Three Artists on Three Floors

Date: Sep 24 - Nov 26,2011

Reception date: Sep 24,2011

Curator: Theres Rohan

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 24, 2011 5-8pm
Three Artists Talk: Gallery Program
Date and Time: Saturday, October 29, 2011 4pm - 6pm
Topic: Process and Inspiration - how their work comes to be

DAVID LINGER: panels
narrative panels in vitrified porcelain

David Linger. The new work by David Linger will feature again, by his description, narrative panels in vitrified porcelain. With this new body of work his essay on art and life continues. The panels are composed of a complex clay/porcelain process and carry a silk- screened image. He arranges the images in cinematic sequence thus telling his story.

Caption: Young Man, Moscow 1969 (detail), 2010, Each Panel 12.5" x 10" x .08", Undeglaze screen print on vitrified porcelain

SANDRA BEARD: magenta
objects and small-scale drawings on rice papers with pigment and wax

Sandra Beard. This new, her second show at Meridian Gallery, will feature small- scale drawings on various kinds of papers, as well as objects that further submit ideas of containment and secrecy presented in the two dimensional format. Her choice of materials, especially the fragile waxed rice papers, are a crucial factor of her visual expression.

Caption: Circle Dance, 2009, Each 10" x 10" x 10", Kozo paper, pigment, wax

KIMETHA VANDERVEEN: pared down language
paintings on altered panels and folios from her drawing practice

Kimetha Vanderveen. Her exhibition is titled ‘pared down language’ and will occupy the third floor of the gallery. She will feature painting on lightly sanded and highly polished wood panels. There will also be a selection from her extensive drawing practice. In painting, as well as in drawing, this artist’s concern is one of coming to visual essence – to essence of visual language. A small publication of her Nest Drawings will accompany the exhibition.

Caption: Winter, 2011, 19 1/2" x 5 3/8", Oil paint on pine board

Other events

Love and Bullets: A San Francisco Love Story Gala

The Festival will culminate in LOVE and BULLETS: A San Francisco Love Story, a one night gala on November 12, 2011 starting at 7 pm celebrating the Meridian Center for the Arts 21 years of successful service to our community and to commemorate the 100th anniversary of our home and its most famous earlier residents— Tessie Wall and her husband Frank Daroux. Celebrations at the Gala, with performances by Freddi Price, Anya Malkiel, tango by Christy Cote and Darren Lees, and a period costume lecture/exhibition entitled, Overdress and Undress in the Working Life of Tessie Wall, and a special Meridian performance by Danish composer, Søren Kjærgaard, will honor their time in San Francisco history and include historic libations and hors d’oeuvres, costumes, sound art and dance. Tickets $50.

Choreographer as Community Engagement

Community artist Alexis Iammarino calls herself a facilitator. As such, her primary goal is to impart that no body exists outside of its relationship to other bodies by guiding people through cooperative art making. Alexis will be in residency at Meridian gallery for 3 fun-filled weeks during which she will engage with local low-income youth. Together, Alexis and her participants will develop an evening length performance as part of the House at 100 celebrations. Alexis has a truly effective way of setting a space for participants to discover themselves and each other as valuable resources. During a recent workshop of hers a woman told me, “I didn’t know I was a dancer, but I am. And, because we danced together, we are now friends."

At Sea, reading and conversation by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Hirschman

Lawrence Ferlinghetti. preeminent poet, painter, publisher, agent provocateurs studied at Columbia University, the Sorbonne and the Academie Julien in Paris after World War II. He is known as one of the best American poets of his generation, who CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND is translated in many languages and has sold over a million copies. He is a publisher and bookseller, the founder of City Lights Books, which is the place where he sold Allan Ginsberg's HOWL and was arrested on obscenity charges. Felinghetti is also a painter of excellence, exhibiting his work in San Francisco and Rome. At Meridian he will recite his recently completed major poem AT SEA for the first time.

Film Screening: Classic San Francisco Double Feature: Barbary Coast and Dark Passage

Madams of the Barbary Coast with introduction by Daniel Bacon founder of the Barbary Coast Trail

Daniel Bacon presents a screening of Madams of the Barbary Coast. He is the writer and founder of the Barbary Coast Trail, San Francisco’s official history walk. He is also a Board member of the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society. He will introduce and contextualize the documentary, Madams of the Barbary Coast in which one meets Tessie Wall and a diverse group of the Madams and some of the sex workers who flourished or perished in the mythically male- dominated mileux of early 20th century San Francisco. The Film, both flamboyant and shocking, was directed by Michael Rohde and produced by Vénus Oriane. Daniel Bacon will also do a Q and A.

Easy Town: Sunny Jim Rolph's San Francisco

James "Sunny Jim" Rolph's election in 1911 — the year that the Perrine mansion was built — marked the beginning of an era for San Francisco that led President Taft to dub it "The City That Knows How." Under Mayor Rolph, San Francisco hosted a spectacular world's fair, built the Civic Center and numerous fine schools and libraries, created the Muni, and launched the Hetch Hetchy water and power system. Its sobriquet "The Paris of the Pacific" was also code for an open town where everything was available for a price as long as it didn't spook the horses too badly. Gray Brechin will discuss why the vice behind the city's glittering facade was so widely tolerated that San Francisco remains to this day a place well apart from mainland America.

Voodoo and Art, reading by Herb Gold

An evening of a film on Haiti and a talk by Gold. Herbert Gold is an outstanding American writer. Originally, close to the Beats and a close friend of Allan Ginsberg in New York, he moved to San Francisco where he still resides. He is best known as the author of novels, including the well known FATHERS and THE GIRL OF FORTY. Gold is also a fine writer of non-fiction, several of his worksdealing with San Francisco and Haiti, a country he visits regularly.

House at 100: Arts Festival and Gala

The Centennial Celebration of the Home of Meridian Center for the Arts

SF State Poetry: Anna Moschovakis and John Sakkis

ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS's recent publications include You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake (Coffee House Press, 2011), a book of poetry, recently selected for the Second Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, and her translations from the French of Egyptian writer Albert Cossery’s novel The Jokers, and The Engagement, one of Georges Simenon's extraordinary "romans durs" (both from New York Review of Books). Based in Brooklyn and in upstate New York, she is an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse, and teaches at Pratt Institute and in Bard’s interdisciplinary MFA program. JOHN SAKKIS is the author of Rude Girl (BlazeVOX Books), and with Angelos Sakkis he has translated two books by Athenian poet and multi-media artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis — Maribor (The Post-Apollo Press), awarded the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation, and Chinese Notebook (Ugly Duckling Presse). Under the moniker BOTH BOTH he has curated various projects including: blog, reading series, music collaboration, and since 2005 a magazine. A graduate of SFSU and Naropa University, he lives in Oakland and works for Small Press Distribution. Photo: Drummond Buckley.

Tread the Tendernob

Amy's "Tread the Tendernob" is a performed walking tour through the neighborhood around Meridian Gallery. Amy will take audiences from the brothels to the 5-star hotels, exploring the rich history and evolution of this complex area, then and now.

Textile Workshop: Silk Artificial Flowers

Learn the basic techniques of artificial silk flower-making from fabric preparation to shaping the petals using flower iron tools to assembling the finished hand-painted and dyed product.