OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 6-9PM
IN RESIDENCE THROUGH SEPTEMBER 12, 2015
Closing Artist Talk: September 12, 3pm

IN RESIDENCE: ALAN CLARK
Crisis in the Rainbow Forest

Alan Clark is graphic novelist and painter. He studied thermal dynamics and theoretical physics at Georgia State University. Born in New York, he has resided in many places throughout the Eastern Seaboard. He moved to Oakland in 2013 to work on his second book, The Black Panther for Self-Defense, a graphic novel history of the Black Panther Party.

From Alan:

"I want to express the need of the imagination in regards to our tomorrows. This is a look at how utopias are built from dreams while dystopia is built on nightmares. It is the lack of imagination that creates dystopias, and the abundance of imagination is what utopias are derived from.

In the past many utopias resembled the fantasies of white, hetero males; they rarely incorporated into that vision the experience every other human organism that does not share in that singular narrow privileged position. As a person of color, I felt that I was not included as part of their future tomorrow. Yet I have to share in the dystopias created by them, which feed often on egoism, capitalism, and apathy, while cultivating racial, sexual, gender non-existence for those who don’t share that vision.

Of the three weeks of my residency, I will be sharing new work that invokes imagination to the extreme in the form of a new mythology presented in the form of serial paintings, which I hope will ultimately become a graphic novel. These works will show a way to transcend normal categorization of utopia, while exploring infrastructure, culture, religion, spirituality and art. I will be bringing in people to discuss new ways of framing the ideas we have about “utopias” —- from intentional communities to healthy neighborhoods with volunteer markets. This will be recorded and archived to piece together a manifesto a possible blueprint for what this can look like now."