Student work from two special Yolo County art programs will comprise two group shows opening Friday at Gallery 625 in the County Administration Building, 625 Court St. in Woodland.
The gallery’s main floor will offer “Colorful Screenprints: The Artists of TANA” and feature the work of student and teaching artists practicing the art of screen printing at Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer.
The second floor will be home to “Ceramic Portraits: Students of Einstein and Midtown Schools” created by Einstein Education Center and Midtown School students.
Located in Woodland, TANA is a community art center managed by the Chicana/o studies department at UC Davis. TANA offers a fully functioning silkscreen studio, Chicano/Latino arts exhibition space, and is also a teaching center working to cultivate the cultural and artistic life of the community.
The artists featured in “Colorful Screenprints” include UCD faculty, emeritus faculty, UCD graduates or undergraduates, a community artist and a Woodland Community College student. They are Carlos Jackson and Malaquias Montoya, TANA’s directors; Jaime Montiel, TANA artist in residence; Maceo Montoya, affiliated faculty; and staff members Gilda Posada, Roque Montez, Olivia Hernandez, Jose Chavez-Verduzco, Rocky Rojas and Eddie Lampkin.
Also located in Woodland, the Einstein Education Center and Midtown schools are operated by the Yolo County Office of Education, and provide an alternative education to students from across Yolo County. This arts education program is offered to students through a partnership with YoloArts’ ArtMix program and Safe Schools Healthy Students.
Professional artists JuliAnn Blanco, MaryAnn Kirsch, Susan Shelton and Joyce Winter were hired by YoloArts to teach watercolor, printmaking, drawing and ceramics to students this school year. The project culminated in the school’s first student art show earlier this month. It was positively received by the community and now is moving to Gallery 625.
“The experience of working with a professional artist was fantastic for the students as they not only had the opportunity to learn new skills and techniques in several media but were able to take a project from an initial idea to completed artwork on display, making it an authentic experience and not just a classroom exercise,” said Susan Cassady, alternative education director for the Yolo County Office of Education.
“Ceramic Portraits” will showcase the ceramic portraits created by Shelton’s students. They learned multiple methods for working with clay and were offered the opportunity to “… explore the idea of the many pieces that make up a person, and the changing nature of those pieces …” according to Shelton’s teaching artist statement.
The exhibition’s opening reception will be attended by many of the featured artists and students and will run from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, coinciding with downtown Woodland’s First Friday Art Walk. The reception will also feature Turkovich Family Wines, sponsored by Roth Ranch.
At 7 p.m. Malaquias Montoya, professor emeritus at UCD, will offer a lecture and slide presentation on Chicano art and the murals of Yolo County, including his recently completed mural at the Student Community Center at UCD. The talk is expected to last about 45 minutes.
“Colorful Screenprints and Ceramic Portraits” will run through June 27 at Gallery 625, in the County Administration Building , 625 Court St. in Woodland.
Regular gallery viewing hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. For more information, call YoloArts at (530) 406-4844, or visit www.yoloarts.org.
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=180668
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Source: www.davisenterprise.com
California offers first test case for Google's robot cars - Fort Worth Star-Telegram
More Americans are starting to pay attention to the lack of privacy while online.
Two events that have been part of this awakening:
1) News that Google's Street View picture-snapping cars also collected private information from homes it passed by.
(Google Street View car from thecarconnection.com)
2) The constant difficulty of maintaining proper privacy settings on Facebook (have you tried to find the privacy settings tab lately?)
Now comes California, usually first in the nation in trends of all kinds, looking at a problem soon to be faced by every other state in the nation. Should it pass a state law that allows robot-driven cars to pararde through its streets?
The obvious beneficiary of this is Google, which wants to deploy the photo-snapping cars without human drivers.
Google is already testing such cars now.
California Senate Bill 1298 is now up for grabs in the State House after unanimous passage in the state Senate. The bill permits "autonomous vehicles" on California roadways.
In a protest letter to the California House Speaker, the group Consumer Watchdog seeks to kill portions of the bill. The group leaders write that the company lost its trustworthiness with the so-called "Wi-Spy scandal, the largest wiretapping effort ever, in which Google's Street View cars sucked up emails, passwords and other data from private Wi-Fi networks in 30 countries around the world." Read a report from the group here.
Google was fined $25,000 by the Federal Communications Commission for obstructing its investigation, Consumer Watchdog reminded the speaker. The company first blamed an engineer, but the FCC later determined that the company was aware of the operation.
The group wants any new law to ban the collection of private data.
The bill is a test case. Even if the House passes the bill, Gov. Jerry Brown would have to sign it into law. Soon enough, the whole world will be watching to see what happens.
Read California State Senate Bill 1298 here.
# # #
The above report comes from Star-Telegram Watchdog columnist Dave Lieber. Reads his reports at Star-Telegram.com. Visit his Facebook page for more stories like this. Follow him here on Twitter @DaveLieber to get news like this.
Source: blogs.star-telegram.com
Pass the cheese and quackers! California restaurants and diners overdosing on foie gras before state-wide ban - Daily Mail
- Golden State to ban foie gras on July 1, and will be only state to do so
- Ban states that over-feeding of ducks via tubes is cruel
- Ahead of ban, high-end restaurants serving abundance of decadent food
By Associated Press and Beth Stebner
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This is not a good time to be a duck with a fatty liver in California, though better times lie just ahead.
Chefs are loading their high-end menus with duck liver: terrine de foie gras, seared foie gras with mango chutney, foie gras salad and sweet foie gras for dessert.
And they are keeping secret the locations of their multi-course dinners to avoid protesters as a July 1 ban looms in California, the only state to outlaw foie gras.
Cramming in: High-end restaurants in California are squeezing in as much foie gras into their menus as possible ahead of a state-wide ban; here, a carrot soup topped with foie gras cream at Sent Sovi
Liver alone: Foie Gras is torched and made into a brulee at Sent Sovi Friday; the culinary treat will be banned on July 1
Demand for the delicacy created by force-feeding ducks through funnel-like tubes has never been higher as diners sate their palates with a product that soon will be banned for production and sale in the Golden State.
'The price has doubled. People are finding it hard to get it because the demand is so high,' said Tracy Lee of the San Jose-based traveling dining service Dishcrawl, which has organized a series of 15 secret, sold-out foie gras dinners. Her last one is Thursday.
While gourmands stockpile foie gras at $60 a pound, others are stomaching the frenetic food fest with disdain.
'High-end foodies and chefs stuffing down their throats excessive amounts of fatty liver from force-fed ducks in the run-up to the ban paint a pretty ironic picture,' said Jennifer Fearing of the Humane Society of the United States.
As the California foie gras feeding frenzy escalates, protesters in San Francisco and Los Angeles are staking out restaurants and even making reservations to tie up seats at dinners they know they'll never attend.
'Many people don't know what foie gras is or how it's produced and they're horrified when we tell them,' said Dana Portnoy, who shot undercover video inside a foie gras operation and organizes the San Francisco-area protests. '
Prep work: Chef and owner Josiah Slone, right, prepares a foie gras dish at Sent Sovi; renegade chefs across the state are loading their menus with the fatty duck liver
Duckadent: Guests enjoy a foie gras dish at the restaurant
Delicious dish: The food will be banned because of the cruel way in which foie gras must be prepared
Occasionally we'll run into antagonistic patrons, but that's usually when we're protesting at the foie gras benefit dinners.'
It's why Lee doesn't publicize the restaurants where her dinners will be held until a day before the date.
'So far we haven't had any protesters, which has been nice,' she said.
The California legislature gave the state's only producer, Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras, more than seven years to come up with a cruelty-free way to fatten the duck's liver when in 2004 it voted in the ban on producing and selling foie gras.
Absent that, a coalition of chefs have mounted a lobbying campaign to try to overturn the law in the future, and the foie gras dinners are funding that on-going effort.
Force-fed: A farmer in France force feeds grain to a duck as part of the traditional process to fatten its liver for foie gras
A mallard of life and death: Geese wait for their midday feed where they are force-fed to enlarge their livers; Israel and the Czech Republic have banned the practice
To the oohs and aaahs of about 30 diners, Chef Josiah Slone hosted a recent seven-course foie gras feast at his Sent Sovi restaurant in Saratoga.
He started with arugula with foie gras vinaigrette, moved to foie gras mousse with tartufata and English peas and seared foie gras with savoury rhubarb pie. For dessert: foie, peanut butter and chocolate.
FATTY TREAT OR CRUEL FEAT? THE TRUTH BEHIND FOIE GRAS
Foie gras - French for 'fatty liver' - is made from liver swollen to 10 times its normal size, which the lawsuit argues is acute hepatic lipidosis, a condition linked to obesity in animals.
Ducks' livers become so engorged by the feeding process called 'gavage' that the birds can't walk and have trouble breathing.
Gavage has been outlawed in a dozen countries including Israel, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
'For me, it was more of an educational dinner to talk a little about how foie gras is produced and the science behind how it's produced,' Slone said. 'Yes there are two sides to it, but understanding the line between science and emotion is very important for people.'
There are enough 'quality ingredients out there' that his California-French menu won't be lacking when it's gone, Slone said.
As someone who goes to extreme measures to source quality meat and vegetables, he thinks animal welfare advocates could end more suffering if they'd focus on practices at large confined animal farming operations producing beef, chicken and pork.
'I think the issue that the animal rights people have is a lot bigger than foie gras,' Slone said. 'Foie gras was sort of an easy target, sort of low-hanging fruit.
'But in the sense of improving conditions of animal welfare, ending some of the factory farming practices that big ag is defending is a very admirable goal.'
The California ban, which maintains that over-feeding ducks using a pipe stuffed down the esophagus is cruel, comes as four animal welfare groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture last month, making another point about foie gras.
They hope to secure a national prohibition by arguing that USDA is violating the Poultry Products Inspection Act by allowing 'diseased birds' to enter the food chain.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
Stunning artwork by Grimsby Institute degree students proves to be a draw - Grimsby Telegraph
HUNDREDS of people have flocked to see stunning work by the Grimsby Institute's art degree students.
Organisers said that the annual BA fine arts practice degree show was the busiest they have seen as it opened for preview on Friday.
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IMPRESSED: Onlookers admiring Abigail Noble's work at the Grimsby Institute's BA fine art practice degree show 2012
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INTRIGUING: Bethany Buks' artwork.
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SURREAL: Artwork by Martine Wainwright.
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HOMELY SCENE: Jo Smith's 'Two Brothers, Three Sisters And A Mouse'.
The contemporary exhibition shows some of the best work done by 11 degree students currently training at Grimsby Institute.
Art technician Tanya Kennedy, who also did an art degree at Grimsby Institute, said: "This year's exhibition is already one of the busiest I have ever seen.
"There were at least 200 people who came in on the opening night. This is a very well supported exhibition and it seems to be getting more and more popular every year."
Exhibiting artist Abigail Noble said the opening night was "jam-packed".
"You could barely move for all the people inside and there was a great atmosphere.
"We were constantly washing wine glasses throughout the night and there were still hundreds to wash in the morning.
"Hopefully I will sell some of my work this week and the number of people through the door will definitely help", she added.
Martine Wainwright, who is also displaying work, said: "This will be my final exhibition here at the university which is a shame as it is a great space and I like to exhibit here.
"However, I already have a number of other exhibitions lined up for after I graduate."
Toke Dodge, 23, of Louth, came to have a look at the work on display.
"I had heard about a few of the pieces so I came along to see for myself.
"I am really impressed with what I have seen – they are very talented", he said.
The exhibition opened on Friday at the Institute's Cambridge Road campus and continues until Thursday, running from 10am to 4pm every day.
Source: www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk
Is the California Condor Out of the Woods? - Mother Jones
This post was originally published at Scientific American.
California condors—North America's largest birds, with a wingspan of up to 2.8 meters—were almost wiped out by poaching, DDT and lead poisoning before all of the remaining birds at the time were brought in from the wild in 1987. Captive breeding programs have increased the number of condors dramatically since then, and according to the April 30 census cited by The Oregonian, there are now 226 California condors living in the wild in California, Arizona and nearby Baja, Mexico. An additional 179 birds live in zoos and breeding centers. The population has increased more than 20 percent in the last two and a half years alone.
But condors still face threats on several fronts, chief among them the continued use of lead bullets by hunters in Arizona. California banned lead ammunition in the condors' habitats in 2007, but efforts to limit its use in Arizona have so far failed. Condors, as scavengers, eat the carcasses of animals killed by lead ammo (or the "gut piles" of innards left behind by hunters) and often die as a result. At least 22 of the condors released in Arizona have died from lead poisoning, according to a report from MSNBC. Up to 95 percent of the birds in the state have lead present in their blood, and a painful and sometimes fatal process called chelation is often used to remove the lead from their bodies in both states.
Source: www.motherjones.com
How is this any different than the way caged chickens are kept in massive chicken houses in the US? There are probably millions more chickens suffering much worse through their short lives. Why not ban that? - Me, Here, 31/5/2012 00:03...It is not any different than the factory farms where chickens are kept in horrific conditions and confinement. And there are millions more chickens than ducks. Humane treatment of all animals needs to start somewhere. Will the ban on foie gras change the world? No, but it will change the world for those cruelly force fed ducks.
- Risa, London, 31/5/2012 02:32
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