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Su-Chen Hung
San Francisco artist Su-Chen Hung is currently working on a large-scale project to be installed at the San Francisco International airport. This project involves a series of custom-built double glass panels which have the words "welcome" inscribed in many different languages. The glass panels are adhered to both sides of 12 columns that line the corridors of the customs area. The messages appear and disappear as passengers walk by them. According to Hung, this project is related to her own immigrant experiences coming to the airport. She recalls that "When I first came to San Francisco, I saw a welcome sign in both Chinese and English. This sign gave me such a wonderful feeling, that I wanted to create something that would welcome all of the visitors and immigrants arriving from different parts of the world." Seyed Alavi
Seyed Alavi's project "Mind Field" is a collaborative piece between the artist and sixteen high school students in Dublin, California. According to Alavi, the project, situated on the school's campus, is "a profile of a face in the landscape. The brain, which is a walkway, is constructed of chain-link material in the form of a maze. Inside the maze are sixteen benches which reference the different parts of the brain: the seat of memory, the seat of knowledge, etc. Small plaques, embedded in the ground, are inscribed with nine poems, two of which have been written by the students. The poems are related to the maze as a metaphor of life. A historical time capsule, assembled by the students, is going to be buried under the eye of this large-scale profile." Anna Valentina Murch
"I became more and more interested in how culture's change and how places became a point where you looked and it activated memory. The places that I was particularly drawn to where what I categorized as forbidden, abandoned and condemned. . . I was interested in the places that had been left behind. They had already gone through some sort of transition. They provoked me to rethink their histories and the people that had been there. Because they were in this state of flux, they had the possibility of changing yet again." Richard Kamler
"I am in the process of building a very long table, called the Table of Voices. It is made of transformative materials . . . such as lead and gold leaf, which from the ancient notion of alchemy suggest change. You can head voices talking through telephone receivers and across a sheet of glass which goes down the length of the table. Surrounding this table are memorabilia such as clothing, photographs, writings, drawings, coat hangers and other personal things. The problem that has turned up is the question of what side of the table you are on, the felon or the victim?"
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