RADAR Salon: Literary Conversations, Revelations and Gossip

Description

the radar SALON series
conversation + revelation; gossip + advice

NEW LOCATION: Femina Potens Gallery
Market Street at Sanchez
7pm Free

with special guests:

CRISTY C ROAD, who has been illustrating ideas, people, and places, ever since she learned how to hold a crayon. Blending the inevitable existence of social principles, cultural identity, sexual identity, mental inadequacies, and dirty thoughts- Road thrives to testify the beauty of the imperfect. Cristy Road, a Cuban- American from Miami, FL, went to Ringling School of Art and Design, where many arguments on commercialism and the representation of women in Illustration took place. Her endeavors in illustrating and publishing began when writing a punk rock zine, Greenzine, for ten years. While today, Road has moved onto illustrated novels, taking both writing and visual elements a step more seriously, her visual diagram of lifestyles and beliefs stay in tune to the zine's portrayal of living honestly and unconventionally. In a spread featured in Curve Magazine , Jocelyn Voo notes "At 14, the Florida native started Greenzine, an alternative zine that focused primarily on the politics of punk rock and the honesty of adolescence. Roughly nine years later, Greenzine (and Road too) has evolved to encompass maturing ideas of gender, race, sexual liberation, and cultural identity." However, Voo enthuses, "Greenzine is far from the only thing on this dynamo's plate. Road's illustrations, each one a detailed manifesto, have appeared in various magazines and as contributions to punk rock bands." Cristy Road graduated in 2004 with bachelor's of Fine Arts in Illustration, whether or not the administration at her school irritated her. Roughly two years after that, her repertoire consists of ten years of independent publishing, two graphic novels, and countless illustrations for a broad slew of magazines, record album art, concert posters, and political organizations.In early 2006, Road released an anomalous illustrated storybook, entitled INDESTRUCTIBLE. It's a 96-page narrative about her experience as a teenager, where Road tackles the themes of being Latina, class, rebellion, gender, queerness, mental health, and death; all beneath the topical umbrella of being a teenage Floridian punk rocker in the early 90's. Road has recently completed a Collection of postcards featuring art from 2001-2007, entitled DISTANCE MAKES THE HEART GROW SICK [Microcosm Publishing]. Road just published BAD HABITS, a fictional illustrated novel [Soft Skull Press] that has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Road toured with SISTER SPIT in 2007 and will again this Spring, and has been featured in various literary anthologies. With no means to slow down, Road currently draws, paints, writes, obsesses over pop-punk bands, and hibernates in Brooklyn, NY. She is a Gemini.

JENNIFER BLOWDRYER: should I use the pronoun "she", as if I am not writing it myself? Not for me, the well paid publicist, the agent, the cultural interpreter. No, I'm afraid I must present you with this brief sketch of a fascinating individual, myself, using my own peasant length digits to hammer it out. In 1978, at 17, JB began to sing with her very own punk band, The Blowdryers. This was before the days of documentation and ambition, so only one tape of a live gig at The Deaf Club exists on record, soon to be transferred to that state of the art vessel, the CD. She was pretty obnoxious, but fortunately that was in. In 1983 – 84, she (well I) put together her first book, Modern English: A Photo Illustrated Trendy Slang Dictionary. This was a little project she'd started working on in her friend Ginger's zine, Punk Globe, and Last Gasp kindly agreed to make it an entire book. Her ex-boyfriend had put out a book called Hardcore California and, because she dumped him, he made her a postage stamp size photo and had her singing the wrong song in the wrong decade. She was sick and tired of people who weren't there documenting shit, and, fueled by snarky rage, she put Modern English together and it's actually still pretty funny. In 1984, she was singing in a party band her and Ginger had put together, White Trash Debutante and had20a possessive alcoholic boyfriend with whom she'd written two good songs. She got a fellowship to the Writing Division of Columbia U and decided to jump ship, rather than spending the next 10 years fighting with her band and/or boyfriend, getting an ulcer for the perceived glory of a rock'n'roll cover band. At Columbia, she lived in an 8 by 10 room and put together White Trash Debutante, a photo illustrated lower middle class autobiography, and The Laziest Secretary In The World, an adventure novel about an overweight temp, a character her Columbia classmates found to be absolutely unlovable and inconceivable, never having stapled together stacks of paper at Blue Shield Insurance themselves. In the late 80s, Blowdryer began to run shows called Smut Fests with the initial help of Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Vera. These shows featured strippers performing their own poetry, a little bit before the term sex worker was coined, and they became the darlings of the avant guard. Some early acts were Lily Burana, Tracy Quan, Kembra Pfahler (The Karen Black Band), and Danielle Willis. The first were in a lap dancing parlor in NYC, and they expanded to Hamburg, Baltimore, San Francisco, and London. HBO produced a half hour special on them, for which she was paid a total sum of $3500. The music and spoken word gigs are really too many to chronicle. In 2002 the first major production (well, perhaps major is a relative term) of her plays was produced at Theater Rhino in San Francisco: White Trash Debutante and Behind the Candelabra. A new production of WTD is running at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC, and plans for The Laziest Secretary In The World, her other play, and Gutter Boys, her best friend Alvin's play, are in the works for the Bay Area. Works in Progress: Blowdryer writes a food column for New York Press, and the occasional book review The 86'd Project is underway, currently she's compiling interviews and texts by people who are consistently thrown out of places and banned, for varying lengths of time, from venues as various as Rite Aid and pretty much anywhere in San Francisco. This will eventually become a found text play. Persiflage is the zine she publishes with Alvin Orloff, it's the house organ of their literary movement, Spectacularist Internationale, and has featured pieces by Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Stephen Beachy, and Chelsea Starr. Truly Blue: An Anthology of writing by sex workers and even a trick (I'm Not in The Habit of Paying People To Leave, But In Your Case I'll Make an Exception), including pieces by Lily Burana, Tracy Quan, Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Jonathan Ames, Rev Jen, and Nick Zedd. Photo illustrated by Annie Sprinkle.

Hosted by Michelle Tea

Radar is a program of the San Francisco Public Library / Eureka Valley- Harvey Milk branch, temporarily housed at Femina Potens while the library renovates. Thank you Femina Potens! Thank you also to the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, the Hormel Center, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and the California Arts Council.

Come to Femina Poets 1/23 for Sizzle with Annie Danger. Michelle Tea +more and 1/25 for a Sister Spit benefit with Nicole J Georges, Silas Howard, Yes Alexander, Lynn Breedlove, Len Plass and Shar Rednour!

More Info

Link

http://www.feminapotens.org