Thursday, September 29 - 7:00 pm PS to 8:30 pm PST
Fine Arts Gallery, Fine Arts 238, San Francisco State University
Full-program video: Jennifer Foerster: September 29, 2016
Highlight video clips: Jennifer Foerster reads "Land Art" | "Descent"
This reading by poet Jennifer Foerster is presented in conjunction with the exhibition When I Remember I See Red: California Contemporary Native American Art. Cosponsored by The Poetry Center, SFSU Fine Arts Gallery, and the Department of American Indian Studies. The Fine Arts building is located just west of the César Chavez Student Center. This event is free and open to the public.
Orlando White is unable to join us. We plan to reschedule his visit for a later date.
Jennifer Elise Foerster received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts (2007) and her BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2003). From 2008-2010, Jennifer was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. She has received a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, along with fellowships to attend Soul Mountain Retreat, Caldera Arts, the Naropa Summer Writing Program, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. Foerster’s first book of poems, Leaving Tulsa, was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2013, and was a Longlist Finalist for the 2014 PEN Open Book Award. A Mvskoke citizen, Jennifer has worked as a grant writer and non-profit development consultant in San Francisco, and is pursuing her PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver.
This exhibition at SFSU's Fine Arts Gallery surveys California Native American contemporary painting, sculpture, photography and installation art. It begins with the visual art from the activist era of the 1960s and 1970s, then exhibited at both museums and community venues such as the American Indian Historical Society in San Francisco, founded in 1964. The exhibition traces the interpretive reclamation of ideas drawn from the specific cosmologies of regionally localized indigenous California Indian traditions, and begins tracing the careers of some of the important artists and their projects. The exhibition also features the work of multiple Native American artists working in the state but with tribal ancestry based beyond California, who have contributed greatly to this region’s rich dialog. Together the works reflect a broad range of compelling issues including living in contradictory worlds, environmentalist awareness and activism, and a commitment to remembering. Featuring both artists with academic training in contemporary art as well as self-taught artists, the exhibition explores the ways artists interpret and reflect Native perspectives in their creative work.
Event contact:
The Poetry Center
Event email:
poetry@sfsu.edu
Event phone:
415-338-2227
Event sponsor:
The Poetry Center, Fine Arts Gallery, American Indian Studies