Project Art Bridge Blog

This Friday is our first main event. Here is a letter that went out to all the participants. Location is deleted so as to require signup as a participant to be invited to attend the event.

Hello Project Art Bridge Participants,                            

I will cover 4 things in this email:

1. -November 2nd’s meeting, 3 things to bring, the schedule of  the night, how to get here.
2. -Email failure - request for confirmation from you having received this email.
3. -List of participants attending Nov. 2nd.
4. -Mapquest link showing my address

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1- November 2nd.Friday, November 2nd at 6:30, we will be meeting on Potrero Hill in SanFrancisco. This is my home and studio. These are the 3 things to bring:                   

A- Bring one piece of art to hang, lean or place in my studio. My open studio just happened this last weekend and the space is all clean and beautiful. I have great lighting. We will have a  mini show for ourselves.

B - Bring a dish to share.

C - Bring a presentation of your art (or art of who you arerepresenting) in digital or slide format if it is visual. Because there will be roughly 15 artists showing work, let’s keep ourpresentations to 10 minutes or less. We will have a digital projectorwhich can be attached to a lap top. The laptop will be a Macintosh. We can also visit websites during the presentation. We will also havea slide projector set up. Please let me know what type of presentation you will be bringing. My husband Richard will be helping get the presentations set up so we can have a smooth viewing. At the bottom of this email (before the mapquest link) you will see the list of people coming and what they are showing or how they are participating. Not everyone is an artist but some will work on the project in ways that are inspiring to them.

D - The evening of November 2nd will go like this: 6:30 - People arrive and place or hang their one piece of art work in Nancy’s studio. This is on the first floor of her house. Someone will be there to help with this and take your dish of food to share, from you hands and put on the table upstairs. You can hand over your presentation and this will be put at the projection area. Name tags will be available. I would like people to put their name and how theyare participating, on the tag. This will help to start conversations. Upstairs we will have our potluck and chat. We can walk downstairs or stay upstairs with our plates of food and look at the works and chat and get to know each other.

7:30 - the chairs will be arranged upstairs to face theprojection screen. We will take turns showing-sharingourpresentations. 

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2- EMAIL FAILURE OR SUCCESS, PLEASE CONFIRM (Richard forget this part) I sent a group email on October 19th. Some of you did not receive this email. I fear that it may be going into your bulk or spam folders . The email was from this address, but because I had around 29 email addresses on this one email, that may be a flag for sending it to the bulk/spam folders. So I will try again on this address but send to individuals and not the list. Please let me know if you get this email and also if you got the one from Oct.19th. Look in your spam/bulk folders if you didn’t get the October 19th email. This will help me enormously to see if I need to get another system going. If I have time before the meeting on November 2nd I will set up a list serve with yahoo. Also Sarbjit, one of the participants, will be setting up a Myspace page which has some bells and whistles that will keep everyone informed. She has some great ideas for keeping us connected and spreading our news. 

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3 - LIST OF PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING NOV.2nd         

1. Sundus Abdul Hadi – painter, representing her art as well as her sister’s and mother’s art (Jordan), Montreal Canada
2. Halla Ayla - painted photographs from the Middle East, Mill Valley
3. Suzy Barnard - oil painter, San Francisco
4. Dina Aljuburi - representing her sister’s work Safa Aljuburi (Baghdad), Pleasanton
5. Margo Majewska - drawing and design, she is preparing a powerpoint of Iraqi artists who live out of the country and cannot attend, San Francisco
6. Mary Swanson - field sketch artist, secretary during event San Francisco
7. Sidnea D’amico - painter, San Francisco
8. Nahda Bala – Bay Area
9. Amal Almuddlall -painted fabric, Bay Area
10. Sarbjit Rai – painter-poet, San francisco
11. Zina Fattah - glass painter, Bay Area
12. Christine Nicklos – drawing, San Francisco
13. Nancy Rodger – painter, San Francisco
14. Dalia – Bay Area
15. Judith Sandoval – community organizer - photographer, San Francisco (bringing photo CD and statement)
16. Summer Shapiro – clown theater, San Francisco
17. Jennifer Clarke – oragnizational Leader – San Francisco
18. Vic Zikoor – AACC VP/Arab TV Director
19. Sherry Abrams –editor , San Francisco
20. Dima Almoamin – translator_teacher, Monterey
21. Richard Shapiro – tech, San Francisco
22. Susu Attar – San Francisco
23. Amber Hill –flow during event, San Francisco
24. Nancy Spangler –flow during event, San Francisco
25. Sarah McKnight – artist, San Francisco
26. Marjorie Hill

Remember to reply to me to confirm the receipt of this email (and the Oct.19th email) and any questions or concerns that you have.

Nancy Rodger

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The Brick Theater, Inc. presents
CLOWNIFORNIA
at the 2nd Annual New York Clown Theatre Festival
Oct. 12 @ 7 pm       Oct. 13 @ 4pm        Oct. 14 @ 10pm

The New York Premiere of
The Damsel’s Demise
by Suzanne Santos & Summer Shapiro
The Damsel’s Demise features the girlie girl, in love with her mannequin boyfriend,and the tomboy, playing war games from her cardboard box fort - polar opposites and yet all they have is each other. They operate in a world of ferocious play:
of deep companionship and perilous betrayal. During the 30 minute journey the audience finds themselves literally part of their world.

"Wow! It is one of the best shows in Clown Theater I have ever seen. Fully realized and developed. Every minute well played. Not one off move. Funny, sad, moving, complex ideas done simply."
-Judy Finelli
Artistic Director of The Pickle Family Circus, 1987-90
Co-founder of the San Francisco School for Circus Arts

TICKETS
$12 online or at the door
www.bricktheater.com/clown
https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/122

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Last Thursday, I had the wonderful experience of being interviewed on San Jose’s community Arab T.V. show. Vic Zikoor is the host of the show. He is a wonderful man with a great sense of humor. He cares greatly about the world and all of us getting along.
On the show he had me tell a little about myself and my art. I then read quotes, from emails to me, written by participating artists. I read from the power point that Margo made with an introduction about Project Art Bridge and the participating artists. Then a little slide show of my artwork and comments by myself and Vic over the images. I was a little nervous but while reading I was fine. At one point my lip was twitching and I am sure I got beat red. But that passed and it was really fun. I know now that I can go on T.V.!!! Thanks Vic!
At the end of the show Vic invited our president to put 1% of the money spent on the war towards art. He was very taken by Sundus’s painting juxtaposing the trumpets with the objects of war.

“Baghdead” © by Sundus Abdul, Montreal, Quebec

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A moment ago I opened my binder to find my notes on people to contact for the project. I was specifically looking for scribblings during speaking to Vic Zikoor who has given me many leads on finding Iraqi women artists. My plan is to call Vic and ask him please help me with a particular woman who’s name I don’t know. We spoke on the phone but had a hard time understanding one another. Actually I think she and her husband understood me much better then I could understand her. She is further up on the listening skills for my accent then I am to hers. She and her husband gave me both their emails and I sent off a note about the project and attached the sign up sheet. I never heard back from them and don’t know if they ever got the emails. I will enlist Vic to help me with this. I really want to have this woman at our share. She sounds terrific and her husband was raving about her artwork which uses fabrics.
Anyway…. back to the binder being opened. Out flew a paper which I had written after an inspirational moment. By the way wikipidea has a very meaty page about “inspiration”.
This is what I wrote on August 13th of this year.

“Just today, talking to Summer (my daughter) on the phone about my being stuck over choice of project , I was facing my drawings and paintings posted on the wall. I began to focus on the black and white drawings and pen and ink tree images. I was starring and talking. The conversation was about me being stuck, submerged in the muck, worthless, fearful and a failure. I became present to a welling up of emotions while I reacted to those images. I realized what an amazing and powerful creative soul I have. It is so moving for me to see those images and realize they came out of me. They remind me of the spirit of my creativity. I remembered that in the process of creation I can become cleansed of negativity. Now I realize that looking at those images brings a similar, yet more powerful feeling experienced while creating those images. The sensation is peaceful exhilaration that comes with strong physical sensations. I can feel the good juices stirring, lightness and uplifting clarity as though all atoms of myself and those pushing into to me are letting go and pulling back, so I can spread everywhere and be unencumbered by anything mental or physical.”

Trade in your arms for paint brushes, pen and ink, your voice and really seeing.

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Artspan (open studios) put the project in their newsletter!!!!! I got a flurry of interested artists!
I just put up several new participating artists! Sidnea D’Amico. She said, “I feel very attracted to this project”. This is very exciting to have responses such as this. Her work is beautiful.
Margo Majewska has written, “I will gladly participate. I feel that enormous injustice is being done towards Iraqi people and I would like to help anyway I can. I will submit my artwork this week. Also, I would be very happy to represent an Iraqi woman artist and to help recruiting more participants. Thank you for organizing this project. What a great idea.”
Heart warming!
Marcia Middleton wrote, “Your website looks terrific. Thank you very much for putting my work up. I feel lucky to be included.” Her oil paintings are so free and alive! Check out her page here.
It is more difficult to find and contact the Iraqi women artists living in the Bay Area. I have a lot of feelers out there and I trust more will be coming in. Dina sent out her email, in Arabic, a few days ago. She has a list of people to contact abroad who I hope will spread the word. I am crossing my fingers that this will produce more images and text from Iraqi women artists living abroad and we can share their work over here. Dina procured images of art work done by her sister, Safa Aljuburi, who lives in Baghdad. Here paintings are up here.
Several women emailed that they were confused about who could participate. I apologize for that unclarity. Dina and I went over and over how to best express this tongue twister. The idea is that all Bay Area Women Artists are invited to participate, including Iraqi and Non Iraqies. Also Iraqi women artists who live abroad can particpate by sending us material to share here. I think that when we were writing how to best address the abroad people, the wording got less clear for the women in the Bay Area.

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This morning, my friend and participating artist, Mary Swanson, and I went to City College. We spoke about the Project to Kay Russell’s watercolor class. We got a good response. Many in the class were interested enough to take hand outs and sign up sheets. I stressed that being an accomplished or a beginning painter didn’t matter. The point is that our art is a vehicle to use as a connecting point towards getting together and learning about one another. This made a difference in people feeling more open to participate. So many of us feel like we aren’t “good enough” to show or share our wook.
Mary is a great help in this project and sees that it is meaningful and something beyond ourselves. I showed her the video on Halla’s website. Halla Ayla is an artist who lives in Mill Valley and was born in Iraq. She paints photographs she has taken in Iraq and abroad, with watercolors.
I also showed Mary the link to the Montalvo Art Center and the program which “invites the public to learn about the significance of the current circumstances of Iraq in a global and historical context.”

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Project Art Bridge came to me like a bolt of lightening one day. I was in a workshop geared to making our lives work, gain inspiration, and make a difference in the world. It was my job to come up with a project that would sing to me. I was coming up with some ideas that didn’t quite make it. They usually involved me doing something similar to what I had already done and already knew about. Non of those projects would push me forward in a new way or over the top in excitement.

Our workshop leader gave us examples of projects others had done. She told us how to begin to put the project down on paper in a format that was clear and simple so anyone hearing it would instantly get it . We were told to write out 5 projects, zip zap, in 15 minutes! That was only 3 minutes for thinking what is was and writing it out in the specified format! I thought I was going to start with the two I already had, one involving strangers knitting on one giant hat and talking about themselves to each other and the other one networking within my job.

But instead - boom - this new one came out:

Get Iraqi artists who are mothers and Bay Area Artists who are mothers together to share their art and make a book that would be sent to mothers in Iraq.

I wasn’t exactly sure if we, the artists, would do a group project or work on individual pieces that would be represented in the book or how and where would we find all the mothers in Iraq and all the Iraqi Artists and Bay Area Artists. But it was unfolding to be very exciting. I spoke about it with some of my friends and in doing so the project was streamlined a bit. I got rid of the “mother” specification. Possibly creating something all together got turned into getting together to share each other’s work first. The book concept is still out there and in the works, just on the back burner. At the moment I am gathering people to help make this project work. I have found some really really great people who are enthusiastic and wonderful.

I hope they as well as others who find me will feel free to write in this blog and be the conversation that this project brings forth. I hope that the “me” turns into “we” and the “we” is everyone who wants to get involved in anyway, even if it is just checking in to see what we are up to. You can look at the “get involved” link and get some ideas on how you can…. get involved. Or please email me or post a comment about something you would like to do for the project or can think of something that needs to be done.

You don’t have to be a woman or an artist to get involved. In doing so we are all going to learn something we hadn’t know before, about someone and or a culture. I already have learned a lot and taking steps to come out of my cocoon of working alone being a web designer and painting alone. I hope to see you all at some huge event someday where we celebrate the sharing of the creativity of women from two different cultures.

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