

“Love and Anarchy” brings together four artists working in different mediums, each with their own unique and distinct styles, infusing and combining to create exciting visual, immersive narratives. “Love and Anarchy” explores these ideas through popular and accessible mediums including posters and mural graffiti. The works writing to ever present, universal themes of love and power.

The Filipino Education Center Mural
824 Harrison Street, San Francisco

Community Paint Day, Saturday, September 24!

In July, muralist Cece Carpio met with students and community members to get ideas for a new mural to cover a 25×80 foot wall at the Filipino Education Center Middle School. Thank you to everyone who shared thoughts and ideas. This dynamic mural celebrates our shared experiences, history, and culture.We have a design we can all be proud of – and we want your help to make it happen! Join us on Saturday, September 24, for a community paint day – more details coming soon!

Commissioned by The Filipino Development Foundation & KulArts

Funded by the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District 

“The Yerba Buena Community Benefit District is a nonprofit organization working every day to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood.”