tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-111542542011-12-28T08:57:17.496-08:00Artist and arts advocate Aida Mancillas writes about cultural production, artists' rights, public art, civic involvement through the arts, and the artist's path.Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.comBlogger201100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-10081486599713413592009-02-19T08:53:00.000-08:002009-02-19T08:58:15.697-08:00

Aida Mancillas, Artist, Advocate, Visionary, and the author of these posts and much more, passed from this earthly plane on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009.She left behind a family, friends, colleagues, and thousands of people who have been touched deeply by her and her work, but who never met her. You can meet her here through her words. Although this is only a short selection of her work, we

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-68398965485790079662008-10-25T10:14:00.000-07:002008-10-25T10:16:33.877-07:00

I am always hopeful that hope itself, which can seem so elusive, is breaking through everywhere -- even in the smallest manifestation. Paying attention to that is paying attention to seeds breaking through the earth. It's tiny. But powerful. Creative force.

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-85372667192456787682007-11-08T18:36:00.000-08:002007-11-08T18:40:37.259-08:00

These are the sooty days and nights of fire, ashes, and displacement. The aftermath of loss is reassessment and, ultimately, response. We artists (poets, dancers, musicians, painters, photographers, craftspeople, writers, graphic designers, actors, sculptors, singers) possess the skill set that can unpack the events and emotions brought forward by the devastating inferno of 2007. Our skills will

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-6852815004085688322007-10-09T16:29:00.000-07:002007-11-08T17:09:27.195-08:00

I am an artist walking the cancer path. Every time I say that I feel a tightening in my chest, like I’m about to fall off the edge of a steep traverse. Cancer is not an illness; it’s an attitude toward life and living. I do the treatments, I get pictures of my brain taken regularly, generally taken while the technicians are injecting me with contrast dyes. I interact with technology that I have

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-33096440311302549642007-08-27T18:31:00.000-07:002007-08-29T14:51:54.349-07:00

My family recently began taking measures to live in line with our concernsabout the impact we were having on our environment and how we might respondto our collective, challenging financial circumstances. I’m a public artistand cancer survivor on disability. My son and daughter-in-law live with meto help care for me. They are expecting their first child on Christmas eve2007 They are typical GenX

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-53218560651451267422007-08-26T11:17:00.000-07:002007-08-27T23:25:59.507-07:00

August 25, 2007My family recently began taking measures to live in line with our concerns about the impact we were having on our environment and how we might respond to our collective, challenging financial circumstances. I’m a public artist and cancer survivor on disability. My son and daughter-in-law live with me to help care for me. They are expecting their first child on Christmas eve 2007

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-91762558672156080992007-04-18T11:40:00.000-07:002007-04-18T12:06:25.322-07:00

An Artist Looks At National Funding And Its Impact On CommunitiesOriginally written and published in 1996by Aida Mancillas*In 1996 a group of neighbors gathered to talk about strategies for preserving the unique histories of some of North Park’s oldest residents. Many in the group were long time community residents and activists; some came as representatives of the adjacent neighborhoods of

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1176492959708225112007-04-13T12:33:00.000-07:002007-04-16T11:22:18.936-07:00

By Aida MancillasThose of us who advocate for the arts here in San Diego and elsewhere have not been exactly candid with the powers who shape the budgets we live and die by, or the average citizen who wants to know where his or her tax dollars are going, why his trees aren’t trimmed, and why the potholes in front of her house remain unfilled.We arts advocates have made a good case for why the

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1176041850661330862007-04-08T07:13:00.000-07:002007-04-09T01:21:29.756-07:00

Written for his memorial 2007UCSD Visual Arts GalleryI worked for Allan Kaprow as a graduate student in the late 1980’s, one of many. I doubt that he would remember me., but his contribution to my education was more profound than I realized at the time. I was introduced to his seminal article, “The Real Experiment,” by one of my fellow teaching assistants and it has directed my artistic and

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1175955789721924702007-04-07T07:21:00.000-07:002007-04-18T12:11:49.902-07:00

April 7, 2007A couple of years ago I chanced to be seated at a luncheon next to a young man whose family business was art collection and sale of Mexican master printers. We engaged in a pleasant conversation and he offered to show me the work that he and his father had at his home, followed by lunch. I decided to take him up on his offer and invited the Latin American art historian, Dr. Janet

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1175705371609258962007-04-04T09:48:00.000-07:002007-04-04T10:32:54.926-07:00

The Tyranny of Like Don’t LikeBy Aida MancillasIntroductionThe woman brought herself close to me. She was shaking with rage; an athletic woman; petite, chic, progressive, had sailed the world with her children and husband so that the children would have a different kind of growing up experience; other than the kind of slacker Southern California experience that can be so seductive. These were

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1125032383169662872005-12-25T21:55:00.000-08:002007-02-20T01:35:54.106-08:00

On a blue-black evening in August 2005 I attended a candlelight vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan, the mother whose son’s death in Iraq spurred her to leave her home in Vacaville, California and set up her lawn chair in the punishing heat alongside the road leading to George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. As I stood in a circle of strangers in the middle of Spreckles Park, my candle

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1122957626691646472005-08-01T21:38:00.000-07:002005-10-04T12:48:13.333-07:00

Image by joefire.comI work in the public sphere—creating public art, advocating for the arts with my colleagues at Public Address, helping to create city policy as a city arts commissioner, and generally talking the arts up everywhere. I'm also a Latina lesbian who's been part of the discussion of gay rights in San Diego. Right now the issue of gay marriage is the hot button that's making both

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1121380876547059982005-07-14T15:37:00.000-07:002005-08-11T15:41:29.180-07:00

“June Gloom,” coastal California’s early, grey, summer weather, pulls us San Diegans back into a false winter, to the quiet, hunkering down that we thought was well past. Embarrassed for our city, we pity the poor tourist who has escaped her city’s icy or sweltering extremes to find herself here, cheated by the absence of the sunny and balmy days promised by our vacation brochures. Winter

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1112646722315506772005-04-04T13:22:00.000-07:002005-04-25T15:50:27.126-07:00

"Let me tell you my story," by Terri Hughes-Oelrich and Anna StumpUrban Trees2, the Port of San Diego's newest public art installation, opened on March 13 along the city's waterfront. This year 30 artists were commissioned to design, fabricate and install unique "tree" sculptures that would line the Embarcadero, the city's historic harbor district. In many ways this project demonstrates the

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1110170452063108392005-03-06T19:58:00.000-08:002006-10-13T10:33:30.173-07:00

I have been rethinking the notion of decoration and how it relates to public art. Last week I served on a panel held in conjunction with the exhibition, "Artists and Architects, Modeling Our World," in which we spoke about how the two disciplines are redefining the creation of public space. As it always does, the question "What is public art?" came up. One of the panelists began by saying what it

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1109988954970413822005-03-04T18:13:00.000-08:002005-07-15T17:12:57.870-07:00

"The Sacramento Bee (newspaper for the state capitol) found that California spends $0.03 per capita per year to fund the arts. Mississippi spends $1.31, New York $2.75, Germany 85.00, and Canada $145.00 per capita per year. Pathetic is what the Bee called it""Everything that happens in my day is a transaction between the external world and my internal world. Everything is raw material. Everything

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1109722384031153022005-03-01T16:10:00.000-08:002005-04-06T19:55:24.760-07:00

Recovered Journal Entry, August 2, 2004.I've spent the summer reading about travel and traveling myself—Berlin, Dresden, and Prague. My reading has included a number of books that speak of both inner and outward voyages of discovery. I have carried around this idea of my own voyage for almost 17 years. I write this number and feel the shock of my surprise at the passing of so much time. My son

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1109662799440473542005-02-28T21:58:00.003-08:002005-04-08T00:36:27.736-07:00

Woke up this morning at the ranch of artist friend and colleague Nina Karavasiles. The ranch, situated in the high chaparral area of San Diego County, is an integrated system of buildings, gardens, outdoor rooms, and alternative energy production being created daily by the artist and her long-time partner, Scott Richards. I am there to meet with other public artists, members of a group started

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11154254.post-1123796569268156782005-02-11T14:39:00.000-08:002005-08-11T16:31:40.150-07:00

This essay originally appeared in High Performance magazine, Spring 1996.Original Community Arts Network/Art in the Public Interest publication: September 2002We had known that sooner or later we must develop an explanation for what we were doing which would be short and convincing. It couldn't be the truth because that wouldn't be convincing at all. How can you say to a people who are

Aida Mancillashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03658767175768526778noreply@blogger.com0