The Micro-Philanthropy Movement is Growing

The launch of my micro-philanthropy project, Art Head, is under some review and revision due to some major life changes I am making in the next couple of months (I'm moving to Minneapolis!), so in the meantime, I'd like to direct interested readers to Peter Dietz's blog About Micro-Philanthropy.

As is to be expected, the developments in online peer-to-peer fundraising are coming fast and furious. There is a lot to be excited about, and I expect that Art Head will be a very welcome addition to the micro-philanthropy community when it does launch, which will be before the end of this calendar year.

Currently, I'm exploring a partnership or merging of some sort with my friends and avid supporters, Independent Arts & Media. As that plan becomes more concrete, I will share it with you via this site. Once Art Head launches, this blog will be moved permanently to the arthead.org site.

Thanks for reading!

It's Cutting Ball, Ya'll

Cutting Ball Theater - Risk is this...

How cool is that tag line?!

Cutting Ball came to my attention (though not for the first time) via the Squidlist, which listed a reading they were doing of Pirandello's It is so (if you think so).

First off, I love Pirandello. Even though I've not actually finished a book of his, he is one of my favorite writers. Come to find out, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. How about that!

In any event, a performance of his work is indeed a rarity, so I jumped at the chance to see a reading.

Now readings can be dull things. I mean, it's a bunch of people READING. But this group was a stellar collection of actors - I'd love to know where these people come from, because I don't see their ilk on the main stages in this city - where I would expect to see talent like this. So that's encouraging to me because it means we have an artistic director (in Mr. Rob Melrose) who can choose both exciting, high quality material as well as skilled performers who can bring that material to life.

Their current production is Woyzeck, in a new translation by Rob Melrose. They will also continue their Hidden Classics Reading Series (in its second year) at Modern Times Bookstore in the Mission. The Readings are FREE.

Let's get this party started.

Good News: The website is functional and ready to go!
Bad News: I have been unable to dedicate the time to writing content for the site.
Resolution: That changes starting NOW.

Tonight I am dedicating some time finally to identifying and hopefully writing some of the essential content that arthead.org needs in order to launch.

Art Head will have the following features:

• Project pages for artists and arts organizations
• User profiles
  
• Online fundraising/donations for art projects
• Ability to subscribe to arts projects you want to track
• Ability to communicate with subscribers to your project through blog posts or email blasts
  
• Ability to find and connect with other artists
• And more!

I'm also interested in providing philanthropic resources to artists and micro-donors, though I am not yet clear what form that will take.

Let's launch this puppy in the next few weeks shall we?

Art Head Artist Named!

Art Head by Mildred

Thanks to a comment on a previous post by some guy named Jason, I have discovered that the artist who created the endearing image I have appropriated for my arthead logo is someone called Mildred.

The artist's stuff is GREAT (isn't it?!), and I am so happy to know their identity and be able to see the rest of their work AND share it with others. Like you. My peeps.

I've sent the artist a note of appreciation.

New Music Alert: Earplay

earplay nurtures new chamber music. earplay links audiences, performers, and composers through concerts, commissions, and recordings of the finest music of our time.

Earplay has started giving free concerts (which is probably why I've only just heard of them). Earplay put together a sparkling concert of works by living (and near-living) composers. Earplay made me notice the resemblance between myself and Ligeti:



Uncanny, isn't it?

There's nothing I love more than a free concert of contemporary classical music. However, I have a few tips for groups performing this type of music:

1. Chamber music requires chamber spaces. I suppose some people consider Herbst Theater a chamber space, but when you have 2 performers on stage and 50-odd people scattered throughout a large theater the feeling you get is more that of attending a music school noon-time recital (required for all music majors), not an exciting evening of new and glamorous music (contemporary classical music is very sexy, people).
2. Glamour requires alcohol. I highly recommend performing in a space that allows alcoholic beverages (or beverages of any kind) into the theater. People who like new music like to drink. And we like to drink while taking in sexy musical events. We do not like having to suck down a glass of wine in five minutes during intermission.
3. Get creative. Contemporary music deserves a contemporary setting. Do something different. Shake it up a bit. Play with lighting, staging, large mammals, anything to add a little sparkle and wit to the performance. In order to build a new audience for this music (something these groups always proclaim they want to do), you have to compete with a lot of crazysexycool things out there. Business as usual is not going to cut it!

Tonight's performance was by all accounts wonderful and well worth the $5 donation I gave at the door. Earplay's next performance is May 21st, as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival. If you like new music, make it a point to attend.

As for the folks at Herbst Theater, I have three words:
Oil the chairs.

Good night!

New Banner for Art Head

Created using the Warholizer!

Orgy courtesy of the Thrillpeddlers at the Hypnodrome

I had the distinct pleasure this weekend of visiting a SOMA theater I had never heard of: The Hypnodrome occupied by SF theatrical troupe the Thrillpeddlers. (The websites are unfortunately out of date.) They specialize in Grand Guignol, classic theater of the macabre, graphic violence and graphic sex!

The group is about to launch its latest production, Head Trips, featuring an adaptation of a play by Alfed Machard entitled "Orgy in the Lighthouse" (adaptation by Eddie Muller, founder of the SF Noir City Film Festival).

For me, the highlight of the evening's performance was not the orgy (two butts and a pair of breasts), but the Thrillpeddler's Orchestra's performance of one of John Zorn's game pieces - those structured musical improv games that experimental chamber groups like to play in bars and black box theaters with rules that only the musicians are privy to. I'll tell you this much - it's the only time you'll ever see a conductor use the disco "boogie" signal as a musical cue. They don't teach you that in MUS 305 Conducting.

Art Head

Graffiti art found on 10th Street between Mission and Market.

Networking with the Web Heads

So as head of this here operation, I have to get the word out. I gotta do a little leg work, kiss a lotta babies. And let's face it. I'm not great at the whole networking thing.

So tonight I got myself out there - printed up some crappy Kinko's cards to hand out and went to the SF Beta Web 2.0 Mixer Meetup. Things went surprising well.

First off, I've named the site. So I didn't have to be all awkward saying, well it's gonna be this great site, but it doesn't have a name yet...

We're going to be Art Head. (I'm an Art Head, you're an Art Head, wouldn't you like to be an Art Head too?) What I'm most excited is my idea of commissioning a different artist every quarter or so to create a new "head" logo. Heads! Here's what I think of when I think of Heads:

Those are all plucked right from my good buddy Joe Sayer's website, by the way. Thanks, Joe! But I'm sure there's no end to the art heads supply.

So the highlight of tonight was running into Josh, editor of Newsdesk.org and media director of Independent Arts and Media. I've volunteered many times for their Expo for the Artist and Musician event. They share my dedication to the vitality of the grassroots arts community and therefore are a natural partner for my project. If I made only one connection at tonight's event, Josh was the one to make. I look forward to finding opportunities to work together with these guys to achieve our shared mission!

One Sentence Opera Synopsis

Mozart's The Magic Flute
"Dude has a little flute."

Courtesy of Matt.

Don't call it MySpace for Artists!

Awww yeah. You found Humble Voice.

I read about Humble Voice on (in? what's the proper preposition for online media??) Solution Watch this morning. It's an online community specifically built "by artists for artists". Hooray! This site has a lovely graphic design and a "gallery" feature that lets artists compile works into multiple galleries to display on their profile.

Key differences between sites like this one and my concept:

My site focuses on a specific geographic region: the Bay Area
The intent here is for the virtual community to support and augment the actual real-life community. I'm looking for real impact with tangible results - like more work being produced, more money being contributed, and more audience members filling the seats. Not that I don't think sites like Humble Voice can do that, too. I just think starting small and focused a.) makes it more likely and b.) speeds up the process.

My site is about funding projects
I want my users to take a step beyond becoming virtual buddies with an artist they think is cool. I want my users to contribute real-life resources to a project they think is worthwhile - a project they want to see happen.

My site includes arts organizations
My real passion: the grassroots arts organizations. I want to see organizations like City Concert Opera succeed. I want my site to provide them with the tools to do that.

In any event, I'm excited to see communities like Humble Voice cropping up. The more places for artists to flourish, the better.

Operatic Obscurity

One of my goals as administrator of this soon-to-be online community is to regularly profile deserving artists and organizations. Tonight, I'd like to write a little about City Concert Opera, an entirely volunteer-run* organization dedicated to concert performances of rarely performed operas.

What I love about this organization is the focus on obscure works. This is what being a small arts organization in a culturally rich city is all about - serving those niches that the larger institutions find too cost ineffective to serve. This is also why it's essential that these organizations receive support from the community. They provide us with choices, variety, discovery! I've already SEEN Der Rosenkavalier! THREE TIMES!

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But back to the subject at hand. I bet most classical music fans would be surprised (and delighted) to learn that City Concert Opera is planning a performance of a Haydn opera that has never even been published. (Unless those same people were paying attention during an earlier Haydn opera revival period.) That's right. The score for this piece exists only on microfiche in the collection of the Library of Congress. How fortunate are we to have someone with the dedication and passion to pursue a project of this nature? The answer is: very fortunate.

Being a girl whose musical tastes tend to the modern, I am also whole-heartedly supportive of the organization's plans to record an opera by David Carlson, an American composer who was recently commissioned by the Florida Grand Opera to write an opera based on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (premiering May of this year). In 1993, David wrote an opera with writer Peter S. Beagle (author of The Last Unicorn and an episode of Star Trek!) entitled The Midnight Angel. Apparently he has recently re-scored the piece for 8 singers and a 21-piece orchestra - meaning it's now the perfect size for a chamber orchestra to perform! Or record for that matter.

I sincerely hope organizations like City Concert Opera benefit from my project. If you know of other organizations you'd like to see profiled, please let me know!

*Note: the only staff the organization DOES pay is its musicians!

A Vision

I have a vision of thousands of bay area residents giving thousands of dollars to local artists and arts organizations struggling to get a foothold in the community.

Instead of ONE $25,000 donation to the San Francisco Symphony, I see ONE THOUSAND $25 donations to any number of individual artists, collectives and grassroots arts organizations in the bay area.

I see an online community that makes it all possible...

I am building a website. My website is going to make it possible for anyone trying to create and deliver art in this community to promote, fundraise, and build a community around their project(s). My website is going to root for the underdog. You may not have the Symphony's donor list, and you may not have the Symphony's donor's means, but you will have my website. If you have $20 and a passion for graffiti art, then my website will be for you.

(My website has not been named. Otherwise I would refer to it by name and not as my website.)

This is going to be a great project, and I greatly appreciate my readers' interest. Please feel free to post comments here, sign up for my Google Group, or email me directly with your comments or questions.

A few other notes of potential interest:

• I am contracting with CivicSpace on this project.
  
• My website will be in Beta test starting next week. Let me know if you would like to be one of my testers!
  
• I plan to launch the website in late March. There will be a party, oh yes.
  
• I will be blogging here and using my Google Group to communicate with interested individuals.
• I still need a name for this website!
  

Thank you for your support!