Reintroductions – by Todd Gilens

TG front

Levy Art & Architecture is pleased to present “Reintroductions” by Todd Gilens, an exhibition of photographs and a newly commissioned installation. This show extends the Endangered Species Project that Gilens completed with San Francisco MUNI in 2012. The intent is to bring attention to our environment through fauna that are endangered, central to the San Francisco Bay ecosystem, and largely unseen by the local human population. The show runs from March 28th through June 30th; there will be an opening reception on Thursday April 17, 2014 from 6-9 pm. The installation will be in place for 6 months.

Inside the gallery are photographs based on Gilens’ 2011-12 Endangered Species project, in which he designed four buswraps for San Francisco Muni buses, each wrap an enlarged photograph of a local endangered animal. As these buses circulated from route to route, the artist followed them with his camera, on foot, by bicycle, car and motorcycle, photographing them all around the city. The photographs document the juxtaposition of the wrapped buses as they travel through the urban context. This is the first San Francisco exhibition of theses photographs.

A new project commissioned by Levy Art and Architecture for the gallery’s facade extends this work by returning images of the Sacramento Sucker (Catostomus occidentalis) to Noe Valley. The LA&A studio is immediately adjacent to the historic course of Precita Creek, that these fish likely inhabited. The creek ran from Twin Peaks to the Bay shore, along what is now upper 24th Street, prior to the development of the area in the early 1900’s. This hundred and fifty square-foot print installed on the studio façade brings the fish back to an original habitat through our collective imaginations. The exhibition coincides with the 2014 “bio-blitz” a project sponsored by National Geographic and The GGNRA to discover, count and document the living creatures in the parks.

By reproducing images of these animals at larger than life scale and installing them in unexpected ways, the artworks emphasize the precarious situation that these creatures, and their human counterparts, are in. They serve as reminders of our mutual dependence or as Gilens says, “no species goes extinct in isolation; extinction is also the loss of relationships.”

He continues: I think of these projects as collections of metaphors, unfolding physically and conceptually, from the structure and systems of the city and adjacent open spaces, through the presence of the buses with their images of animals in their habitats. Photographic prints are another level, where what is common, like buses in public space, becomes rare, as limited edition prints – just as animal, and also human populations, may move between common and threatened or extinct. Yet the prints are stable, whereas the buswraps have been destroyed, are only a memory. Part of the work is always a bit elsewhere in time, space or meaning. This may be what I’m really working with, opening a space for considering relationships, for asking about vulnerability and rarity, about how priorities are assigned and managed.”

Todd Gilens is a visual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His website is Follywog.com.

2014 – International Year of Family Farming

IYFF card

The United Nations declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) to highlight the importance of family and smallholder farmers. Food Tank is partnering with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to commemorate IYFF, and will feature weekly posts and other media highlighting the innovations that family farmers are using to alleviate hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation along with the campaigns and policies that support them.

The International Year of Family Farming honors over 400 million family farms in both developed and developing countries, defined as farms that rely primarily on family members for labour and management. Such farms produce the food that feeds billions of people. In many developing countries family farms make up on average up to 80 percent of all farm holdings.

But small and medium-size family farms are suffering across the world. One bad harvest, a rejected bank loan, or too much or too little rain can drive farms out of business.

“The most effective way to combat hunger and malnutrition is to produce food near the consumers, precisely what family farming does, not the large itinerant investors,” explains Jose Antonio Osaba (WRF), Coordinator of the IYFF-2014 Civil Society Programme.  Food Tank acknowledges the crucial importance of family farming and its potential to help create a more sustainable and just food system.

Forthcoming reports by FAO and Food Tank suggest that through local knowledge and sustainable, innovative farming methods, family farmers can improve yields and create a more nutrient-dense and diverse food system. Family farmers are key players in job creation and healthy economies, supplying jobs to millions and boosting local markets.

During 2014 Food Tank will be releasing a variety of materials for the International Year of Family Farming, including a research report that will come out early next year, a series of weekly articles on Food Tank’s website, and a petition encouraging support of family farmers across the world. Today we are excited to release a new video highlighting the importance of family farming in alleviating hunger and poverty!

Over the next year, let’s remember that farmers aren’t just food producers – they’re business women and men, they’re teachers in their communities, they’re innovators and inventors, and they’re stewards of the land who deserve to recognized for the ecosystem services they provide that benefit us all.

Linear Space – by Deborah Sibony

Art Sibony Post

Please join us on Wesnesday December 4th  from 6-9 for the opening of:

Linear Space

Deborah Sibony Monotypes

at Levy Art and Architecture,

1286 Sanchez St., SF, CA

visit us at levyaa.com for directions

Deborah Sibony’s work and aesthetic derive in large part from her heritage — North African — and her formative cultural experience growing up in Italy. She starts her prints by traveling into history, memory and imagination; interested in patterns and boundaries, both physical and cultural. What happens when you get near? What crosses over, what is connected and what is repeated? She hopes to reflect transitions and overlapping experiences that give form to the contemporary world and shape our experiences.  Sibony uses a variety of printmaking methods to connect and assimilate a progression of ideas. Deborah uses visceral properties of paint and the power of color to convey the drama of emotions. As the layers change and become more complex, history and memory become part of the conversation. The visual language is primordial, melodic, baroque and industrial.

Sharon Risedorph – Opening

2013 Risedorph Email

Please join us on Thursday September 5th from 6-9 for the opening of:

Composition – Decomposition

by Sharon Risedorph

at Levy Art and Architecture,
1286 Sanchez St., SF, CA
visit us at levyaa.com for directions.

Sharon Risedorph’s recent work at Pier 70 looks directly at the early twentieth century waterfront landscape and finds in it a wealth of inspiration.  These works do not illustrate the size, scale, type or texture of the historical places; rather they find a wealth of raw material that is employed to create works of special presence.   These are pure renditions of light and form, “made” in a creative process that is the result of exploration, observation and opportunism.  Sharon uses the lens to produce works that are at once crisply photographic and richly abstract.  They embody space and form in the same way that James Turrell’s works render light as physical matter.  These images take the everyday, the discarded, the common and reposition it, elevating it to the level of abstraction that inspires curiosity and introspection.

Neighborhoods will Survive (a happy Real Estate Story)

We are all well aware of the economic pressures on the real estate market in our region and the resulting gentrification.  Gentrification is a word that is bandied about a lot and, depending on your perspective, is either; the decline of western civilization, or the seed of urban revitalization.  Either way, the wave of new wealth that is cascading over the region is bigger than policy and will undoubtedly yield long lasting, physical and social remnants.

While we can comment upon and shape these changes, we need to be cognizant of their causes and effects and try to work for the best outcomes for all.  Too often, we throw our hands up in despair and hopelessness. Here is a real estate story with a happy ending that suggests that there is and will always be a place for locals in our growing and changing City.

A woman, lets call her Becky, lived in a flat in Noe Valley.  When a young couple bought the two unit building, they had no choice but to evict Becky, invoking the Ellis Act.  Becky you see was young and her upstairs neighbor was an older woman who was a “protected tenant” under the law.  This made Becky the only target for the new owners who were themselves young and, having just been tenants themselves, sympathetic to Becky’s plight but unable to occupy their new home without removing her.  Becky moved, not too far from where the flat was.

A year or so later, she ran into her former flat mate, the older woman from upstairs.  The woman told Becky that she was ready to retire and was going to move to Florida.  She went on to explain that the new owners of the building felt terribly guilty about having had to evict Becky and would like nothing better than to have her move back in, this time upstairs.  Becky moved back in with her new boyfriend, Paul, and life proceeded.

Two more years passed and the young couple, now with a child, a growing three person household, came to Becky and Paul with more bad news.  They needed more space and had purchased a single family house across the street.  They would have to sell the  apartment building, and did not want to see Becky and Paul homeless again.  With this notice Becky and Paul set about polling their friends to see if anyone wanted to go in with them and buy the building as a TIC (Tenancy in Common).  They found partners and were able to acquire the building in 2008, as interest rates were falling and the deal became affordable.  They moved in and set about the necessary inspection and repair process that would allow them to create condominiums and each become owners of their own homes.

Three years later, that process was complete, and once again, interest rates had dropped allowing them to refinance and providing them the security of a long term financial instrument and the pleasures of home ownership.  Becky and Paul live there today with their cats.  They walk the neighborhood where they have now lived for over fifteen years.  They are locals, Paul is a mechanic and Becky works in fashion.  They work in and frequent local businesses, they know their neighbors and they participate in community events.  The moral of the story, real estate transactions can have happy endings,  not all evictions lead to disenfranchisement and the social fabric of our neighborhoods will survive.

Zero Energy House hits Asia

Blog FuturArc JanFeb2013cover

Zero Energy House was published in FuturARC (an Asian Green Architecture magazine) early in 2013, in an article written by Jalel Sager.  The article explores the California codes, the most stringent in the US (probably the world). Here Jalel finds several developments that go further than most; their owners speak of sharing their abode with the planet. The battle between the personal and the political is fought on the fringes of mainstream Green.

Here is a PDF of the article

Green California Article from Jan-Feb FutureArc

San Francisco Remodel

Blog FDemo Main

This Noe Valley Remodel pushes the envelope of what most would call a remodel, but when you start with an old small house a little goes a long way.

The house is being slightly lifted to allow for a full height understory and a new story is being added to dramatically increase the space, view and use.

The City of San Francisco and most jurisdictions have rules for what is allowed.  In the case of San Francisco the permit process is much easier for a renovation, the only issue is that you can only change so much before it’s considered a demolition.  However there’s sometimes tax consequences, so check with a financial adviser.