December 2014 Update

If you haven't had a chance to visit StoreFrontLab's current exhibition, Massive Urban Change, by Eliza Gregory with Nicole Lavelle, be sure to stop by Saturday thru Wednesday from 12-5PM before the show closes on December 14. 

You also can check out these other upcoming events at StoreFrontLab and with affiliates: 

Artist Talk with Eliza Gregory, Kirk Crippens, Lizzy Brooks + Radka Pulliam
Wednesday, December 3
6:30 pm
StoreFrontLab
RSVP

Temporal Cities, Lizzy Brooks + Radka Pulliam
First Thursday Lower Polk Art Walk 
Thursday, December 4
6-10pm
Ramon’s Tailor
628 Jones St. (at Post)

Massive Urban Change
Closing Reception
Sunday, December 14
6:30 pm
StoreFrontLab

Switch Bench, by Danny Garcia
As a part of Massive Urban Change, woodworker and architect Daniel Garcia has placed a pair of his Switch benches down the center of the gallery. Contoured to subtly suggest that people sit facing opposite directions along the bench, these objects reinforce the values of dialogue and community-building that underscore. The two pieces are for sale as part of the project for $3,600 each. Please contact info@elizagregory.com to purchase.

Stay tuned for January events!

Urban Symposium
Mid-January, 2015
Urban Symposium, an ongoing series led by architects Lyndon Manuel and Leah Nichols, fosters an interactive and participatory dialog about urban development as it relates to the city’s current socio-economic environment.

Give
January 9 to February 7, 2015
Give explores the collective city as a space between the object and the viewer. Through the sculptural layering of donated clothing, blankets and a collection of fabric goods provided by the community, artists Juliana Raimondi and Bird Feliciano create an immersive site where one can get lost in space and, at the same time, reconnect with each other.

Dec 3: Artist Talk with Eliza Gregory, Kirk Crippens, Lizzy Brooks + Radka Pulliam

StoreFrontLab invites you to an evening in conversation with artists Eliza Gregory, Kirk Crippens, Lizzy Brooks + Radka Pulliam. Together, their works present a timely trifecta of San Francisco neighborhoods undergoing rapid urban development—Bayview-Hunters Point, the Tenderloin, and the Mission District—contentious and well loved. While these works are presented primarily through still imagery, the artists have embedded themselves deeply within the communities of their focus, enriching the visual with essential oral and written narrative and thus creating an important record of San Francisco's historical present.

Artist Talk with Eliza Gregory, Kirk Crippens, Lizzy Brooks + Radka Pulliam
Wednesday December 3, 6:30pm
StoreFrontLab
337 Shotwell Street

Eliza Gregory's Massive Urban Change, on view at StoreFrontLab, creates a space for nuanced dialogue about neighborhood evolution amidst the polarized debates currently surrounding San Francisco's Mission District. The work is comprised of a panoramic view of Mission Street, annotated with hand-written narratives contributed by visitors.

Eliza Gregory, Massive Urban Change (detail), 2014, digital photograph

Kirk Crippen's The Point, on view at the SFAC Gallery at City Hall, honors and celebrates the long-time residents of Bayview-Hunters Point. Primarily consisting of regal large-scale portraits of individuals from all generations in the neighborhood, The Point also features poetic interior shots of homes and rooms within the Bayview-Hunters Point community.

Kirk Crippens, The Point: Sphinx, 2014, digital photograph of Chet Allen's living room in Bayview.

Lizzy Brooks and Radka Pulliam's Temporal Cities, on view at Ramon's Tailor, explores the changing nature of a city and our own ideas of permanence. The installation's main visual is a window projection of a fading image of a Tenderloin street scene circa 1970. The artists use this beacon of light as an entry point to talk with neighbors and record personal stories.
 

Negative AAZ-0060, Courtesy of the Robert Durden Color Slide Collection, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. From Lizzy Brooks + Radka Pulliam's Temporal Cities, 2014, Ramon's Tailor.

Opening November 7: MASSIVE URBAN CHANGE

Eliza Gregory and Nicole Lavelle's Massive Urban Change will create a space for  nuanced dialogue about neighborhood evolution in the Mission District.

MASSIVE URBAN CHANGE
November 7-December 14, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, November 7, 6-8:30PM RSVP
Closing Reception: Sunday, December 14, 1-5:00PM
Gallery Hours: Saturday–Wednesday, 12-5:00PM
Closed: November 22-30

This November we invite a closer look at the changing Mission with our exhibition, Massive Urban Change. The five-week project, a collaboration of artists Eliza Gregory and Nicole Lavelle, creates a space for nuanced dialogue about neighborhood evolution amidst the polarized debates currently surrounding San Francisco's Mission District. 

Composed of visual, sculptural and conversational components, Massive Urban Change zooms in and zooms out on the controversies by calling attention to historical context while also prioritizing individual experiences within the neighborhood.

The installation begins with a photograph of Mission Street between 15th and 30th Streets. With a nod to Ed Ruscha’s Sunset Strip, this panoramic series will snake around the gallery walls and provide the first layer of what will become a collaged, narrative map of neighborhood evolution, hope, frustration and reinvention.

Open Saturdays through Wednesdays from 12–5:00PM, the gallery will host visitors as both audience members and participants. The artists will conduct interviews, do online and historical research, and take suggestions from audience members for how to build out the this 3D map of changes. At the exhibition opening, visitors will begin the mapping process by speaking to other guests about neighborhood identity, history, pride, distress and hopes for the future.

Additional Components
Lavelle and Gregory are creating a series of graphic postcards for purchase that illuminate the role that the language of commerce plays in forming and representing place-based identity. Each postcard features one or more graphic renderings of business signage from Mission Street, taken from original photographs. The sale of these cards will help fund the project and act as an entry point for conversation around familiar landmarks.

Two custom made benches, part of Daniel Garcia’s Switch series, will run down the center of the gallery. These benches subtly encourage conversation by physically suggesting that people sit facing opposite directions: the contours of each bench switch two-thirds of the way along. Made from baltic birch and fixed to welded plate steel legs, the Switch benches reinforce the values of dialogue and community-building that underscore Massive Urban Change.