Free with admission!

Join us for an evening of stories and conversation with Jamis MacNiven. MacNiven says he has been a gear in the clockwork of Silicon Valley for so long he used to pound acorns. Now he pounds out pancakes and tall tales at Buck's Restaurant of Woodside. A few years ago, he became friends with the owners of the largest airship in the world: the 246' Zeppelin Eureka, a hybrid dirigible. From that perch he conceived of and has written a book about lighter than air travel titled California From 500 Feet - A Story of the Coastline. 

Free with admission!

Jenny Robinson was raised in Borneo, and studied for her BFA in Printmaking in the United Kingdom. After moving to San Francisco in 2001, she became fascinated by structures displaying a sense of strength and energy, but ignored, threatened by the passage of time, to ultimate defeat by corrosion and decay. Her work is concerned with depicting how these giant structures appear, not through a sense of romantic yearning for the past, but by responding to location and documenting how they appear to her now, in the moment. The monoprint process enables her to create images that are drenched and heavy with dark ink. She uses deeply saturated colors and textures, not only to reveal the surfaces of the structures, but also to permeate the emptiness around them. The physical nature of, and energy involved in making large format monoprints imbues the work with the frank monumentality of its subject matter. Drawing is a crucial and integral part of her practice and this direct engagement enables her to emphasize the essence of the moment and stay true to the emotional reaction of that specific time and place. 

Robinson has exhibited widely, both nationally and abroad. Her work can be found in many collections, including the Library of Congress Graphic Arts Collection, Washington DC; The Achenbach Fine Print Collection, San Francisco; The British Arts Council Collection and The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK. She is an Artist in Residence at the Kala Institute of Art, Berkeley and a regular visiting artist at universities and presses throughout the United States. Robinson is a member of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (RE) London and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society (LAPS).  Gallery representation includes: the Davidson Gallery, Seattle; Warnock Fine Arts, Palm Springs; Vertical Gallery, Chicago; Gallery 72, Omaha NE and the Kala Art Institute Gallery, Berkeley, CA. 

On May 6, 1937, Hindenburg burst into flames. The world’s largest zeppelin was totally destroyed in only thirty-four seconds. The iconic footage of the first major air disaster caught on film is seared into our memories along with Herb Morison’s famous words “Oh the Humanity.” But Hindenburg’s legacy is more than its disastrous end. Learn about life aboard the famous zeppelin and imagine yourself enjoying a transatlantic voyage during the heyday of airship travel.

Cheryl R. Ganz is a Smithsonian Institution Curator Emerita following her retirement as the Chief Curator of Philately at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and as lead curator of the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery, the world's largest postage stamp gallery. She currently serves on the USPS Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee, the committee that selects subjects and approves designs for U.S. postage stamps. She specializes in zeppelin memorabilia and mail worldwide, especially from U.S. airships, the 1933 Graf Zeppelin Chicago flight, and Hindenburg. Ganz earned a PhD in U.S. history from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her publications include Pots of Promise: Mexicans and Pottery at Hull-House, 1920-40; The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress; Delivering Hope: FDR & Stamps of the Great Depression; Fire & Ice: Hindenburg and Titanic; Pacific Exchange: China & U.S. Mail; and Every Stamp Tells a Story: The National Philatelic Collection. 

Admission is $15.00 for nonmembers, $10.00 for members. Talk begins at 2:00pm.

Stacey Carter was born in Cape May, NJ and received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. In 1991 Carter moved to San Francisco, CA where she currently lives and works. Through creative observation, Carter's work offers insight into the changing urban environment. Her artworks are layered multi-media compositions based on photographs, which are then transformed using a unique combination of skilled printmaking techniques and spontaneous expressionistic painting. 

For over fifteen years she has made work that draws from the site of her studio: the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco.  After working on paintings based on her photographs from this same source, she came across 30 negatives of the airship the USS Akron in Sunnyvale in 1932. Her mind was transported to the time of the ships and the airships, the marvelous engineering and the heroically ordinary workers who built and operated and maintained the day-to-day activities of the giant vessels. In these paintings she aims to create a sense of scale, give the viewer an appreciation of the achievements  the workers and freeze time, allowing individual histories to be recalled and shared once more. Layered and compositionally rich, her body of work is a study of how experiences define one's environment; it is an acknowledgement of what has passed and its importance to the present. 

Carter has exhibited her mixed media paintings and works on paper in a solo and group shows at galleries and museums throughout the United States, including George Krevsky Gallery, San Francisco; the National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA; and the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA. She has been the recipient of many awards and honors including a residency at the Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams, Massachusetts; the Golden Image Award of Excellence in Serigraphy from the International Screen Printing and Graphic Imaging Association; a Trustee Award selected by artist Nathan Oliveira for the National Steinbeck Center; and a nomination for the Fleishhacker Foundation’s prestigious “Eureka Fellowship Award”. Major commissions include an ongoing series of paintings for the NFL team Baltimore Ravens. 

Free with admission. Talk begins at 7:00pm.