SAN FRANCISCO.- As part of its commitment to nurturing local artists, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) presents Bay Area Now 5 (BAN 5) from Jul 19-Nov 16, 2008. YBCA’s multidisciplinary triennial, now in its fifth iteration, is devoted to featuring emerging and established local artists and serves as the most expansive survey of contemporary art created in the San Francisco Bay Area. Designed to establish a standard for serious consideration of art being produced regionally, Bay Area Now generates dialogue about the Bay Area’s significance as a cultural region, acknowledges the work of established artists and introduces audiences to emerging artists.

Bay Area Now 5 explores the many ways artists are influenced by their experiences both inside and outside of the Bay Area. YBCA’s curators chose BAN 5 visual and performing artists based on their visions of new work and enabled them to realize these works through financial support. In addition, to reflect the dynamic Bay Area arts scene, YBCA has tapped four visual arts guest curators and six guest film programmers to present programming exclusively for BAN 5 audiences. BAN 5 also goes beyond YBCA’s walls with its guest curated projects and community engagement programming.

“YBCA is a cultural institution that builds community through art. At no time is this more apparent than during Bay Area Now. This triennial event gives those who live here, and those visiting San Francisco, a chance to come together in celebration of our local artists,” says YBCA’s executive director Kenneth Foster.

YBCA’s Bay Area Now 5 community engagement programming highlights culturally vibrant areas in the Bay Area – these neighborhoods include Richmond, San Francisco’s Mission District and West Oakland. Programming with the organizations (InSitu: Richmond, Red Poppy Art House and Black New World) in each of the neighborhoods and at YBCA is planned.

YBCA’s free open house, titled What’s the Big Idea? Day, on Sat, Sep 13 invites the public to learn more about contemporary art with visual art, music, performances, hands-on workshops, exhibition tours, film screenings and food & drink.

Bay Area Now, initially started as a visual arts survey, expanded into a multidisciplinary festival with a performing arts and film/video component in 2005. Many past Bay Area Now artists, including Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, Todd Hido, Rachel Neubauer and Kota Ezawa, have gone on to achieve recognition at other major festivals and exhibitions.

Bay Area Now 5

YBCA First Floor Galleries

Sat, Jul 19–Sun, Nov 16, 2008

Twenty-one BAN 5 visual artists were selected by YBCA curators Kate Eilertsen and Berin Golonu after extensive studio visits throughout the Bay Area. Artists in the exhibition include Maria Antelman, Elaine Buckholtz, Joshua Churchill, Brian Conley, Ala Ebtekar, Ana Teresa Fernández, Donald Fortescue and Lawrence LaBianca, Misako Inaoka, Jonathon Keats, Edmundo de Marchena, Ian McDonald, Praba Pilar, John Roloff, Paul Schiek, Erik Scollon, Leslie Shows, Ginger Wolfe-Suarez and Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe with poet Moira Roth, Canan Tolon and lauren woods.

Bios for Bay Area Now 5 artists and guest curators begin on page four.

Guest-curated Exhibitions:

Theory of Survival

YBCA Terrace Galleries

Sat, Jul 19–Sun, Aug 24, 2008

Guest-curated by Taraneh Hemami, Theory of Survival engages the Iranian and Iranian-American diaspora community in an intergenerational, creative dialogue about issues of cultural identity, preservation and representation. The exhibition brings together a multi-generational and international group of artists of the Iranian Diaspora who have responded to a historical archive belonging to the library of the Iranian Students Association of Northern California, which was active from 1964-1982.

Ground Scores: Guided Tours of San Francisco Past and Personal

YBCA Terrace Galleries and Locations Throughout San Francisco

Sat, Jul 19– Sat, Oct 18, 2008

Guest-curated by Valerie Imus, Ground Scores: Guided Tours of San Francisco Past and Personal is an interactive project within the YBCA galleries as well as offering tours or self-guided explorations of sites in and around San Francisco. Ground Scores offers cartographical and audio portraits of sites that reveal the city’s forgotten histories, as well as mapping out invisible networks within the city’s infrastructure. The Ground Scores artists are BARGE (Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics), Jonn Herschend, Alison Pebworth with James Goode, Jeannene Przyblyski and the Bureau of Urban Secrets, Michael Swaine, The Studio for Urban Projects and Syndicate (organized by Jessica Tully, Kim Munson, Wendy Crittenden, Tom Griscom, Christine Wong Yap, Greg O'Toole and the Labor Archives and Research Center).

Ground Scores Tours (All tours leave from YBCA, unless otherwise noted, and reservations are required.):

Sat, Jul 26; Sat. Oct 4, noon–2:30 pm, Syndicate

A walking tour of sidewalk art installations which nod to the history of labor unions at performing arts venues in San Francisco led by Jessica Tully, Kim Munson and historians from the Labor Archives and Research Center. This tour is accessible.

Sat, Aug 23 & 30; Sat, Sept 20 & 27, noon–4 pm, How to Organize a Public Library

Michael Swaine’s walking tours of individual home libraries. Tour locations TBD. Reservations: ( 415-978-2710 ext. 136 or www.apleafortenderness.com).

Sat, Sep 6, noon–4 pm, A Lover’s Line thru the Presidio

Jeannene Przyblyski and the Bureau of Urban Secrets examine the history of Lovers’ Lane in the Presidio on this bus tour.

Sat, Sep 13, 3–5 pm, Everything Is Better Now

Jonn Herschend embraces absurdity on this bus tour of locations of public and private emotional crisis.

Sat, Oct 11, noon–4 pm, Buried Treasure Island

Bus tour led by BARGE (the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics) explores the history of land use on Treasure Island.

Sat, Oct 18, 2–5 pm, An Unnatural History of Golden Gate Park

The Studio for Urban Projects team up with landscape designers, ecologists and park historians to create a walking tour illuminating Golden Gate Park’s complex history. Meets on the steps of the Conservatory of Flowers on Kennedy Drive. This tour is accessible.

Estacion Odesia

YBCA First Floor Galleries

Sat, Jul 19–Sun, Nov 16, 2008

Queens Nails Annex, 3191 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 9411

Fri, Jul 25–Sat, Aug 30, 2008

QNA/BAN Music Club events occur at 7 pm on Fri, Aug 15; Mon, Sep 15 and Fri, Oct 17 at Queens Nails Annex.

Estacion Odesia explores the work of Bay Area artists who are also musicians and who make audio based projects. Curated by Julio Cesar Morales, Brian Storts and Mike Bianco of Queens Nails Annex (QNA), this two-part exhibition showcases artists’ visual works at QNA while featuring their audio tracks in listening stations at YBCA. Artists included are Mary Elizabeth Yarboro (TITS), Paul Costuros (Death Sentence Panda), John Dwyer (The OhSee) and other artists including Katrina Lamb and famed Beat artist Wally Hendrick. Estacion Odesia also includes a limited-edition box set with CDs featuring music and experimental audio from the artists and bands. The “QNA/BAN Music Club” enables people to create downloadable play lists and attend monthly salons at QNA.

Queens Nails Annex was founded in 2004. The space began as a way to fill the gaps left by the dot-com boom and bust in the Bay Area during the mid to late nineties. Storts and Linder led the overall re-construction of the space from a Filipino bakery to artist studios and a gallery. Currently QNA is co-directed and curated by Bay Area visual artists Julio Cesar Morales, Brian Storts and Mike Bianco. It serves as a project space dedicated to presenting collaborative, site-specific and experimental works by artists, and hopes to challenge both emerging and established artists to work outside their normal practices in order to produce unique projects.

Galleon Trade: Bay Area Now 5 Edition

Terrace Galleries

Opening Night Party: Thu, Sep 4, 5–8 pm

Thu, Sep 5–Sun, Oct 19, 2008

Guest-curated by Jenifer K. Wofford, Galleon Trade: Bay Area Now 5 Edition is a collaborative project that builds international bridges between the Bay Area and other cities on the globe through a process of exchange and dialog. The BAN 5 edition of Galleon Trade connects the work of Bay Area artists Jaime Cortez, Megan Wilson, Johanna Poethig, Gina Osterloh and Christine Wong Yap, all of whom went to Manila with the project in 2007, with that of Manila artists Poklong Anading, Norberto Roldan, Maria Taniguchi, Yason Banal and MM Yu.

For more information on Bay Area Now 5 performing arts, film/video and community engagement programming, visit www.ybca.org.

Bios for Bay Area Now 5 artists and guest curators:

Maria Antelman was born in Athens, Greece. After studying art history in Madrid and publishing a cultural magazine in Athens for several years, she moved to the U.S. Her videos revolve around the fears and desires that emerge from our necessity to believe in something and the converse impossibility to believe in anything.

Elaine Buckholtz has worked as a lighting and visual designer in the Bay Area for 20 years. Her most recent work utilizes video and light in relation to sculptural forms, digital prints, and preexisting sites in architecture and nature. Buckholtz holds dual MFA’s from the California College of The Arts and from Stanford University. She is an adjunct faculty member in the Art and Art History department at Stanford University.

Joshua Churchill is a cross-disciplinary artist who works primarily in the media of sound and light.

Churchill is also an active experimental sound performance and recording artist who often creates noise under the moniker T/R and is involved in a number of ongoing solo and collaborative projects. His installation work often focuses on elements of sites that are either inaccessible or generally overlooked by the public in everyday life.

Brian Conley’s artistic practice operates between the divide of science, art and politics, from radio performance to sculptural and sound-based installations. He is founding co-editor with Sina Najafi of Cabinet Magazine, an international art and culture quarterly. He is also on the faculty of the Fine Art Program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Ala Ebtekar, born in the United States to Iranian parents, was raised in both Iran and the U.S. Ebtekar’s drawings and painting are as influenced by the mythology and folklore of his Iranian heritage as he is by the legends and lore of hip-hop culture. Ebtekar holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute an MFA from Stanford University.

Ana Teresa Fernández was born and raised in Tampico, Mexico. Her paintings of women, rendered in plaintive and dramatic light, are neither menial nor domestic. They are imbued with mystery and dignity, aggressive affirmation, defiance and resilience, resignation and reverence. Fernandez received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Donald Fortescue is the Chair of the Furniture Program at California College of the Arts. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of New South Wales; an Associate Diploma in Visual Arts from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University; and a Masters of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong.

Taraneh Hemami is an Iranian born Bay Area artist and community leader. Fully committed to expanding the function of art in society, she has developed collective, collaborative and participatory projects. Hemami has been an artist-in-residence at Montalvo, Djerassi, the California Art Council, the Lab, and a Fellowship recipient at Kala Art Institute. She holds an MFA from the California College of the Arts.

Misako Inaoka’s sculptural work and installations combine the artificial and the natural to create new hybridized species and landscapes. Inaoka holds a BFA in printmaking from the Rhode Island College of Design, and an MFA from Mills College.

Valerie Imus is the Exhibitions Manager at YBCA and an independent curator and writer. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jonathon Keats is a conceptual artist, fabulist and critic. He serves as the art critic for San Francisco Magazine and as a columnist for both Artweek and Wired Magazine. He is the author of two novels and a collection of fables, as well as museum catalogue essays, monographs, and artist's books. Since graduating from Amherst College, he has been a visiting artist at California State University, Chico, and a guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

Lawrence LaBianca sculpts metal, ceramic, wood, and glass into forms that explore humankind’s relationship with nature from within a technological society. Labianca has taught at the Richmond Art Center, Anderson Ranch, and California College of Arts and Crafts. He holds a BA in Environmental Design from the University of Colorado and MFA from the California College of the Arts.

Edmundo de Marchena, Venezuelan born, draws on culture from todo el mundo to explore both the glamour and the separateness of life in familiar and foreign places through multimedia art. De Marchena received a scholarship from Parsons School of Design where he later taught in the product design department.

Ian McDonald has completed residencies at the European Ceramic Work Center in Holland; the International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark; and the Museum of Fine Arts at the de Young Art Center in San Francisco. He has been on the faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute since 2002.

Praba Pilar is a performance artist, technologist and cultural theorist exploring the intersections of emerging technologies, economics and the environment through performances, installations, street theatre, writing and websites. A Bay Area/Colombian multi-disciplinary artist, she has been honored with multiple awards, including the Creative Capital and the Creative Work Fund awards. Pilar is currently pursuing a PhD in Performance Studies at the University of California, Davis.

John Roloff works conceptually with site, process and natural systems. He is known primarily for his outdoor kiln/furnace projects done from the late 1970’s to the early 1990’s as well as other large-scale environmental and gallery installations investigating geologic and natural phenomena. Roloff holds degrees in geology and fine arts from University of California, Davis. He is currently Chair of the Sculpture/Ceramics Department the San Francisco Art Institute and is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco.

Paul Schiek is a photographer who founded the publishing company “These Birds Walk” four years ago in Oakland. Schiek holds a BFA from California College of the Arts, where he studied closely with Jim Goldberg and Larry Sultan.

Erik Scollon holds an MFA in Fine Arts and an MA in Visual & Critical Studies from the California College of the Arts. His studio practice consists of working with porcelain objects that mix historical references and blend functional concerns with aesthetic ones. His critical writings examine the overlap of art, craft and design in how material culture effects social relations.

Leslie Shows’ pigment, graphite and cutout collages investigate alternative ways to view people's relationships to land. Shows holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA at the California College of the Arts.

Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe is a Cuban-American architect/artist whose practice has occupied built architecture as well as psychological and conceptual spaces. He holds an MFA in New Genres and Sculpture from University of California, Los Angeles.

Ginger Wolfe-Suarez is an artist, writer, and organizer. She founded the InterReview Journal in 2002 which produces ongoing publications, performances, and artworks with revolving collaborators and participants.

Canan Tolon was trained as an architect, and holds degrees from University of California, Berkeley, Middlesex Polytechnic in London, and Fachhochschule in Trier, Germany.

Jenifer K. Wofford’s creative practice encompasses installation, painting, drawing, photo, video, performance, teaching and curating. She holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an MFA from UC Berkeley. Wofford is also a member of the artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B.

lauren woods creates hybrid media projects and video and sound installations. Woods holds a BA in radio, television, and film with a minor in sociology from the University of North Texas. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

In Addition:

Moira Roth, collaborator with Ginger Wolfe-Suarez and Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe, is Professor of Art History at Mills College. A contemporary art historian, she also writes poetry, plays and fiction.