“Meanwhile” – Documenting the Microcommunities of San Francisco

April 13, 2011

Tim Hwang reporting in here for Awesome Foundation San Francisco! We’re thrilled to announce that this months winner of the Awesome Fellowship is Wendy MacNaughton, a brilliant artist and illustrator living here in the Bay Area. She’s been working recently on a series called “Meanwhile” — narrative comics exploring the thicket of awesome microcommunities nestled within San Francisco. Previous comics have explored the Market Street Chess Players, The Dolphin Club Bay Swimmers, Dog Walkers, Farmer’s Market Farmers and Mission Bartenders. They’re all tremendously fun to read, and are worth checking out here. For this month, she’s worked out a partnership with the San Francisco Public Library, and will be spending a month interviewing and drawing the folks who work there, and exploring the people who use the libraries as a community hub. Best of all (and we’re still working out the details) but the SFPL has agreed to either show the outcome of the project in their readers cafe at Fort Mason, or (better yet) help make little books of it that can be on display and for sale at libraries, the cafe and bookstores in SF (with proceeds going to the library!) You can see more of Wendy’s work… read more →

One Hundred Dinosaurs at AF-San Francisco!

March 18, 2011

Over at AF-San Francisco, we’ve been a little bit obsessed lately by the “X a day” category of Foundation applications. They’re discrete, highly do-able, and result in a ton of awesome products being released into the universe. We had such a great time seeing Meredith Scheff’s Scarf-A-Day project take shape last month that we decided to follow up that grant with another project that takes the model in a entirely new and great direction. To that end, thrilled to announce that our March Awesome Fellowship goes out to the endlessly wonderful Bay Area artist Adam Davis, who is embarking on a mission to paint one hundred bite-sized (around 4” x 4”) and big sized (yet to come!) paintings of dinosaurs over the next month or so. He will then engage in a worldwide hide-and-seek game, caching the dinosaurs in secret locations and releasing clues (some clues leading to yet more clues) to their location on his project blog. Once the dinosaurs are located, they are yours to keep. Four have been located so far around the Bay Area (including this crazy story and the first dinosaur being hidden at the weird and wonderful Jejune Institute), and there’s many more on… read more →

Headed to SXSW? Come Hang Out!

March 3, 2011

Greetings, all! Just wanted to drop a line out if you happen to be headed to the SXSW Interactive Festival next week. The Institute on Higher Awesome Studies is officially hosting its second annual global meetup of Deans, micro-trustees, and friends of the Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences at the festival. Currently, it looks like we’ll be having trustees hailing from the following chapters: AF-Boston AF-San Francisco AF-Berlin AF-Sydney AF-Austin Should be a fun time hanging out. We’ll be meeting up for drinks and food on Saturday, March 12 at The Ginger Man in Austin, TX at 2:30. Even if you’re not a current member of a chapter, definitely stop by! And, if you’re so Facebook inclined, the full invite is here.

SF Awesome Fellow: Meredith Scheff’s Scarf-A-Day!

December 27, 2010

We’re positively thrilled to announce today that the trustees of Awesome Foundation San Francisco have chosen Meredith Scheff to be this month’s Fellow for her project Scarf-a-Day, wherein she will make one silly, strange, whimsical, nerdy, electronic, fuzzy, warm, or otherwise totally awesome scarf a day for a whole month — and post how-tos online. Meredith’s a graduate of the California College of the Art’s Illustration program, though she’s been all over textiles, electronics, soft circuits, and a whole range of geekery in recent years. Specifically, she’s been sewing a ton recently, and it’s already led to a fair quantity of sheer epicness that we figured would be great to have manifested in a showcase of 30 awesome scarves. These will culminate in a mighty reception show sometime in January/February. So, stay tuned. You can find more about Meredith on her site and her Twitter. She’s also the creator of the Northskirt — a skirt that always helpfully indicates where due north is — which, if you haven’t seen yet, you really, really should. If you’d like to help support the Scarf-A-Day, check out Meredith’s Etsy, and you can donate to hear using the handy dandy PayPal button below: Congratulations… read more →

Awesome Foundation SF Funds Papergirl!

August 24, 2010

Greetings from California! I’m glad to officially announce that, after much deliberation, the September Fellowship of Awesome Foundation SF goes to the superbly fantastic project brewing over at Papergirl SF. The project clearly forwards the interest of awesomeness, and we couldn’t imagine a more perfect summer scheme to support! Dubbed a “a mail-art and delivery systems art project that is participatory, analogue, non-commercial, and impulsive,” Papergirl SF plans to broadly collect pieces of work mailed to them, and then distribute them in rolled bundles on bikes to random passerbys, old-school paperboy style. If you’re interested in participating and submitting artwork to be distributed, the deadline for submissions is September 18th (details on how to do that here). And, best of all, the Papergirl crew will be holding a showcase of all the work submitted on September 26th during the Mission Bicycle Festival at the Women’s Building. We’re definitely planning on being there, and hope you will be too! There’s more details available on their website here, for the curious. And a Facebook page, for those so inclined. Congratulations!