Arts in the 2010 Governor's Race - Fundraiser

GET the Arts in the Governor's Race!

TELL Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman the arts are vital to our communities!

SEE a powerful installation on art and social justice - closing soon!

JOIN artists from around Bay Area for an evening of drinks, music and art at SOMArts and

CONTRIBUTE to a statewide effort to mobilize support for the Arts in the California Governor's Race Campaign!

Wednesday, September 15 5:30-7:00pm

SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street San Francisco, CA 94103 http://www.somarts.org/about/directions/

$5, $10, $15, $25 and $50 and available at http://ccarts.eventbrite.com

Give what you are comfortable giving, all ticket levels will get you into the event. tickets will also be sold at the door. Proceeds go to the California Governor's Race Campaign, a non-partisan effort created to ensure that issues related to the arts and the creative economy are successfully inserted into the California governor's rave. Organized by a consortium of non-profit arts organizations, arts support groups, artists, and concerned individual supporters of the arts, the consortium participants believe strongly in the need for meaningful public support for the arts and arts education.

The Arts in the California Governor's Race project is building a statewide army of citizen activists who will help send the message to the gubernatorial candidates that the arts are important to California's future, and urge the candidates to support arts-friendly public policies such as:

• Increase public funding for nonprofit arts organizations in order to better serve their communities
• Ensure that every child has the opportunity for a comprehensive, high quality arts education in grades K-12
• Nurture an environment to allow individuals and families affordable access to all forms of the arts

While you enjoy a little bit of good food, wine and music; walk around the beautiful SOMArts exhibition space and see: "What Cannot be Taken Away: Families and Prisons Project." It will be your last chance to see this incredible exhibit before it closes on September 19th.

There are over seven million youth in this country with parents in the legal justice system. "What Cannot be Taken Away: Families and Prisons Project" is a new exhibition of collaborative paintings with Evan Bissell and Community Works that share the experiences of eight individuals who have experienced this rupture in their own families. Resulting from eight months of intergenerational, creative dialogue between Bay Area youth who have incarcerated parents, and fathers who are currently incarcerated in San Francisco jail, the exhibition centers around eight life-size collaboratively designed and created portraits. The exhibition also includes interactive wall drawings, installation pieces, audio, documentation of the process and a dynamic workshop series.

SOMArts Gallery Director Justin Hoover commented, "Evan Bissell's work is a unique approach to social responsibility where an individual acts as a hub for collaborative and creative social justice. in this way, "What Cannot be Taken Away" highlights some of the most vital social efforts in the local community to use the arts for healing, peace and justice.