Pacific Felt Factory arts complex

Have you seen our August PFF newsletter? To subscribe, click here: https://us10.list-manage.com/subscribe https://mailchi.mp/83dccdcfd089/pffoct2017-5023005

San Francisco, Pacific Felt Factory, artist Rodney Ewing will be interviewed LIVE by Elena Gross of the SF Museum of the African Diaspora, tomorrow August 12th, from 1-2 PST.

Beautiful new piece by Rodney Ewing on Octavia.

We are proud to present this working directory of Bay Area Black artists to the broader art community. Please share widely and contribute those we may have missed. Special thanks to Spike Kahn for spearheading this effort.

PFF member Rodney Ewing's latest mural in Pac Heights (detail.) (c) 2020

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him." -President John F. Kennedy, Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963 About the Program:... The Kennedy Center, a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, honors our 35th President everyday by uplifting ideals from his legacy (service, justice, freedom, courage, and gratitude) that live through the arts. As part of this celebration of legacy, the Kennedy Center launched the "Citizen Artist Fellow Recognition" in 2016, which celebrates emerging artists across the country who utilize their art form for positive impact on communities. Meet the 2020-2021 Citizen Artists Fellow: Beatrice Thomas, director of Authentic Arts & Media, is a national multi-disciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and creative producer. Whether through creative production, consulting or equity, diversity, and inclusion workshops, Mx. Thomas' focus is on uplifting and centering queer, transgender, and POC voices, with special attention to creating queer-inclusive family programming. They are a pillar of Drag Queen Story Hour, serving as director of the SF Bay Area chapter, on the Leadership Team for the national organization, and as a featured drag queen. Beatrice’s work has illuminated the audiences of the deYoung Museum, SF PRIDE Mainstage, CounterPulse, SomArts Cultural Center and KALW Radio, and has shown in galleries across the United States. Currently, they serve on the national board of directors for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals

PFF member Beatrice L. Thomas recognized!

An artist and an activist are not so far apart. Ava DuVernay, award-winning writer, producer and film director Interview in NYT: We’re in a moment of uphea...val hundreds of thousands marching, a pandemic, an upcoming U.S. presidential election. What’s the role of storytelling in this moment? "The story has been told from one point of view for too long. And when we say story, I don’t just mean film or television. I mean the stories we embrace as part of the criminalization of Black people. Every time an officer writes a police report about an incident, they’re telling a story. Look at the case of Breonna Taylor and her police report. They had nothing on it; it said she had no injuries. That is a story of those officers saying, Nothing to look at here, nothing happened. But that’s not the story that happened because if she could speak for herself, she would say, I was shot in the dark on a no-knock warrant in my bed." So when you think of her story and multiply that times hundreds of thousands of people over the years in communities of color, specifically Black communities, a single story line has led the day and we need to change that story line. And to do that, you have to change who the storytellers are. This is a moment of grief and rage for so many. How can those emotions be translated into art? "The answer to your question for me personally was the creation of our Law Enforcement Accountability Project LEAP which uses art to hold police accountable. It links to the idea that an artist and an activist are not so far apart. Whether you call yourself an activist or not, artists use their imagination to envision a world that does not exist and make it so. Activists use their imagination to envision a world that does not exist and make it so." Today’s movement against police violence was, in large part, prompted by the killing of George Floyd when it was captured on video. When did you first make the connection between film and social action? "I began to make the link between art and social action in high school when I went to my first Amnesty International concert. It was the first time that I, a girl from Compton, started to link the things that I was experiencing to the wider world through music, and what was being said in those lyrics. And then as I got to college, I started to watch films like The Battle of Algiers and the work of Haile Gerima, an Ethiopian filmmaker, and started to see the link between images, film and social justice, and what’s possible in storytelling." You were nominated for an Academy Award for best picture the same year that you helped start the movement #OscarsSoWhite. What are the challenges of changing an institution or community that you’re deeply a part of? "It’s a system that I work within. It’s not a community as it relates to the problem you’re talking about. It’s a system like the criminal justice system. It’s a system like the health care system, the education system. It is the Hollywood system, the entertainment system, the way we create images. It’s a system that is over a hundred years old, and it’s built on a foundation of racism, exclusion and patriarchy. So, at this point, I think of it less like rally the community, or how do you change people’s minds. Changing people’s minds doesn’t matter if those changed minds are working within a system that’s still diseased. It’s just a Band-Aid. So the way I approach it is, yes, you want to create awareness, you want to educate people, you want to make people be less ignorant to the nuances of living in skin of color and as a woman but, ultimately, the systems that we all work in are harmful to a healthy industry. We need to be thinking more broadly about how we not just reform that system but rebuild the system." You once called Hollywood a patriarchy, headed by men and built for men. One year after you said that, the #MeToo movement was introduced to take down some of Hollywood’s worst abusers. Are you optimistic about the industry’s future? "I’m hopeful about everything in the world because I believe in the power of people. I’m a student of history, and there’s too much precedent to be hopeless. I understand there is a way forward, and the way forward is as a united front. You’re seeing some of that right now. Whenever you get enough people with enough energy behind it, that’s power exerted." Let’s talk about Gone With the Wind. Statues are being torn down. Should films like this be erased from the canon, or are they important in some way? "I don’t think the film should be erased from the canon, because then you erase past sins those cannot be erased. The damage that was done, the foundational elements of that film that seeped into cinematic culture worldwide, I don’t think you want to erase those. But I do think you need to give context to them so that they aren’t used as propaganda for ideas that are poison to our culture. They’re really a lesson on our dark past and what we need to do to get past it. So I feel like contextualizing these films is important. Now film is different from statues commemorating murderers and traitors to the country who wanted to see human beings enslaved. An artist who decided to promote a certain narrative about the inferiority of certain people is different from a monument to murderers. I think these monuments should come down and the films should have context." Many people in the United States are just beginning the fight for racial and social justice. You’ve been in this battle a long time. What’s your advice for sustaining the fight long term? "The battle is ongoing whether you keep it going or not. The question is how are you going to react to it? That’s up to everyone to decide for themselves. But the battle is not by choice. I would rather not do any of it. I’d rather just make my films and go about my day. But if I don’t buy into the fight then I don’t get to make my films. That’s what privilege is."

Don't miss Juli Delgado Lopera w/Daniel Handler /Fiebre Tropical July 9th!

The July 2020 Newsletter is out, and it's chock-full of awesome things our artists are up to: https://mailchi.mp/3e54558c0d7c/pffoct2017-4950041 Sign up on our website for updates: www.pacificfeltfactory.com Art by @sandra_yagi for upcoming @moderneden show

4th of July cocktails