Native Funk and Flash: An Emerging American Folk Art
Author's Statement
The exhibit and the book
represent a collection and an overview of contemporary folk art executed by
people in the San Francisco Bay Area, but the origins of the symbols and
messages inherent in the work derive from two distinct areas of influence: first, the primitive and ethnic cultures of
the world, made available in recent years by modern communications media to a
contemporary melting-pot society immersed in the miracles of technology but
hungry for the spirit and human reality of handmade functional everyday
objects: second, the establishment-bucking youth of the sixties and seventies, including
the so-called Drug Culture, an
ever-widening cross-section of people determined to find alternate values to
those determined by the mass-produced comes-out-like-a-ribbon-lies-flat-on-the-brush bunch.
There is a cohesiveness of feeling
and identity among these folks who wear their hearts on their sleeves, so to
speak, proclaiming peace and love in embroidery and applique, and butterflies
on their bottoms acclaiming metamorphosis as a good shot at changing our
current bent-on-destruction direction.
This collection demonstrates a
wide range of proficiency in craft, but the message emerges clearly. Recycle--there is beauty in the old and worn;
stay happy and keep it light; only good vibes, please, and generate more of the
same by doing it for yourself and by enjoying the process of the work. Pass it on.
Tell it in a picture--create a mood and a feeling, if you can--that way,
others aren't threatened by the ideas so much.
Next step after music--and the next step after that, do it yourself. Action.
The Tao Te Ching suggests one live his/her life as an example--the
teaching embodied in work born of joy--then the people say, 'We did this
ourselves.'
-- Alexandra
Jacopetti This exhibition is organized
by
Lester
Gallery,
Inverness,
CA in conjunction with a book by Alexandra
Jacopetti.
Artists:
Alex and Lee, Kit Andrewson, Alexis Aquino, Linda Bacon, Hannah Bauer, John
Bauer, Marina Beebe, W. Bentley, Billy Bowers, Betsy Brock and Susi Neri,
Laurel Burch, Nina Carisi, Molly Davis, Nancy Denmark, Joanna Droeger, Tepper
Mari Eade, Dorothy Flash, Penelope Fried, Al Garvey, Marilyn Gordon, Pat
Haines, Kelly Hart, Elia Haworth and Ginger McNew, S. Jackson, Alexandra
Jacopetti, Hobart Jacopetti, Joanne Leonard, Alice and Susan Miyamoto, Kathleen
Rochester, Corina Rollins, Bill Sapios, Gino Sky and Neshama Franklin, Suzanne Taylor,
Patti Towle, Sue Van Brunt, Karen Warford, Judith Weston
|
|
|
March 09 - March 29, 1975
|
|
|
Staff / Board
