Press Contact Liam Passmore Shave and a Haircut [email protected] 415-865-0860
Bay Area’s Headlands Center For The Arts Turns 30 and Celebrates Three Decades as Both Muse and Medium
From left to right: view of Rodeo Beach from the Headlands campus; artist at work; view of campus
Anniversary year sees the launch of innovative new programming for artists along with ambitious public programming that will include—but not be limited to—the showing or performing of work from an illustrious roster of local, national and international artists slated for residency who join such disparate former artists in residence as Sapphire, the poet and author of Precious, musician William Oldham, aka Bonnie Prince Billy, as well as a slew of Guggenheim Fellows and Whitney Biennial alumnae, including Sam Green, Amy Franceshini, William Cordova, Julian Mehretu and many others
The former military fort turned arts hub operates in conjunction with the National Park Service and is open to the public 5 days a week; offerings include open studios as well as a newly expanded slate of public events, lectures, music and literary performances, roundtables, walks, exhibitions and even week-long mini residency workshops where the creatively inclined can sign up for a week of guided group and solo activity led by accomplished artists and thinkers
June 26, San Francisco - Headlands Center for the Arts turns 30 this year. Located just 15 minutes outside of San Francisco on the rugged and beautiful coast of the Marin Headlands, it will present a number of different artists from its internationally recognized Artists in Residence program, along with a variety of other programming open to the public.
While the caliber of the artists Headlands attracts makes it easy to see why many draw parallels between it and institutions such as MacDowell, Yaddo and Bemis, the reality is more complex. “What makes Headlands unmatched by anywhere else is not only the cross disciplinary and international nature of our residencies,” says Executive Director, sharon maidenberg, “but the fact that it is both private and public, and that the land and park—seemingly perched on the end of the world as they are— act as inspiration to so many of those who come here to create site-specific work. Essentially Headlands becomes both muse and medium to those artists.”
As both a center for the arts offering residencies to artists as well as a travel destination for visitors from the Bay Area and beyond, Headlands will celebrate its anniversary with an onsite event on September 15, 2012.
Programming, Presentations and Workshops Among the programming highlights already seen in 2012 are:
Jeremy Novak of Dymaxion fame whose residency at Headlands was part of a re-emergence onto the music scene after a self imposed 5-year hiatus.
OPENharvest’s presentation/recollection of their 2011 visit to Japan which put the spotlight on aspects of Japanese life and sustainability after the shock of a devastating earthquake and tsunami. The collective’s experiences were revealed through the prism of visual art, as well as food and drink, specifically the Ramen and Whiskey Highballs that the group of chefs and artists savored during their trip.
Programming, Presentations and Workshops Still to Come in 2012
Alumni New Works (Inaugural year) The Alumni New Works program will award project-based, month-long return residencies to six select alumni each year. Headlands provides the artist grants of $2,500 and month-long residencies, while the Alumni New Works Program partners with the crowd-funding platform USA Projects which empowers the artists to use their own networks to raise any additional funding needed. Artists launching the program in 2012 include:
Mel Day (GRAD ‘05-’06; AFF ‘06) and Jeanne Finley (AIR ’05) Frequent collaborators Finley and Day come back to complete their two-channel experimental piece Fat Chance based on a shipwreck on the shores of Headlands’ Rodeo Beach. The final installation is slated for exhibition at the Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco.
Anthony Discenza (AIR ‘01) Visual artist Anthony Discenza will work on a new audio-based project that utilizes Google search tools in order to collect text fragments from many different sources and weave them into a new, synthetic text.
Ben Ehrenreich Writer and journalist Ben Ehrenreich returns to finish a draft of his novel based on poet Roque Dalton’s tremendous life as a radical political and aesthetic catalyst in 1970’s El Salvador. The ultimate goal is publication with City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco.
Kalup Linzy (AIR ‘10) Prolific and challenging, performance and video artist Kalup Linzy will shoot and edit the feature film Introducing Kaye, a spinoff of the web series Melody Set Me Free, which streams on James Franco’s Whosay channel. The video and music will be featured in a performance at the Metropolitan Museum in September.
Swintak (AIR ’11) Multimedia installation and performance artist Christine Swintak heads into Headlands’ bunkers—local architectural remnants & ghostly artifacts of another era—in order to sleep and dream, and then include her experience as one of three international bunker sites featured in her Sleeping in Bunkers project. Swintak’s video vignette recreations of her dreams will be exhibited within scaled dioramas at CAFKA Biennial, Kitchener, Ontario, among other venues.
Jefferson Pinder (AIR '10) For his Alumni Return Visit to Headlands in Summer of 2012, Jefferson Pinder will be shooting studies in Marin County and other nearby locations for a performance-based video that depicts a fictional black suburban experience. Working in a satirical vein inspired by David Lynch and utilizing synchronized movement, the finished work will follow two black yardkeepers working gracefully in unison as they mow a lawn at night. The final piece will be part of Patricia Sweetow Gallery’s presence at upcoming artfairs.
Project Space The Project Space housed at Headlands offers visitors an opportunity for casual engagements with art and artists of a variety of disciplines. During the Summer of 2012 visitors to Headlands will encounter three of the 2012 Artists in Residence in Project Space:
Jeremy Mende – Working with both words and images that he takes out of one context and places in another (often a public space), Mende seeks to expose "the stories, myths and alibis we use to justify our selves to ourselves." Visitors will be invited to beta test new strategies for his upcoming series of "public interventions" set for 2013. June 18- August 23, 2012
Emily Mast - Visual artist who works primarily with people, movement and sound will transform Project Space into a theatrical workshop where visitors will have the opportunity to assist in the generation of sets, costumes, props, scripts, sound, and light as they themselves become a part of an ongoing performance that celebrates the excitement that doubt, uncertainty and the unknown offer. July18- August 23
Sandra Ono - Bay Area artist will engage the senses of visitors with her evocative, life-like sculptures made from consumer goods such as dental floss or rubber bands, all designed to reflect consequences of consumption, as well as the phenomena of “how little things accumulate to have weight and gravity.” July 18- August 23, 2012 with a special Build Your Own! workshop hosted by Ono on Sunday, August 12, 12-5PM
More information along with dates can be found here
Creating Social Space Matilde Cassani (AIR ‘12/Italy) and Yukiko Bowman (AIR ‘12/CA) join with other architectural thinkers to discuss alternative approaches to re-purposing built spaces. The conversation will consider how constructing inhabitable ‘space’ might have less to do with building walls and windows, and more to do with revealing and re-framing existing rituals and movements within space. August 4, 2012
Workshops Workshops are tuition-based intensives that are available to the public or professionals working in the particular subject matter being explored. All of the workshops use the expansive setting of the Marin Headlands as a starting place for creative exploration. Led by accomplished artists and thinkers, these workshops invite participants to exchange ideas, realize creative projects, and develop new skill-sets.
WKSHP: Future/Headlands - The interdisciplinary collective led by Future producers John Bielenberg and Marc O’Brien, of Project M fame, will focus their radical design-meets- enterprise approach on Headlands Center for the Arts and the surrounding park. August 31-September 5, 2012 Workshop limit: Approximately 14-20
WKSHP: Covert Operations: Hacking the Landscape - Liam Young (AIR ’11) and Kate Davies of the nomadic design group Unknown Field Division take up temporary residence at Headlands. They will employ contemporary surveillance technology to map the post- militarized landscape. Collaborators assembled from the worlds of art, architecture, and technology, including Nicola Twilly of Edible Geography and Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG and Columbia's Studio X, will guide sorties across local terrains, laser-scan forests using hi-res, long range optics, deploy infrared night vision cameras to peer through the mist as well as build a fleet of drones to map the area from above. September 7-September 12, 2012 Workshop limit: Approximately 14-20 Headlands Turns 30! Headlands will celebrate its anniversary with an inclusive, big bang Birthday Party—turning its surrounding parade grounds into a carnival of artist-produced projects—offering food and fun for the whole family. Post bash, the commissioned works will become part of a month-long exhibition at Headlands. September 15, 2012
Mouse Auditions Renowned New York chorographer Melinda Ring (AIR ’12) will explore Kafka’s Metamorphosis in a decidedly Kafkaesque way: as a series of never-ending auditions for a dance never to be performed. November 4, 2012
SFFS Headlands Alum Film/Video Headlands partners with San Francisco Film Society to produce an evening showcasing the film and video work of Headlands list of prestigious alum. Evening will include a montage of video clips as well as a hand-full of short films with remarks by artists. November 8, 2012
Artist in Residence, Affiliate Artists & Graduate Fellowships 2012 will see a total number of 45 Artists in Residence, representing a wide range of disciplines heralding from countries around the globe. Coming to Headlands in three shifts (Spring, Summer and Fall), these artists are often also scholars, activists and others who are forging the contemporary cultural landscape. Among them are:
Matilde Cassani – This Italian architect looks at the spatial implications of religious pluralism in the contemporary urban context. Her time at Headlands will be spent grappling with how the act of designing a space often fails and how a city can be thought of as a “huge digestive system.”
William E Jones – This film and video artist —as well as Whitney alum— who lives in Los Angeles is known for re-contextualizing sequences from 1970s and 80s era gay porn into explorations of the complexities of homosexual identity. He intends to use his time at Headlands in order to produce a fully finished film script tentatively titled, The Splendor of Fear.
Sarah Kabot – Installation and visual artist, assistant professor at the Cleveland Academy of Art and participant in the second season of the Bravo reality series, Work of Art. While at Headlands she intends to develop a series of sculptures influenced by the interdependent relationships between the aging military architecture, the encroaching natural environment, and the human processes of renovation and reinvention that have taken place in recent decades. Chinaka Hodge - Author and burgeoning filmmaker from Oakland, California who writes for what she terms, “girls like me,” which she describes as “the nerds, the black chicks and the cultural outliers.”
Amalia Pica – A visual artist from Argentina whose work explores the nature of thought and speech as well as enunciation. Her residency will involved working with film, photography and objects using the story of Endymion by John Keats as a departure point.
William Powhida - New York-based Visual artist and critic works with trompe l’oeil lists, letters and diagrams to produce his work. The New York Times once referred to him as an “art world vigilante, virtuoso draftsman, compulsive calligrapher and fantasist autobiographer.”
Paul Rucker – Composer, musician and visual artist who makes his home in Washington state is in a constant quest to find inventive ways to integrate live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. While at Headlands he will develop Recapitulation, an installation demonstrating the parallels between slavery and the contemporary prison industrial complex through animation, digital stills, sculpture, original music compositions, interactive sound and video.
Jamaaladeen Tacuma – Jazz musician extraordinaire who has worked with the likes of Ornette Coleman, Nona Hendryx of Labelle fame, The Golden Palominos and many others segues into his residency at Headlands following time at MacDowell. He comes to Headlands to continue working on his current multimedia project about Charlie Christian and Monk Montgomery, who are respectively credited as the first electric and electric bass guitarists ever.
Kirmen Uribe – Basque author and poet whose 2009 novel Bilbao-New York-Bilbao won the National Prize of Literature in Spain. Uribe intends to finish his new novel while in residence at Headlands, which he hopes will be an epiphany. “Time is a writer’s best friend. I do not know if I will see the sea and sails from my room in Headlands. If I do not, I will imagine them. A day so happy.”
A complete list of Artists in Residence as well as details on the application process can be found here
**** The Affiliate Artist track at Headlands is an immersive studio practice program that is competitively awarded to 20 Bay Area artists each year. Affiliates receive subsidized studio space, public presentation opportunities, and are active participants in Headlands’ peer-to-peer- driven creative community.
The complete list of current affiliate artists as well as details on how to apply can be found here. **** The Graduate Fellowships are designed to provide meaningful support to recent, promising MFA graduates, in partnership with esteemed Bay Area academic institutions. The program is unique in the country for addressing this critical juncture in an emerging artist’s career, giving aspiring post-grads opportunities for professional development and a chance to define their practice outside of the academic context. Complete list of current awardees and details on how to apply can be found here.
Headlands Center for the Arts as Travel Destination What other arts center is in direct proximity to a view of the golden gate, a marine mammal rescue center and a decommissioned missile silo and has 9 micro-climates?
Headlands Center for the Arts is located only 15 minutes outside of San Francisco. Depending on the time of a visit, it may resemble a rugged windswept coast of the type one would more typically expect to find in Ireland or Scotland. Or, it could be warm, sunny and idyllic. It should be noted there are 9 micro-climates within the Marin Headlands, and at least that many different ways to experience it.
Visitors to the Center are as likely to encounter a wild turkey as they are an artist, and are invited to hike the trails or head to Rodeo Beach to watch surfers and see views of the Golden Gate.
Unlike a museum or a theater, art at Headlands is being produced in real time. Artists participating in programs are engaged in the behind the scenes aspects of art making – researching, reading, walking, talking, and trying their hand at new techniques and approaches.
Several times each month the doors are thrown open and the public is invited to join for events that range from intimate artist talks and dinners to campus-wide Open Houses. On non-event days the public is welcome to visit and explore the artist-rehabilitated spaces, visit the exhibitions or artists working in Project Space, and enjoy a good cup of coffee in the Mess Hall.
Biscotti made by Headlands chef and baker Damon Little are available to visitors along with Headlands Blend coffee from San Francisco roaster De La Paz.
The Headlands Center for the Arts is open to the public five days a week. Visitors are invited to stop into Project Space, two large, light-filled studios that function as working studios for Artists in Residence working on participatory projects and occasional exhibition space. Open: Tuesday – Friday + Sunday, 12pm – 5pm Closed: Monday + Saturday Cost: FREE
Headlands Center for the Arts boasts a large number of park partners that include a museum, a marine sanctuary, a decommissioned missile silo and more. Here is the complete list:
Bay Area Discovery Museum Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy Golden Gate National Recreation Area Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Headlands Institute Institute at the Golden Gate Cavallo Point Marin Headlands Visitor Center The Marine Mammal Center Native Plant Nurseries Nike Missile Museum Point Bonita Lighthouse Rodeo Beach
30th Anniversary Events To mark the occasion of its 30th anniversary year, Headlands held a major fundraiser and auction in early June that included a photograph from the legendary Bay Area photographer and teacher, Larry Sultan, as well as work from Michael Light, David Maisel, Tauba Auerbach, Clare Rojas, Jonas Wood and others.
Additional auction items were a privately hosted jet trip for eight to Marfa, Texas, that also included private tours of the Chinati and Donald Judd foundations, and four days in Belize at Francis Ford Coppola’s Blancaneaux Lodge.
Headlands Center for the Arts also commissioned a select array of talented local makers and artisans to create a new set of limited edition objects that represent a response to the Headlands as a place, concept and experience. These participants were asked to envision items inspired by the natural beauty, military history and creative spirit of the area that could be thought to function as a defacto “Headlands Field Kit”. Items making up the kit included a custom and truly limited set of the much-prized pottery and tableware from Heath Ceramics, Matt Dick-designed military totes, double-duty capable stools from New Factory, and cunningly appealing Brownie-camera sized flashlights built from found wood, leather and brass by artisan Scott Tal. http://www.headlands.org/auction/headlands-at-30/
NOTE: Headlands will celebrate its anniversary with an inclusive, big bang Birthday Party —turning its surrounding parade grounds into a carnival of artist-produced projects—offering food and fun for the whole family. Post bash, the commissioned works will become part of a month- long exhibition at Headlands. September 15, 2012
History The Marin Headlands was originally home to the Native American Coastal Miwok, who lived seasonally there for thousands of years. In the 18th century, Spanish and Mexican ranchers occupied the land, eventually giving way to Portuguese immigrant dairy farmers. In the 1890s, the first military installations were built to prevent hostile ships from entering San Francisco Bay. The Fort Barry buildings were erected from 1907 to 1913 and served as an active military center until 1950.
The National Park Service (NPS) took over the decommissioned buildings in 1972, inviting several mission-based nonprofits to act as park partners and specifically writing an arts center into the park’s Master Plan. In 1982, the founding Board of Directors of local artists, activists, and civic leaders incorporated Headlands Arts Center, which was later renamed Headlands Center for the Arts. The organization launched an ambitious plan to rehabilitate the historic buildings through artists’ commissions, empowering artists to re-envision the physical space and future use of the facility. In 1994, the organization secured a twenty-year agreement with NPS for use of the Fort Barry buildings.
Headlands Center for the Arts continues to rehabilitate and steward their campus in order to honor the history and foster continued dialogue about the site itself, as well as the larger topic of human engagement with the natural and built environment.
About Headlands Center for the Arts Headlands Center for the Arts provides an unparalleled environment for the creative process and the development of new work and ideas. Since its founding Headlands has presented an array of dynamic programs for artists and the public—including residencies, lectures and performances, Open Houses, community-based projects, publications and commissions—designed to enhance the reflection, dialogue and exchange that builds understanding of and appreciation for the role of the artist and art in society.
More than 1,000 artists from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds worked at Headlands in programming that also features scholars, activists and other luminaries and professionals forging the contemporary cultural landscape. This list includes a broad variety of disciplines and achievements, including poet and author of Precious, Sapphire, musician William Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy, Guggenheim Fellows Sam Green, Amy Franceschini and Matthew Cooldidge, installation artist Camille Utterbach, writer Daniel Alarcon, as well as Whitney Biennial alumnae William Cordova, Julian Mehretu, Sanford Biggers, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla.
Headlands reputation for creative exploration is world renowned, influencing communities from Bangkok and Berlin to Stockholm and New York. Incorporated in 1982 by a founding Board of Directors comprised primarily of local artists, a long-term Cooperative Agreement for use of buildings within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area was secured in 1994. 2012 marks the 30-year anniversary for Headlands Center for the Arts. More information at Headlands.org ###
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