Kent and Nanette wish you Light, Warmth & Occupation
this Winter Solstice and throughout the coming year.
this Winter Solstice and throughout the coming year.
Occupy at PreNeo Press
Whirligig Interview: Valerie Raps
Whirligig is all tooled up over a new interview with metal arts artist Valerie Raps and her recent public art project for San José’s  Alum Rock History Corridor Project.
Cultivating Community is a life-size, stylized spring tooth harrow created from fabricated steel and cast bronze. The tines of the harrow are made from casting the arms of ten San José community members.
The sculpture is located at Tropicana Shopping Center at King and Story Roads in East San José.
The dedication ceremony is Saturday, October 29, 10:15 – 11:30 am.
Read Valerie’s interview here: whirligig.hungerbutton.org
Autumn Events
We have a few things going on this season to share with you.
Book Arts Jam at Foothill College
Saturday October 15, 10 – 4
Nanette will be writing Poems on the Spot with Robert Perry as part of Spontaneous Word Combustion
Both Kent and Nanette will be showing book works in several of the Jam exhibitions, including a group showing of Focus Generator inspired projects.
Uncommon Threads
23 Sandy Gallery, Portland, Oregon.
September 23 – October 29
Encoded Structures: Interpreting the Story
Handmade & Bound, Watkins College of Art, Nashville, Tennessee
September 30 – October 31
15th Anniversary Exhibition
San Francisco Center for the Book, 16th at Deharo, San Francisco, California
through November
Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze
SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco.
November 4 – 26
The Asian Connection: Art in a Global Age
Asian Arts Gallery at Towson University, Towson, Maryland.
through November 5
Whirligig Interview with Steven Andrew Kacsmar
Whirligig is singing the praises of Steven Andrew Kacsmar. Kacsmar is a San Francisco based singer songwriter. His band Phantom City has just released its second CD Off the Map.
Visit Whirligig to read Steven’s interview: whirligig.hungerbutton.org
Focus Generator
PreNeo Press is focusing in on creative strategies with a new online project:
Focus Generator.
Focus Generator is a tool for artists who enjoy the challenge of randomly set project parameters; and for those who find that preset parameters help them to focus their creative energies into projects beyond their previous imaginings.
Focus Generator comes in three flavors: Focus Generator, is the primary engine and provides the highest level of challenge for the contemporary creative. Focus Light is a mid level machine for those who know their media yet enjoy the challenge of content triggers. Custom Focus provides the the highest level of individuation as it allows Participants to custom select from four areas of randomly generated stimuli.
Take the Focus Generator Challenge and check out the creative work of Focus Generator Participants: http://focusgenerator.net
Stephanie Metz Residency
Summer 2011 Residency Artist Stephanie Metz created a series of Monotypes with Drypoint and Chine Colle during her time in the print studios. Stephanie’s focus is overly domesticated creatures, especially those whose form has overgrown their function.
Visit Stephanie’s Residency page to see all twelve prints.
Lyn Bishop Residency
Lyn Bishop focused on her move to Panama for the prints she made at PreNeo Press during her Summer 2011 Residency.
Lyn created two editions employing digital pigment printing, monotype, drypoint, screeprint and chine colle. Visit her residency page and read about her time at PreNeo Press in her blog, Sharing Secrets.
Spring 2011 Artists in the Print Studios
Erin Manske and Maggie Manske were our Spring 2011 Residency Artists. These cousins came together during their shared spring break to visit us in California. The projects they created — although they are very different in both concept and form — both demonstrate a strong interest in interpersonal communication.
Erin created a broadside which included her own collected writings. Maggie created a blank journal as a device to communicate with a person she seeks to be closer to.
You can see Erin and Maggie’s projects at PreNeo Press Residency in the Prints Studios.
Summer Reading
Kent and Nanette are launching this summer with three exhibitions showing their artists’ books. Happy Summer reading!
Bibliophoria II
June 16 – July 23
Sebastopol Center for the Arts
6780 Depot St.
Sebastopol, California
BOOKWORKS, Pacific Center for the Book Arts’ Fourteenth Triennial
June 18 Â – Â August 7
San Francisco Public Library
Main branch Skylight Gallery, 6th floor
100 Larkin Street at Grove
San Francisco, California
East for Art in a Global Age
September 8 – November 5
Asian Arts Gallery
Towson University
Towson, Maryland
Whirligig Interview with Jody Alexander
The book is open on a new Whirligig Interview with Santa Cruz bookmaking artist, Jody Alexander.
Alexander’s work celebrates collecting, storytelling, and odd characters.
Alexander currently has two solo exhibitions open through May 31: Jody Alexander: Sedimentals at Mohr Gallery, Community School of Music and Art in Mountain View, California; and The Odd Volumes of Ruby B.: An Installation at Saffron and Genevieve in Santa Cruz, California.
Read Jody’s interview at: whirligig.hungerbutton.org.
Photo by r.r. jones.
Book Arts & Printers’ Fair at Fort Mason
PreNeo Press & Hunger Button Books will be at Pacific Center for the Book Art’s Annual Book Arts & Printers’ Fair at Fort Mason in San Francisco this weekend.
Saturday, May 7, 9a – 3p.
Stop by and say Hi!
Hello Catty!
Karen Chew and Nanette Wylde are meowing up a storm over the completion of their new book Hello Catty!
Hello Catty! is a light-hearted, yet poignant play on catty behaviors couched by a feline perspective and inspired by the meanness of others.
Designed as a movable board book, it consists of five two-page spreads. Each spread contains user interactive elements: wheels, pop-ups, pulls, spinners, windows, flaps, a game and ephemera.
A Hello Catty! celebration event is scheduled for late April. Contact either Karen or Nanette to be included in the guest list. Space is limited.
See more about Hello Catty! at Hunger Button Books.
Whirligig Interview with Marion Patterson
Whirligig is pleased to announce a new interview with photographer and Bay Area native Marion Patterson.
Patterson was mentored by Ansel Adams, and has experienced a rich history surrounding the early California art and photography scenes. She was photo faculty at Foothill and DeAnza Colleges for 28 years.
Patterson has several new bodies of work coming out based on recent travels to Antarctica and the Galapagos. Her monograph Grains of Sand: Photographs by Marion Patterson was published by Stanford University Press.
Read Marion’s interview at whirligig.hungerbutton.org.
Whirligig Interview with Stacy Speyer
PreNeo Press is tickled pink to publish a new Whirligig interview with textile artist Stacy Speyer.
Speyer recently completed a residency at the Exploratorium in San Francisco where she created an interactive exhibit of metal geometric forms known as polyhedra for the Exploratorium’s traveling exhibition Geometry Playground.
Visit Whirligig to read Stacy’s interview:
whirligig.hungerbutton.org
New Year Events
Gualala Arts presents Dolled Up, featuring the works of Signe Barrar, Elaine Benjamin, Matthew Christopher, Eileen McGarvey, Jane Reichhold, Shannon Shea, and Nanette Wylde.
In this exhibition artists push the limits of how we understand and think about the doll using installations, video and animation, portraits, books, narratives and unique doll objects.
The reception is Friday, January 7, 2011 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The exhibition runs through January 30, 2011.
More info at:Â Gualala Art Center
While you’re in the stunning left coast towns of Northern California catch José Arenas’ book signing on Saturday, January 8 at the Phoenix Restaurant in Point Arena. 5:30 – 7ish pm.
José’s book, A Little Piece of Happiness, was recently published by PreNeo Press’ Hunger Button Books .
Image: Matthew Christopher, Western 1:47
A Little Piece of Happiness: Paintings of José Arenas
Hunger Button Books is delighted to present A Little Piece of Happiness: Paintings of José Arenas. This monograph features 53 of the paintings Arenas created between 2005 and 2009.
José Arenas is an Oakland, California and Brooklyn, New York based artist who spent much of his childhood traveling between Northern California and Guadalajara, Mexico. His experiences navigating cultures, past and present, is a point of investigation in his work. Themes in his imagery include migration, memory, childhood, rites of passage, and disjointed identities.
Book launch and signings are in the works. Tentative schedule includes PreNeo Press Studios in Redwood City on December 20 and a Gualala/Point Arena locale on January 8.
Friend us on Facebook for updates and news.
Whirligig Interview with Julia Bradshaw
Whirligig has a new interview with photographer and video performance artist Julia Bradshaw. Bradshaw is exhibiting seven different series of work in her first one person show at Fresno City College this month. Her work often comments on language and the mixed messages of cross-cultural exchanges.
Visit Whirligig to read Julia’s interview:
whirligig.hungerbutton.org
PreNeo Projects included in Southern Exposure’s Art Publishing Now Library
Three PreNeo Press related projects are included in Southern Exposure’s Art Publishing Now Library and Archive: Meaning Maker, Hunger Button Books, and Whirligig.
The Art Publishing Now Library is a physical and online archive of Art Publishers in the Bay Area. It was created in conjunction with a two day summit in October on the state of Art Publishing in the Bay Area. The library is installed at Southern Exposure from October to December 2010 and will then go on to find a new home in the Bay Area.
Southern Exposure is located at 3030 20th Street in San Francisco. You can visit the card catalog online at:Â artpublishingnow.org/
Meaning Maker at Roy C. Moore Art Gallery
Meaning Maker Periodic Personal Evaluation edition is included in the exhibition Identity, August 19 to September 16; and Relationship to Nature edition is included in Wild Culture: Ecological Perspectives, September 23 to October 26. Both are at the Roy C. Moore Art Gallery on the Gainesville State College campus in Oakwood, Georgia.
Meaning Maker at The Schneider Museum of Art
Meaning Maker American Citizenship Edition is included in the exhibition The Mythical State of Jefferson, May 6 to June 12 at the Schneider Museum of Art.
The Museum is on the Southern Oregon University Campus in Ashland, Oregon. The exhibition addresses a 1941 movement to create a new state, out of parts of Northern California and Southern Oregon, for the purpose of copper mining .