Upper Playground | Features

Jim Dirschberger & Rinee Shah

July 23rd, 2010

Tonight at FIFTY24SF Gallery is the closing party to Porous Walker’s ‘Haricots Magiques‘ show at FIFTY24SF Gallery which features a film festival of animations, short films, and music videos by SF filmmakers Jim Dirschberger & Rinee Shah. The show will also feature some new illustrative work by Rinee Shah AND raw unseen sketches by Jay Howell, Skinner, Porous Walker and Ferris Plock.

We asked Jim and Rinee 5 questions, and Rinee, whose illustration is above, answered first:

TCR: What are you guys doing tonight at FIFTY24SF Gallery?

Tonight is a showcase of both our films, some of the production artwork from Jim’s animations and some of my illustration.

TCR: How did you guys both meet?

I went to a local film screening that happened to play the first episode of the Forest City Rockers. I was instantly in awe of the humor and style of it. I found Jim after the screening and told him I wanted to be a part of it somehow. Turns out he was super drunk and barely remembers that interaction at all, but we’ve been collaborators and good friends ever since.

TCR: Talk about what you guys both do professionally? Rinee, your music videos? Jim, all the films you have done with Ferris Plock, Kelly Tunstall, Skinner, Porous…

I work as a freelance Art Director in advertising, mostly on web and video projects. Outside of that, I started a film collective called Church & Steak with Josh Lowman, and we’ve put out two music videos in the last year for Benoit Pioulard and Memoryhouse. We feel lucky that both videos have been received so well and are grateful to be able to work with bands that really inspire us.
TCR: Talk about Forest City Rockers?

Punks Git Cut!

TCR: Both of you, plug as much as you possibly can about yourself?

I think I fall somewhere in between a designer/illustrator and a filmmaker, and I love it when I’m able to work on a project that combines it all. My videos have screened locally at SF Indiefest, SF Shorts, and SFIAAFF and most recently at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. You can see my work here: www.rineeshah.com.

Go to Rinee’s website for all her work.

EightyFourFilms.

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Tags: benoit-pioulard, director, Features, festival, FIFTY24SF Gallery, film festival, films, forest city rockers, forest-city, Gallery, humor, illustration, Interview, San Francisco, skinner

Viveca Hawkins – The Memorials

July 20th, 2010

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I flew into Oakland in the middle of the night and rented the last car on the lot. A quick pit stop for swishers and coffee, and 10 minutes later I was watching The Memorials’ last run through their set. The band was holed up at Moondog Studios in Alameda, California, preparing for their first show ever, and playing with crazy, spastic, unhinged energy. I saw Viv in the corner booth, feeding off her band’s intensity and looking enthralled, a vibrant force itching to bust out. She’s been singing and performing her entire life, from her early recording sessions as an 11 year old, to her exploration of hip hop, jazz, soul, and rock n roll as a teenager and adult. She’s solidified her skills and fostered her ability to sing anything, through projects with the likes of Goapele, MF Doom, and Blackalicious, to name a few.

Viveca is Berkeley, born and raised, and she’s on the verge of making her mark on the landscape of rock music, alongside bandmates Thomas Pridgen and Nick Brewer. The Memorials form a powerful and balanced rock outfit that is melodic, yet ferocious, eclectic yet solid. If you took Tool, The Police, Erykah Badu, and a band from the moon (that sounds a lot like Frank Zappa), and put them in a blender…you’d get The Memorials.

A few days later, and between rehearsals, Viv and I kicked it on the couch in the control room, blazed one, and got the details down. You heard it here first, The Memorials are on a come up, and Viveca Hawkins is a big reason why. —Evan La Ruffa for The Citrus Report

TCR: Where did you grow up?

Viveca Hawkins: I grew up in Berkeley, CA and never really left ‘til I went to college. When I went to Franklin for school, I started dancing “Baile Folklorico” and had did traditional Mexican dance since 2nd grade. I had a very multicultural upbringing, and was in bilingual classes in elementary…my dad’s Mexican and even though he wasn’t really in my life, my mom wanted me to have that. I was in a little banda group, and 7 or 8 girls would all pile into this green mustang…it was bad ass (laughs), I wanted that car soooo bad (laughs)…we’d drive to Richmond, and perform at little events…

I’ve always been a performer. I did a lot more of the traditional Mexican dance when I was younger, and then I got more into hip hop, jazz, and modern as I grew older.

TCR: When did you start recording?

I did my first session when I was 11 in a home studio, and then when I was 13 I started demoing tracks for this production company, and they taught me a lot. They would pre-record the songs and then I’d sing ‘em, so it didn’t help me creatively really, but they were definitely hard on me, and it whipped me into shape.

TCR: Biggest musical influences?

I know that I listened to a shitload of Whitney Houston! I listened to Whitney until my moms ears were bleeding…the bodyguard soundtrack was in my tape player forever! I was singin’ “I Will Always Love You,” sounding like shit, and lookin’ hella stupid, (laughs)…but I had a sense of respect for her talent.

TCR: So tell me how you and Thomas reconnected for The Memorials…

Thomas and I have known each other since we were 12 years old, and we’ve been bumping into each other, living this life where our paths are just winding around the other, never necessarily going straight along, but always passing by…and ya know, we’d talk every now and then. He’d call me from across the world and talk shit to me (laughs)…it was a very funny love and hate relationship we had for a long time…

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Tags: berklee, citrus report, Features, landscape, night, slim's, songs, whitney-houston

iO Wright

July 12th, 2010

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Today, we catch up with NYC’s iO Wright, photographer, filmmaker, writer… shit, you know what? Today we catch up with ARTIST iO Tillet Wright. We first worked with iO at Manifest Equality this past Winter, and now with her work currently hanging in the inagural show at the post-Deitch gallery, The Hole, we do the big, long, in-depth interview on of our favorite artists of the moment. —The Citrus Report staff

TCR: There is a great line in your About me section that says “My mother, the incomparable Rebecca Wright, is making a show out of photographs like this, from another time, when Manhattan was fucked up and interesting.” A lot of people who grew up in Manhattan or in NYC have this sentiment. A friend of ours, Ricky Powell, whom you have shot before, is a big proponent of keeping NYC bohemian. What happened and why does everyone say NYC used to be a lot more interesting?

New York just used to attract a whole different breed. It was home for all the outcasts and freaks, and people who didn’t fit in in squaresville, where everything was cookie cutter and safe, and largely shaped around some religion. They knew they could come here and be amongst the weirdos, the gays, the creatives, and not be judged. It’s like we all say to the missionaries on the street, “I’m looking forward to hell, because you wont be there.” It wasn’t safe here then, so there was no room for the people who thrived on security and normalcy – the only people who got out of their cars on my block were junkies, punks, drag queens, and the hells angels. Now its a different kind of cess pool, of whiskey bars, fancy hotels, and NYU dorms. Ricky and I both find real, freakish creatives more interesting than frat boys. How can we not miss the old days?

TCR: But even this statement, there is a group of young artists who either grew up in NYC or come there from other places that are working at keeping a bohemian, artistic spirit in the City. Ryan McGinley, you, Dash (RIP), Aurel, ESPO, Jose Parla, Dan Colen ( I can go on and on)… so my point is, is NYC in a healthy place right now?

Those artists are the people I’m talking about, birds of a feather, the weirdos and creatives, and they are drawn to like minds, so it becomes a community. A-ron, Ryan, Tim Barber, these are people who thrive within big interconnected networks, and making a communal thing happen, where everyone feels like part of some strange family.

New York is an international hub. Everyone comes here from somewhere, on their way to somewhere else. Very few people want to stay here for life, and even fewer were born here. Ricky, Dash, and I were born in New York City. It’s an entirely different mindset when this jungle is your playground as a child. You know how to work every angle, how to never pay for shit, how to meet the right people who will hook you up with the things you need. We all come from different parts of the financial spectrum, but New York used to be a broke kid’s heaven, which is how I grew up. When you’re raised here in that way, you don’t necessarily have the same sense of moving away as people who have a home somewhere else they think of eventually returning to. New York is intense as fuck, and it draws intense people. It always has, and it always will, and as long as some part of Brooklyn or Queens is affordable enough for the freaks to keep flocking, and heads are thinking communally and not only of themselves, New York will always be in a healthy place.

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Tags: citrus report, deitch, Features, Interview, kathy grayson, nyc, people, photos, the hole nyc, weirdos

MAYFOURTEENTH-Behind the Scenes

June 30th, 2010

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As we showed last week, Mayfourteenth is a new sunglass and eyewear company, with handmade frames at a 3rd generation eyewear studio in Argentina. We have some photos of the behind-the-scenes process of the making of the first collection of Mayfourteenth frames. Above, the workbench with Mayfourteenth microfibre clean cloth.

The work with files and aviator frame in progress.

Drills & bits

New MAYFOURTEENTH shape in progress.

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Tags: aviator-frame, citrus report, eyewear-studio, Features, made in argentina, making, mayfourteenth, new-sunglass, pop-up shop, showed-last, sunglasses, the-workbench

St Ides

June 24th, 2010

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Biggie. Tupac. Wu-Tang. Ice Cube. The list goes on, and on, and on, and on. These are the heavy hitters of rap for the past 20 years, the Golden Age of hip-hop before auto-tune watered everything down, and before rappers thought they could sing and act, and before Ice Cube made us ask if we were there yet. And before the mass commercialization of hip-hop and the rap game as a whole, a little company named St. Ides decided to use the heavy hitters of the game to promote their malt liquor, which by all counts, isn’t half bad. Other than the stereotypes that bust into your head when the words rap and malt liquor are mentioned, the ads themselves were sicker than your dying puppy, featuring original verses by many of the MC’s featured in their campaign. Check this incomplete classic featuring Biggie.

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Tags: alcohol, biggie, campaign, everything-down, Features, golden, heavy, hip-hop-before, malt liquor, rappers-thought, snoop, st ides, words

Kasper’s Hot Dogs

June 22nd, 2010

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Go to Kasper’s in Oakland, and you get to see how food is really done. While the city is known for it’s local, organic food, it’s missing out on the comforts of a good ol’ fashioned hot dog joint. I mean, a REAL hot dog joint. Sure, Rosamunde serves good
dogs, and Underdog does the organic thing better than most, but to find a hot dog filled with nitrate goodness that won’t cost your more than $5, you can’t find anything better than Kasper’s. The place has been around for 81 years, and it shows. You walk in and you get a sense of all the greats who have eaten here over the years, and the heart that’s thrown into every dog. Try and find that in San Francisco. I love the city as much as the next guy, but really, you can’t find a good dog in San Francisco the same way as you can in Oakland, and that’s all thanks to Kasper’s. So live a little, go get yourself some awesome goodness wrapped in a fluffy white bun, and stick a weiner in your mouth that’ll make anyone happy.

We got that pic from Flickr. Thank you person for shooting this photo.

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Tags: city, culture, east bay, fashioned-hot, fast food, Features, kasper, photo, The Citrus Report

Chuck Johnson / Soul Beat Television

June 18th, 2010

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Chuck Johson / Soul Beat

by Jonathan Liu

Chuck Johnson. Heard of him? No? How aobut Soul Beat Television? No, either? Heard of BET? Yeah? Well, then, there might be a problem there. See, before there was the madness of BET and all of it’s hyped up mass media, there was Soul Beat, the first and only 100% Black owned television station. While BET was funded through loans and investors who were not necessarily people of color, Chuck Johnson made sure that the only hands touching the idea of Soul Beat were his and close friends, to ensure that the station remained 100% Black owned.

Why is this so important you ask? Well, because by keeping out powerful influences and investors interested only in the sale, Johnson was able to provide a network that spoke to his community – it empowered them, provided them a voice (as indicated by Johnson’s willingness to air ads for local businesses at a lower price), and represented them. Never before had there been a station to do that for the Black community, particularly not one that did it ONLY for the Black community. In doing so, Chuck Johnson was able to pick the artists he wanted to put on Soul Beat, and many of these artists would later break out to become voices for their generation in their own right. Artists like MC Hammer, Too $hort, and the Whispers all made appearances on Soul Beat before MTV or BET.

While Chuck Johnson passed away in 2004, his legacy remains. Coming up on July 27, the anniversary of his death, let’s remember him, pump up the jams, and re-live our days with 2 Live Crew for him.

For more about Chuck Johnson and Soul Beat, go here.

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Tags: chuck johnson, Features, mc hammer, oakland hip-hop, soul beat, soulbeat television, too short, tupac shakur, whispers

Amanda Gordon Dunn

June 16th, 2010

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AMANDA GORDON DUNN
Form Follows Fiction
By j.frede

Sexy is rarely a word I use to describe art and even more so when referring to sculpture, but Sexy is an apt description for the work of Amanda Gordon Dunn. Combining sleek form, perfect lines & elegant shapes with brilliant colors Amanda Gordon Dunn explores a variety of conceptual ideas with her current body of work that ranges from her identifying loved ones with 70s muscle cars to the futurist set design of classic science fiction movies, which is the basis for her upcoming show The Landscapes of Science Fiction.

Dunn’s wall-reliant structures are graceful and mysterious and seemingly lay somewhere between Ellsworth Kelly and Anish Kapoor. The simple nature of her work echoes the minimalist movement of the 1960s and 1970s and perhaps not coincidently is also decades that produced the Science Fiction films that inspired her new exhibition.

“I recently revisited the film Barbarella and was blown away by the tremendous forms, color and bizarre landscapes/set design. This sudden fascination fueled a nerd-crazed hunt into other sci-fi cult classics such as Logan’s Run, Solaris and Dune. My childhood favorites came into the equation with rediscovering old fantasy comic books and novels and old TV shows like He-Man and Thunder cats.” Dunn continues, “From these I created specific understructures that can be seen as a universal form throughout the show. Each wall-reliant sculpture has large, bulbous growths that emerge from candy apple finishes. When the viewer is standing in front of the work it creates a disorienting optical reflection like one may see from a spaceship or in Jane Fonda’s space suit. The sculptures are named after specific science fiction planets, such as “Thundra” (home planet of the Thunder Cats).”

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Tags: art, denver, dunn-combining, Features, fiction-planets, film, minimalist, pirate contemporary art, The Citrus Report, thunder, thunder-cats, tremendous, work, work-it-creates

MAYFOURTEENTH

June 14th, 2010

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This interview was conducted while Benjamin Belsky, whose MAYFOURTEENTH handmade-in-Argentina- sunglasses-label is releasing it’s first collection at a pop-up shop at Fillmore and Haight in San Francisco today, was polishing a 24-karat gold machine gun with a Gucci grip (the gun is part of the exhibit in conjunction with the shop, featuring the work of Peter Gronquist). And so we begin. . .

TCR: Why sunglasses?

Out of a love of everything vintage and handmade, I start collecting eyewear. And I soon realized that they really don’t make them like they used to. I was lucky enough to find an amazing factory & friend that adheres to the level of craftsmanship I respect.

TCR: How did the connection with Argentina begin?

I was doing some work for a design studio in Buenos Aires, called Furia, and they do a mix of fashion and advertising, a kind of creative think tank. We were working on a project for fashion week in Buenos Aires, and I was introduced to a local optometrist that helped start my first collection. I like the vibe in Buenos Aires, I feel like there are some parallels and similarities to San Francisco. They also have a great sense of craftsmanship and quality unlike most places in the world.

TCR: Is Argentina known for sunglasses?

There is an amazing amount of vintage products in Argentina. There was a distinct renaissance before their financial crisis and come back where the country produced and designed a lot of great furniture, leather goods, eyewear and even some weapons. They have an affinity for craftsmanship with great sense of style. I actually found more vintage eyewear in Buenos Aires than anywhere I have been in the world. Ever since the brand’s inception I wanted to steer away from the typical mass-produced eyewear that you see on the market today. Argentina was the answer for me.

TCR: How many styles are in your first collection?

The first collection is made up of 6 different shapes in various colors and acetates. We have also done a few collaboration designs and shapes with other brands in limited colors and shapes that will be leaked throughout the next year. Our pop-up boutique will showcase our first collection, as well as a few collaboration designs, and about 300 vintage deadstock styles.

TCR: How many of each pair did you produce?

Every thing is produced in small runs, under 1,000 to ensure the highest quality. Our factory is small operation, fourth generation business. Each step of the process is done in the same place by master eyewear craftsmen who have been shaping eyewear for decades.

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Tags: argentina, benjamin belsky, buenos-aires, country, Features, financial, Interview, mayfourteenth, News, vintage eyewear, vintage sunglasses, work

Dustin Canalin

June 10th, 2010

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For the record, we did this interview a while back, when thoughts of the NBA Finals were long down the road. And look at that Finals question we asked Dustin Canalin, Creative Director of New York City-based apparel and sports-inspired brand, UNDRCRWN… we knew what was going to happen come June. But we are not here for that, we are here to celebrate and discuss Dustin’s 3 new graphics for Upper Playground that have just been released. So onto the discussion. —The Citrus Report staff

Q: You are, you started, and you are now working with/on?

I am Dustin Canalin. Creator and Creative Director of UNDRCRWN the lifestyle brand.

Q: We’ve been huge fans of UNDRCRWN, of course because some of us are basketball/sports fans, but I’ve always felt that a lot of the work has a European poster art vibe. Who were some of your influences?

Wow. I’ve never heard that. Not many people make that comparison. They’re usually so overwhelmed by the music and sports references. I’m glad that you got that vibe. I am a huge graphic design history fan. One of my favorite and most inspirational design styles has always been Russian propaganda posters. The typography was always so powerful to me. I never knew what the posters said, but they type still evoked an emotion. I’ve also loved the work of John Hartfield, Herbert Bayer, anything Bauhaus, Saul Bass, Norman Rockwell, and Kyle Cooper. I love typography. With all the fonts loaded on everyone’s computers, typography is not a respected craft these days with on everyone’s computer these days. It’s a lost art form.

Q: How do you prepare for a season of UNDRCRWN? For instance, the last season you have worked on, what were some of the inspirations?

With UNDRCRWN I always want to make sure that we expand our position in the market. We don’t do the same thing twice. I try to make sure that we mover further away from what people expect every season. I want people to look forward to what’s next.

Q: New York is crowded, brand-wise. Who do you think is doing right at the moment?

Now that I have my own line, it’s hard to stay up on what’s new. I usually fill voids in my closet with every line, so I don’t have any need for anything new. As far as brands I admire and check out every season, I’ve been a huge fan of Ralph Lauren’s Rugby line since its creation. The brand I love and follow the most are Polo, Paul Smith, Adidas, Marc Jacobs, Junya Watanabe COMME des GARCONS, and Canal St.

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