#1ppu

[nicolerosegelormino]

PUBLIC PAINTING POP-UP:  Echo Park

Sunday August 14th 1-4PM

Sunset Blvd & McDuff St.

[nicolerosegelormino]

Next 1-painting-pop-up Saturday Sept 24th at the Chispa Autumn Moon Festival at Louis Sutter in McClaren Park 11am-3pm #1ppu #sfarts #communityarts @bookandwheel #chispasf more info http://bookandwheel.org/chispa link in bio for reflections on past 1-painting-pop-up (at Louis Sutter Playground) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2EeNXFh4y0/?igshid=11va8muohfsw4

[nicolerosegelormino]

Peace & Harmony Celebration, Visitacion Valley Greenway

Saturday August 17th, 11:00am-3:00pm

I was had planned to pop-up in front of a plastic surgeon in Pacific Heights the following weekend. But Friday night, I had a better idea. I texted Anne, “Can I bring a large painting as a pop-up gallery to tomorrow’s Greenway party?” She loved the idea. Saturday morning, after laundry and other errands, I lift my Lilly painting out of the garage and carry her across the street over to the Visitacion Valley Greenway.

 Lilly is 7 feet tall and 5 feet wide. My daughter will point to her excitedly and yell, “Walking! It’s walking!” There are really only 3 elements in this painting: a translucent beige sea slug with short little legs that look like cow’s teats, a tangle of tan and brown limbs taken from men’s muscle magazines and men’s nudie (girl) magazines, and a crown of pastel-colored coral. This painting also has pale cerulean blended into the titanium the background and a muted lavender shadow cast by the figure.

 Sabrina and Carlos trail behind me to enjoy the festival. The entrance of the park is decorated and busy. Artists and volunteers carry equipment through the gate, performers linger and mingle and families waltz in with dogs and appetites to play. Like previous Greenway parties coordinated by Anne, today’s event is jovial, down-to-earth, artsy and a tad funky. It’s the perfect size: a few hundred attendees filter through over the course of 4 hours. And it’s the perfect pace: adequately planned, yet full of spontaneity.

 From the entrance follows a short corridor which opens up to a greenish slope encircled by a paved sidewalk. Directly to the right lies a small playground with swings and sandpit. Past the slope, the path continues through another corridor and finally through a brief maze of stairs and wheelchair accessible pathways set in a beautiful garden of native plants and trees. At the top are benches and another gate from which can be seen the next block of greenway across the street. The entire Greenway stretches 6 blocks, from Leland Avenue to McClaren Park. The party is contained in this one block.

 At the beginning corridor from Teddy are stationed a couple SF Sketchers, and a beautiful teal cart covered in paintings and open drawers. This busy corridor feels like an art gallery already, so I sit Lilly down under two trees onto the woodchips and tie her against the fence of the playground.

 The day unfolds like an art opening. I am too busy running into friends and acquaintances and igniting new relationships to take notes. I also meander away from the painting frequently to watch musicians play, to witness the doggie costume contest (hosted by 7 Mile’s owner Vanessa Garcia,) and to participate in making at other tables. My phone is broken so I am unable to take pictures. This one was taken by Cynthia, a preschool teacher at Paul Revere, whose teenage daughter I taught at Pacific Arts Camp many years ago.

 Lilly seems to feel at home in this environment. Cynthia says the figure in the painting looks as though it is moving. Cynthia used to be a dancer and she talks about a piece she choreographed and performed with her baby in her arms, performing the tumbling, caressing and babbling that is part of a mother-and-baby’s private daily interaction. She also whispers to me that the arm curling into a first on top with red creases looks phallic. I assure her that although the phallus was unintended, it contributes to the meaning of the painting. The limbs or tentacles have been taken from both men and women’s bodies. Painting a portrait of a woman’s experience must include masculine elements. The myth that women and their bodies are opposite to or an inversion of men’s bodies is false and instrumental to disempowerment. 

 I introduce myself to the artists of the teal cart, one of whom I happen to know. Book and Wheel is a project of Chispa, a collective of artists of Southeast San Francisco. I am quite surprised to meet them for the first time since living in the area since 2009. Kate and Oscar have built this beautiful cart called Book and Wheel to engage community members in more meaningful encounters with art, artists and nature. They are also responsible for some of the most beautiful murals around Portola. Today the cart is a gallery-studio-exchange. Participants are invited to draw ideas or pictures based on the “seed.” They deposit their drawings in a mail slot in exchange for a beautiful print of botanical watercolors by Anne or prints of sculptures, paintings and scratchboard drawings by Kate and Oscar. I sit under a tree across from Lilly to draw a seed exhuming billowy forms. A friend sits next to me and we catch up on life with toddlers. Carlos carries a wailing and wet Sabrina home for a nap.

 It’s nearly 3:00pm and time to close up. As I untie the rope, I meet an SF Sketcher from Fremont. He and his wife are originally from India. We talk about migration and diversity in Indian families. I talk about being inspired by Orientalism and trying to figure out what it means to be a painter who is Americanized, white and also South Asian too. He shows me some watercolor landscapes he started today. His style looks very Western, with an emphasis on naturalistic light with only selective details fully defined. I start to wonder what he thought about my comment. He says the figure in my painting looks like it’s dancing, and asks me if I intended it to be abstract.

 I have wondered about how my painting practice can be a place to explore my muddled ancestry for some time, but I honestly feel lost still. Orientalism parallels the tradition of Western figure painting. Both are an expression of colonization (of peoples of color, of women’s bodies) and in the Neo-Classical era most artists worked in both genres. As a mixed woman painter, I represent both the colonizer and the colonized. Having grown up in America it can be difficult to know where to begin inventing an authentic practice that explores this strange weaving of cultures, oppression, resistance, genetics, family. But I know I have no choice; I must ask this question because of my position. I am old enough to understand the recent past. But in flesh I am new. I am undoubtedly privileged. But to indulge blindly in that would dishonor my ancestry and disrespect my grandfather. “Yoooo are PunJABI!!!” my wide-eyed grandfather would announce with a fist blown loudly down.

 I exchange hugs and contact info. I pack up the white rope and carry Lilly home so I can catch a few minutes of rest with my family.

[nicolerosegelormino]

Monday July 29, 12noon-4pm

1 painting pop-up

UCSF Parnassus

Thirty-four years ago I was born here, atop this hill in the middle of a small city jutting into the bay. We didn’t live here, though. My mother knew she wanted a midwife. She had driven six months pregnant all the way from Hollywood, Florida to nest in Napa, California. I am not sure whether there were midwives in Napa. But there certainly were not any available to a mother on MediCal. So she went to UCSF. They were not thrilled to admit a mother so far into her term. But they made the right choice in the end. I was quite healthy. And my mother had a dreamy eight-hour labor—almost as swift as a Hollywood movie. Five years later we lived in Concord, where midwives had been banned altogether. That year, we drove to Alta Bates in Berkeley to have my sister, who arrived in less than six hours.

 The UCSF birthing center is not at Parnassus now, though. It has been moved to Mission Bay. I buy a terrible hot chocolate from the cafeteria because it is so very cold up here. And also because I want to be inside the cafeteria where I sat as a 3-year-old, looking up at the main hospital across the street where I was about to undergo minor ear surgery. The food is different. And there are more students. But the overall feeling is the same. And the pop-out glass wall is optimistic.

 It’s nearly noon and I tie my painting Brianna to a telephone pole in front of the library. The library has a small, lovely courtyard in front with tall planting beds full of native plants and trees and short, wide concrete borders for lounging on. This time, I try hiding some of my postcards in between the back of the stretchers for passerby to find. I feel giddy knowing a large, mildly obscene painting does not belong here. I try to anticipate being thrown out.

 I try sitting in different locations, at varying degrees of proximity. There’s not much threat to anyone stealing or defacing it here, so I even take a bathroom break. When I step into the library briefly for the toilet, I am reminded of the last time I was came in roughly eight years ago. I pulled books off the shelf with rich photos of internal organs. That was the beginning of my artistic journey into the body.

 The painting wins glances and smiles, but most passerby avoid it. Construction is happening to the building directly west of the main hospital. Construction workers lunch nearby. The morning is full of student chatter below the thunders of drills, mallets, dragging metal and shouts of caution.

 Directly across the sidewalk from Brianna, sitting atop a planter bed is a stone sculpture of a mother bear and two nursing cubs. It is stylized and the cubs seem to be nursing from breasts on her… chest? I thought bears have breasts on their bellies? Bear and Cubs (1984) was made by Beniamino Bufano, and Italian-American. At first I liked the sculpture, but now I begin to think about the romanticization of the maternal woman. I mean I love being a mother. But why must I be expected to be beautiful also? Why can’t we evade objectification once we become mothers? I think it would be a much better sculpture if the mama bear were fiercely snarling at some unseen threat—whilst nursing. Nursing from teats on her belly (as opposed to some humanized woman’s boobies.) A white woman photographs her 6-year-old son posing next to the bear. They ignore Brianna.

 After I move closer to the painting, I notice how the flow of foot traffic subtly redirects behind me. As though pedestrians want to catch a look without being seen.

 I nursed my daughter. It was fabulous. But very difficult in the beginning. I tried not to show any body parts at first. But within a few months I gave up all efforts to remain demure. Sabrina and I would just plop down anywhere we could get cozy, and I’d scoop her up. She refused to be hidden while nursing. And I didn’t object. Sustaining life trumped modesty, which I secretly reveled in. My mother nursed me also with some initial difficulty. In the 80s in the North Bay women bottle-fed or they nursed in the confines of their home. So she tolerated a good deal of shaming. Shame on breast-feeding-shamers. In contrast, in 2017 San Francisco, I enjoyed a great deal of encouragement, especially from elderly women. One beautiful 78-year-old credited her excellent health and longevity to having been breastfed.

 A group of young college students circle around the painting. Four of them are young men and one a young woman, who stands a little further away from Brianna. They gesture, discuss and laugh for nearly ten minutes. I wait for them to realize I am staring at them. So that I can grin and wave—maybe even wink.

 A construction worker walks past within inches of Brianna’s surface, spitting directly in front of her. I consider asking him to pose, spitting, for a photo. But he’s talking on his phone.

 A couple of weeks ago someone I love very much got a breast reduction. She is a dancer. She became a woman at age 13, in spite of her clinging to a tomboy identity. She became a woman because she was beautiful and because men liked her changing body—not because she was ready to become a woman, nor because she knew much about womanhood biologically or culturally. But I guess that’s what womanhood means in this culture: being desired, being violated, losing your personal space, being robbed of your perceived agency. “Catcalling,” “stalking” and “objectifying” sound misleadingly passive. That kind of sexual violence traumatizes women. It is also the only universal way American girls are initiated into adulthood.

 Some children, a middle-aged mom and more med students take pictures.

 Staring at the big, juicy persimmons atop Brianna, I try not to think about the plastic surgeon slicing off her nipple, trimming her ampleness, conforming her body to be “more proportionate,” sewing her up and sauntering home with a generous paycheck.

 This painting in invisible to so many people. Is the woman’s experience invisible too? I think so. Even to women.

 I had Sabrina at home because I am terrified of hospitals. Soon as I step inside, anxiety pales my face and dizzies my steps. It’s frightening enough to be a woman. But a half-naked woman in an institution with a deep history of harming bodies through exploitation or sloppiness is pure terror. It’s not so scary outside though. My homebirth was marvelous.

 A middle-aged woman wearing all black and a black down jacket circles my painting many times. Slowly and quickly, at varying distances. She has beautiful black curly hair flowing down to her waist. She dances with Brianna, and quietly walks on.

 It’s so damn cold here.

 A 10-year-old girl with puffy headphones paces back and forth in front of the painting. She bobs up and down, her short black hair bouncing. I guess she may be on the spectrum. She sometimes closes her eyes, and sometimes looks at the painting. She wears a continuous clever smile. Fifteen minutes later, her mother appears and scolds her for wandering.

 It’s time to go.

 "Don't let it fly away" I look up from my handful of tangled tie-downs. I have bad hearing and ask him to repeat. "Oh! Absolutely not!" I reply in exaggerated Judy Garland fashion. I return to disentangling.

 He lingers, "What is it?" he points down into the bed of my 2004 wine red Tacoma.

"A painting," I smugly grin.

 "Yeah, I know," he huffs, apparently offended or irritated at my implying he doesn't know how to look at a painting. "... I mean aren't those persimmons?"

 The discussion doesn't last long and he continues to exit down Parnassus away from the UCSF campus. He did not give me the impression he was interested in learning about the nuances of meaning, form, memory and sensation in painting. And I still haven't figured out how to respond to that question. What is it?

[nicolerosegelormino]

Saturday June 22, 12noon-4pm

1 painting pop-up

766 Valencia, Falling From Glory, Exhibition June 11 - July 12

The site at which the painting sits directly shapes the viewer’s encounter: how long they look, how close they get, their perception of its inherent or ascribed value, and the extent to which they express their perception/experience.

I sit the Chicken Legs painting directly next to the door leading to our pop-up gallery at 766 Valencia. I carry a tall stump outside that had belonged to Sean. I move it to various locations throughout the session to sit and enjoy different vantage points of the passerby experience. Sometimes I sit near the painting, and sometimes I hide in full view so that I appear to be another passerby or loiterer.

For the first 15 minutes, no one enters the gallery. I wonder if my sitting out front on a log, eating a large homemade salad is the deterrent, or if it's the ugliness (and beauty) of the painting.

I move into hiding.

A youngish straight white couple pass by. The woman seems startled by the painting. “Eeeeeuuuu!” she exclaims gritting her teeth in a frown, as though the painting has assaulted her. “Someone should graffiti it.”

A white tween amongst her family shudders and says, “That scares me!”

Slowly at first, and then quickly, plenty of passerby sight the painting and follow right in. At times, the painting becomes an advertisement, a billboard, an awning announcing the content of the show even better than our hand-made sandwich sign could do.

The music is loud inside. My poor hearing can’t reach their comments inside. I consider turning the music down, but realized they may talk less or less audibly.

The father strolls about, pointing out “colors” in various paintings, to his family.

It becomes more difficult for me to staff both the inside and outside of the exhibition as more passerby flow in and around.

Outside I enjoy a full spectrum of responses:

Furrowed brows… eyes popped wide open… cameras snapping… cooing… pointed questions…

A couple of mixed friends:

“THAT is weird.”

“What is it?”

THAT is REALLY weird."

I’m still trying to understand how the Instagram phenomena changes experiences with artworks. Lots of viewers try to snap photos and videos. They post on social media like a 17th century European explorer, “Look what I found!” I start directing “photographers” to our Instagram names. Some are delighted to direct their own followers to the original artists, others do so begrudgingly or mumble they’re not posting.

A white straight couple in their 40s, mid-discussion, holding hands enter the gallery. The woman breaks hands and turns away immediately, “Oh no! This is too weird!”

The sidewalk is a corridor, so this location does not allow long encounters with the painting itself, even if it does lure passerby to approach the paintings inside.

Because of the particular circumstances of this site, today’s pop-up is probably the most difficult for me. The abundance of negative responses is exciting, but they still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

But there are some gems too.

A white trio that appear to have come from a fraternity/sorority stop and joyfully gaze together:

One dude, “What is going on here?!”

Another dude, “Chicken legs.”

Dudette, “That’s not chicken.”

Other dude, “But just the bottom half of them.”

First dude, “Exploding sausages!!!”

They all laugh. Dudette, “Ok we have to keep moving…"

A young woman in an elbow-to-floor burgundy flowing dress with wild pink and powder blue lines all over formed like butterflies marches up to my painting, nearly falls into it and saunters inside the gallery. She pops out again to motion a friend to follow. I am curious and follow as well. After circling and enthusiastically gesticulating, they introduce themselves as Emily and Forest, hosts of the wildly funny podcast Radio Free Multiverse. She brings a beautiful passionate empathy to my work. The work speaks and she can hear it—or it feel it. She is very young and vivacious and I am glad that feelings the that overwhelm my being and spill into the palette resonate so strongly with someone else. She buys a few stickers and I find a way to give her an extra and we promise to keep in touch.

Tanya, a Chinese-American woman is very excited about the paintings. Her husband is a mail carrier by day and a painter by night. She asks to take a picture of me standing in front of the painting. So she can show her husband. I grin. That might be better than an Insta shout-out.

[nicolerosegelormino]

Next one-painting-pop-up rescheduled for this Monday July 29th at UCSF Parnassus 12:00-4:00pm. More details to come! #1ppu #artinpublicplaces #sfpainting (at Ucsf Parnassus Millberry Union) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0ba3jVhhU_/?igshid=12317wl0beqaw

[nicolerosegelormino]

Carnaval, Saturday, May 25th, 12noon-4pm 1-painting-pop-up 24th St & Harrison It’s warming into a beautiful day. The sun is strong, but the subtle breeze softens its touch. I am sitting on the curb, my octopus-doughnut-ruby painting tied to a young but sturdy tree. The painting faces into the concrete parklet and beyond that the intersection of Harrison and 24th and beyond that the grand entrance to Festival Carnaval. This is great people watching: lots of Mission neighborhood regulars, plenty of visitors from other neighborhoods, visitors from other bay area and norcal cities, displaced families returning to celebrate in their hometown. A suburban family makes friends with a local woman as they exchange Smirnoff ice and jokes. Two elderly men pass by. They stroll through, sending their gaze and confidence to every nook and cranny of the intersection. “Hey beautiful,” one says with a grin. I nod. The hairs on my back stand up like a Carolina dog. But it’s invisible. A middle-aged white woman points to the Mission Girls mural as she speaks to a small crowd of families, who appear to be predominantly of her same race. I wonder if it’s a Precita Eye Murals tour. The Head Start program once residing in the muralled building is in the process of moving out, but will still be able to enjoy a great view of the parade the tomorrow. A tipsy man in his 30s with slick-back hair sits beside an ice cream vendor on a concrete bench next to the painting. They chat for some time. He stares at me and tells his acquaintance that I am his novia and that I am just scared. I pretend not to hear or understand. Suddenly, he appears around the front of my painting and sits next to me on the curb in the sun. “I see you and I’m in love, you’re beautiful..” he begins to mumble in broken slurs. “I’m not here for that. I’m here for my painting,” I say firmly with a cold smile. He grabs my hand and brings it to his mouth. I yank it away and point to my ring, “I’m married and my husband is here.” “I am esposo too…” He finally leaves at my insistence. I am dressed somewhere between casual, professional, colorful and modest. I wonder what on earth I must wear to deflect attention away from my body to my painting… while not looking like a heap of trash. An interracial couple wearing lots of black layers has been enjoying their conversation, the view and yerba mate in a can. One of them interrupts the tour guide, “That graffiti is terrible!” The tour guide, smiling, tries to absorb the harsh comment into the tour, mumbling something about the subjectivity of aesthetic preference. The critic wearing a black jacket gets up, swags up to the wall and theatrically convinces bystanders that he intends to pee on the wall. His partner urges him not too, so he returns to the cement bench grinning sheepishly. A middle-aged man who has been sitting a couple feet in front of the painting for fifteen minutes looks at me and says in a middle-eastern accent that I cannot place, “Did you make this?” I nod. “It’s beautiful.” “How long did it take you to make it?” asks the black-jacketed critic. His partner joins us in conversation. Her hair falls in long, golden ribbons all around her cherub face and trench coat. James and Shell are stage hands. James used to make graffiti, and now makes hip hop music. Shell makes traditional and digital animations. We talk for quite a while about art-making, San Francisco and having kids. They ask interesting questions and say lovely things about my painting and also my family. We promise to keep in touch through social media. I untie the painting and forget to hold onto it. The wind blows it over. James rushes to pick debris off of its surface while I lift it. Shell insists on holding it for me while I wind up the rope. The passerby become progressively looser in the limbs and jaws. Children and their parents funnel out as 20-and-30-somethings saunter in. My family texts me from a taqueria down the street. I muster the muscles to parade the 4-by-5 foot painting over my head, transporting it safely to our pickup parked in a quiet dead-end. Children playing across the street exclaim, “Wow, look at her painting. It looks like a dragon!” I lay the dragon down in its cherry-red bed and gingerly rejoin 24thStreet as just a mom eating tacos with her family on a festive afternoon. Tomorrow I bring my kid to the same intersection to watch her eyes dazzle with low-riders, glorious dancers and horn players.

[nicolerosegelormino]

Next One-Painting-Pop-Up Saturday June 25th, 12noon-4pm at 24th Street & Harrison, right next door to Carnaval! Come on by for hugs and a close encounter with wild paint #1PPU #popup #sfpainting #sfartist #artoutside #carnavalsf (at Mission Headstart) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxgm1r5BwLZ/?igshid=h6ryly6ix8by