Monthly Archives: March 2019

FERLINGHETTI’S 100th BIRTHDAY! GET THE POSTER!

This post was originally published for Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 100th Birthday. We present it again to honor his passing at age 101 and 11 months. Good news: there are still posters to purchase as well as the remarkable greeting cards which were not offered 2 years ago. Buy one or more now to honor an activist artist who inspired so many. POSTER NEWS! We continue to get requests for this poster. Please note new price due to limited  supply.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s birthday is March 24. Just a few days ago he turned 100. Celebrate this great life landmark with an exclusive poster designed by Jonathan Clark. His birthday is also March 24th! but not his 100th. Not yet. The poster is colorful with a strong image of Lawrence’s painting. Buy one now for yourself and another as a gift. It was a limited edition poster of which Jonathan is offering some of what he has in his own collection.  In 1994, Jonathan –the internationally acclaimed photographer and fine art printer—was the Chair of the Visual Arts Committee for the City of Mountain View, CA. He organized and presented the first major exhibition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s paintings. Well known as a poet and publisher, Ferlinghetti’s visual art was not well known. Soon after the exhibition in the Mountain View City Hall, the exhibition moved to San Francisco to be shown in The Lively Foundation’s new studio at the corner of Grove and Gough Street, just a block from the SF Ballet and the SF Opera House. It was Lawrence’s 75th Birthday Party and our opening; a great day with a great crowd of art lovers and many who were devoted to Lawrence’s role in the cultural life of San Francisco.

Original poster. It is 18″ x 24″

Cost for one poster is $36. If we mail it to you, postage cost is $7.84 (exact postage cost can change depending on destination). Yes, that really is the postage. This is the real deal. You will not find this anywhere else, and it is terrific. Previously not for sale, but NOW AVAILABLE: greeting card, blank inside, with portrait photo by Jonathan Clark of Lawrence standing by his painting.

Email us at livelyfoundation.org   Let us know your name, address and how many posters or cards you would like. This is first come, first served. Mail a check made out to Jonathan Clark to Jonathan Clark, 550 Mountain View Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94041-1941. You will love having this historic poster celebrating an individual who is a significant cultural force and who has done so much for many artists. Do it today!

International Dance Festival@Silicon Valley, 2019:HERE WE GO!

The Lively Foundation is excited to announce the dates and events of International Dance Festival@Silicon Valley, 2019. OUR 8TH SEASON! This year, IDF@SV takes place in May. The Full Day of Dance© will be on Saturday, May 18. First class begins at 10 a.m. Last class ends at 5 p.m. The Festival Concert will be on Sunday, May 19, 3 p.m. ALL EVENTS take place at the Mountain View Masonic Center, 890 Church Street, Mountain View, CA 94041. There is free parking on the street around the Center and in the parking lot behind the building. It is also an easy walk from CalTrain.

FULL DAY OF DANCE© You may take any number of classes, but for the BEST DEAL & THE MOST FUN: TAKE THEM ALL! Ballroom (Cha Cha and Waltz), Ballet, Etta’s Electric Line Dances, Pilates mat, Tap. The best teachers anywhere, all of them are established, acclaimed artists in their own movement styles and all of them are devoted teachers. No partner for Ballroom? No problem; partners will be provided by the teachers. Each class is one hour long, open to mixed levels of training or dance experience, best for participants age 14 and older. Any age adult is welcome. Class costs: Price per class reduces with each added class. Early Bird registration: $20 single,$36 for 2; $48 for 3; $56 for 4; $60 for all five; Regular registration: $25 single; $40 for 2; $54 for 3; $64 for 4; $70 for all five.

Audreyanne Delgado Covarrubias teaching Tap

FESTIVAL CONCERT The Festival artists perform and choreograph new works special for this concert. Premieres by Audreyanne Delagado Covarrubias, Kris Mola, Leslie Friedman. The Awardees of the annual Choreography Competition present their award winning works. This is a Very Special Event for dance lovers and those who are interested in getting to know dance in the intimate, summer stock style setting of the Festival Concert. The dances will range from Contemporary to Traditional, international dance forms; Ballroom to Hip Hop. It is not to be missed! Tickets are $20 general admission; $12 for over 65 or under 10. Sponsor Tickets: $35 or more by your choice (reserved best seat and tax deductible donation). Group ticket discounts are available. Please contact The Lively Foundation for group information.

Taylor Florez & Casandra Armenta thrilled the audiences with their Hip Hop at IDF@SV, 2018 and return to the Festival Concert, May 19, 2019

FESTIVE FESTIVAL DINNER! Join artists and audience members at a fun, delicious dinner after the show. We will meet at Amici’s Pizzeria which is about a block and a half from the Masonic Center. Dinner plus the show: $40.

TO REGISTER AND BUY TICKETS: email livelyfoundation@sbcglobal.net  If you are registering for classes tell us which classes, and if you are buying tickets, tell us how many and which type of ticket. Please mail us a check made out to The Lively Foundation and mail it to The Lively Foundation/550 Mountain View Avenue/Mountain View, CA 94041-1828   OR if you need to use a credit card please go to the landing page of this blog, scroll down the page until you see the PayPal logo, click on it and follow directions. PLEASE let us know what classes you are registering for and how many and which kind of ticket. It is absolutely necessary for you to email us this information or, when you appear for class or performance, we will have no idea that you paid or paid for what. OR you may pay at the door.

THANK YOU!

Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey at de Young Museum, SF

The story of Paul Gauguin’s life (1848-1903) lends mystery and romance to the idea of an artist. He left the over developed, over civilized, expensive world of Paris to free himself and find his art in Tahiti. The exhibition at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey, expands the reality of Paul Gauguin as artist and spiritual seeker. It is not so much denying the romance of a man working as a stockbroker, a humdrum job, and revolting against number crunching to seek primitive beauty as it is enriching our understanding of the complicated, thoughtful greatly talented individual. The works in the exhibition come from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek , Copenhagen, and from works in the Fine Arts Museums of SF own collection.

Photograph of Paul Gauguin

In his early life in France’s Merchant Marine and Navy, he sailed around the world and completed his military service. When he returned home, he established a close relationship with Gustave Arosa, who became his legal guardian after the death of his mother. Arosa had a an art collection distinguished by works of Delacroix, artists of the French Salon, and ceramics from world wide origins. In this environment, Gauguin’s interest in art became a passion. Through Arosa, he met Camille Pissaro. The great Impressionist became Gauguin’s friend and mentor. Gauguin had no formal art training. Mette Sophie Gad, a Danish woman, met him in Paris; they married in 1873 and had five children. The stock market  crash in 1882 was a fortunate fall; it opened a door for Gauguin’s full time devotion to his art. Although Mette and Paul would eventrually separate when he turned to painting full time, she loyally supported his work, organized an exhibition in Copenhagen, and sold his paintings. Other painters were also important in his life as friends and companions. He and Emile Bernard met in Brittany where Gauguin made important strides in creating his own style. The Bretons with their distinctive dress and their emphatically not-Parisian life style and environment were nearly foreign and exotic.

Breton Girl, 1889, is in exhibition at de Young

Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh painted side by side in Arles, in the south of France. Each had his own vision creating art, but the few months together surely had an impact. Gauguin left Provence shortly after Van Gogh cut off his own ear. Gauguin continued searching for a pure, wild or “sauvage” home in which he could get in touch with a culture and spirituality which was not influenced by the industrialized, urban world of Copenhagen or Paris. He left Mette and his family to travel to Panama and Martinique. He made his first trip to Tahiti in 1891 under the auspices of the French Ministry of Fine Arts. What he found in Papeete was not an untouched paradise; the colonialism of the French empire had inevitably modified Tahitian existence. He moved onward to another part of the island, Mataiea. On his second trip to Tahiti, his ship was delayed in Auckland, New Zealand. He closely observed and collected Maori art.

Flowers and Cats, 1899, Tahiti, in the de Young exhibtion

His story is not one of finding the original, pure society he sought; instead, it is one of continual seeking. He went to Hivo Oa in the Marquesas Islands, in 1901, and died there in 1903. Among the many glorious surprises in this brilliant exhibition are Gauguin’s ceramics. These are not thrown on a wheel but hand worked in fascinating character. To see his earlier paintings which glory in nature and humanity in nature, and his drawings and paintings of Breton life which present the differences of life style, forms, and pattern established through the shapes of costume and patterns of movement is a spiritual journey for the exhibition visitor. It expands one’s understanding of this artist’s many journeys to come closer to the world as a whole and to immerse himself in particular ways of living which were never entirely his own. Gauguin was also a collector of art. His collections expose his profound interest in other forms of living and other forms of worship. The exhibition closes on June 23. Do not miss it.