In your immediate future:

ARTIST TALK: Amy Franceschini: Futurefarmers
Wednesday, April 8 / 4:00 PM
UCSB McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

Amy Franceschini is an artist working with notions of community, sustainable environments and a perceived conflict between humans and nature. In 1995, she founded Futurefarmers, a design studio that works across traditional and new media, and that supports art and research projects. One of Futurefarmers' recent public art projects is Victory Gardens 2009+ (VG2009+), which is being developed with the City of San Francisco. The program began as a utopian proposal and has now become a pilot project that supports the transition of backyard, front yard, window boxes, rooftops and unused land into food production areas. VG2009+ has the mission to create and support a citywide network of urban farmers by (1) growing, distributing and supporting home gardens, (2) educating through lessons, exhibitions and web sites and (3) planting demonstration gardens in highly visible public lands, such as City Hall, schools and Golden Gate Park. Franceschini teaches new media classes at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her art practice questions and challenges social, cultural and environmental systems through interdisciplinary and collaborative practices manifested "on" and "offline" in the form of dynamic websites, installations, open-access laboratories, and educational platforms that encourage new formats for engagement and production. The talk will be followed by a reception.

For more information about Amy Franceschini:
http://www.futurefarmers.com