Pledgers receive all sorts of goodies from a Creative Lives sketch kit, tshirt by Henry Gunderson, prints from Ferris Plock & Andrew Schoultz, tickets to the LA & SF screenings, etc. Donate as little as $5 now.
80+ year old NYC based street fashion photographer and icon Bill Cunningham is an interesting character who still buzzes about New York City by bicycle making fashion shows and society soirees for the NYTimes. The film, "Bill Cunningham New York", documents the thoughtful/ matter-a-fact nature of the man who believes fashion isn't about celebrity and glamour but about finding beauty in a harsh world.
We highly recommend this honest portrayal of a man whose life's work isn't about money but about following your heart's desire and truely being yourself, working hard continuing to do what you love. The film is a wonderful portrait of an honorable man and well worth checking out (Netflix streams it, if you go that route).
Influential figure in experimental and underground filmmaking, George Kuchar passed away from cancer yesterday. Kuchar had been a professor @SFAI since 1971 while working on his lo-fi films and videos.
Kuchar's 1966 "Hold Me While I'm Naked"
If you've never seen a movie by the Kuchar Brothers, you really should. When George and Mike Kuchar were in their heyday, their work was the epitome of 1960s underground cinema: 8mm, no budget, wild ideas, wilder content. Unless you went to film school or lived near a cool theater or museum? They were almost impossible to see. Now? They're a click away on YouTube. ~read on
Saturday update via U.P.:Officially billed (according to Harry Kim and Dave Choe) as the "Dirty Hands Release: Jerk Off Cum in Your Eye Party. Everybody Cum". We're keeping it in the hood and doing a DVD release party at Nickies (466 Haight St) Sunday night at 10pm. If you're around come by and get a dirty dirty from Dave. That is all.
Guess it's the way things are these days. Remember The Alhambra Theater? How about The Regency Theater? So many of San Francisco's best indi one screen theaters are going the way of the 8 track, and it sucks. It sucks that more people didn't support and enjoy them, but what's the way it is. Streaming video, Netflix, etc and with people's limited time they have... Well...
The best popcorn with yeast in San Francisco, the Red Vic celebrates their 31st anniversary this July 25th, and it also happens to be the day the classic Upper Haight theater closes their doors. "Our closure is 100 percent certain at this point," co-owner Claudia Lehan said. "On July 25, our birthday screening of 'Harold and Maude' will be our last, I'm sad to say." ~Chronicle story.
Wanna check out some of the now closed classic SF theaters? A man on Flickr has tons of photos.
Underskatement is back and they want your films for this US touring skate-centric film festival. Fecal Face is proud to be a media sponsor of this great program that's now in its 10 year.
UnderSkatement is a traveling film festival featuring short films made exclusively by skateboarders. Underskatement originated in 2001 to showcase the talents of both well-known and unknown skateboarder filmmakers. Entering this film festival doesn’t require a big name in the skateboarding world, but rather-just like skateboarding- requires creativity and imagination.
This is an open call for participants to appear in a film commissioned by the Oakland Standard, a series of contemporary art projects produced by the Oakland Museum of California. Once selected, participants will visit the museum on Monday, June 27, 2011, for a single forty-five-minute on-camera interview.
The film, titled Nothing Happens for Long, is an investigation (by the filmmakers, Jonn Herschend and Andrew Leland) into the normal, even boring moments that happen every day at a museum. It’s our belief that these quiet, mundane experiences are what lead to real discovery and wonder, and that museums are especially good at creating the right atmosphere to make them happen—in other words, to make nothing happen. (A more detailed explanation of these ideas appears on the film’s project page.)
We are looking for stories by individuals who have been to the Oakland Museum—recently or years ago—and experienced a moment where nothing happened.
Saw the documentary on Bill Hicks last night, AMERICAN: The Bill Hicks Story, and was so pleased to see a feature length film dedicated to telling the story of his genius and of his career starting out at age 16 to his early tragic death from pancreatic cancer at age 32 in 1994.
Bill Hicks, self described "Chomsky with dick jokes", was one of the best stand-up comedians, social critics, and satirists of all time, decades ahead of everyone else and culture at large. The film is currently playing here at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas and runs through... Well, tonight, Thursday, is the last showing, and you should get there and see it on the big screen before it's gone.
Yes, Bill Hicks was on stage many years ago, but the humor is completley timeless- everything is just as funny as it was 2 decades ago when it was written. If you miss the film in theaters, download some of his stand-up or watch it online.
Considered the comedian's comedian, whose act generally flew over the heads of most Americans at the time (his 12th appearance on David Letterman in '93 was pulled for being "over the top"), Hicks never garnered much US mainstream success, although, a huge hit in the UK selling out massive theaters filled with thousands of fans... Any comedian you love today was hugely influenced by Hicks who stayed true to his words and art, never selling out his act and completely just being himself throughout.
The film is smartly assembled, keeping even those obliviously unaware of Bill Hicks entertained with jazzy after effects/ animated motion of the old photographs of Bill's early life and career, such that you feel as though you're watching classic footage. Very well done, and for those of you who are huge Bill Hicks fans, the film is a way to relive classic performances and to appreciate and be inspired by an artist who stood his ground and kept focused on what more of us should.
R.I.P., Bill. You are greatly missed, and we would to see how you'd respond to our nutty ass world today. -Trippe
If you don't who Lee "Scratch" Perry is or what his music is about, you need to start with the Lee Perry station on Pandora for a quick education (it's a good one). He basically began reggae music defining its sound in the late '60s. He began the career of a young Bob Marley producing many of his biggest hits. Perry's prolific career includes beginning the sound of DUB music and could argue much electronic music and hip hop as well. He's an energetic creative force that at times during the 70s, in his home studio "Black Ark Studios", produced an astonishing 20 songs a week.
The film isn't your traditional VH1's Behind the Music where other musicians and critics rant and rave about Perry's genius and his importance in modern music history. Instead, the film takes you inside the mind of Perry (or attempts to) by focusing a lot of screen time to Perry's long winded monologues where his stream of conscious religious/ poetry rants are intriguing in illustrating his talent at word play and musical mastery. Some may find the film focuses too much on Perry's ramblings, but I found it refreshing and a way to get inside Perry's head and thought it helped to truly illustrate how creative and interesting the man is. Scrawling words and phrases spray painted on his home walls. Burning gasoline in his snowy driveway. Dancing and seemingly truly being himself, it's nice to see someone so mentally free of any self restriction or those imposed by society. He lives within the space of his own mind.
The film follows Perry's rise through the music scene in Jamaica to the present day where he lives in Switzerland with his wife and children. It tracks him at his highest peaks to the lowest of lows of an artist refusing to compromise- pushing those around him away for what Perry calls parasites reeling about his consciousness sucking his energy and creativity for profit and fame. At times Perry's a self described Mad Man, as those believed he was, but he pondered if it was too many years with the smoke (he's since stopped smoking ganja). He is no mad man but a creative force who deserves not only this spotlight on him and his music but so much more. Following a life of true creativity and focusing his energy on his music rather than a chase at fame and money, it's this reason why Lee Scratch Perry will be remembered in musical history while those around him seeking rich and fame will be enjoyably forgotten.
I caught up with Corey earlier this week and asked him a couple questions that hopfully aren’t duplicative and the one question that everyone who has seen it wants to know, “When can we get the DVD?” The film is multi-layered and while skating plays a central role in the film, if was replaced by, let’s say pogo-balling it would not have hurt the main content of the film. Although, it would have been pretty funny to see Steve Olson on a pogo-ball.
I have a film called Machotaildrop that is playing at the SF indie fest.
Where is the film playing?
The screening will be held at the Roxie theater.
Have you been here before?
I have been there a few times. We actually shot a small piece of the film there with Frank Gerwer. Who hopefully knows about the screening. He is a very hard man to get a hold of. Frank if you read this we would love to see you there!
Corey Adams photographed by Isaac Randozzi
I know you are sick of this question but it is all people want to know. When can we get our hands on a DVD of Macho Tail Drop? Or will it be in theaters before that?
Well we are hoping for both. I am learning that getting a film out for people to hold in their hands is a very difficult task when you don’t really own the entire film. Others have there hands involved so we are dealing with higher powers.
So bummed to have learned that Macho Taildrop will be screened in San Francisco at The Roxie on Fri, Feb 11th as part of the SF IndiFest... Well, we were stoked for a half a second after we bought tickets here, and then realized that Corey Arnold's opening at Fecal Face Dot Gallery is the same night... Bummer, as we've been waiting to see it for some time... But don't fret us. It'll also be screened on the 16th too.
Directed by Ralph Arlyck in 1970... This kid was only 4 & 1/2 years old at the time and lived with his parents in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco...
Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck interviews his neighbor, Sean Farrell, a 4-year-old living on San Francisco's Haight Street in 1969. Sean gives his thoughts on life in his home, a hippie crash pad, and casually mentions that he smokes pot, which caused this short film to become a national sensation.
A POSSIBLE OSCAR NOMINATION FOR BANKSY FILM --> The outsider status of graffiti artist Banksy took a further blow today with the announcement that he has been longlisted for an Oscar for his documentary film, Exit Through the Gift Shop. ~continue
STRANGE POWERS explores Merritt’s songwriting and recording process, and focuses on his relationships with his bandmates and longtime collaborator/manager Claudia Gonson, revealing an artist who has produced one of the most engaging and confounding bodies of work in the contemporary American songbook.
Robert "Budd" Dwyer served in the Pennsylvania State Senate in the 80s and was caught up in a bribery scandal that ended with Dwyer taking his own life in front of television cameras during a press conference at his office in Harrisburg, the state capital of Pennsylvania. The film tells the complete story of the scandal and suicide. Jesse Pollock reviews the film which premieres this Saturday @The Red Vic here in SF.
Before the days of internet video you had to watch your snuff films on VHS
and let me tell you, they were not easy to come by. I didn’t happen upon the
1970 Faces of Death series until I was well into my mid-teens and even then I
had to sneak around to watch the endless compilation of live autopsies, crime
scenes and suicides. When a person is subjected to countless hours of murder
and mutilation, the senses become numb and after a while it’s hard to summon
up any empathy at all - much like the famous eyeball scene depicted in A
Clockwork Orange. There was one scene in the series however, that made me
snap back to reality and proceeded to sear itself into my mind. In this scene,
a man calls together a press conference where he then reads for a short time
before
reaching into an envelope, pulling out a gun and shooting himself in the
head.
This part in the movie halted me so suddenly because it seemed to come
from a place I could empathize with. The intensity and starkness that these
images conveyed had connected with me on a more personal and intimate level.
I remember, as I’m sure many others have done as well, that I instantly wanted
to know who this man was. I wanted to know more about what happened on the
day a group of journalists crowded around a successful politician to watch him
end his life.
It would be many years before I would come to know this man as State Treasurer
R. Budd Dwyer of Pennsylvania, and finally read his story for the first time. Now
that video is so casually splashed around the internet at every turn, it’s not hard
to find and watch this scene within five minutes of searching for it... ~continue reading
We've featured all of the shorts that our friends @California is a Place have produced. All are worth a view and check them out being featured on PBR. Nice work, guys.
"I know very well that I’m out of your life. But the day I die, I now you’ll have to cry..to cry and cry. You may say you never loved me. But you’re going to be really sad and that’s how you’re going to stay. A stone in the journey taught me that my destiny was to roll and roll...to roll and roll...Then a cowboy told me you don’t have to get there first. But you have to know how to get there. With or without money I always do what I want. And my words are the law. I don’t have a throne or a queen. Or anyone who understands me. But I’m still the king” His name is Saúl Ezqueda and he is a Mariachi.
We interviewed this SF based artist a couple years back. Well, he now has a new website featuring his new drawings of sourced material he takes from google and youtube which he juxtaposes with alternate movie titles, tv show titles or characters, creating new fantasy entertainment teams. ~read the mini interview
Michael Hsiung traveled around the US w/ a bunch of dirty ass skater/ artists to put on art shows and to get shred gnar under the title of One Way or Another. Well, Corey Adams (MachoTailDrop director) was filming the whole time and has edited the footage down into a 5 part feature. Part 3 is the latest.
Fans of artist/ designer/ science/ thinker duo that is Charles and Ray Eames and their great film Powers of 10? This Sunday The Exploratorium is devoting the day 10/10/10 to the couple... The day will include activities, demonstrations, conversations, and of course, films, exploring the relative scale of things, and the philosophy and ideas of Charles and Ray Eames. Free w/ cost of admission. ~Details
I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...
I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.
It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.
Hit me up if you have any ECommerce related questions. - trippe.io
I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.
SF skateboarding icons Jake Phelps, Mickey Reyes, and Tommy Guerrero with the 3 SF Giants World Series Trophies
When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading
"Six Degrees" opens tonight, Friday Jan 16th (7-10pm) at FFDG in San Francisco. ~Group show featuring: Brett Amory, John Felix Arnold III, Mario Ayala, Mariel Bayona, Ryan Beavers, Jud Bergeron, Chris Burch, Ryan De La Hoz, Martin Machado, Jess Mudgett, Meryl Pataky, Lucien Shapiro, Mike Shine, Minka Sicklinger, Nicomi Nix Turner, and Alex Ziv.
"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on
As we work on our changes, we're leaving Squarespace and coming back to the old server. Updates are en route.
The content that was on the site between May '14 and today is history... Whatever, wasn't interesting anyway. All the good stuff from the last 10 years is here anyway.
Opening tonight, Friday May 23rd (7-10pm) at Park Life in the Inner Richmond (220 Clement St) is Again Home Again featuring works from the duo Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter who split time living in Sacramento and a tiny island at the top of Pudget Sound with their children.
Jacob Magraw will be showing embroidery pieces on cloth along with painted, gouache works on paper --- Rachell Sumpter paints scenes of colored splendor dropped into scenes of desolate wilderness. ~show details
NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?
The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.
Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON
Los Angeles based Alison Blickle who showed here in San Francisco at Eleanor Harwood last year (PHOTOS) recently showed new paintings in New York at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Lovely works.
We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...
If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.
Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.
Nate Milton emailed over this great short Gator Skater which is a follow-up to his Dog Skateboard he emailed to us back in 2011... Any relation to this Gator Skater?
Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.
In a filmmaker's thinking, we wish more videos were done in this style. Too much editing and music with a lacking in actual content. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.
FFDG is pleased to announce an exclusive online show with San Francisco based Ferris Plock opening on Friday, April 25th (12pm Pacific Time) featuring 5 new medium sized acrylic paintings on wood.
Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.
San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.
Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.
Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.
The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.
With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding
I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle
While walking our way across San Francisco on Saturday we swung through the opening receptions for Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in the Mission.
Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.
Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.
For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.
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