Cheri Gaulke

The book “Marriage Matters” is “Out There”

in Artists' Books / Exhibitions / News / Performance  by Cheri Gaulke

Marriage Matters, the artists’ book that Sue Maberry and I created in 2005, is included in an exhibition called Out There that opens tonight.  http://laaa.org/out_there_2010/index.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA) and the City of West Hollywood are proud to announce the third annual Out There exhibition celebrating the LGBT experience during West Hollywood’s Pride Month festivities. This effort commemorates West Hollywood’s lasting commitment to raising public awareness and appreciation of the talents and abilities of all artists.

The Out There exhibition, opening at Gallery 825 on June 11, is an all-media exhibition juried by Hillary Metz of Blythe Projects Los Angeles. Ms. Metz’s past commitment to the LGBT Community via the Santa Fe Human Rights Alliance and the 2009 Create Equality artwalk in Culver City poises her as the ideal curator to jury this important exhibition. Out There celebrates and acknowledges the special opportunities that West Hollywood has provided for creative individuals over the past 25 years. Out There is made possible by the City of West Hollywood Arts Grant Program and the Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission. Out There runs June 11-17 at Gallery 825 (with special Sunday hours on June 13 after the Pride Parade).

Featured Artists: Brandy Eve Allen, Dori Atlantis, Eric Allen Carter, Joanne Chase-Mattillo, Ching Ching Cheng, YaYa Chou, Richard Chow, Raul de la Torre, Bryan Fair, Steve Fujimoto, Alisa Gabrielle, Martin Gantman, Cheri Gaulke and Sue Maberry, Shizuko Greenblatt, Niku Kashef, Siri Kaur, Shelley Kommers, Jonas Kulikauskas, Linda Kunik, William Mackenzie-Smith, Steven Moses, Gustavo Muñoz, Bob Poe, Mei Xian Qiu, Glynnis Reed, Gwen Samuels, Mark Schoening, Steve Seleska, Thomas Skene, Alix Soubiran, Eugenie Spirito, Michael Salvatore Tierney, Daena Title, Dan Vanclapp and Art Weeks.

Reception: Friday, June 11, 6 to 9 pm and after the Pride Parade on June 13. Show runs through June 17.

Admission: Free 

Where: Gallery 825, 825 N. La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069  

For more information call 310.652.8272 or e-mail [email protected]

Marriage Matters was also pictured and discussed in a review of the Love Never Dies exhibition in Minneapolis.  It’s a great review about a very interesting exhibition of work about the “gay marriage” issue. Check it out. http://www.downtownjournal.com/index.php?&story=15466&page=65&category=93

Exhibition about gay marriage opens in Minneapolis

in Artists' Books / Exhibitions / News / Video  by Cheri Gaulke

Our Wedding, July 5, 2008

I’m very proud of my latest video art work called Our Wedding which was created in collaboration with my life partner Sue Maberry and our daughters Xochi and Marka. It just opened in an exhibiton called Love Never Dies at Form + Content gallery in Minneapolis.  The exhibition also includes Sue’s and my artists’ book, Marriage Matters, which is one of our art works that incorporates Sears portraits of gay and lesbian families. The book and video were called the “centerpiece” of the exhibition by Minnesota Public Radio (though they failed to say our names!). Here’s a link to the story and some wonderful shots of some of the other artists’ works in the show. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/state-of-the-arts/archive/2010/05/love-never-dies.shtml.

The video Our Wedding was produced by Sue Maberry and me, but the impetus for it came when our daughter Xochi wrote an essay about our 2008 wedding for a school application. Fifteen-year-old Xochi is the writer/narrator and her twin sister Marka is the director/editor. Sue and I served as producers/editors. Soon I will begin entering it in youth and lesbian and gay film festivals. Here’s a description of the 7 1/2 minute video art documentary.

Twin daughters of lesbians collaborate to tell the story of what their mothers’ legal marriage means to them. The 14-year-old girls served as “documaidens,” carrying flip video cameras instead of bouquets to record the ceremony. Phranc, the All-American Jewish lesbian folk singer, wrote and performed an original song for the event. The story unfolds against the backdrop of the battle against California’s Proposition 8. Not your typical home movie, this short documentary offers a glimpse into the life of an artistic lesbian family.

Speaking of Movies with Jason Reitman

in News / Talks/Panels / Teaching  by Cheri Gaulke

In December 2009, I co-hosted (with my colleague and collaborator Kevin O’Malley) another event in our series Speaking of Movies with Jason Reitman. We created the series with Jason, our former student from the Harvard-Westlake class of 1995, to interview interesting people from the film industry in front of a student audience. With the recent release of Up in the Air, we decided to turn the tables and have Jason be our guest. We screened the film at Paramount Studios for an audience of Harvard-Westlake students, parents and alumni. The event “sold out” in 2 hours! After the screening, I interviewed Reitman and O’Malley videotaped.

It was exciting to see the film after having visited the set in St. Louis with my daughters. We had seen some of the scenes being shot and between takes Jason entertained us by showing us scenes on his laptop that he’d already edited. There was a particular scene we watched being filmed in which George Clooney’s character must fire the man he most admires, the head of the airlines played by Sam Elliott. The scene wasn’t in the movie! I ran up to Jason afterwards and asked, “Where was that scene?” and he informed me it will be on the DVD. So look for that.

The award-winning Harvard-Westlake school newspaper, The Chronicle, has posted the interview. I’ve seen Jason do a few Q and A’s now and I’m really impressed with him as a public speaker. He is charming, funny, and insightful. Check out his analysis of why we like (I do!) the TV show 24. Enjoy!

Gaulke Interviews Reitman from hw chronicle on Vimeo.

On the set of Jason Reitman’s film, Up in the Air

in News / Teaching / Video  by Cheri Gaulke
Cheri, Xochi, Jason, Marka
Cheri, Xochi, Jason, Marka  

Recently, during my spring break, I visited St Louis where former student, Jason Reitman, was shooting his new film, Up in the Air. The film stars George Clooney as an executive whose job it is to fly all over the country and fire people. He spends all his time in hotels and is obsessed with reaching his personal goal of 10 million frequent flyer miles.

 

Jason Reitman graduated from Harvard-Westlake in 1995, the high school where I teach Video Art and am Chair of the Visual Arts Department. As a young filmmaker, Jason already showed talent. I remember watching him shoot a public service announcement and thinking to myself, “That kid is a director!” It was the first time I saw a student not only guiding the concept, camera work and editing, but also the actors’ performances. He won the top prize in a contest for that PSA which was about AIDS. He also cast an openly gay student in the spot, although the point of the piece is that AIDS was not a gay thing or a boy thing or a girl thing or a…..you get the idea. Jason went on to college, graduated and made a number of short films that screened at Sundance, then commercials and his first feature, Thank You for Smoking. Around the time of his second film, Juno, he reconnected with his former teachers at Harvard-Westlake (it was my colleague Kevin O’Malley who was actually Jason’s video teacher). Jason was the keynote speaker in our 2007 Harvard-Westlake Film Festival. We embarrassed him by opening the evening with his 10th grade PSA! He was a judge in our festival the following year. Last year, Jason, Kevin and I co-created a speaker series called Speaking of Movies in which Jason interviews cool people he knows in front of an audience. We videotape the talks and plan to post them on the internet soon. Our guests so far have been Diablo Cody (Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Juno) and Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (directors of Little Miss Sunshine and numerous award-winning commercials and music videos). Coincidentally, Valerie and I knew each other back in 1984 when I stage managed a performance art piece she did with Lin Hixson and Molly Cleator. 

 

My daughters, Marka and Xochi, spent the day with me on set in an airport hotel where they were shooting a series of short scenes with George Clooney. We learned a lot while we watched — the production designers change the room to become different cities, the director of photography experiment with still and moving shots, the prop master get the Blackberry to go off at just the right moment, the gaffers block out the windows with green screen material, the craft services guy who was also a sculptor and a founder of the amazing City Museum (if you haven’t been there it’s worth a trip to St. Louis!), and the excellent sound guy who gave me some tips. Between shots and while the crew was setting up for the next shot, Jason was a gracious host. He used his laptop to show us: clips from the film, scenes that were already edited (he’s going to premiere it in Toronto in September so his post-production is happening simultaneous to production), and some of his favorite stuff on youtube! Jason also introduced us to George Clooney and as you can imagine, the man is charming and funny (we loved listening on our headsets to the banter especially the bet between Reitman and Clooney as to whether the Blackberry would go off on cue). The day began at 9:30 a.m. and they broke for lunch at 3:30 p.m. We were exhausted and I went back to my folks’ house and took a nap! Meanwhile the film crew had another 6 hours of shooting.

 

It was an amazing experience for me as a teacher of film and video, as well as for my daughters who are young filmmakers themselves. This weekend Xochi and I are off to Seattle where her 7th grade film screens during the opening night of NFFTY-National Film Festival for Talented Youth. Then we return for the Sunday screening of her 9th grade film in the Newport Beach Film Festival. The next generation?

 

Filipino WWII Veterans Memorial Featured in New Book

in Artists' Books / News / Public Art / Talks/Panels  by Cheri Gaulke
Los Angeles's Historic Filipinotown by Carina Monica Montoya

Los Angeles's Historic Filipinotown by Carina Monica Montoya

The Filipino WWIII Veterans Memorial I designed is included in a new book called “Los Angeles’s Historic Filipinotown” by author Carina Monica Montoya (from Arcadia Publishing). The Filipino American Library (FAL) will present a Book Launch on Saturday, April 4 at 2:00pm at Lake Street Park (227 N. Lake St., Los Angeles 90026). I am scheduled to speak briefly at 3:10. For more information about Montoya’s book contact  [email protected] or 213-382-0488.

Also on sale will be the book “Valor: Filipino World War II Veterans Memorial” that is an indepth look at the memorial itself. Published by Midmarch Arts Press, it includes essays by art writers Betty Ann Brown and Eleanor Heartney, as well as Filipino writers Enrique de la Cruz and Mae Respicio. Stunning photographs of the memorial by Kevin O’Malley plus all of the historic photos and information I culled for the memorial grace its pages. Both books sell for $20 each.

Valor: Filipino World War II Veternas Memorial by Cheri Gaulke

Valor: Filipino World War II Veternas Memorial by Cheri Gaulke

The City Council of Los Angeles officially designated Historic Filipinotown on August 2, 2002 . It is the first Filipino community in the United States to merit a named area with distinct geographic boundaries. Historic Filipinotown was once home to one of the largest Filipino enclaves in California , a place where many Filipinos purchased their first homes, raised families, and established businesses. The cultural continuity of the area’s Filipino families and businesses inspired the collective efforts of Filipino organizations, Los Angeles community leaders, and individuals to establish Historic Filipinotown and maintain its vibrant culture.

Come help us celebrate this community and the publishing efforts that keep its history alive.