SFAQ Symposium
The San Francisco Arts Quarterly (SFAQ)
www.sfaqonline.com
Saturday, November 13th, 2010
5-10pm
at the San Francisco Art Institute
The San Francisco Arts Quarterly (SFAQ) is proud to announce a
Symposium in celebration of their third issue.
Schedule:
Hosted Wine tasting 5-6pm
Artesa Winery
Panel Discussion 6-7:30
J.D. Beltran
Glen Helfand
Renny Pritikin
Tony Labat
Amy Berk
Hosted Bar 7-10
Blue Angel Vodka
Mejor Tequila
Pabst Blue Ribbon
Trumer Pils
Artesa Winery
Live Music 7:30-10
Holy Shit
Birds and Batteries
Passenger and Pilot
The SFAQ Symposium is free and open to the public.
Complementary food provided by Georges Restaurant
The symposium will feature a panel discussion with sought-after speakers,
artists, curators, educators, and art journalists and focus on the diverse art
movements that have grown from the cultural influences of San Francisco’s
mission district, New Media and Latino Art to the “Mission School”. Led by J.D.
Beltran, the chair of SFAI’s Post-Baccalaureate Program and teacher of Critical
and Urban Studies, New Genres, and Film; the panel will feature Glen Helfand,
Renny Pritikin, Tony Labat, and Amy Berk.
J.D. Beltran
J. D. Beltran is chair of SFAI’s Post-Baccalaureate Program and teaches in the Critical Studies
and Urban Studies programs in SFAI’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies as well as in the New
Genres and Film departments in SFAI’s School of Studio Practice. She holds an MFA from
SFAI and a JD from UC Berkeley. She is a conceptual artist, filmmaker, and writer exploring the
contexts, language, and scope of portraying a subject and then mirroring it back. She received
a 1999 Artadia award and was an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting
and Sculpture in Maine. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis, SFMOMA, the Kitchen Gallery in New York City, the Singapore Digital Mediafest,
the Biennale for Electronic Arts in Perth, the 2006 and 2008 ZeroOne San Jose New Media
Biennials, and Bay Area Now 2 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In 2009, her public art
project for the city of San Jose was recognized as one of the best public artworks in the country
by Public Art Network. She writes a column, “Art and Culture Fix,” for the online version of the
San Francisco Chronicle. Beltran lives and works in San Francisco
Glen Helfand
Glen Helfand is a freelance writer, critic, curator and teacher. His writing on art, culture, design
and technology, often concentrating on works by Bay Area artists, has appeared in Artforum, Art
on Paper, Salon, SFGate, Wired, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and many other publications.
He's a co-founder of the Bay Area-based arts website, stretcher.org and has curated exhibitions
for the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, the San Jose Museum of Art and numerous
alternative and commercial gallery spaces. He has taught lecture and seminar courses on
contemporary art at SFAI, San Francisco State University, California College of the Arts, and Mills
College. He was a 2003 Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin.
Tony Labat
Tony Labat is Chair and associate professor in the New Genres department at SFAI. He has
been producing thought-provoking work in various media for more than two decades. Dedicated
to working in multiple disciplines with each project, his art often combines elements of installation,
sculpture, performance and video. Labat's immigration to the United States from Cuba at age 15
has had a profound influence on the many evolutions of his work. Having exhibited at prestigious
galleries and museums around the world, Labat's work resides in a number of prominent
collections and has received several awards and grants, among them two from the National
Endowment for the Arts.
Amy Berk
Amy Berk uses an arte-povera mixture of minimalism and pop to address issues of feminism,
the natural vs. the synthetic, the organic, and the sublime. Her work ranges in scope from very
personal investigative paintings, videos, and sculptures to collaborative public art projects such
as the Together We Can Defeat Capitalism project, which undertakes public art and Internet
projects to raise questions about early 21st century capitalism. Berk has exhibited at many
venues in the Bay Area and beyond, including Center for the Arts, Museum of Folk and Craft Art,
Southern Exposure and scene/escena in San Francisco, the Oakland Museum, Traywick Gallery,
the Bedford Gallery, the Oakland Art Gallery, and the Magnes in the East Bay, Kraushaar Gallery
in NYC, and at the Museu du Republica in Rio de Janeiro. She also co-founded and co-publishes
stretcher.org
Renny Pritikin
Renny Pritikin is the Director of the Richard L. Nelson Gallery and the Fine Arts Collection at
the University of California, Davis. Pritikin was named Chief Curator for all artistic programs
(film/video,visual art, performing arts, education) of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San
Francisco in January 1997 after serving as Director of the Visual Arts Program since 1992.
From 1979 to 1992 he served as Executive Director of New Langton Arts in San Francisco, an
alternative space internationally renowned for its presentations of new visual art, interdisciplinary
performance, video, literature and music. Pritikin has curated numerous exhibitions, and
has authored catalogue essays and articles. Some of his projects include: Alan Rath: Robot
Dance and Other Sculpture; Bay Area Now, a regional survey; Fred Tomaselli: The Urge to be
Transported; Eight from South Africa; The Art of Star Wars; Hall of Fame Hall of Fame; Don Ed
Hardy at the Cuenca Bienal; and You See.
Pritikin has been a frequent consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts and the California
Arts Council, and was a founder of the National Association of Artists Organizations, and has
also served on their Board of Directors. As a writer he received the 1989 McCarron Fellowship
for art criticism, and has had three chapbooks of his poetry published, How We Talk (Collective
Foundation POD Press, 2007), All These Trees (e.g. Press, Oakland, 1985) and Fourth Gear City
Limits (Two Windows Press, Berkeley, 1976). In 1995 he received a United States Information
Agency fellowship to tour and lecture in Japan and the Koret Israel Prize, a fellowship to visit
Israel. In 1999 he travelled to Taiwan as a juror for the Ninth Annual International Print and
Drawing Biennale at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. In 2001 he was the curator chosen to
represent the United States at the Cuenca (Ecuador) Bienal, and in 2003 he lectured in three
cities in New Zealand as a Fulbright Fellow.
San Francisco Arts Quarterly MANIFESTO
The mission of the San Francisco Arts Quarterly is to provide the growing arts
community of San Francisco with a free publication aimed at enabling galleries, artists,
collectors, and the general public to connect and network, facilitating the growth of San
Francisco's art driven economy. SFAQ is a newspaper and calendar that presents the
public with a quarterly update on art community events and offer insight into the current
and future state of a variety of arts throughout the city through a large editorial section.
The SFAQ calendar is a user-friendly guide that contains a pullout San Francisco MUNI
map and a compilation of the various venues and spaces within San Francisco. The
calendar includes the most comprehensive listings in print of openings, public events,
performances, festivals, screenings and releases featured at various educational
facilities, museums, established galleries, non-profit organizations, theaters, music halls,
and more with an emphasis on alternative venues and up and coming spaces/galleries.
SFAQ's calendar will expand the individuals' artistic perspective in San Francisco and
facilitate their connection to the various events that are happening throughout the city.
Our diverse editorial section provides individuals with an in-depth look into the various
districts of San Francisco's multi-faceted arts community. The publication is designed to
inspire people to discover and explore aspects of San Francisco and the Bay Area that
they do not typically experience, with the intention of unifying the varied areas into one
comprehensive artistic whole extending throughout the city.