Community Creates! Re-Opens the Palo Alto Art Center

The inaugural exhibition of the newly transformed Palo Alto Art Center will be Community
Creates!, which partners eight contemporary artists with community members to create
installation projects in the new gallery space. This exhibition presents compelling
contemporary installations in a wide variety of media that includes community participation. Paz de la Calzada

Paz de la Calzada. Vertical Garden. Fabric, wire, glue and charcoal.

Paz de la Calzada. Vertical Garden. Detail of the installation.

The work I created for this exhibition is titled "Vertical Garden". It consists in hand made fern leaves that seem to grow in the walls of the Palo Alto Art Center. I worked with members of Palo Alto community to create the fern leaves with scraps of fabrics and clothes donated by the public.
The exhibition, that opened last October 6th, will be open until April 2013.

Paz de la Calzada. Creating fern leaves with the community the day of the Opening

Where Art Originates
Panel Discussion Series
in Conjunction with COMMUNITY CREATES!

Palo Alto Art Center and Djerassi resident Artist Program

MUTUAL GIFTS: SAYING YES TO TRUST
Wednesday November 14th, 7pm

IS THE MEDIUM THE MESSAGE?
Wednesday January 16th, 7pm
 
REPRESENTING COMMUNITY
Friday April 12, 7pm

Palo Alto Art Center
1313 Newell Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303

Taxes Pay For What? - An Urban Action

Another successful day for our Daily Slots. Sunday April 8th 11 am in the morning. I go to the laundromat across the street from my house to change a 10 dollars bill in quarters. When I get to City Hall plaza Eliza is already there, by one of the newspaper stands. She is organizing the letters by words so that it will be easier for us to place them in the newspaper stands. We've done this many times but there is always excitement. It's Farmer's Market day so a lot of people walk around with their veggies. We start opening the stands and placing our letters inside. Some people stop to watch us, a few of them take photos of the action. They can read TAXES PAY FOR WHAT?

Daily Slots. Corner of Van Ness and Mcallister, San Francisco

Daily Slots is an ongoing collaboration project between Paz de la Calzada and Eliza Barrios. It started in 2010 when after observing the obsolete newspaper stands around the city we decided to reuse them by sending bi-weekly messages.

Taxes  Pay for What?- An urban Intervention by San Francisco City Hall

From Djerassi to Market or Vice-versa

I am enjoying another residency at Djerassi Resident Artist Program in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I am so grateful and happy to be back to what it was my first home in California. However this year my stay feels more like an spiritual retirement, since the last two years have been very busy working in dialogue with the City of San Francisco, around Mid Market and the Tenderloin, and interacting with its people.  This feels like a nice break to put things together.

Two years ago I collaborated with artist and friend Eliza Barrios (www.elizabarrios.com) in a project called Daily Slots. During a month we used the Newspaper's stands from the Clearchannel company to deliver messages, raise questions and engage with the people. Very early in the morning we would replace the front newspaper with printed letters that would form words and sentences. "Convenience is the enemy", "Credito de hoy, hambre de manana", "Capitalism is over if you want it!" where some of the titles that San Franciscans would find instead of the usual newspaper cover.

Convenience is The Enemy. DAILY SLOTS. July 2010

Central Market Street and the Tenderloin were also the source of inspiration for another project called Tenderloin Dreamscapes.  It started with a few animations using charcoal to playfully change the urban landscape.

This Tenderloin Dreamscapes series took me to Mid market where I worked for a few weeks in a large charcoal drawing intervention covering partially the facade of the old Strand Theater.

An now back to my studio in the woods in the Santa Cruz Mountains I continue working in a project that address the way we perceive the urban landscape.

The city is a territory full of stories that inspire my art practice. When I walk or bike in the city I notice a very complex web of connections, including my own connection with the urban landscape and its inhabitants. All these chaotic relationships influence the way I look at the world, at our city, the way I hear its stories and how I notice its people.

Urban Decoration Project. Tenderloin District

Here in the woods I am working on how to integrate certain natural organic forms into the urban furniture, walls, floors or any other architectural elements. San Francisco inspire me to act as a decorator, as a co-creator of a story that takes place in between what I see and what I envision.

Urban Decoration Project. Market and 7th

NUMINA FEMENINA: Latin Women in the Arts

Opening Reception
Thursday October 20, 2011
6:30 - 9pm
Consulate General of Mexico in San Francisco
532 Folsom Street
San Francisco, CA., 94105

This month of October I have worked on a piece called Wall Intervention at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco. I have created a large wall charcoal drawing in the stairs of the building.

On view October 20 through December 13 at the Consulate General of Mexico in San Francisco, the exhibit consists of 16 events involving 5 artistic disciplines. Numina Femenina celebrates women’s contribution to aesthetics and poetics, through literature, film, music, dance and visual arts. The key aspect of this ambitious project is making art more accessible to the community, by taking it out of conventional spaces such as museums and conference rooms.

Paz de la Calzada working on her wall drawing

The main exhibition, featuring a selection of video, installation, murals and more, will take place within the facilities of the Consulate General of Mexico, making the art accessible to everyone. The Latin women artists showing in Numina Femenina will be interacting with the public at the Consulate.

Dreamscape at the Strand Theatre

From April 18th to May 2nd I will be realizing a long time vision mural wrapping the Facade of the legendary Strand Theatre.  Ill be covering with charcoal part of the Strand. It will almost be like a meditation/performance as it will imply lots of fine strands made and lines. As many of you know, the Strand Theatre is located on Market St betwwen 7th and 8th, right across the street from the UN Plaza and the Farmers Market.

Built in 1917, the Strand became a legend. It went from projecting independent movies and venue for revival cinema to a porn theatre showing projected video. It also became a popular venue for midnight showings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".

 The theatre deteriorated in the late '90 as it became a haven for crack dealers and hookers. It was closed in 2003. This was also the end to theatres that showed movies on Market Street.

This is the second year, Art in Storefronts  returns to Central Market with six storefront installations and five murals. The latest in The ARTery Project’s efforts to revitalize a once-vibrant commercial corridor, the program temporarily places original art installations by San Francisco artists in vacant and under-used storefront windows and exterior walls.

The new projects will be unveiled at a launch event on Friday, May 13, from 5−7 p.m., that will also include receptions at three neighborhood galleries, the debut of two sculptures made possible by Black Rock Arts Foundation, live music, and Off the Grid food trucks. The festivities will kick off outside of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts at 998 Market Street with an unveiling of two murals. Gamelan X, a Balinese fusion ensemble, will lead a procession up Market Street where the public may catch performances by the John Brothers Piano Company; the Jazz Sawyer Trio; and the Space Cowboys DJ Collective performing on their hi-tech mobile sound system called The Unimog at U.N. Plaza.

Central Market Dreamscape, Strand Theatre, San Francisco

Photography by Michael Rauner