TENDER AT A DISTANCE

Third Workshop, November 8

2009-11-08T20:41:00.002-08:00

Third Workshop November 8

2009-11-08T20:41:00.001-08:00

Third Workshop November 8

2009-11-08T20:40:00.001-08:00

New Batik of Gee-hin-doo (phonetic spelling)

2009-11-08T20:38:00.002-08:00

Third Workshop November 8

2009-11-08T20:38:00.001-08:00

Third Workshop November 8

2009-11-08T20:36:00.000-08:00

2009-11-08T20:23:00.000-08:00

2009-11-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

Queen Amie Closing Event – November 14, 3 – 5 PM

2009-11-03T20:00:00.000-08:00

The Queen Amie Studio will be having a closing event on Saturday, November 14, 3 – 5 PM. This will be an open house for the workshop participants, interested friends, and guests. The open house will be a great opportunity to see the batiks made by workshop participants and by Queen and her colleague, Carole Hay, who has been crucial to the success of the workshops. WE will have future postings about this when the date draws closer.

Closing Event

2009-11-02T10:55:00.001-08:00

The Queen Amie Studio will be holding a Closing Event for workshop participants, interested neighbors, and guests on Saturday, November 14 from 3-5.

Queen's Second Sunday Batik Workshop

2009-11-01T17:06:00.000-08:00

Queen giving preliminary instruction to the participants

Carole showing examples of batiks by previous workshop participants

Batiks being worked on by workshop students

Two of the participants holding up their works-in-progress

Workshop batiks drying before more layers of color can be added

Details of some of the batiks as they dry

The studio shortly after all of the workshop participants had departed

Queen's Workshop Schedule

2009-10-21T08:17:00.001-07:00

Queen is offering several batik workshops for friends and residents of the Tenderloin. Although the workshops seem to be full, openings may occur. If you think you might be interested in participating please contact Doug Hall at dhallstudio@sbcglobal.net. The workshops are scheduled for October 25, November 1, and November 8. Queen is doing a workshops for the Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club on November 4 and 5: and perhaps for the TNDC's after school program the following week.

Opening Day

2009-10-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

Visitors to Queen's studio on Saturday, opening day for WONDERLAND.

John and Queen talking to visitors about the project.

Opening day Visitors looking at Queen's work.

Final Preparations

2009-10-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

Queen's storefront studio with her poster in the upper right window (a little hard to see in the photo due to the glare)

John finishing an arrangement of photos we took of Queen's African album

A selection from Queen's earlier work

Queen working on a new Batik

A work in progress

October 8 – Moving Day

2009-10-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

Today we helped Queen get settled into her Hyde Street studio. We've posted a few photos from the day. The first one shows Queen and Carole hanging some of their batiks.

Here's John Roloff, smothered in a curtain of batik prints.

And Queen in battle gear.

Queen started working as soon as she stepped into the studio.
/>
Here's another shot of Queen working in the studio, barely visible in the background.

I'm not sure who brought this into the studio. I suspect it was Carole. In any case it seemed the perfect sign for the occasion.

The Successful Quest for Queen's Studio

2009-09-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

We've posted some photos from today when we secured Queen's studio. The first photo shows us on the way to visit Lily's studio on Hyde Street. On the left is Dina from CBD, John Roloff, Queen, Carole Hay, Queen's friend and sometime collaborator, Elaine, director of CBD, and Lance Fung.

Queen and Lily at Lily's studio on Hyde Street.

Lily with Queen in her new Wonderland studio moments after seeing it for the first time.

Today We Found the Perfect Space for Queen's Studio

2009-09-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the generosity of the clothing designer, Lily Sami, Queen Amie now has a studio for the duration of Wonderland. Lily donated the large ground floor of her building at 125 Hyde Street where her production studios are located. It’s an art deco building from the 1920s that once housed a movie theater and film production company. It appears that all the buildings on the west side of Hyde Street between Golden Gate and Eddy are from the same time period and, judging from the decoration on the facades, were involved in the film industry. We were all thrilled by the space. Now comes the task of outfitting it and getting it ready for Queen's Batik workshops.

2009-09-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of photos from one of Queen's workshops in The Gambia, taken I think, in the early 1990s.

How Amie Krubally Came to be Known as "Queen Amie"

2009-09-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Amie Krubally, also know to her friends and colleagues as "Queen Amie", was born in Bakau, The Gambia. Because of family ties, which stretch to Senegal and Mali, Ms. Krubally had the opportunity to travel frequently as a child. The rich cultures of Mali, Senegal, and her own country, The Gambia, had a profound influence on her during her formative years.

Over the years, Amie developed a view of art and history that was finally brought to life when she was introduced to Batik in 1963. The state of the art, which at the time was known as "Stamp Batik", was a process where pieces of wood were carved to make patterns, which were dipped in wax and placed on fabric to make designs. The first major departure from this method in Bakau was pioneered by Amie Krubally and resulted in the expressive and painterly forms that distinguish her art from its precedents.

Amie has gained worldwide recognition for her innovation and artistry. The Gambian government granted her the title, "Queen of Batik", in recognition of her wide-reaching influence in the art of Batik. Over the past forty years, she has worked, taught, and exhibited in locations as diverse as Los Angeles, London, and Berlin. Ms. Kurbally is renown not only for having led the revolution in forms and techniques of Batik but also for having used her art to tell the rich histories of her Cassamance and Gambian heritage, springing from Bintong Krubally, a Malian king and her great grandfather. Her works tell the stories of her ancestry: Sundiata Keita, slavery, motherlessness, pain, victory, life – themes that bring admiration for a woman who can boast of a Bakau Primary education and some training in the United States but who has gone on to sit with city mayors, presidents, and renown artists and dignitaries throughout the world.

For the past several years Queen Amie has been residing in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco – one of its hidden treasures.

Photos of Queen and her Batiks

2009-09-14T11:16:00.001-07:00

Queen's Studio & Workshops

2009-09-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

Finally it appears that we might have secured a space for Queen's studio and, eventually, the workshops that she intends to provide for residents of The Tenderloin. We want to thanks Lance Fung (Wonderland), Elaine Zamora (Community Benefit District), Stephan Woo (Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation), and Lily Samii (fashion designer with studios in the Tenderloin) for their tireless efforts in helping us secure a space. As soon as the space is finalized, we will post its location and information about Queen's studio visiting hours. As our plans solidify, we will also provide information on the workshops, including their dates how to sign up.

Queen Teaches

2009-09-09T02:40:00.001-07:00

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

2009-07-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

Tender at a Distance: The Queen Amie Project

As their contribution to the Wonderland Project, the team of Doug Hall and John Roloff (working under the theme of Tender at a Distance or TAAD) will be working with the artist, Queen Amie Krubally. Queen, originally from Gambia, is a Batik artist, whose designs are based on her own personal stories and the folk myths from her native land. She has, for the past several years, been living in the Tenderloin, a resident of one of the TLNDC properties, but has been unable to ply her craft due to her current living situation. Our proposal is to use the Wonderland Project as a context in which she could work, exposing her to a larger audience through the publicity that the event will attract during its exhibition at multiple venues from mid-October through mid-November, 2009.

Our proposal is to establish a studio space, with a pre-determined amount of equipment and materials, where Queen could work and display her wares for the duration of the Wonderland exhibition. For most of the time, Queen will concentrate on her own work, producing what interests her and working at her own pace. In exchange, she will be asked to conduct one or more workshops for people in the community working with organizations in the Tenderloin (The Boys and Girls Club, for example). TAAD and Wonderland will help organize and facilitate these. Although the details have not been worked out, we have been discussing different approaches that the workshops could use to engage the diverse communities of the Tenderloin. For example, participants could be encouraged to make drawings based on their own personal stories, which would be turned into batik art or fashion during the workshop. Throughout the month these would be displayed at Queen’s temporary studio. Toward the end of Wonderland, there would be an event where batiks created in the workshops are exchanged between participants. Each participant would receive a batik created by another person in the group. In this way, the stories represented on the batik hangings would be distributed through the community. The personal work that Queen produces during this period will remain her own property to do with as she pleases.

One of the central focuses of the Wonderland Project is to encourage the invited artists to respond to the Tenderloin and to do so with no official budget. During our research over the past several weeks we came up with numerous ideas, many of which involved procedures for interacting with and celebrating members of the community and their stories. While a couple of these excited us, they seemed, at the same time, overly abstract and perhaps self-serving in the sense that they imposed our vision onto the community rather than allowing elements within the community to come forward and to do so on their own terms and with their voices intact, which has been our intention all along. Our proposed collaboration with Queen, in which we act less as “artists” and more as promoters and facilitators seems to provide a way for us to proceed.