Ravenous Reptiles and the "Missing" Project

Chris Giorni

Come face to face with frogs, lizards, turtles, tortoises, snakes and a whole cast of creepy, crawly, rescued reptiles and amphibians with naturalist and Tree Frog Treks director Chris Giorni. Hold frogs and see them climb, jump and munch lunch at this hungry herps frog hop. Hand feed lizards and watch them display. Slither like a snake and learn how they eat such large prey by watching them have a rodent gourmet lunch. After the herp feeding frenzy we will go on a Herpin’ Birdin’ Safari around the park grounds armed with binoculars and a full helping of kid energy. After the walk we will make "Missing" nature posters:  "Missing Wide Open Spaces" - "Missing the S.F. Garter Snake ".  

Chris Giorni received his undergraduate degree in zoology from U.C. Berkeley and his Master’s degree in biology from San Francisco State University. Born and raised in San Francisco, Chris has always been fascinated with animal life and never missed an opportunity to go get out and get dirty.  He founded Tree Frog Treks in 1999 so that kids of all ages could have that exciting behind the science museum experience with every class.  Tree Frog Treks now serves over 10,000 children and families. The mission of Tree Frog Treks is to create critical thinkers who will work to save, preserve and maintain our planet's biodiversity by introducing them to rescued reptiles and amphibians, doing fun, hands-on science projects and exploring nature.

Introduction to Botanical Illustration

Linda Ann Vorobik

Linda leads a two-hour workshop about the basics of scientific illustration. Participants then have an opportunity to draw.

Dr. Vorobik is a botanist, editor, and illustrator of botanical publications. She lives on Lopez Island, Washington. She holds a PhD from the University of Oregon, Eugene, she conducts field research and teaches in the Siskiyou Mountains of southwestern Oregon, and she is a Research Associate at University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Vorobik specializes in botanical illustration and plant systematics and is the principal illustrator for several books, including Flora North America Volume 25 (Grasses), The Jepson Manual: Higher Plants of California, The Jepson Desert Manual, and A Flora of Santa Cruz Island. She has taught numerous courses, including An Introduction to California Plant Life (plant communities and plant taxonomy) and Botanical Illustration through several universities and field institutes.

The Road of an Activist: Remembering Kathleen Chang

Suzanne Lacy

On October 29, 1977, at the end of a long and occasionally difficult planning process, Kathleen Chang and I performed The Life and Times of Donaldina Cameron on Angel Island--a look at the history and current situation of cross-race relations between Chinese and White women in California. Through the process of coming to a deeper understanding of how our ethnic identities and histories impacted our present artistic collaboration we became friends.

Nineteen years later on October 23, 1996, Kathleen Chang, now activist Kathy Change, joined a long list of people - often students - who self-immolate to call attention to oppression and war.

Suzanne Lacy remembers Kathy Change with a series of postcards tracing their original performance up the hill and a revised edition of their broadsheet ANGEL ISLAND TIMES PAST.  

Suzanne Lacy, an artist and writer whose work includes large-scale public performances on urban issues, is the Chair of the Fine Arts School at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. In fall 2007 Lacy will chair Otis College's new MFA in Public Practice. Lacy, a proponent of audience engagement and artists' roles in shaping the public agenda, is currently on a Henry Moore Fellowship in Aberdeen, Scotland, and pursuing her PhD through Gray’s College of Arts’ On the Edge Program.

Paper Son

Cliff Caruthers & Kristin Miltner

Using some of the actual questions asked of Asian immigrants, along with suggestive sounds and sonic textures, Paper Son is a recreation of what the immigrantion experience might have been like on Angel Island. The term Paper Son refers to young Chinese men who fraudulently established ties to naturalized American citizens to avoid the discriminatory immigration laws of the time.

Cliff Caruthers has been composing electroacoustic and experimental music since 1995. He searches for direct relationships to complex technologies, creating narrative soundscapes and psychologically charged atmospheres from recordings of real and imagined environs. His work has been featured at the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, The San Francisco Tape Music Festival, Deep Wireless 2006, Stanford's Strictly Ballroom Series, and Quiet American's Field Effects series. Since 2000, Cliff supports himself as a sound designer working for various theater companies throughout the Bay Area. Cliff serves as technical director for the New San Francisco Tape Music Center.

Kristin Miltner is a composer, videomaker and installation artist living in Oakland. She gleans harmonies from machine sounds, abandoned and recovered instruments, and factory drones, and gathers abstracted moving images of her environment. Kristin makes video scores to guide her in creating improvised music using materials from the rough colors of the Oakland docks to the windmill-covered hills above Altamont Pass. She attaches homebuilt circuits to such living things as insects and humans, which physically translate her rhythmic samples. Recent San Francisco performances include the Mission Creek Music Festival, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Jiffy Scuttler series, Field Effects series, and multiple performances at the C.E.A.I.T. Festival at CalArts, Valencia, California. Her video work was shown in the 2004 Rencontres International Film and Video Festival in Berlin and Paris.

Guardian of the Western Gate

Joe Chan

Chan speaks about the impact of the Angel Island Immigration Station in enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and subsequent discriminatory laws against Asian immigration.

Joe Chan is a docent at Angel Island State Park. His maternal grandmother, parents, and parents-in-law were detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station. He is a retired US Air Force pilot, and is actively engaged in his community.

For more information email: amber@art-eco.org
or call and leave a message at 415-786-4957