August: Art & Popcorn!

Summertime Reading: Whirligig Interviews

Our friend Katherine Bazak interviews her longtime friend, Bay Area playwright and author, Sharmon Hilfinger for Whirligig, Nanette’s online platform for interviews with creative entities. Read this enticing conversation to gain insight about the writing life and regional live theater here.


First Sundays Open Studio at Art Bias
Sunday, August 6, 12–4pm

Art Bias 
1700 Industrial Road, San Carlos

We will present Meaning Maker as part of our hallway art on display outside our Art Bias studio #215. Meaning Maker is a conceptual art project designed for personal self reflection. Five editions of Meaning Maker will be featured this month, free for the taking by Art Bias visitors. Popcorn will be served.


Hand Bookbinders of California, Annual Members’ Exhibition
August 7–October 1, 2023

Arion Press Gallery 
1802 Hays Street, the Presidio, San Francisco, California
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 12, 2:00–4:00pm.
Hors d’oeuvres, beer and wine served with friends and literary eye candy!
Gallery Walk-through: Thursday, August 17, 5:30–7:00pm

Kent Manske, Corpus Animare Volumes I, II, & III, artist books

We are showing four photographs from a new body of work titled: Encyclopedic: Weathered Volumes. Kent is also exhibiting his artist books, Corpus Animare Volumes I, II, & III.

About: Hand Bookbinders of California


Westward Bound II
August 17–September 10, 2023

Kent Manske, San Francisco Bay, artist book

Spark Gallery
900 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, Colorado in the Santa Fe Arts District

Westward Bound II is organized by Abecedarian Artists’ Books and asks the question What is The American West? Virtually every part of the United States except the Eastern Seaboard has been “the West” at some point in American history, linked in popular imagination with the last frontier of American settlement. For purposes of this exhibition, The American West refers to that vast stretch of plains, mountains, and deserts west of the Mississippi River. Kent and Nanette’s collaborative book Foodies: Seven West Coast Foodie Vignettes, and Kent’s book San Francisco Bay are on exhibit. The gallery is also featuring a separate exhibition of books by our artist friends Alicia Bailey and Rhiannon Alpers.

It’s pARTy time!

Join us at Anne and Mark’s Art Party & Opening Night Gala on September 24th. There will be 300+ exhibiting artists, live music, dance, spoken word, fire arts, fashion shows and food trucks. This event is at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San José, California. Get your tickets in advance at: artpartysj.com

kent_art_party
Kent will exhibit new works from three print series: Conditions narrate states of being and coping strategies. Nests is a series of one-of-a-kind experimental prints. Cells explores imaginary living organisms and microbiome.

Nanette will exhibit four images from On Longing, a series of 50 unique monoprints completed this last summer. Each print is a mandala which contemplates and celebrates the natural world. The series takes its name from Susan Stewart’s book: On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. The Art Party is discussed in the Mercury News, where Nan’s work is also featured.

Photo of the studio while the On Longing series was still in-progress, Spring 2016.
Photo of the studio while the On Longing series was still in-progress, Spring 2016.


Meaning Maker is 10!
Of course, we are trying to make sense of the upcoming November election. Thus we have created a new and improved version of Meaning Maker U.S. Presidential Elections Edition. Download your free copy at the Meaning Maker website, and distribute as you will.

Meaning Maker LogoIn the San Francisco Bay Area, U.S. Presidential Elections Edition was on exhibit and take away in Vote your Subconscious at Works/San José and will be exhibiting in: POLITICS (NOT) AS USUAL at Branner Spangenberg Gallery:
275A Linden Street in Redwood City from Oct 7 – Nov 13, 2016.
Opening Reception: Friday, Oct 7, 2016, 5:30 – 7:30pm.

This Summer we hand-delivered Art Viewing Experience Edition and U.S. Presidential Elections Edition to two significant events in Europe: The 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany; and the opening of the Tate Modern Switch House in London. Other European museum and gallery locations which experienced bursts of Meaning Makers include: Brussels, Paris, Dresden and Prague.


Don Drake and Kate Jordahl invited Kent to write the afterword for Kate’s True North Editions, one poem book, no. 6, featuring Don’s poem, End. The book launch for one poem books no. 5 and no. 6 will be at Don Drake’s Studio, Dreaming Mind, on Saturday, October 8th from 2 – 4 pm. There will be readings! 5664 Sun Ridge Court in Castro Valley, CA.

Kent is also showing in Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: In Defense of Culture at the San Francisco Main Library, Skylight Gallery, 100 Larkin Street, from September 17 – January 1, 2017.

The Future, an artists’ book collaboration between Nanette and Nora Raggio, will be showing the month of October in Words|Matter, Chicago.

Nanette’s Storyland v2 was invited for exhibition in Shapeshifting Texts, International Conference on Digital Media and Textuality in Bremen, Germany. Her print, Propagare, was exhibited at the Graphic Arts Workshop, Scuola Internaziale di Grafica in Venice, Italy; and she received a juror’s award for her needle felted book, Between Us Two, at The Art of the Book, Sebastopol Center for Art in Sebastopol, California.

Our collaborative photo book, CSI: Las Vegas, was included in 23 Sandy Gallery’s summertime Wanderlust exhibition and subsequently acquired by UCLA’s Fine Arts Library.


On another note, we’ve decided to take an extended leave from facebook. We still want to hear about your Art Adventures, however. Our individual emails are the best way to let us know what you are doing. We continue to engage with instagram: @kent.manske @nanwylde

Breezy Spring Pollination

The busy spring bees have us both showing books and prints in a handful of exhibitions. We are also excited to cross-pollinate our social practices with an upcoming Meaning Maker intervention.

We celebrated Dada’s 100th anniversary with a poetry reading :
Nothing is Here, DaDa is its Name

Nothing is Here: Dada is its Name

Branner Spangenberg Gallery, Redwood City, California.
Curator: Michael Paulker.
Closing & Dada Performance: Sunday, May 1, 4pm.


Wanderlust
23 Sandy Gallery, Portland, Oregon.
Curator: Laura Russell.
May 27 - July 30, 2016.

Wanderlust is a German word made from wandern which means walking and lust which translates as desire. We are showing CSI: Las Vegas in this exhibition.


LOOK! BOOK ARTS 

Look Book Arts! at Healdsburg Center for the Arts

Healdsburg Center for the Arts, Healdsburg, California.
Curator: C.K.Itamura.
April 14 – May 22, 2016.
Closing Tea & Salon: Sunday, May 22, 2 – 4pm.


Home at Art Ark, San José

manske_nest_4c

Opening Reception: Friday, May 6th, 6-9 pm.
Curator: Valerie Raps.

We are honored to participate in Valerie Raps last exhibition as curator of Art Ark. Her ten year tenure has launched Art Ark as an important San José art venue. Please come honor Valerie and her partner, Andrew Hedges, during the reception on May 6th.
Pictured is Kent’s Nest IVc.

April South First Fridays Art Walk in San José.


Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here!

March 5 – May 15, 2016
Museum of Contemporary Crafts & Multnomah County Library, both in Portland, Oregon.
Beau Beausoleil’s curatorial project which responds to the bombing of the booksellers’ street in Bagdad continues to inform, inspire and activate us.


Meaning Maker
We will be distributing our Control and U.S. Presidential Elections editions of Meaning Maker at: Open Engagement 2016 POWER, April 28 - May 1. This social practice conference is headquartered at the Oakland Museum of California and includes many additional sites throughout the Bay Area.


In early April, Nanette and Nora Raggio showed their book, The Future, in Space Jam at The Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City. Nanette is exhibiting in The Illustrated Accordion at The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 6 – 27.

YAY! Here’s cheers to all of the springy art abounding in our universe.

Chocolate Foodie Wishes for February 2015

We have been hungrily working on three new projects for Mooncakes, Churros, and Cherry Pie which opens today at the Euphrat Museum in Cupertino, California. It is feeling like we just ate a whole box of designer chocolate truffles.

mooncakes_sm

February 2 – March 19
Reception: Febraury 18, 5:30 – 7:30 pm.
See the Museum website for the full schedule of events associated with this exhibition.

One of our new projects is a Meaning Maker: Food Edition. Download your copy from the Meaning Maker website.


Paul Davies‘ (Whirligig Interview, March 2013) opera, Carlota, will be performed Sunday, February 15th, at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose, CA.

The opera is directed by Daniel Helfgot with Barbara Day Turner conducting the ensemble. Soprano Christine Capsuto sings the title role of Carlota, Stephen Guggenheim, tenor, is Maximiliano, and mezzo-soprano Kayleigh Decker is Carlota’s handmaiden, Sara.

For ticket information Carlota Opera 2x