Making Room for Wonder

 June 1. 2008

Wonder opens horizons of possibility beyond the constraints of “nature” and “law.” It makes room for desire, for doubt, for dreams, for experimentation, for resistance, for things not known and considered unimaginable. Under the current totalitarian political regime, where options appear to close at every turn, wonder may still free the spirit and the mind to imagine and enact alternatives. This exhibition explores the territories that “wonder” may share with “queer.”

Sunday’s opening includes impromptu “wonder-filled” performances and video throughout the afternoon!

Biographies

Tirza True Latimer , Ph.D.

After earning her M.A. at Davis, where she focused on the gay-cultural dimensions of the Paris-based Russian Ballet and Swedish Ballet, Tirza went on to earn a Ph.D. at Stanford University. Since her graduation from Stanford in 2003, she has published work from a lesbian feminist perspective on a range of topics in the fields of visual culture and criticism. She co-edited, with Whitney Chadwick, the anthology The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars (Rutgers University Press, 2003) and revised her dissertation into the book Women Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris (Rutgers University Press, 2005). In the interim, she has also served as visiting lecturer in art history, visual criticism, and feminist studies at Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Davis; and San Francisco Art Institute and has enjoyed visiting assistant professor status at Willamette University, Mills College, California College for the Arts, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her teaching, like her research, continues to explore the intersection of visual and sexual cultures. As an independent curator, she has organized and collaborated on a number of exhibitions–most recently the 2005-2006 shows Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore and Unexpected Developments (which focused on queer photography). Recently she was a visiting faculty member in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the History of Art at Yale University as well as being the Co-Chair of the Queer Caucus for Art, a College Art Association affiliated society. She is currently chair of the Visual Studies Department at California College of Art, San Francisco.

Robert Melton, freelance curator and a community art event organizer, has worked in a variety of art venues throughout the Bay Area. He holds degrees in Ethnic Studies and Art History with honors from San Francisco State University, and is currently pursuing an MA in Museum Studies from San Francisco State University. Since 2002 Melton has curated, co-curated and assisted at galleries and for exhibitions throughout San Francisco. He served as curator at San Francisco State University Student Art Gallery from 2002-2006, where he was responsible for the highly praised show ‘Cuba On My Mind’, and has participated in a variety of collaborative art projects and art-based community fundraising events with organizations including San Francisco’s Chinese Historical Society, SomArts, YMCA, San Francisco Jazz Links, Visual Aid and Art for Aids.  He was also the co-curator for a San Francisco Mission-based fundraising art project for Precita Eyes Muralists at San Francisco’s Andalu Restaurant.  During 2002-2006 he played a key role assisting in the planning, exhibit research and opening of the Museum of the Africa Diaspora and 2004 he became one of the co-founders of Exhibition Workshop, a private Oakland exhibition space dedicated to the promotion and craftsmanship of curatorial practices. Melton’s skills have also led to work on public college art events, which he co-curated with the Fine Arts Museum’s education department at both the Legion Honor and de Young Museum since 2002.  Melton is the Art Pavilion coordinator /curator for this year 2008 San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration. Currently, Melton is the College Night Project Coordinator at the de Young Museum where he prepared a Gilbert and George College Night event.  Future art shows include a collaborative project with Oakland-based Tessera Gallery.

Nexus ArtReach
Nexus Art Reach project team is proud to assist and partnership with Queer Cultural Center up and coming international exhibition “Making Room for Wonder” at SomArts Gallery in San Francisco. Nexus Art Reach is a non- profit project group and the parent event planning team for the de Young Museum College Night Out Reach programs, which supports and promotes emerging artists from the interdisciplinary arts and the bay area’s diverse arts community by providing artists a venue to showcase their works to the general public.

Sr. Project Event Coordinator
Robert C Melton
Project Coordinators
Rumin Jehangir
Ray Gin
Project Assistants
Elyse Kluver
Jared Ledesma

MAKING ROOM FOR WONDER OPENING RECEPTION
FEATURING!

Heklina	DJ Jeff Stallings

Heklina is the hostess, producer, and creator of Trannyshack, San Francisco’s longest running drag performance night club, now in it’s tenth year of shocking and delighting packed audiences every Tuesday night at midnight. Defying all expectations, Trannyshack incorporates everything from low brow trash to high brow performance art, and has become famous (or, infamous) worldwide as the quintessential San Francisco experience. No visit to the City is complete without a stop at Trannyshack. The club has been featured in Out (which named it one of the top 10 reasons to move to San Francisco), Genre, Instinct, and Paper magazines and has won numerous Best of the Bay awards, and has also been filmed for an upcoming VH1 documentary and an independent feature length documentary , titled “Filthy Gorgeous: The Trannyshack Story”. Trannyshack is also branching out it’s empire, with LA, London, and NYC Trannyshack’s already having debuted in 2005 and 2006. Check her out at trannyshack.com

DJ Jeff Stallings will be playing what he calls “upbeat down-tempo” at the opening reception of “Making Room for Wonder” on June 1.  Jeff is a resident DJ of Energy 92.7FM’s Sunday evening down-temp program, Below Zero, and was the chill DJ at the annual Real Bad party at the end of last September’s Folsom Street Fair.

Jeff’s interest in edgy down-tempo music bloomed in 2000 when a friend gave him a CD mixed by Claude Challe and put out by Buddha-Bar in Paris.  He was hooked and started collecting this genre of music from all over the world.  Around the same time, Jeff started mixing compilations for friends, who often told him he should DJ professionally.  

Since taking the DJ plunge, he has played venues in Los Angeles and his adopted city of San Francisco, including at Mezzanine, 1015 Folsom Nightclub, the Slanted Door and Etiquette Lounge.  His chill sensibilities were forged by 70s and 80s rock, honed by late nights in New York dance clubs in the 80s, then refined by the otherworldly sounds of Balearic beats and the Ibiza sound of the last decade.

As the newest resident on Below Zero, Jeff regularly conjures up mixes comprised of new, cutting-edge down-tempo tunes and classics as well as gems from other genres.  

You can learn more about Jeff’s music at Http://snuggythugg.com and at http://belowzerobeats.com.