cadre: the $10 artist grant

Tea Party Magazine is doing a full spread on Nora’s photographs of Palestine, which she generously attributes to the publicity generated by her receipt of a cadre art grant!This will be published in August.

She’s headed back to Palestine for a third time this year, both for her regular gig on KPFA’s Flashpoints show, and to make more photographs with her refurbished 1950’s Rollieflex knock-off (a 120-mm box camera.) “It takes stunning photographs, and Ican’t wait to keep taking them as my journeys unfold!”

She’s looking for a good local venue to exhibit her photographs, so get in touch if you have ideas for her.

Nora has also launched a website where you can check out more of her work, both written and photographic:www.norabf.comShe writes that receiving the cadre $10 arts grant has “been a wonderful jump-start to a blossoming photographic romance.”

This is what we hope for. Thanks again to all of our generous donors.

Jessica has been busy shooting for the project, A Civil Rights Memorial. Her focus during the month of June was Alabama. The Southern Poverty Law Center opened their relevant files to her, which were an “amazing” research tool. In a week she leaves again to shoot for another month, focusing this time on eventsin Mississippi. Both excited and upset by all the new information, she is starting to work on the book project. We’ll continue to follow its development.

Please also note that she has just launched a completed website which (like all of our sites!) will be in constant development. Check it out at: www.jessingram.com

Yesterday, after sending our new emailer out, we received an reply from a donor that surprised us. Carla and I felt it merited a response, because we make every effort to ensure that the grant process is completely transparent.

The author of the email wrote that he’d supposed if we’d given the first grant to a friend here in San Francisco; “not a bad way to help out a friend in need!”

So just in case you’ve wondered the same thing, we want to be very clear that we’ve tried to build that possibility out of the process. Admittedly, the majority of both our donors and applicants are from the Bay Area. We live here, and starting a project on this small scale is initially a word-of-mouth deal. However, we recruited jurors from around the country (selected from our board and from the donors), and if you check out our recipients, they hail from Tokyo, London, Canada and the States. We knew none of them personally, though we were familiar with some of the work. So if you have a moment, check out our grantees through the link below. And remember that any donor is eligible to be a juror. Please let us know if you’re interested.

http://cadreart.org/grantees.html
As we go forward, our challenge is to build momentum and expand our audience. Sustaining a grant on $10 donations is harder than we expected. We always invite your ideas for new and innovative ways to get the word out.
Cheers.

This is a CADRE update.
As you know, Collaborator’s Guide, is in full progress and we wanted to let you know what has been happening!

Both Bethany and Selwa have formed two groups in London and Tokyo. Our collective now includes seven members for the project (which we have nicknamed CADRE project for now).

Communicating between Tokyo and London.

Our original goal of working with a newer and bigger group, long-distance, is materializing, and we are dealing with administrative and creative solutions to enable this. Archiving our research, enabling all of us to challenge the concept democratically and synchronizing conversations between Tokyo and London are important parts of our process!

We recently started using a new online tool called Activecollab (activecollab.com). The tool is opensource (free and shared). This tool is helping us archive and manage the process as well as exchange information! We are just demo-ing the software to other Collaborator’s Guide members and have uploaded some notes/case studies/files.

Meanwhile, during our process of finding new like-minded individuals to work on this collaborative event/installation with us, we have also been visiting and assessing spaces. This has been a fun and interesting process. Tokyo galleries and some UK galleries charge for showing work (aside from commissions) so while visiting spaces to assess size, interest, location, cost we are also investigating non-traditional spaces.

Proposed Calendar.

ongoing: introducing our concept to artists, gallerists, creatives and receiving feedback about appropriate spaces/opening our concept to questions.
May 20: questionnaires and first meetings with new members of Tokyo group.
May-June: re-evaluating goals. conversations in cultural differences between tokyo and london (and what to portray in the exhibit).

July 5: questionnaire and first ‘official’ meeting of London group.
July 2-9: mini-exercise. Collaborator’s Guide member will exchange detailed journals of each day to share a more intimate picture of our relationships with Tokyo and London (and get to know each other better, faster).
10 July: all members receive short training on how to add info to activecollab tool and the blog.
28 July: tokyo vs. london ‘meet n greet’ for all members to get to know eachother via online web chat as well as other forms of introduction, possibly a meal, an gift exchange of some sort.

Start of August: second group exercise after agreed concept refinement.
August: fundraising, prep-time, making, sourcing materials….
Sept: final stages of workshop, exhibition/show.

We hope this finds you well and we will email again with an update in a few months!
Please feel free to email thoughts or concerns.

Thanks so much,
Bethany and Selwa

Family Geography

Bronwyn Hughes, Melissa Kaseman, and Jessamyn Lovell

RayKo Photo Center
428 Third Street

San Francisco, CA 94107

415-495-3773

closes Wednesday, May 30, 2007

This exhibition of photographs explores geography and space as it relates to family using environmental portraits, landscapes, and abstractions of space as seen by three CCA alumni. Places can serve a similar purpose in that they hold valuable stories and emotions that all come rushing back just by visiting the place. In a way the act of photographing these places and the people within them creates a link to the past, through the artists’ eyes. Stories are told, secrets are revealed and additional layers unfold.

–

http://www.jessamynlovell.com

Mark your calendars. cadre has been invited to participate in a panel discussion on art, community and the Internet at the San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art on September 13, from 7:00-9:00pm. We’d love to see you there!

The Virtual Space
Artists and arts organizations create websites that document work and exist as the actual work. Websites can potentially reach an audience and create communities that gallery spaces can only dream of. In our technically-connected world, this panel will discuss various strategies of presenting work on the internet, such as virtual galleries, artists projects and blogs.

Panelists include: Joseph del Pesco, Curator and co-founder of collectivefoundation.org, Christian Frock, Creator of invisiblevenue.com, Erin Goodwin-Guerrero, Producer of artshiftsanjose.com, Deirdre Visser and Carla Williams, Co-founders of cadreart.org

Copy-Art.net; Fine Art Adoption Network; Service Works; InCUBATE; Orchard; Mutual Art;
The Present Group; Tiny Showcase; Center for Cultural Innovation

Foster An Environment For Mutual Benefit and Make Interdependence Visible

http://www.collectivefoundation.org/

Whew! In the better late than never category, we want to catch you up on the goings on here at cadre art. On May 3rd as promised we participated in a conversation with Ted Purves at the Yerba Buena Center, in an event called “Speaking the Art World into Existence.” We left inspired by the work of the other presenters (listed and linked above, who are working on a range of projects to create a more open source and equitable art world) - and with the challenge to make our grant more closely reflect our values and inspirations.

We started this grant out of a desire to transform our relationship to arts funding. After years of applying and receiving mostly rejections in response, we wanted to become agents in this system. We wanted to be able to fund projects that were interesting, even if the applicant had never received funds before. With this in mind, and having experienced last winter being on the other end of sending out rejections to those applicants whose projects we had no money to fund, we’re considering a move from an application process to a nomination process. This is in the offing for the Winter 07/08 grant cycle. We welcome your feedback and ideas about how we can make this happen. Nominees won’t necessarily know they’ve been nominated and thus won’t receive a rejection, and we like the initial gesture of generosity that’s required to nominate an artist for funding.

Best wishes and thanks to the Collective Foundation.

Speaking the Art World into Existence
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Thursday May 3rd, 6:30pm

cadre is thrilled to announce that we have been invited to present our manifesto as part of the
Collective Foundation exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, tomorrow, May 3rd. The event begins at 6:30pm.

Collective Foundation artists Joseph Del Pesco, Scott Oliver and Ted Purves are bringing together groups who have both “personalized and pluralized the art world.” Presenters will include collective artist groups, other alternative granting programs, publishing projects, and spaces for art criticism and dialogue, all “projects and organizations that exemplify a more democratic, DIY, people-powered art-world and employ strategies of collective contribution, crowdsourcing, and alternative or informal economies.”

A point of clarification for all of our generous donors and potential donors:

As much as we’d like to send receipts for donations we receive, we are trying to keep it low key at the launch of this grant. We may eventually go there, but for now we do not have a legal non-profit status and though we could write you a receipt, it would not make your donation to cadre tax-deductible.

This is one of the reasons we asked for donations of $10, reasoning that most people would feel comfortable giving up that relatively low amount even if it wasn’t tax deductible.

Thanks!