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 The piece is based on the research that I did for an (as yet) unpublished book of the same title.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.

Please join us for food, drinks, grog and conversations with the artists, May 26th, 2012 at 7pm, in San Francisco’s Mission District. The artists will be  offering insight into their personal psychogeographies.

In my opinion this is some of the best modern public art, a memory stated clearly, and it’s pretty, “really pretty.” I hear art must be pretty.  This is pretty art in San Francisco, California.

Maybe you have to see it in the street? Maybe it must be seen in real life to feel it’s bigness, I hope not. I have one picture of the shaft of the arrow. I am sure it is NOT sanctioned ART, it was free. I cannot show the neighborhood, or even the entire arrow and don’t in the cropped picture below. It is a light pole, the point of the arrow is a glass globe.

A bloody arrow, pointing to the sky, with pretty feathers, a Native Memory and an artists interpretation.

“

When I go to a new city I  go to the ‘main drag’, it’s the place where all the tourists are sent.  In Reykjavik, the tourists and the locals go to the same place, this is nice.   Even so, the main drag is not where I like to be. I like to be a bit more remote, on the edge.

I loved everywhere I went in Reykjavik, but I found ‘my people’ on Hverfisgata, a street just off the main drag, nearer to the water.  I know Hverfisgata has a meaning. I know that every little part, of every long word in Islenska gives you the definition of the word, sometimes it is a direction, or who you are the daughter or son of, or maybe that you are on the water side of the city.  That made learning parts of words quite valuable.

I found favorite stickers by artists I admire for their public art and messages, in Islenska, on Hverfisgata!  I was thrilled to see I was drawn to the same areas as these public artists! Here are only a few of my favorites, DCEVE, SPACE INVADERS and OBEY.  I have seen their work in many places, they get around.  OBEY has some recent work up in the Mission District of San Fransisco, USA, not shown here.

What I really want to know is what name the person goes by who uses the symbol of the bird?  If anyone knows please forward it on to me. The birds are my personal favorite; they are placed in just the right spot, some high, some low, but always perfectly placed. Enjoy the

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In my neighborhood, the streets are clean of urine, the trash is mushy and stuck to the gutter floor, it goes unnoticed, covered with sticky, wet, leaves, and the soil is saturated with water, because of the rains. The rains also mean, the tomato plants, that needed to be taken out last week and weren’t, must be taken out this week and replaced with…. and that means, ” the hot pink art, attached to the tree for support of the tomatoes, will be coming down.”

That is the question, “what food plant to plant on the street in the front yard garden?”  I put a lot of thought into this question every year.  Here are  the particulars, what will stay contained and be rather neat, with little upkeep and little water? Very important if you want your garden to be minimal work, and I do.

What food is recognizable to my neighbors? This is probably the most important question to me.  If I am wrong and I have been, food does not get eaten or picked. That is the worst, plain old waste.  I know the worms eat it and the birds, but I plant for humans, and it is a drag when the food doesn’t get eaten.  There is not only waste, but somehow the garden stays less neat and clean of debris.

What’s the weather looking like for this fall? I guessed wrong this summer,  I planted tomatoes, but the regular warm days came late to San Francisco, and the cherry tomatoes were small and few. There were still harvesters, but the garden stayed looking a bit bedraggled, because I guessed wrong.

So, I am back to the question, “what do I plant?”

Heather Green, is an artist deeply involved in preserving the land and ocean, everywhere, with a lifelong attachment to La Cholla, Mexico, the Sea of Cortez. She wrote asking me to write a letter to the organization below, as I also have a long time attachment to this area.

Intercultural Center for Study of Deserts and Oceans, AC
Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico C.P. 83550 Phone and FAX: 01 638.

And now! I’m asking you to also write a letter. Please, read the letter provided below and request the resort builders follow the law, quit negatively impacting the La Cholla estuary and tell them to stop immediately. This estuary is very important to ‘our’ environment, also known as Earth, and livelihoods of the Mexicans that live in the La Cholla neighborhood

granite rocks up close, Sea of Cortez

Sunset in La Cholla, Mexico

Water into the granite rocks, regularly water free

Sea bug

Sea of Cortez

Granite rocks, Sea of Cortez

Tide coming in

Sea of Cortez

Tide going out, Sea of Cortez

I have added the translated letter to this story and just added email addresses today, provided by Paloma and Hita from CEDO, so you can send your thoughts immediately.
Lic. Abigail Galvez
PROFEPA
abgalvez@profepa.gob.mx
denuncias@profepa.gob.mx

Ecol. Martín Saú
CONANP
RB. Alto Golfo de California y Delta del Río Colorado
msaucota@hotmail.com
msau@conanp.gob

M. en C. Oswaldo Mendoza
Desarrollo Urbano y Ecología}
H. Ayuntamiento de Puerto Peñasco
oswaldo2810@gmail.com

Paloma and Hita
CEDO-Intercultural Thank you very much!!!

13 de septiembre 2011,

Puerto Peñasco, Sonora

Lic. Rafael Carlos Quiroz Narváez

Delegado Regional de PROFEPA

Hermosillo, Sonora

P R E S E N T E :

Through this I extend the complaint relating to modifications in the flow of water from two channels in the estuary La Cholla (within ZOFEMAT), adjacent to the facilities at the Laguna del Mar located in the town of Puerto Penasco , Sonora.

It should be noted  the Estero La Cholla is located within the buffer zone of Biosphere Reserve of the Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta as well as being part of the object of conservation Adair Bay Ramsar site.

In Field trips conducted by the Coastal Conservation team for bird monitoring in wetlands, on April 1 this year, we saw the first modifications that were doing in a creek channel.

The channel had the presence of stones, sheets and partitions proved the beginning of construction on the channel of the estuary. During this visit we crossed the facilities at the Laguna del Mar and found near your golf course, material and construction equipment with the same characteristics as of the material that was in the channel of the estuary.

Later on July 29, on a tour to the same stream where the team Coastal Conservation CEDO team was giving a bird monitoring trainig to monitors form Community Network Ejidos Adair Bay Wetlands (REHBA) we find a modification of a stream channel more advanced. A stream channel is completely closed thereby altering the flow of water from this. A few meters there was evidence of  the beginning of a new building that showed the close of the second channel of the same estuary.

In August 2, we received a report by REHBA group monitoring and surveillance, which works under PROCODES supported by the RB of the Gulf, where we are given notice of what was found on its tour, the two channels of the cholla near the Laguna del Mar  complex are sealed in their entirety. CEDO Team for Coastal Conservation comes the same day to the  place and finds staff hired by Laguna del Mar making modifications with machinery, we found out it was people working for the resort because they were asked and they did provided this information. Data were collected from the coordinates of the two points where the channels are modified: Channel 2 (N 31.34630 W113.60809) and channel 2 (N 31.34537 W 113.60799).

REHBA and CEDO we gave notice to the staff of the RB. Upper Gulf which asked us to file the complaint directly to PROFEPA.
Yesterday, September 12, 2011, at a CEDO training meeting imparted to Sub Rocky Advisory Council of the Upper Gulf RB, CEDO asked ecology municipal authorities and urban development to support in the denunciation of this acts, so it is that this complaint is made to continue the environmental protocol to PROFEPA, waiting obtain a response to stop and protect the ecological character of this valuable ecosystem which is also part of an ANP and a place at International Priority.

No more for now, thank you for your attention and ask to take action as soon as possible to stop this damage to the ecosystem of the estuary La Cholla.

TOTAL REQUEST CONFIDENTIALITY
Intercultural Center for Study of Deserts and Oceans, AC
Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico C.P. 83550
Phone and FAX: 01 638
P. S. We attach photographs of the changes.
complaint with these acts, which is that
more
Cholla.

Last night the Alexander String Quartet tightly played Dvorak to a full house in Saint Francis Woods.  I could hardly sit still, while I listened and watched, from a front row seat. All of the seats in the house were fine for hearing, but the front row seat! was wonderful for this visual artist.  I could see them making plans with their eyes, their bodies moving to their personal interpretation of the music, each musician fully present.

The best is to ‘see and hear’ the Alexander String Quartet, but if you can’t ‘see’ them perform, they have many recordings available.

Roy A. Merritt, artist of the hot pink, Elvis U.S. stamp,  survived his quadruple bi-pass, open heart surgery. Rumor has it Mr. Merritt, known for his dark humor, said before his surgery, “even the condemned get a last meal.”  He’d gotten his the day before. He is up walking, eating, and I hear, marching to his own drum.   Many wish him a speedy recovery.

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

Roy A. Merritt, a self-taught artist, born in North Carolina in the 1940’s.   His trademark, the use of color that one does not often see used in straight-up portraiture. He uses brightly colored pen and pencils and is a fabulous painter. I believe he is most well known for the hot pink, colored pen drawing of Elvis, a portrait, now a U.S. stamp.  A fine and fun rendition of the King. Check out the Elvis stamp and see the feeling Merritt captures of the King.
Roy A. Merritt suffered a serious heart attack last week and will undergo surgery, Sept. 26th, 2011, in North Carolina. I’m thinking of him.