San Jose’s community-based, artist-owned First Street gallery, WORKS, hosts its benefit auction next weekend, with work available to view now and bidding starting next Saturday evening, the 22nd.
I’ve served as a gallery sitter and will be back Thursday the 20th, 2-4 for another shift…and the artwork is diverse and lovely! Several people who’ve been featured in Synchronized Chaos over the years have pieces up for auction, including Reuben Rutledge, Kimy Martinez, Wayne Jiang, and many others.
Announcement from the gallery:
Over 100 Bay Area artists have donated their work to support Works/San Jose, located on 451 South First Street, near parking garages and in a reasonably safe neighborhood, and the community art and performance center of the South Bay! Pieces range in size and form, media and subject, creating a diverse array of artwork that represents the broad artistic spirit of artists in and around San Jose. The art will be auctioned on Saturday May 22nd to support the ongoing activities of Works. Gala reception and final preview at 5 p.m., bidding for live and silent auction begins at 7 p.m. Please join us for an exciting evening! Wonderful folks will be there, lots of lovely positive energy so come on out!
Also, THIS weekend, the 14th-16th, is Open Studio weekend in Hayward and Castro Valley. Plenty of other wonderful work available for view and purchase…come support another emerging art scene, and plenty of folks in the Synchronized Chaos family and whom we’ve featured will show work here, also. http://www.haywardarts.org/OS_2010/
protestpoems. org is a poetry journal entirely devoted to, and fully committed to, new poetry that tackles human rights issues worldwide.
The journal strives to present the best poems of protest written to promote freedom of speech and human rights. It is updated fortnightly. We publish a maximum six poems a month to keep a steady flow of relevant protests. Although we update the journal often, we are very selective. We are looking for edge.
The website and mailing lists provide information about persecuted writers, along with letters of protest ready for our subscribers to cut and paste. To receive emails (once a month, on average) with protest information focused on a specific persecuted writer, send an email to <write(at)protestpo ems.org> (replace (at) with @). Please write SUBSCRIBE in your subject line.
Planned remaining publication dates for 2010 are :
22 May
05 June 19 June
03 July 17 July
31 July 14 August
28 August 11 September
25 September 09 October
23 October 06 November
20 November 04 December
18 December
Submission guidelines
It’s simple.
We’re not looking for partisan propaganda. We’re not looking for party-political mouthings. We’re not looking for sentimental depictions of what you see on the TV. We’re not looking for rhyming greetings card verses.
We want you to champion, not yourselves, but human rights; the rights of those who don’t have the freedom to write and speak as we do. Rage. Celebrate. Mourn. Demand. Scream. Dance.
Formal complaints are especially exciting. There’s something wonderfully subversive about a villanelle that attacks a government deliberately making the same mistake over and over again.
If you need to be inspired, read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then check out any objective newsfeed or news site.
Paste your poems (a maximum of 3 one-page poems), into the body of an email and send to <write(at)protestpo ems.org> (replace (at) with @). If necessary, you can email a single .doc or .rtf file containing all the poems you are submitting.
Include a brief bio.
We will accept poems previously published on paper, as long as you hold the copyright. We will not accept poems which are already (or have previously been) published online (including blogs). We will publish a poet only once a year.
If your poem deals with a specific call for action, or commemorates a specific person, please let us know.
I’m looking for speakers for our next fashion and tech workshop called “Fashion Mash-Up on May 20th to be held at Pigment Cosmetics. Join the prestigious list of speakers and mentors that have graced our stage. To be considered as a speaker, you have to be at least familiar with social media apps such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and currently using these open apps to promote your business online.
Our main topic will be “Social media in the fashion industry” details are below”
1. How has social media reshaped the ever changing trends in the fashion industry
2. How to apply social media in marketing your online store, fashion design or boutique product?
3. Discuss how social media makes it possible for fashion designers or fashion boutiques to generate interest about their brand online.
4. How a brand can be promoted more to customers at a global scale with a minimal cost.
5. Discuss the following social media platforms: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Meet Up.
6. What are the latest open source tools or online platforms in social media that enables the fashion industry professionals, to connect with their customers online
Tarryn Teresa Gallery is pleased to announce Lights on S.F., a public art event celebrating Bay Area artists. The project, developed and organized by Tarryn Teresa Gallery in downtown Los Angeles, is composed of energy efficient CFL light bulbs decorated by individual artists and then collected into a single, temporary exhibit. Each evening the bulbs will be illuminated at the same time as city street lights, overwhelming the park with the light from the collected assembly of light bulbs.
Tarryn Soderberg, director of Tarryn Teresa Gallery, conceived of the Lights on… project as a way to focus attention on the arts during difficult economic times, when “nonessentials” typically suffer. The installation is meant to serve as a reminder of the role that a vital and diverse artistic community plays in any successful urban environment.
“Better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all”
Critics and scholars consider Puccini’s romantic tragedy La Rondine (The Swallow) closer to comic opera, since characters manage to avoid suicide and murder and suffer only heartbreak. And Opera San Jose’s production blossoms with roses and sunlight and crackles with wit and laughter, reflecting much more life and joy than loss and sorrow. Heroine Magda (Jasmina Halimic), her lover Ruggero (Alexander Boyer) and her benefactor Rambaldo (Silas Elash) sing their way through a kaleidoscope of human emotion. Magda’s maid Lisette (Jennie Litster) who jokes freely with her employers and borrows Magda’s dresses for nights on the town, and the intrepid, clever, but clueless poet Prunier may remind one of one’s own dinner party guests.
Opera San Jose’s performers fully engage with the show, and we never see ‘wallpaper characters.’ The people in the background for each scene continue interacting and mouthing words to each other while the leads present the show’s main drama. Never loud or obvious enough to distract from the story, the others on stage add even more life to the production by carrying out their individual stories with the same focus and abandon as the leads.We get the impression that, as would be true in a real-life party, Magda’s cocktail soirees and the Bullier nightclub play host to dozens of simultaneous opera-worthy stories.
Lisette’s spectacular failure at cabaret singing, even under Prunier’s dedicated mentorship, brings to an end one of these side plots, as she flees hisses and catcalls and gratefully returns to her old chambermaid position. If Puccini had created the opera to show this scene directly, it would not have been easy for Litster to convince audiences of her lack of vocal ability. She shows off the greatest energy and vocal range of any woman in the cast, with Halimic a close second. Rondine’s entire cast and orchestra carries off the music, including famed aria Chi il bel sogno di Doretta, with a rare blend of the technical proficiency of opera and the easy grace of a musical number.
The society and cultural climate where Magda lives does eventually force her to choose between love and elegance, pleasant cottage life and lively cocktail parties, dreams and reality, youth and maturity, Ruggero and Rambaldo. However, Halimic brings such dignity to the role, standing tall and looking both men and the audience in the eye, suggesting she would be able to survive and triumph in both worlds. Even while returning home to the compromises of her adult world, she acts from her heart along with her mind: sparing Ruggero his family’s disapproval. Even as a kept woman, she’s still a romantic to an extent and capable of love and consideration for others.
Halimic’s strength and grace, along with the entire cast, chorus, dancers, effusively decorated sets, orchestra, and conductor, smiling as he mouths the arias along with the singers, beckon us to join her in celebrating life in all its manifestations.
La Rondine runs at Opera San Jose through this weekend, May 9th, and then the season starts again in September with Anna Karenina. Tickets are on sale now for the 2010/2011 season, and readers may click here http://www.operasj.org/home.html for more information.
May 20th, 2010 Ashkenaz1317 San Pablo Ave. Berkeley, CA
Doors 7:30pm, Show 8:00pm, Soulfège 10:30pm
Come early; show begins promptly!
$10-15 sliding scale – all ages
I usually spare all of you international folks the local announcements, but this is run by a very worthy organization trying to get people to perform and speak and participate in the arts while creating positive change in their neighborhoods (recycling, mentoring kids so they stay in school and out of gangs, etc.) And I enjoy Ashkenaz too – open community space for diverse entertainment and cultural performances.
