SPREAD THE LOVE, THE LOVE MOVEMENT

Love Movement Toy Art Show

The Super Frog Gallery in New People Building in San Francisco's Japantown is hoping to hold an art show called the Love Movement.  Japanese artists Shin and Nao sent blank vinyl toys to over 50 artists couples around to world to paint their own message of love.  The show is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC from December 11th to January 16th.  On opening night, Shin and Nao will fly in and will feature a Japanese beatboxer, a live painting by Shin, and an animation by Shin and Nao.

Love should be everywhere in our daily life. 

Because Love is invisible, and we can’t touch it or buy it, we usually pass over it. 

Modern society lacks Love due to a lack of communication. 

If I want Love from someone, and I don’t give the person Love, it’s unfair. It’s wrong just requiring Love from someone. 

If you start giving Love to people around you, Love will be everywhere, and we can live happily. 

If the world were to embrace the Love Movement, it would solve many problems we have. 

–Nao

Many creators put their Love into this exhibition. Please feel their Love. 

Giving Love will bring even bigger Love back to you. 

We can spread Love. That is the Love Movement. 

–Shin

BUT THEY NEED YOUR HELP! The event organizer is hoping to raise at least $3000 help to bring the artists to San Francisco.  The pledges come with a prize from custom digital signatures to personal mural of your and your love's name displayed in the exhibit to custom-painted, one-of-a-kind vinyl toy.

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I somehow feel very strongly about this and want to support it very much, even though I have not heard about these artists until now.  I, myself, may even pledge $50 to support this event (and to get a cool Tshirt).  But for sure I'll find my way to opening night, because it's always fun and a good opportunity to meet the artists and see them in action.

Monument Intervention

Groupmates: Luis Pascual & Shizuka Mitsumura

For the Monument Intervention project, we have to choose a monument site and carry out some kind of intervention that draws attention to that particular place.

We started off with Luis's project, carried out in Golden Gate Park.  His idea was to draw attention to the statues, by dressing them up.  His original idea was to dress up the Gandhi statue down in the Embarcadero in a cape like Superman or Batman.  But he decided to go with Golden Gate Park instead as there are more statues to work with.  We didn't have a cape on hand, despite having Halloween just passed, but I brought a few costume items with me that could be fun to dress up the statues.

 

The First Statue, Apple Press Monument

Me and Shizuka dressing up the 2nd statue, and a few reactions from passerby

 

 The Second Statue: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza kneeling in front of Cervantes

The Third Statue, Robert Emmet, the young Irish Patriot

Reactions from passerbys

Recording the Robert Emmet statue

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Next we did my project, which also happened to take place in Golden Gate Park.  My idea was to sit down somewhere in a public space, and get comfortable as if you were at home, watching entertainment through a "TV" which was a cardboard box fashioned into a TV with an open back panel and screen.  The idea was to watch life through a TV much like what more people do at home, watching life through TV.   The location where I set up my little TV happened to be a stage in Golden Gate Park, the Spreckels Temple of Music.

The "TV" is that little red thing to the right.

Spectator's View in the seats in front of the "Bandshell"

A couple came up and took a picture with the TV in it.

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Lastly we did Shizuka's project, which took place in Union Square.  Her project idea was to post up Civil War photos with shopping bags photoshopped into the image, around Union Square.  Since the ice skating rink was set up, we put the pictures up on the heart monument on the northwestern corner of the Square.

Me and Shizuka putting up the photos.  The photos consisted of the American flag with the Macy's logo in the middle of a circle of stars; Abraham Lincoln and two others standing with Nordstrom bags at their feet; and Civil War Union soldiers standing with Forever21, Sephora, and other shop bags at their feet.

View of Heart Monument, we had to wait til no more people were taking pictures of the monument.

This photo to me is absolutely priceless.  A woman poses with her shopping bag from Nordstrom while one of the images below her depict Abraham Lincoln also posing with his shopping bag from Nordstrom.

Shizuka decided to put the images up on the backside of the heart instead.

Retooled Logo

Volvo logo as of 2006, an automobile car company, untouched

For this project, we were asked to take a logo from the real world, and retool it and change it into something else, to create a commentary of our society or of the company itself.  I decided to use the company logo for the car manufacturer "Volvo."  When I first saw a commercial for this car company, my first reaction to it's logo was, "that's sexist!" looking at the Mars symbol that the company used, which also is a symbol of the male gender.  Taking that idea of the male symbol, I decided to retool Volvo into the female symbol, Venus, and change the the word "Volvo" into "Vulva" which is the word for the female external genitalia.  

Doing some research on both the terms and the history of Volvo, I learned that Volvo was originally a Swedish car manufacturer that also made construction items.  The logo we see today was originally the logo for Volvo's line of ball bearings, using the symbol of Mars, which also represents iron, to state that's what their ball bearings were made of since iron is a very strong metal.  The symbol for Venus represents the metal copper, with this in mind I was going to change the greys in my retooled logo to browns to represent copper, but copper is an inferior metal to iron, and I did not want to imply that women are inferior to men.  "Volvo" and "vulva" also stem from the same Latin root "volvere" which means "to roll."  In the case with the company, they used the conjugated form meaning "I roll" and with the case of the female genitalia, vulva literally translated to "wrapper" in Old Latin.

"Vulva", my version of "Volvo", retooled