by Worldchanging San Francisco local blogger, Rose Miller This past Saturday marked the opening of the SECA art award exhibition, which runs through April 22, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). SECA, Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, an auxiliary of SFMOMA, awards talented local artists biennially. Amy Franceschini, one of the six most recent award recipients, is an artist and graphic designer who works with the boundaries between art, activism, community organizing, and in the case of the work currently on display at SFMOMA, gardening. Her project featured in the SECA exhibition re-imagines the Victory Gardens of World Wars I and II for the present political and ecological situation. Design can be used as an activist tool, and Franceschini uses it adeptly. In the project, she uses good design to organize, and mobilize community activity. The exhibition of her pilot Victory Garden program features, among other works, historical documents, Franceschini's own Victory Garden kits, posters advertising planting parties, a video of the pilot project in action, and related sculptural elements. The pilot gardens were realized in under-utilized front- and back yards in San Francisco using Franceschini's vision. She supplied each garden with a carefully designed... (more)

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Arts at 1:09 PM)