For the month of May at the Tenderloin Museum Gallery, artists Amanda Eicher and Cara Levine have activated an interactive artwork and exhibit titled This Is Not A Gun as a part of 100 Days Action. On Wednesday, May 24 from 6-8PM the exhibit will close with a community dialogue and art-making workshop led by Amanda Eicher. Throughout these first 100 days, sculptor Cara Levine has been carving wood replicas of common objects mistaken by police as weapons that resulted in police shootings, based on a list of these objects published in Harper’s Magazine in December 2016. About her sculptural inquiry, the artist says, “We do not know the outcome of these shootings. We do know that none of these items are guns. We want to understand this error. We want to understand through questioning, grieving, looking, and making. We want to understand together, as community.” Amanda Eicher, artist and organizer has engaged in continual dialogue with both Bay Area community and Richmond Police members surrounding this national crisis. Through this series of dialogues and hands-on workshops, Amanda Eicher and Cara Levine invite the public to honor and try to understand these objects, and the lives they have impacted. Participants will sculpt their own replica objects out of clay and be invited to contribute to an open dialogue as a part of the artist talk and exhibit closing workshop at the Tenderloin Museum on May 24.
100 Days Actio is a counter narrative to the Trump administration’s one hundred day plan. A calendar of activist and artistic strategy, 100 Days Actio is a call to thinkers, artists, and writers to propose gestures that can be carried out either at home or in the world. Whereas the president’s 100 Days will seek to dismantle restrictions that protect our environment, public education, health, and jeopardize unprotected minority groups, 100 Days Action s a forum for resistance, an artistic coming together, an exercise in endurance, a call to all bodies that stand against bigotry, xenophobia, racism, sexism, and the destruction of our environment to act together. 100 Days Action has been featured in VICE, San Francisco Chronicle, and KQED's FORUM, and is currently exhibiting at Yerba Buena Arts Center with an artivist gym called 24 Hours Resistance. For each day of the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, 100 Days Action has organized one or more participatory events, free or low-cost and open to the public, in a variety of locations throughout San Francisco. For a full list of 100 Days of Actio activities, visit: 100daysaction.net
Cara Levin grew up in Los Angeles CA. She currently lives and works in Portland, OR. Levine is an artist exploring the intersections of the physical, metaphysical, traumatic and illusionary through sculpture, video and photography. She has shown work in various places including the Wattis Center for Contemporary Art in San Francisco, The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, and The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. She has been a recent artist in residence at SIM Residency in Iceland, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Kala Institute for Art, Vermont Studio Center, and Signal Fire Arts. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Lewis and Clark College and has taught as a lecturer in at UC Berkeley and California College of the Arts. She taught ceramic arts at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland CA from 2013-2015. She received her MFA in sculpture from CCA in 2012. Cara practices yoga and meditation, contemplative and authentic movement. She believes in the human in the body. She lives with her dog and constant collaborator, Pigeon.
Amanda Eiche's projects investigate the roles artists play in development processes; the ways groups engage in creative thinking; and intersections between traditional community-based art practices and contemporary approaches to social engagement in art, relational aesthetics, and dialogic practices. These works invite participants to interrogate, practice, and perform various cultural competencies and to create mobile leadership styles, negotiating growth and change through creative observation, collaboration, and problem-solving. Her professional work has included projects throughout the US, and in Cameroon, Rwanda, Kyrgyzstan, Sweden, Morocco, and El Salvador.