Awe Lab

Jenn Doyle Crane + Amy Ress

AweLab is an installation, salon and workshop series exploring the ways in which artists, designers and other creative makers employ Awe as a tool for inspiration and generation, and as a community-centered approach to life.

Featuring artists Alice Shaw and Alison Pebworth with participation by Patricia Algara, Institute for New Feeling, Jeremiah Jenkins, Tanya Kaplow, William Faulkner, Tarin Towers, Anneli Virkhaus and StoreFrontLab grant recipient Sound + Consciousness (Joti Dee, Laura Cohen, and Colin Wang).


Alison Pebworth
Using the Wunderkammer, or Wonder Cabinet, of the Renaissance as a point of departure, Alison Pebworth presents cultural artifacts, and bits of San Francisco history and architecture, in a large-scale installation with smaller sculptures. Her work brings the same fascination once held for the mysteries of nature and science to our discards, creating a spectacle of consumption from an ever-changing city. Innards and Upwards is a project Pebworth has developed during her recent artist residency at Recology, San Francisco.

Alice Shaw
Alice Shaw is a photographer who often utilizes other art forms to realize her concepts. She exhibits internationally and is an Artadia Grant Awardee, and her work is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Gallery 16 in San Francisco, where her work is represented, published her book People Who Look Like Me in 2006. For the Awe Lab, Shaw enshrines parts of black-and-white images with twenty-two karat gold leaf to instill a renewed reverence for nature, and contributes her clairvoyant gift to bring clarity to visitors through one on one sessions.


Amy Ress and Jenn Doyle Crane
Amy Ress and Jenn Doyle Crane met while serving on the SFAC Galleries Advisory Board in 2010. Amy leads Public Architecture's national 1+ pro bono design program and is at her best designing programs that empower and inspire creative professionals to expand their potential. She is an artist and landscape designer, and believes in the power of art and design to be a vital part of public life. Jenn is responsible for the administration of complex installations of newly commissioned public art projects for SFAC’s Public Art Program. She is a strategic thinker known for a collaborative spirit and is always striving to convene and enable a love for the arts in both private and public realms. As a team, they enjoy collaborating on public programs and exhibitions.
 


Patricia Algara
Patricia is a visiting professor at UC Berkeley and UC Berkeley Extension. Patricia is also co founder and principal at BASE, a multi-talented and omnicurious design firm with expertise from concept to construction. She was the faculty advisor for the 2011 ASLA Communications Honor Award and last year she was awarded the “Tending the City” – 10 woman campaign award for her educational and community building work as the co-director and founder of the Algarden Demonstration Urban Farm. Patricia is a Permaculture designer and avid beekeeper who strives to apply values that she has learned from the bees in her designs: that beauty, function, structure, and communication can intersect sweetly.

Institute for New Feeling
The Institute for New Feeling is a research clinic committed to the development of new ways of feeling, and ways of feeling new. The Institute is the inventor of its own authority, borrowing from the language of corporate branding and new age healing, as well as that of mainstream medicine, therapy, health and beauty. The Institute's work takes the form of treatments, therapies, retreats and wellness products that acknowledge the contemporary digital age’s modes of production, consumption, distribution of goods and services.
((((((((((((( institutefornewfeeling.com )))))))))))))))
 

Jeremiah Jenkins
Jeremiah Jenkins was born in the mountains. As a child he would walk with deer and talk to horses. His practice is about listening and responding. Using tarot cards, spirit guides, and shamanic methods he will receive visitors and assist with their issues. Each person will be allowed one question and will receive a consultation session and a ritual to take home.

Tanya Kaplow
Tanya Kaplow, MA, MFTI, is a school based therapist and lifelong academic. She holds psychology degrees from University of California, Davis and Santa Clara University. Her graduate degree in Counseling Psychology emphasized health and positive psychology. While at Santa Clara University, Tanya studied under Dr. Shauna Shapiro and Dr. Dave Feldman, among many others, immersing herself in contemporary research regarding mindfulness, hope, post traumatic growth, awe, self-compassion, gratitude and other positive psychological science. Tanya is currently finishing her first paper for publication with co-author Dr. Dave Feldman, looking at the link between awe and post traumatic growth. (more info)

William Faulkner
William Faulkner has played harp since 1979. Director of the Mariachi Mixtlán from 1980 through 1998, and solo harpist since 1983, William and his harp have traveled throughout California and the Southwestern United States as well as various parts of Mexico. He studied with Arturo Mendoza, former harpist with the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, and has given workshops at festivals in Mexico City, Guadalajara, California, Arizona and New Mexico. William and his harp have traveled as far as Scotland to the Edinburgh Festival (with Mariachi International América from Tucson Arizona), to Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands.

Tarin Towers
Tarin Towers is a writer living in San Francisco. She's been out of a permanent place since May. Housesitting and REALLY cheap housing leads appreciated: Email displacementblues at gmail.

Jessica Ress
Jessica Ress is a holistic wellness advocate, skincare formulator, crystal and plant intuitive, author, and eco-warrior. Jessica’s interest in transformational energetic healing spans many art forms. She has studied with an array of Shamanic Master Teachers in Aromatherapy, Crystal Healing, Sound Healing, and Reiki. She holds certifications in Aromatherapy, Reiki Levels I & II, Reiki Crystal Healing, and Primus Activation Healing Technique. Jessica's education is founded in fine art, with a BFA from San Francisco Art institute.
 

In addition to the exhibition, Awe Lab hosts Consultations for Internal/External Inquiry, a series of weekend workshops: one-on-one and group sessions explore both traditional and contemporary techniques used to unearth and explain the unknown and invisible patterns of human existence: 

Saturday, February 13, 1–3 pm
Session 1 / Opening the Unknown
Three artists guide individual sessions of discovery. Alice Shaw facilitates fundamental techniques in clairvoyance for developing personal clarity and healing. Jeremiah Jenkins offers one-on-one guru sessions culling elements from tarot, spirit guides, and shamanism to assist individuals, one question at a time. Jessica Ress improvises sound healing with crystal and Tibetan singing bowls. 

Saturday, February 27, 1–3 pm
Session 2 / It Takes 3 to Make a Collection: An Exploration in Internal Inquiry with Jalisco Harp Performance
Artists Alison Pebworth and Alice Shaw invite you to come ruminate on collections of three. Guests are invited to drop by with three items of something they collect, or simply join in the experience. William Faulkner, a Jalisco Harpist, will play the connective, harmonic, and transcending strings. 

Saturday, March 5, 1-3 pm
Session 3 / Awe Lab / Soundscaped Cocoon
Converging with Awe Lab, we present a program by StoreFrontLab grantees Sound + Consciousness (Laura Cohen, Joti Dee, and Colin Wang): Broadcast from the Soundscaped Cocoon, an ambient sound performed from within a human-sized chrysalis. Stimulate your senses with a hazy, consciousness expanding, psychedelic brunch.  The afternoon's program will also feature video treatments by the Institute for New Feeling and iPhone Tarot by Tarin Towers.

Saturday, March 5, 5:45-9 pm
Sound Therapy with Anneli Virkhaus
In partnership with board certified music therapist (MT-BC), sound healer, and energy worker Anneli Virkhaus, StoreFrontLab grant recipients Sound + Consciousness (Laura Cohen, Joti Dee, and Colin Wang) will host an immersive soundscape exploring the complex reactions of our conscious states to a sound-based experience. Within a large ambient cocoon, groups will explore their own qualitative transformations. There will also be video treatments by the Institute for New Feeling and iPhone Tarot by Tarin Towers. Registration recommended.

Wednesday, March 9, 6:30–8:30 pm
Session 4 / Panel Discussion / Biophilia, Clairvoyance, and Wunder
What do artists and designers do differently in order to keep awe an integral part of practice,life, and community? At the close of Awe Lab, join us for an engaging dialogue centered around awe experiences and outcomes with resident artists Alice Shaw and Alison Pebworth; co-founder of BASE Landscape Architecture Patricia Algara; and therapist and awe researcher Tanya Kaplow.


We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy, which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.
— Carl Sagan