Lee.org

Hey, there will be a Fireside Lounge at The Crucible in Oakland on May 10. Free for members, $10 for the public. It should be a fun evening.

I’ll be there with some flame effects.

There will be a discussion panel with some cool artists. The subject, “Creation”

And there’s always some fun, unexpected stuff going on. At memorable one, an artist friend smashed a beautiful piece of his own art on stage. It was sublime. See a photo about that one here. It’s the third photo down .

Panel Discussion participants

Facilitator
Leslie Pritchett brings to her public art and community art program consulting more than 20 years experience in corporate marketing, small business and start-up business management. She spent several years as managing partner of Digital Pond, a high-end digital imaging company serving clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies, such as Nike and Hewlett-Packard, to leading museums and fine art print purveyors, including the Ansel Adams Gallery. She entered the nonprofit arena as executive director of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, where over the course of three years she produced or supported more than 28 public art projects, including eight major and award-winning temporary public installations within the City of San Francisco. She secured the organization’s first major grants from the James Irvine Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, SF Grants for the Arts, San Francisco Department of the Environment, and several private foundations. The program for temporary art exhibition that she helped establish now serves as a model for municipalities around the country. Through public art consulting and production of major public art exhibitions, Leslie is able to integrate her business experience with her love of fostering community-building art programs. Leslie holds a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia University and a degree in French Literature from Dartmouth College.

Panelist
Hopi Breton is a Bay Area-based artist and Professor or Art at Diablo Valley College. She received her MFA with a concentration in sculpture from Montana State University, in Bozeman, Montana in 2001, and her BA from Loyola University in New Orleans in 1996. In addition to her academic background in Art, hopi grew up surrounded by artists. A weaver mother and musician father (who often fixed instruments) significantly formed her early fascination with the processes of making, materials, and craft. Hopi’s studio practice focuses on Conceptual Craft-oriented sculpture with a heavy concentration on form, abstracted common objects, and material. Her technical background is in metal working, specifically in Foundry work and in cast iron. She has organized and worked with students and peers to create cast iron art performances nationally, including the International Cast Iron Art Conference at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Al, The Western Cast Iron Art Conference, in Denver, CO, and the Fire Arts Festival at the Crucible in Oakland, CA. Her performance foundry work explores stages of the process while using molten metal as an ingredient, rather than a means to an end. Many of these performances imitate leisure daily activities such as baking and bowling. She is motivated by any opportunity to gather, organize, and collaborate with artists. She has also curated several shows, including “Metaliform, All Things Metal”, “Between Places; Photography and Sculpture”, and “Turf; Ecological Activism and Art” at Diablo Valley College’s Art Gallery.

Panelist
Exploratorium Director of Public Programs Melissa Alexander and oversees all temporal programming for the casual museum visitor. Since 1989 Alexander has developed and produced numerous public programs and exhibition projects for the Exploratorium, both on site and online, including the online resources “Evidence: How do we know what we know?” Doctor Atomic: Commentary on an Opera, and Live@Exploratorium: Origins and the award winning exhibition Revealing Bodies an experimental exhibition addressing the social, cultural and political impact of scientific, anatomical and biomedical representations of the human body.

Panelist
Dale Dougherty is the founder, President & CEO of Maker Media, Inc. in Sebastopol, CA. Maker Media produces Make Magazine, which launched in 2005, and Maker Faire, which was held first in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006. MAKE has been the catalyst for a worldwide Maker Movement that is transforming innovation in industry, hands-on learning in education and the personal lives of makers of all ages. MAKE invites everyone to become a maker, and integrate creative goals with technical skills. Dougherty was a co-founder of O’Reilly Media, where he was the first editor of their computing trade books, and developed GNN in 1993, the first commercial website. He coined Web 2.0 in 1993. MAKE started at O’Reilly Media and spun out as its own company in January 2013. He grew up in Louisville, KY.

Panelist
Beckey Kaye I was born in Los Angeles in 1976 and reared under the love of a hard-working single mom and older sister. As a child, I studied ballet, befriended stray cats and climbed more than my share of trees. I attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts with a focus on modern dance and site-specific choreography. In 1994, I moved to Seattle with a full scholarship to Cornish College of the Arts Dance Department. However, a bite from the wanderlust bug and a strong inclination towards puppetry caused me to seek education elsewhere. In 1996, I joined a transient street punk performance group called Circus Dischordia and performed as a fire dancer and puppeteer. In 1998, I founded a nomadic puppet performance troupe called Mimicry Libre Puppet Theatre and performed at various protests and activist events. Trying to save money for overseas travel, I worked migrant agricultural jobs around the States. By 2000, I was on a plane to Indonesia to study mask carving with the Dell Arte Study Abroad program. My newfound love for Indonesian woodcarving directed an opportunity to become a Darmasiswa Scholar and study Set Construction and Wayang Golek at Sekolah Tinngi Seni Indonesia, Bandung. I also collaborated and stayed with the Javanese artist community, Taring Padi in Yogyakarta. In 2004, I enrolled in California College of the Arts with a major in Sculpture and graduated with distinction in 2007. After graduation I worked as a wheelchair mechanic at National Seating and Mobility and as the Sculpture Shop Technician at UC Berkeley. I attended Machine and Welding Technology programs at Laney College before getting accepted into SFSU MFA program in 2010. I currently live in South Berkeley with my dog, Kerosene. I work as a welding instructor and studio manager at The Crucible.