Headlands Photos: Front + Center

I went to the Headlands on Sunday to install one of the ArtForums. The light can be described as still. Like the Artforums, the galleries are a stratum of time and memory. I am very happy to have the work in that space. Kimberley Johansson curated the exhibition and, along with Jessica Brier, installed the show in creative and unexpected ways. Beautiful!





Urinals on the ground floor of the Headlands Center for the Arts

Interview by Christine Brenneman in the Marin Independent Journal

Here is an Interview by Christine Brenneman in the Marin Independent Journal in connection with Front + Center at the Headlands Center for the Arts:
Working artist: Pastine focuses on physicality of objects
Christine Brenneman
Posted: 01/07/2009 07:16:07 PM PST

Francesca Pastine's ArtForum series of excavated magazines will be displayed at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito.
To hear local artist Francesca Pastine tell it, her artistic life began practically at conception. Her mother and father were both working artists, and her childhood was spent immersed in a milieu of paintings, sculpture, art studios and constant talk of the creative process. Pastine, a multimedia artist and painter, now lives and works out of her home in San Francisco's Mission district. There, she creates paper-based sculpture and realistic paintings, often using ordinary materials in her artworks.

This month, Pastine and 19 other California artists will be featured in a group exhibition, "Front + Center," at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito.

Each participant applied for the center's prestigious artist-in-residence program for 2009; though these applicants did not get the residency, their work was chosen for the annual kickoff exhibition, which showcases up-and-coming artists in a variety of visual media.

Four pieces from Pastine's ArtForum series of "excavated" magazines will be on display.

Q: There's an overarching theme in your work of calling attention to the physical nature of your materials - whether you're painting shopping carts used by the homeless, cutting snowflakes out of the New York Times or chopping into an ArtForum magazine. Can you talk about why that's important to you?

A: In those specific bodies of work, I wanted to work with things that were immediately at hand. I'm interested in the physicality and materiality of objects:
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the object-ness of the shopping carts, for example, the piles of things, the ways in which they were covered and piled with blankets. That theme runs through, wanting to deal with what's at hand, things that I'm engaged with on a daily basis. With both the ArtForum and the New York Times, I like how the pages feel, and all those little peripheral marks on the edge of the pages. I'm interested in all of these things as physical objects.

Q: The hand of the artist, and clear evidence of that,
Francesca Pastine's ArtForum series of excavated magazines will be displayed at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito.
seems paramount in your work. Why?

A: I was very inspired by the women's art movement of the 1970s, which emphasized craft. I got into paper-cutting and paper crafts, and I liked cutting into them and trying to have the trace of my hand in the actual object. This brings the viewer to the present, into a richer experience of seeing. The viewer can have an embodied, visceral experience with the physical act of making when I bring that aspect forth. That's the reason I don't want to laser-cut them.

Q: Can you talk about the pieces you'll have in the "Front + Center" show?

A: There will be four of my ArtForum works (in which she cuts into the venerable art magazine). I consider them an archeological excavation, a dig. I'm digging through the current history of art making and stripping it and exposing it in a physical way, not an abstract way. The reason I was attracted to them was that they are square-shaped. A rectangle represents a portrait or landscape. But with a square, your eye kind of stops, it reads more as a real object.

Q: You teach art at the college level, and have done so for much of your career. How does that feed back into your own art practice?

A: I think it's important to get back to the fundamentals of art, to touch base with that all the time, so that you don't get too far into the conceptual realm. Through teaching, I go back to the reason that art's exciting for me in the first place. It's really gratifying to open up the possibility and potential of art on all levels. People get so much out of this experience; it's gratifying to see how people connect with creativity.

Q: What's your favorite color?

A: That I don't have - but I do love orange.

Q: What is your most prized art possession?

A: The art I have that was made by my parents.

Q: What's the most inspiring thing you see daily?

A: My first cup of coffee.

Q: What one word best describes you as an artist?

A: Dedicated.

Q: What you would do if you didn't make things?

A: There's really nothing else I can do. I'm hopeless at anything else.

IF YOU GO

What: Front + Center, a group exhibition guest-curated by Kimberly Johannson with featured artists: Francesca Pastine, Tamara Albaitis, Brice Bischoff, Todd Bura, Matty Byloos, Ajit Chauhan, Joshua Churchill, Lori Esposito, Mayumi Hamanaka, Taro Hattori, Rachel Mayeri, Jennie Ottinger, Erik Parra, Alison Pebworth, Tara Tucker, Paul Urich, Lindsey White, Noah Wilson, Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough and Ayelet Zohar.

Where: Headlands Center for the Arts, 944 Fort Barry, third floor, Sausalito

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and Sundays, Jan. 18 through Feb. 22. Public performance and reception Feb. 8, time TBA.

Information: www.headlands.org

Front and Center + Headlands Center for the Arts

Here is an upcoming show that I am in at the Headlands Center for the Arts:

Front + Center

Francesca Pastine, Erosion, ArtForum Excavation Series, 2008, 10.5 x 10.5 x 5 inches

Date: 1/18/2009 - 2/22/2009
Location: 944 Fort Barry, 3rd Floor

An exhibition featuring new and recent work by: Tamara Albaitis, Brice Bischoff, Todd Bura, Matty Byloos, Ajit Chauhan, Joshua Churchill, Lori Esposito, Mayumi Hamanaka, Taro Hattori, Rachel Mayeri, Jennie Ottinger, Erik Parra, Francesca Pastine, Alison Pebworth, Tara Tucker, Paul Urich, Lindsey White, Noah Wilson, Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough, Ayelet Zohar

Headlands Center for the Arts is pleased to present Front + Center, a dynamic group exhibition featuring cutting edge artwork by California artists working in a range of mediums who applied for the 2009 residency program. After six successful years launching its residency season with an annual exhibition, Headlands, in collaboration with Kimberly Johansson, reimagines the show and calls critical attention to noteworthy California artists from the applicant pool.

Front + Center reflects diverse interests among contemporary, emerging artists at both aesthetic and conceptual extremes. While some of these artists embrace blankness, or the void, others relish the notion of horror vacui, or "fear of empty space," illustrated on the canvas, page or gallery wall. Others pay particular attention to Headlands' physical space, focusing on architectural surroundings as subject matter. Front + Center also traces a trend among some artists in responding to history; they borrow and freely remix tropes of Surrealism, Dada and traditional portraiture, seemingly in reaction to their art historical ancestors. Many revisit antiquated techniques and favor the low-fi over the high-tech. This fascination with history and its relationship to current artistic production again underlines the significance of Headlands as an exhibition site.

The exhibition's title is borrowed from the military lexicon, alluding to Headlands Center for the Arts' campus as a place of rich military history. Moreover, Front + Center reflects the position of Headlands as both historic and contemporary, off the beaten path yet central. While physically located in the hinterlands of the Bay Area, Headlands is at the center of creative innovation. At the core of Headlands' mission is the importance of promoting and supporting artists as cultural producers who actively shape the world. Front + Center supports this mission while showcasing a specific group of artists to kick off the new year.

Members Reception: Sunday, February 8, 1-2PM (Please RSVP)
Public Reception: Sunday, February 8, 2-4PM