Widely attended in the Mission District, Maps Only was a wild success!

As the curator there were many successes for me personally; Artists sold their work and met lovers of their personal maps, there is no  greater compliment. Char Green’s “San Francisco in My Hair”, Fernando Marti’s “Mis Missiones” and Richard Keltner’s “Top of the Bay” all found new wall hooks and “Mission Possible: A Neighborhood Atlas”, a broadside of maps, have few left in this print run. I was thrilled to be asked to collaborate by a SOMA Gallery!

ART in pirate garb, Oliver Lowe regaled the huge and often crushing crowd, while many drank grog and were saved of scurvy, at the same time folks were educated by Deborah Sciales’, “Transmigration of Radiation: We All Live in Japan”. Brian Jones’ “Pistol Pop and Dada” gave us insight into British and U.S. Punk and is being considered by a serious collector.

“Lordrifa” and “True North”, performed their audio map to a room so full they were unable to move from their latitudinal and longitudinal locations.

Randy Figures met a woman who is following the progress of his map, “Aestos” a fantasy world map, in hopes of investing in “Aestos” in the book form.

“Relocation”was Take-Able and many were, thanks to Mary Brown and art is touchable thanks to Sarah Dorrance’s, “Infinite Possibilities”, dedicated to Helen Martin 1957-2012, Nellie Stine and my Grandmother Lucille Carter Merritt 1922-May 31st, 2012.

Maps Only: Radical Cartography in Contemporary Art opened May 26th and hangs until June 25th, 2012 and can be seen at Back to the Picture, The Latin American Gallery, 934 Valencia Street, San Francisco, California. Please come and be educated!

Maps Only: Radical Cartography in Contemporary Art, has been in the works for a year or so. The show opens at 7pm, on May 26th and hangs until June 25th, 2012, at Back to the Picture Latin American Gallery, 934 Valencia Street, between 20th and 21st Streets, in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Brian Jones work,  “Pistol Pop N Dada”  “A secret history tracing the development of what was to manifest itself as ‘punk graphics’ in late twentieth century Britain, back through Pop Art, John Heartfield and ultimately to Dada. The piece is based on the research that I did for an (as yet) unpublished book of the same title. It’s been in my head for years. I had always intended that there ought to a ‘map’ to accompany it, and sketched the rough idea, then put it aside to mature.”

Char Green, “San Francisco in My Hair”, “Our personal geography, the landscapes that surround us throughout out lives, shape who we are, in ways that reach to the very heart of who we are, leaving their indelible marks – their maps – upon us.”

Deborah Sciales, “Transmigration of Radiation: We all live in Japan.” “Radiation still leaks from the now-closed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where 100,000 people have been evacuated from a 12-mile no-go zone. The reactor involved was designed by the Southern California-based Rosemead utility, Edison, and foisted on the Japanese by the US government. This work is in no way reproachful of the Japanese people, but rather is a condemnation of US policies of nuclear imperialism as practiced internationally.”

Fernando Marti, “Mis Misiones.”  “My art explores the clash of the Third World in the heart of Empire, and the tension between inhabiting place and the urge to build something transformative.”

Heather Green, “Impact Study”, “In an environment that is rapidly transforming due to human impacts, something as simple as the far reaches of the ebbing tide or as complex as the interconnected and biodiverse forms exposed during its wake may go unnoticed. My projects and installations explore and pay homage to peripheral or even vanishing places and species whose delicate survival depends on our awareness of them. The majority of my work focuses on La Cholla, a small place near Puerto Peñasco in Sonora, Mexico, a place I have known my whole life. By focusing on a singular place my work aims to engender witness, wonder, and regard.
 Through a phenomenological investigation of counting, charting, collecting and displaying what is found in this region, I invite speculation about what can be known and what will remain unknowable, what can be seen and what will never be seen again.”

Mary Brown, “Relocation”, ” The map “Relocation” reflects my interest in take-able public art, treasure maps, and underlying historical layers.”

Oliver Lowe, “Legend of Lost Rumbullion,”,    “It is the Age of Reason, and Science heralds the foreshortening of the World. As Empirical and Scientific expeditions proliferate, defining and quantifying the Known (and Unknown) Worlds, more and more the Fantastic and the Fabled are forced to recede into the Realm of Mythos.

Randy Figures, “Aestos”, one section of a mythical map that has been in the works for years and is being shown for the first time in the Maps Only show.

The Reverend Lordrifa, “True North”: A Consecration of Polar Dimensions”  an audio map in 5  dimensional space, with images of Holy Sites projected onto coordinates. The Reverend’s band, “True North” will film and interview the artists after their audio performance, another part of their performance.

Richard Keltner, “Another House”  and ” Top of the Bay”, a man of few words, “my preferred medium is pastels.”

Sarah Dorrance, “Infinite Possibilities”, deals with issues of permanence.

I was inspired to write after reading UK artist, Brian Jones’ email describing his map. An integration of punk graphics, Dada, in an imagined city, or on a ‘family tree’, all in print form.  Recently censored, his print, ‘Broke Back Britain’ is a play on british stereotypes. It gave me a chuckle. You can see his work at info@artofbrianjones.com