the golden gate bridge project

EXPRESSING BRIDGES: Lived Experience Stories on the Golden Gate Bridge

open call for poetry, writing, rants, words, line drawings, notes, found objects, jpegs of artwork, photography, sculpture and other works that express stories of lived experience on the Golden Gate Bridge.

For publication consideration, Send your creative offerings via e-mail to comeknowing@theblackhut.com before Midnight, January 10, 2010.

It's our guess that everyone whose ever been to San Francisco since 1937 has crossed it, taken pictures of it, considered it up close or from a distance, bought a t-shirt or postcard with images of the thing itself or symbols of this gateway printed on their souvenir, their evidence of a lived experience in the presence of this monument to progress. For this project, we're interested in the temporary, voluntary community that gathers around symbols and monuments and the stories of moments alive in the air of that thing and place we all gather around and keep alive through our snapshots and stories.

Across any great divide, there is the choice, the option, to bridge the distance or not.

In addition to its powerful presence and beauty, The Golden Gate Bridge is also the number one monument in the entire world...for suicide.

The goal of our project is simply to walk across it--to get to the other side of the other side of the bridge and to collect work, art, mementos, stories, artifacts, there, in the vestibules of place, where those who have crossed the bridge and faced their choices as they did so can record their reflections in the moment of their experience.

Selected works will be memorialized in a book. A celebration of lived experience bridge stories will be held.

Artist Facilitated Making Days take place on Thursdays, December 17, 24, 31 and January 7
from approximately 10:30ish-1:30ish
*FREE*
see pictures of the first walk on the black hut facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=the+black+hut&init=quick#/album.php?aid=355713&id=281609265356&ref=mf
and on eBu's profile page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=38503087322&v=info#/writressworder?v=photos

Catch us in the nra parking lot by the presidio entrance to the bridge in the morning and make up poetry, songs, stories as we walk together across the great expanse...or arrive any time and help yourself to the do-it-yourself making station on the back of the mobile studio or wander your own walk across and see what comes to you as story, prom, image, expression and put it in an e-mail and send it to us for publication consideration.
Contributing is free--offered and received freely without the promise of compensation of any kind. (Of course, if we find money, create support streams, strike riches or make it big, we promise to share the wealth with all who contribute).

Contributing allows The Black Hut leeway to include, promote, accept (or reject) contributor offerings and to publish findings, blog entries, promotional material and documentation on its website, blog, facebook page, in the book and in books written about the book.

Contributors who send a good $35 check payable to Juan Vincent Reyes, care of The Black Hut, 58 Rondel Pl, #1, San Francisco, CA 94103, will receive one free ticket to EXPRESSING BRIDGES: Lived Experience on the Golden Gate Bridge release party, reading & book signing *and* a contributor's copy of the book.

EXPRESSING BRIDGES: Lived Experience on the Golden Gate Bridge--the release party, reading & book signing

will take place Sunday, February 21, 2010 from 3-5pm in a San Francisco location tbd.

Additional contributor’s copies can be pre-ordered at $20 each and $180 for ten. Deeper discounts are available for larger orders. Books become available to the public after Midnight, February 22, 2010 for $25 and contributor discounts disappear at that time.

Funds generated contribute to establish The Black Hut and to further its work clearing the ground for celebration, community, animals and the earth.

We are actively seeking sponsorship for this project and others. Please e-mail to indicate an interest in exploring...

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The Black Hut is a collaboration between transformative artists Raven Reyes and elizaBeth Benson-Udom. We work to support each other in making our work and bridging it into the world. We met in the circles held throughout JFKU's Transformative Arts Master's Degree program and we continue to bridge the distance between art and community, space and place, the sacred and profane. We continue to meet in the crossroads of art and life, show up as ourselves, do what we do, invite people to play, and be who we are in all the worlds we bridge....

keep track of the progress of this project by becoming our fan on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/the-black-hut/281609265356?