Christopher Statton | |
---|---|
Born | 1977 |
Nationality | American |
Known for | Public Art, Activism |
Awards | Marlon Riggs Award |
Christopher Statton is an American artist, arts administrator, and community activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Statton is best known for his role in establishing San Francisco's oldest continuously running theater, the Roxie Theater as a non-profit during his four-year tenure as executive director, 2010 – 2013. [1] In 2013 he was awarded the Marlon Riggs Award by the San Francisco Film Critics Circle for “his significant contribution to San Francisco’s film community through the Roxie Theater over the past four years.” Ryan Coogler also received the award for his film Fruitvale Station . [2] In 2013, San Francisco District 9 Supervisor David Campos awarded Statton with a Certificate of Honor for his “important and tireless work with the Roxie.” Statton resigned from the Roxie in 2013 due to health concerns.
Born with haemophilia, Statton was one of the 6,000 – 10,000 hemophiliacs to be infected with both HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated haemophilia blood products in the early eighties by the pharmaceutical companies that were producing concentrate factor VIII, namely the Bayer Corporation. Living with these diseases for all or most of his life (he's had HIV and hepatitis C since he was four-years-old) has led Statton to be a fierce activist for social and economic justice. [3]
In 2006 Statton co-founded the project Sidewalk Sideshow with Reverend Paul Gaffney as a project of the Marin Interfaith Street Chaplaincy. The project produces music shows with San Rafael's street and homeless community. In 2013 Statton co-launched the Roxie Theater's Lights. Camera. Action! Awards to honor Bay Area social justice documentary filmmakers. The inaugural Awards honored the filmmaking team Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (filmmaker) and filmmaker Hima B for the significant contributions these filmmakers have had in bringing attention and awareness to the challenges of those living with HIV/AIDS. [4] In 2016 Statton was asked to be a part of the HIV Story Project, co-founded by Marc Smolowitz. The HIV Story Project has archived over 1,000 videos from survivors and others affected by HIV online at www.thehivstoryproject.org. [5]
Currently Statton is working with The Gubbio Project, which provides an average of 100 people from the street community with safety and rest on the pews in the sanctuary of St. Boniface church in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood each weekday from 6am to 3pm. The Gubbio Project also provides toiletries, blankets, clothing vouchers, referrals, clean bathrooms, and haircuts for its community. In 2015 Statton co-produced the event Blanket Statements, An Evening of Comedy with W. Kamau Bell to benefit the Gubbio Project. [6]
Statton is one of the core organizers and a member of the Board of Directors of the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP). In 2014 he collaborated with artists and CAMP organizers Megan Wilson and Mike Reger to create the mural "Wall of Shame & Solutions" on Clarion Alley in San Francisco's Mission District to call out the city's government officials on the highly contested policies that are impacting the changing character of San Francisco. [7] In 2015 Statton collaborated with poet Tony Robles to create the mural "No Clear-Cutting Our Community" on Clarion Alley, protesting Forest City Enterprises' 5M development in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. [8] Statton has also created two murals on Clarion Alley with his collaborator Megan Wilson in 2015 and 2016 in support of "Housing Is A Human Right." In 2016 Statton collaborated with the San Francisco Poster Syndicate to paint the mural anti-Trump mural Cultivating Resistance in response to the election. [9]
In 2015 Statton and Wilson were invited to participate in the Geneng Street Art Project in Yogyakarta Indonesia, organized by Ruang Kelas SD. The theme of the project was "Gemah Ripah Loh Jinawi," which translates to a critique of the unprecedented levels of development and displacement, impacting farmers and the natural resources in the areas surrounding the city of Yogyakarta. Wilson and Statton were two of the 30+ artists to paint murals on the facades of the homes in the farming community of Sewon. [10]
Statton and Wilson launched the public project Better Homes & Gardens Today in fall 2014, creating a limited edition of 300 pairs of hand-painted signs with the word “Home” in different languages accompanied by a flower. Statton and Wilson state the project's goals to: “1) Heighten awareness around 'home' and the realities of homelessness; 2) Cultivate a dialog within communities and amongst disparate groups – especially with those in the tech sector who are having a significant impact on housing instability in the Bay Area - about the funding and policy change that is needed to help end homelessness; and 3) To raise money to benefit the Gubbio Project, the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, and At The Crossroads, organizations working to address homelessness in San Francisco.” [11] "Better Homes & Gardens Today" was included in the exhibition "Street Messages" at Lazarides Gallery in London as part of the launch of the book "Street Messages, edited by Nicholas Ganz. [12]
In 2022, scholar and activist Dr. Steven Thrasher dedicated his book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide [13] to Statton, Syed Ali, Eli Pollard, Tanya McKinnon, and Matt Mager.
The Castro Theatre is a historic movie palace in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The venue became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, it was built in 1922 with a California Churrigueresque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window surmounted by a scrolling pediment framing a niche—to the basilica of Mission Dolores nearby. Its designer, Timothy L. Pflueger, also designed Oakland's Paramount Theater and other movie theaters in California during that period. The theater has more than 1,400 seats.
The Roxie Theater, also known as the Roxie Cinema or just The Roxie, is a historic movie theater, founded in 1912, at 3117 16th Street in the Mission District of San Francisco. It is a non-profit community arthouse cinema.
The Mission District, commonly known as the Mission, is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is derived from Mission San Francisco de Asís, built in 1776 by the Spanish. The Mission is historically one of the most notable centers of the city's Chicano/Mexican-American community.
Precita Eyes Muralists Association is a community-based non-profit muralist and arts education group located in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1977 by Susan and Luis Cervantes.
The Mission School is an art movement of the 1990s and 2000s, centered in the Mission District, San Francisco, California.
Rigo 23 is a Portuguese-born American muralist, painter, and political artist. He is known in the San Francisco community for having painted a number of large, graphic "sign" murals including: One Tree next to the U.S. Route 101 on-ramp at 10th and Bryant Street, Innercity Home on a large public housing structure, Sky/Ground on a tall abandoned building at 3rd and Mission Street, and Extinct over a Shell gas station. He resides in San Francisco, California.
The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, situated between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. Encompassing about 50 square blocks, it is historically bounded on the north by Geary Street, on the east by Mason Street, on the south by Market Street and on the west by Van Ness Avenue. The northern boundary with Lower Nob Hill has historically been set at Geary Boulevard.
Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) is an artists' collective in San Francisco's Mission District. CAMP is a community, a public space, and an organizing force that uses public art as a means for supporting social, economic, racial, and environmental justice messaging and storytelling. The project is currently co-directed by Megan Wilson and Christopher Statton with a board of directors that includes Wilson, Statton, Shaghayegh Cyrous, Keyvan Shovir, Ivy McClelland, Kyoko Sato, Fara Akrami, Katayoun Bahrami, and Chris Gazaleh. Clarion Alley runs one block in San Francisco's inner Mission District between 17th and 18th streets and Mission and Valencia streets.
The Redstone Building, also known as the Redstone Labor Temple, was constructed and operated by the San Francisco Labor Council Hall Associates. Initial planning started in 1910, with most construction work done during 1914. Its primary tenant was the San Francisco Labor Council, including 22 labor union offices as well as meeting halls. The building was a hub of union organizing and work activities and a "primary center for the city's historic labor community for over half a century."
The history of art in the San Francisco Bay Area includes major contributions to contemporary art, including Abstract Expressionism. The area is known for its cross-disciplinary artists like Bruce Conner, Bruce Nauman, and Peter Voulkos as well as a large number of non-profit alternative art spaces. San Francisco Bay Area Visual Arts has undergone many permutations paralleling innovation and hybridity in literature and theater.
Balmy Alley is a one-block-long alley that is home to the most concentrated collection of murals in the city of San Francisco. It is located in the south central portion of the Inner Mission District in Calle 24 between 24th Street and Garfield Square. Since 1973, most buildings on the street have been decorated with a mural.
Clarion Alley is a small street between Mission and Valencia Streets and 17th and 18th Streets in the Mission District in San Francisco, California. It is notable for the murals painted by the Clarion Alley Mural Project.
Megan Wilson is an American visual artist, writer, and activist based in San Francisco. Known for her large-scale installations, public projects, and street art, she incorporates a broad range of pop culture methodologies and aesthetics to address conceptual interests that include home, homelessness, social and economic justice, anti-capitalism, impermanence and generosity. Wilson's art practice is influenced by Buddhism and Vipassanā meditation, often creating work that is conceptually rooted in elements of these practices and that is intentionally ephemeral or given away.
Tamara Ching is an American trans woman and San Francisco Bay Area transgender activist. Also known as the "God Mother of Polk [Street]", she is an advocate for trans, HIV, and sex work-related causes.
Daniel Doherty is a San Franciscan street artist. He is widely known for creating graffiti murals in the Mission District. Clarion Alley Mural Project participates in spreading awareness of heroes worldwide. Every year, 200,000 people visit these murals in San Francisco's Mission District. In 2011, Doherty painted an informative mural of Mohamed Bouazizi. The mural consists of a painting of Bouazizi surrounded by an explanation of how he became a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution. Laura Lengel, author of "Symbolic Interaction and New Social Media," mention the significance of Doherty's mural of Mohamed Bouazizi. They describe Doherty's work of art as an "alternative offline media form." Doherty's mural educated each visitor about this Tunisian martyr while promoting local art, helping spread Bouazizi's actions worldwide. Doherty has created several murals that consist of a local homeless man. These images touch on social problems. In one of them titles "Everything Must Go!" a bookstore filled with books about San Francisco is going out of business. He has also captured a famous location in San Francisco, Dolores Park, where he used pointillism.
Shaghayegh Cyrous (Persian: شقایق سیروس; is an American artist and curator based in Los Angeles. Her interactive time-based investigations, participatory projects, and video installations have been said to "create a poetic space for human connections."
Alexis Marie Rivera was a transgender advocate and the first Case Manager and first Program Director for the Children's Hospital's transgender youth services program in Los Angeles. Rivera helped develop social services for the transgender community in Los Angeles in the 1990s and early 2000s, and later statewide programs in the late 2000s.
Keyvan Heydari-Shovir, also known as CK1, is an Iranian-born contemporary artist, and street artist. His work combines Iranian traditional culture with contemporary pop culture, and he is a pioneer of Iranian graffiti art. He lives in Los Angeles, and previously lived in San Francisco and Tehran.
Sirron Norris is an American illustrator, muralist, and arts educator. He is known for his work on the FOX animated television show Bob's Burgers and for numerous cartoon-style public murals, including ones at Balmy Alley, Clarion Alley, and Mission Dolores Park, and galleries around San Francisco. His murals often include political messages, local themes, and his signature blue bear. He has worked with several local non-profits, including SPUR and El Tecolote.
The Luggage Store Gallery, also known as 509 Cultural Center, is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary arts organization founded in 1987, and has two venues located in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The organization has sponsored many local artists, including those that are considered to be part of the Mission School, and of skateboard or street art culture.
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