Monthly Events:
| MAKE IT @ MOCFA 2nd Saturday of the month 11-1pm |
Join artists, makers, and instructors who lead family-friendly activities designed in conjunction with the exhibition: make an original artwork and take it home! All ages welcome, from 5 to 95.
October 9 (Papel Picado/cut paper);
November 20 (block-cut printmaking);
December 11 (weave wallets or book covers);
January 15 (Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec-inspired clay creations)
Upcoming Events:
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Craft Bar » Thursday January 6 6-9pm |
Craft Bar with Etsy Labs at MOCFA is back!!! Create your own jewelry through a range of projects presented by three local artists.
This month at Craft Bar you can learn to spiff up your wardrobe with a jewelry-themed evening, featuring a range of projects. Make a gorgeous felt bib necklace with local jewelry artist Katherine Coleman from KJC Designs or create your own coil wrapped wire ring with Kelly Ball from Realia. Also, local artist Nicole Royer will be teaching a workshop on how to upcycle old jeans into beautiful necklaces.
Have enough gems in your jewelry box? Stop by for the perennial favorite, stitch and bitch area, with drop-in instruction in knitting and crocheting. Enjoy mouth watering cupcakes, and tasty spreads and jams from Stephanie Bushnell of Sweets La Petite. Drinks kindly provided by Trumer Pils. Don't forget to take inspiration from the gallery and shop while you explore the creative process. Craft Bar is free with $5 admission to the Museum.
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MAKE IT @ MOCFA 2nd Saturday of the month 11-1pm |
Join artists, makers, and instructors who lead family-friendly activities designed in conjunction with the exhibition: make an original artwork and take it home! All ages welcome, from 5 to 95.
January 15 will focus on Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec-inspired clay creations.
Past Events:
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Opening reception Thursday, September 23 Member & Press Preview 5-6pm; Public reception, 6-8pm |
Join us for a festive evening of art, music, and food, including the premiere of Armando Miguelez’s project for the exhibition: a Mole tasting provided by Tropisueno restaurant.
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Meet the Artists Saturday, September 25 11am |
Adrian Esparza, Maximo Gonzalez, Armando Miguelez, and Eduardo Sarabia.
The internationally renowned artists of Volver share their artistic inspirations during an informal roundtable discussion.
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Panel Discussion: Artisan Manufacturing as Craft Thursday, October 21 7pm |
Join MOCFA and SFMade for a Panel Discussion: Artisan Manufacturing as Craft. Does "artisan manufacturing" represent a new possibility for the expansion of craft? In a lively panel discussion featuring Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey of Heath Ceramics; Patrick Buckley, co-founder of DODOcase; and Eric and Danette Scheib, co-owners of fashion design/manufacturer/retailer Lemon Twist; we will explore the possibilities of "artisan manufacturing" as a path to entrepreneurship, financial sustainability, and a way to extend the reach of craft. How did these designers make the leap from artist to manufacturer, what were the trade-ffs, and lessons learned. Facilitated by Kate Sofis, founding Executive Director of local non-profit SFMade. Purchase tickets here. Tickets are $25.
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Day of the Dead Craft Extravaganza Saturday, October 30 11am-1pm |
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Mata Ortiz artist talk with Adalberto Meillon Thursday, November 11 5-7pm |
Join us for a talk with artist Adalberto Meillon on the painting technes of Mexico's famous Mata Ortiz pottery. This talk will be in conjunction with Soil and Soul of Chihuahua, Mexico: 2010 Centenario de la Revolucion Mexicana, an exhibition at the Back to the Picture Latin Gallery.
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MAKE IT @ MOCFA with Favianna Rodriguez Saturday, November 20 11am-1pm |
Artist Favianna Rodriguez joins Make It at MOCFA for a special printmaking demonstration and workshop.
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MAKE IT @ MOCFA Saturday, December 11 11am-1pm |
Looking for a great gift for the holidays? How about giving handmade! Weave a wallet out of "money", or a book cover out of recycled Mexican boxes and candy wrappers. Take it home to give to whoever is on your gift list! Adults and children 5 and up. $5 each for materials, and gallery admission.
MAKE IT @ MOCFA Family Days: Where artists, makers, and instructors lead family-friendly activities designed in conjunction with the exhibition. Activities provide opportunities to explore traditional arts using everyday materials, and to enjoy the process of making by hand and creating together.
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Gallery Talk: Author Adriana Williams Thursday, December 9 6pm |
Gallery Talk: Author Adriana Williams presents “Rosa and Miguel Covarrubias as Collectors.” Join Adriana Williams for a talk on the important Covarrubias collection of Mexican art, many objects which are displayed in Volver and borrowed from the Mexican Museum of San Francisco. Williams is the author of ‘Covarrubias’, University of Texas Press; 1st edition (1994).
Docent Tours
1pm: First Tuesday of every month; 2nd and 4th Saturdays of every month
All events are free with Museum admission.
For more information about these events, please call the Museum at (415) 227-4888.
Pictured on homepage:
Original artwork by Favianna Rodriguez, 2010
Pictured
top of this page:
Adrian Esparza, One and the Same, 2010
VOLVER:
Mexican Folk Art into Play
September 24, 2010—January 16, 2011
Adrian Esparza, Máximo González, Armando Miguelez, Eduardo Sarabia, and Favianna Rodriguez
To celebrate Mexico’s Bicentennial Anniversary of Independence (September 16, 1810) and the Centennial of the Revolution (November 20, 1910), the Museum of Craft and Folk Art presents Volver: Mexican Folk Art into Play. This exhibition looks to traditional crafts from Mexico and focuses on contemporary works that imbue materials and processes of popular folk art with conceptual potency.
The artists of Volver engage in the tradition of folk art while delving into its history and articulating a variety of unsettling realities through a contemporary optic. At a moment in time when Mexico is experiencing a prolonged increase of violence and the US is planning a larger border barrier as well as debating excessive immigration laws, the artists of Volver take a light-hearted, yet critical approach to serious issues. The artists introduce a sense of play as they update, reform, and activate these original source traditions.
Artist Adrian Esparza (El Paso, Texas) exhibits the ubiquitous Zarape/blanket, and unravels it, creating a wall sculpture reminiscent of a minimalist painting. The work is about transformation—about a history that is used in order to construct a new form; Máximo González (Mexico City, Mexico), weaves out-of-circulation Mexican currency into striking wall hangings. By weaving currency using traditional weaving techniques, Gonzalez challenges how we value craft, traditions, and art; Armando Miguelez (San Francisco, California), looks to the popular art of piñata-making but his piñatas are socially engaged—they come in the shape of immigration blimps (TARS-Tethered Aerostat Radar Site) that monitor the US border; and, Eduardo Sarabia (Guadalajara, Mexico), appropriates ceramic art techniques to produce hundreds of ceramic plates infused with the artist’s signature iconography—automatic weapons, marijuana leaves, roosters, goats, women—that relate to the symbols and language of black market and illegal cross-border commerce. Celebrated printmaker and digital artist Favianna Rodriguez (Oakland, California) designed the graphics for the exhibition. Her work imitates traditional geometric and graphic styles of Incan and Mayan cultures, while adding reference to contemporary concerns and political and street art graphics.
A special component of the exhibition is the commission of a new work by Armando Miguelez that addresses the collection of folk art housed at the Mexican Museum. In the Mexican Museum collection Miguelez discovered intriguing vessels intended for practical use in food serving and ritual, which made him question emptiness in form and original content. Abstracted from their intended purpose, can these objects tell the whole story about a culture? What stories are they in fact capable of telling? The new work, titled Its Not Me, Its You, addresses the void often created in object-based cultural collections: the negative space between the object and its culture.
The artists of Volver draw the viewer in through formal considerations as they engage in both traditional and contemporary practices. The works create a compelling and playful dialogue between the importance of tradition and cultural complexities in the contemporary world—celebrating both the past and the present.
—Jennifer McCabe, Director/Curator
Many thanks to curatorial consultants María del Carmen Carrión and Julio César Morales; curatorial intern Maria Elena Ortiz; exhibition designer Tomo Saito; registrars Linda Waterfield and Karin Nelson, installers Conrad Meyers and Dave Meyers; Natasha Boas, MOCFA staff and volunteers. Special thanks to The Mexican Museum for loaning objects from their collection.
Volver: Mexican Folk Art into Play is supported by a San Francisco Arts Commission Organizational Project Grant, and by Aeromexico and the Consulado General de México en San Francisco.
The Museum of Craft and Folk Art is generously supported by The Compton Foundation, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, The Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Gertrud and Harold Parker, The San Francisco Foundation, The Sato Foundation, Museum members, and friends.