Find out what others are saying about Root Division.

Tonic News
Non-Profit of the Week: Root Division
If there’s anything I can get excited about in a hurry, it’s an organization that helps get art back into the schools. So I was thrilled when my friend Johanna tipped me off about this week’s featured non-profit, Root Division...
[read more]

SF Bay Guardian
Our Weekly Picks: "Insider/Outsider"
"Insider/Outsider" might be one of this year's best group shows. Its 16 artists range from veterans to new voices: David Yun's 2007 video A Taste of Home is one of a few works in which he takes on the whiteness of suburban Detroit...
[read more]

Flavorpill
Art: Insider/Outsider
Ethnic identity in this country is fluid enough that it's difficult to parse the similarities and differences between, say, three neighbors in the same San Francisco apartment building...
[read more]

KQED
Art Review: Insider/Outsider
My friend can't figure out where he belongs -- there or here. He grew up on the East Coast, but now lives on the west one. Sometimes he asks me, "Which is home?" Sometimes he sounds desperate, scared that if he doesn't belong in one place he must not belong anywhere...
[read more]

ARTslant
Looking Inside: Insider/Outsider
The Insider/Outsider exhibition is an art experience reflecting how the desire to assimilate manifests itself through the art-making process. All of the artists in the exhibition are first or second-generation immigrants and use adroit creative processes to understand themselves in relation to their new culture...
[read more]

Insider/Outsider
Insider/Outsider Event Images
View a gallery of images from the event!
[view images]

Flavorpill
MORE FLAVOR: ExhibitionUnder 100: Exhibition, Sale, and Screen-Print Event
From the tony white walls of 49 Geary to the warehouse studios in Hunter's Point, SF lays claim to nearly every kind of art out there, and the wealth of choices can be intimidating for young prospective buyers...
[read more]

Sound Device NBC11
Sound Device Interview on NBC11
Anne Yalon, one of the curators of Sound Device, talks about a few of the pieces in the show with Bob Rendell of NBC11.
[view video]

SF Weekly - SF Foodie
Last Night: Taste 2008 at Root Division
Notes by Janine Kahn
Friday, April 18, 2008
Last night, flanked by fancy food and fancier people, I ate dirt. OK, maybe drank is the more accurate term, since the nice ladies behind the counter inside the Mission's Root Division studios did swirl it around in a wine glass with some water before handing it over, instructing me to inhale the earthy aroma [read more]

SF Weekly Slide Show
Taste 2008 at Root Division
[view slide show]

Art Business
Taste 2008
[view article]

Flavorpill
Taste 2008
Society's relationship with food is fraught with controversy and emotion — what we eat can just as easily be an aphrodisiac as an arch-enemy [read more]

Tablehopper
the socialite: Taste 2008
[view article (scroll down to "the socialite")]

SF Weekly
Taste 2008 Exhibition
By Michael Leaverton
In 2002, Sarah Klein set up an oven in the lobby of San Jose’s Fairmont Plaza Office Tower and got people to make bread. She also makes homemade books about bread and videos about bread and she organizes the Brick Oven Bread Bakers Conference [read more]

Libby's Niche
Root Division: Taste 2008 Exhibition
Event Photos by Libby Nicholaou
April 13, 2008
[view photos]

NBC11
Blackout
[view video]

KTVU
GLOWING: Gallery Shows Off Self Lighting Art
Root Division Art Gallery in the Mission District is showing off their new installation, 'Blackout'. The only light in the gallery is that of the art itself.
[view video]
[view slideshow]

SF Weekly
You Bright, Risen Angels
by Michael Leaverton
February 9, 2008
Tonight, the art in the exhibit "Blackout" will be doing double duty: first, it will illuminate your thinking, inspire your senses, all that bullshit. Second, it will illuminate, period. [read more]

SFGate.com
'Blackout': Root Division show lit by the art
by Reyhan Harmanci
February 7, 2008
Root Division's show "Blackout" takes its title literally: The gallery will be lit solely by the assembled art pieces. [read more]

Flavorpill
Blackout
by Tanya Feldman
Anyone who's gone camping or spelunking knows that our senses become heightened in pitch-black darkness. [read more]

SF Bay Guardian Weekly Picks (October 17th issue)
VISUAL ART/BENEFIT
Root Division Art Auction
November 19, 2007
In San Francisco the notion of community is abused about as often as a coked-out starlet is abused by the stalkerazzi (and vice versa) in Los Angeles. One place that deserves to use the word, though, is Root Division, a Mission site that has joined the good fight with other neighborhood groups such as the Lab, Southern Exposure, and Intersection for the Arts in terms of sparking Bay Area artistry. [read more]

Flavorpill
The Gun Show
by Gerry Mak
November 6, 2007
The artists in this Root Division group show approach the literal, metaphorical, political, and sexual implications of the firearm. [read more]

Shotgun Review
Alienated Mass Historia at Root Division
by Lian Ladia
August 4, 2007
Arvin Flores seems to present a punk-core, nouvelle vogue, while Quintana's work is very nostalgic, almost anthropological... [read more]

ArtBusiness.com
SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES–OPENINGS
July 14, 2007
Home - An Exhibitioin on the Aesthetics & Politics of Home [view piece, scroll to bottom]

SFGate.com
Home
July 8, 2007
There are many depictions of living spaces in this 30-artist exhibition curated by Liena Vayzman. [read more]

SFGate.com
Art Adventures: Street Styles
June 8, 2007
DAVe Warnke is doing a really great thing. He's providing a place where young graffiti writers can practice their art and develop their skills as artists, and they can do it in a safe and legal way. [read more and watch video]

YumSugar
PartySugar Behind The Bash: Taste 2007
April 27, 2007
Last Thursday night I was invited to a hip local arts event that expertly mixed art, auction and food. Hosted by Root Division—an organization that promotes creative expression and boosts the community by providing studio space to working artists in exchange for their services as art teachers—Taste 2007 was a fundraiser, exhibition, and tasting all rolled into one event. Tastes, bite sized tapas from eight acclaimed young San Francisco chefs, featured delicious, innovative nibbles along side the artwork. [read more]


A Tasty Taste 2007
April 24, 2007
By Sarah Sung
I can't say "no" to food, cocktails, art and music, even on a drizzly, chilly Thursday night; so last week I joined crowds of art-and-food lovers at Taste 2007, a fundraising event at Root Division. With eight popular local chefs preparing an array of savory treats, local artists displaying their work and a jazz band playing, my senses were abuzz from the moment I walked in. [read more]

ArtBusiness.com
SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES–OPENINGS
April 19, 2007
Taste 2007 [view piece, scroll to bottom]

ArtBusiness.com
SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES–OPENINGS
April 14, 2007
Art for the senses includes a do-it-yourself-earthquake JELL-O-Francisco diorama by Liz Hickock amusingly reminding us that catastrophe is right around the corner, a white fur subwoofer ass-oscillator of a bench by Ryan Hackett, and more. [view piece, scroll down to Root Division]

SF Bay Guardian
Crime-free Creativity
After-school Program Teaches the Art of Graffiti
April 11, 2007
By Chris Jasmin
A couple dozen of San Francisco's best young graffiti artists, many dressed in black hooded sweatshirts and baseball hats, huddle around long tables littered with markers, blank books, pens, and stickers. The artists crowded around the white paper–draped tables do a little talking and joking, but mainly they're drawing and writing, some at a fever pitch. Bright colors and stylish lettering abound. There is a sense of concentrated creativity in this large studio space — something rare in classrooms these days. But this not your run-of-the-mill art class. This is Streetstyles, a free course that focuses on the misunderstood medium of graffiti and street art. Its aim is multifaceted, concentrating on the production and repercussions of urban art. The class attempts, as instructor Dave Warnke explains, "to separate the art from the act. [read more]

Root Division Interviewed on “Free Forum”
November 5, 2006
Free FM: 106.9 FM
Heidi Moon interviews Michelle Mansour & Michael Krouse about the arts community, the organization, and the programs at Root Division.
(Please contact us for the opportunity to hear this interview on MP3.)


Tape it, show it
'More or Less 3,480 Seconds' : Low-cost video art opens the door wider at Root Division
November 9, 2006
By Reyhan Harmanci
Arranging an art show with contributors from around the world is no easy feat, even after you've lined up the artists. Paintings and drawings must be safely packed and sent, with hefty insurance costs. Sculptures must be packed even tighter before shipment, with even bigger insurance costs. And then they all need to be packaged and insured for the trip back. For a small studio to mount an international show, well, forget about it. [read more]


It's not easy to get art into galleries. It may be even harder to get schools to teach art. Root Division has found a way to do both.
August 12, 2006
By Rachel Howard, Special to The Chronicle
It's a Saturday night in the Mission District, and in a converted garage on 17th Street a youngish crowd is drinking Trumer Pils beer and talking about mixing pigments. On one wall hangs an oil painting of "Sesame Street's" Count seducing a naked woman; on another is a machine gun decorated with the Louis Vuitton logo.

But most of the positive buzz in the room seems directed at a portrait of a big-eyed man and woman looking like a bohemian version of "American Gothic," adorned with a fanciful neon sign that says "SERENDIPITY." It's by Michael Krouse, an artist who bartends at three taverns 30 hours a week to help bring up a preschool-age daughter. [read more]


7x7 Calls Root Division's Adult Ed Classes "Best of the Bay"
"Best Way to Hone Your Craft: Still bemoaning your choice of econ over art history because your parents insisted it was a sensible major? With a summer schedule that includes such after-work classes as this month's "Video Art Basics" and "Intro to Drawing and Painting" and August's "Creative Speed Dating" workshop (which mixes craft-making with wine drinking), the Adult Art Education classes organized by Root Division offer a way to awaken the creative spirit that's been deadened by your desk job."


San Francisco Chronicle Reports on Root Division's Kids Exhibition
May 18th, 2006
"The arts non-profit Root Division is part artist's collective, part educational organization. Its basic premise is to supply subsidized studio space to artists in exchange for the artists' working with children in arts programs in the public schools. The organization's "Second Saturday" show-and-tell event at its 17th Street studio on Saturday featured a celebrity guest, Giants shortstop Omar Vizquel. "You're one of the greatest shortstops of all time, huh?" asked Nolan Pita, an 8-year-old painter. "I don't know about that," was Vizquel's modest reply. "Aren't you going to the Hall of Fame?" asked Nolan. "I don't know that either," said Vizquel. "Why not?" asked Nolan. "They don't give me a vote," said Vizquel.