Slippery Slurs: Words that hurt perpetuate negative stereotypes, says one linguist (in National News) Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Center for victims of torture opens in San Jose (in Bay Area News) Emil Amok: Using the 'N' Word (in Opinion)

(Look): What's the Mission?

New Mission, a 24-inch square print by tom & john. Click for a larger view of this image.

By Yafonne

Walking into the gallery at Intersection for the Arts, LOOK: What is the Mission? hits the viewer running with a highly polished presentation of banner shaped color photography capturing San Francisco. A quick scan of the photos reveal: an old Chevy, a local shoe store with huge a “Tony Lama” boot sign, figurines and icons of Christ or the Virgin Mary, crosses atop buildings, Roxie movie theater night signs, a “no turn on red” traffic sign, graffiti on cement saying “another battle lost,” Dolores park sunbathers, a tattoo shop, city skylines, a homeless woman on the street, Metreon neon signs, torn up parking lots, half-constructed skyscrapers, a Mission Villa Mexican Cuisine food to-take-out sign, beauty salons and bars, a VA medical services sign offering HIV testing and TB screening, streets with pink flowers, school yards with high wired fences...

(LOOK), which opened Feb. 7 at Intersection for the Arts, is the latest in a series of interactive public art projects by two young graphic design artists, Tom Sieu, 31 and John Givens, 29, also known as the collaborative design team “tom & john.” Socially and artistically, the two have brought the neighborhoods of San Francisco into Intersection’s pristine gallery space, documenting and mapping the vocabulary of each district on a macro and micro level. The content comes not from the artists, but the residents who make up the Mission and its surrounding neighborhoods.

“To me, the project is really about fate meeting opportunity,” says the soft-spoken and philosophical Tom. A Taiwan-born second generation Chinese American who lives in the Haight, Tom met John, who grew up in New Jersey and now lives in Noe Valley, as graphic designers at the same agency. Three years ago, John tracked Tom down for a personal photography project. Avid scavengers of street junk and quirky paraphernalia, the two decided to explore the cityscape of San Francisco.

“We were looking for fodder to inspire our commercial art,” recalls the nonchalant and down-to-earth John. “We noticed the distinct visual language of these neighborhoods, especially North Beach and Chinatown.”

Originally utilitarian in their approach, tom & john looked at signs and objects that had graphic appeal, or what they termed “eye-candy.” After a year of shooting, things began to change.

“Like anything in a life cycle, that process matured over 2-3 years,” explains Tom. “There were stories that developed in our photos. That’s when we realized we had something bigger... All those components started to define a vernacular for each neighborhood, each having a very distinctive feel and design.” They felt a need to formalize the project by including community participation from their Web site, www.looksf.com.

Obtaining community input turned out to be challenging, even with the Internet. “I like to think we are open to all people with our work,” John points out, “But one negative thing about the Internet is the feedback. The population tends to be a certain sub-group in our culture. So we tried other ways to diversify our response population. We did mail-in postcards, installation chalkboards, having shows in gallery spaces. This was to get as broad a reach as possible.”

At first, tom & john interviewed residents on the streets, but found that too straight-forward. Seeking gut-level responses from the community, they changed their approach.

“We started with chalkboard posters asking, ‘What is the Mission?’ or ‘Where do I live?’” They posted chalkboard posters at construction sites, public places, galleries, and outdoors. Apparently, it worked. The chalkboard approach has since elicited immediate spontaneous reactions from all age groups. “For the most part, people want to speak and interact with it,” notes John. “San Francisco being very vocal, a political place to live, it’s surprising we didn’t get many graffiti or butt jokes on the chalkboard. People genuinely responded.”

Off-center looms a large, interactive, 60-square-feet black chalkboard, with doodles and viewer opinions scrawled all over, such as “The best burritos in the world,” “The neighborhood where people express themselves and eat food,” or “Where else can you buy Indian food, heroin, crack, and a Ducati in one block?”

“You would think a gallery space is supposed to be pristine. But also to be able to mess things up a bit with a chalkboard is a pretty smart idea,” chuckles Kevin Chen, 29, program director at Intersection for the Arts, the oldest alternative arts space in San Francisco (since 1965).

A sampling of mail-in postcards from neighborhood residents in one corner, contrasted by a string of printed Web site responses encircling the room like a stream of consciousness, complete the visual experience of the exhibit: “Big shoes and glitter.” “Gentrification, Santeria, Burritos.” “Hispanic, taco, hipster.” “I am a lowly software developer.” “I want to be the Asian Britney Spears.” “A recent grad with hope, ambition and too much pride.” “This town needs an enema.” “I give the innocents money and stay indoors a lot.”

Officially launched two years ago, the project has received 600 responses and 3,000 hits to the Web site. The interactive components of (LOOK) have created neighborhood awareness, fostered a market for their work, and promoted an open forum in the community. A large part of the project’s appeal also lies in their non-ethnocentric approach to creating work, which simply allows visual environments and people to speak for themselves.

“It would be too easy to tailor our photos to the issue of gentrification, for example.” mentions John. “But we just want it to be as it is. Not take sides. Change is not necessarily bad or good. There’s a lot of political animosity in San Francisco. We are totally NOT about that.”

“It’s just like some of the smartest work I’ve seen around,” adds Chen. “It’s organic. They’re presenting it as it is. They don’t put a spin on it. It’s all there for you to look at. They bring good graphic design sensibility in their photography. It’s an incredibly well thought-out execution.”

Atypical of art-based graphic design, which focuses on the end product, tom & john pay intense attention to the process, and how that journey communicates an experience for the artist and viewer. They go through all the architecture, the signage, the color, even trash and tourist items, comparing the characters, murals, and lettering from Mission to Chinatown.

“The old and new is a pretty key point,” adds Tom. “It’s about the historic versus the present. Both planes co-existing in the same neighborhood, always in conflict. Take North Beach and Chinatown, such close proximity of diverse cultures.” John agrees, “You could be sitting down drinking coke in an Italian deli, with a Chinese restaurant or market right next door with people speaking full-blown Chinese.”

(LOOK) has also inspired community partnerships with Out of Site and the San Francisco Arts Institute, where teams of youth artists are modeling their documentary art projects after tom & john’s work. Mentoring high school students from the Galileo Academy of Science and Technology, SFAI students help create on-going video and audio clips for the (LOOK) exhibit.

Sounds of the street from audio clips, combined with video images of the Mission flashing on the upper right-hand corner of the chalkboard, plus a duct-taped geographic map of major San Francisco streets from the Mission and South of Market to the Castro and Lower Haight, all contrive to bring San Francisco into the gallery space.

“La Mission is a diverse neighborhood full of life, colorful as the people who live here. It’s a place where you can walk down the street with your children and feel like no one is a stranger. It’s home,” says Beth Rubenstein, Co-Director of Out of Site, a center for arts and architectural education for Bay Area youth. “My goal in working with art and architecture high school students is to show them how art is a vital part of the community, and how they can use the art and architecture to define and shape their community life.”

Back on home base, her 11 students of color at Galileo are asking questions about their school environment, which contains 1800-2000 students. Using photographs, signs, symbols, and graphic signage, they draw, document and build installations created in response to the dynamics and needs of their school.

Julio Morales, an instructor at San Francisco Arts Institute and a pioneer of media-literacy based educational curricula for youth, sees (LOOK) as a springboard for new public art.

“tom & john are taking the experience of public and putting it into a gallery space. My class then takes what’s inside this gallery and transforms it back into the public sphere, into an art project with the perspective of youth,” comments Morales.

Though they are graphic designers by profession, tom & john struggle with that term, which, in their opinion, does no justice to the kind of work they really do. “The difference between commercial art and visual art is content. Who controls what is being said is what defines the art. If you are the creator, you control the content, or if you believe in the message with all your heart, then it’s art. If you are doing this for someone else, then it’s design. The quality of execution for visual artists and graphic designers is virtually the same — and that’s why it’s so frustrating for us [to separate the two].”

Their professional goal is to bring the business and pleasure of art together as close as possible, so there’s no separation. Honest, direct and unpretentious, their approach to making art suggests a more culturally sensitive and humble role for the artist in the 21st century.

(LOOK) asks, what do we know about each other in San Francisco? Look at all the different cultures and art from all over the world here. The intersection of space, time and signs communicate who we are.

Are we aware of each other?

Look. Just Look.