Walter Kitundu's West Wall project

Walter Kitundu has created the fourth West Wall project, We Are Everything We Are Not, a kinetic sculpture in the form of a rowboat. When viewers interact with the piece, it responds with light patterns and sounds suggesting the movement of a boat through water. Kitundu’s piece is on view during office hours from January 2012 through June 2013.

<Read the Artist’s Statement after the break>

Artist’s Statement

Paddling across a body of water initiates a symphony of reactions as waves propagate from the sides of the boat, fish dive away from the bow, eddies drift in the wake, animals ashore react, birds respond. In the distance life returns to normal but it has been inexorably changed, however slightly.

We Are Everything We Are Not is meant to encourage us to broaden our attention to encompass both the intended and hidden consequences of our endeavors. But primarily, it is meant to be a delightful and thought provoking encounter.

Close up of Walter Kitundu's West Wall project

Walter Kitundu is a sound artist, installation artist, and inventor of original musical instruments that navigate the boundary between live and recorded performance. His most recent project was a 27 foot long, bird-themed, interactive, hand built, musical mural commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for Terminal Two of the San Francisco International Airport.

Kitundu received a 2005 Creative Work Fund grant in performing arts to collaborate with Kronos Quartet, creating original phonoharps and composing a work entitled Cerulean Sweet,dedicated to Sally Wingwall and using elements of sound drawn from jazz great Charles Mingus. Cerulean Sweet premiered at Carnegie Hall in March 2006. In 2008 he became a MacArthur Fellow.

Close up of Walter Kitundu's West Wall project

Fay, a senior advisor to the Hewlett Foundation, is one of the smartest people in the nonprofit sector. She has tremendous experience in small and large scale evaluation. We learned a lot from her and her partner, Jill Blair, when they did some consulting with us here at the Fund several years ago.

In this op-ed piece in the most recent issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Fay cuts thru some polarizing rhetoric about how to approach assessing nonprofit effectiveness. As Fay sees it,

“Evaluation is fundamentally about finding the best ways to help nonprofits do their jobs better. And to do that well, evaluators need to listen carefully to the people working on the ground, understand their ambitions and values, and provide data to answer their most pressing questions.”

I agree completely.

It’s not always relevant or feasible to reduce program effectiveness to a number (e.g., return on investment), as can be done in the for-profit sector. But, the flip side is not to dismiss the need to have high quality data to determine program and organizational effectiveness.

As I told Fay after I read this piece, she brings “perfect pitch” to this important discussion. Subscribers can read the entire piece here.

As part of the Initiative, the bank also is giving $200,000 grants to LYRIC and to the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center.

LYRIC, a San Francisco organization that works with LGBT youth, nominated Pam for her Local Hero award. In 1991, while at the Mayor’s Office of Community Development, Pam was instrumental in helping LYRIC secure a home in the Castro.

In addition to Pam’s work with LYRIC and at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, she serves as co-chair of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The Task Force is dedicated to training the next generations of LGBT activists. Pam has chosen the Task Force as the recipient of a $5,000 grant from Bank of America.

Pam began her career teaching Women Studies at San Francisco State University and as a community organizer and activist. She was one of the key organizers of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian/Gay Rights. She then became a policy advisor to Rev. Jesse Jackson on LGBT and other issues. Returning to San Francisco, Pam was appointed to the city’s Domestic Partners task force, helping craft the first local ordinance of its kind.

In 1990, Pam was appointed to the Mayor’s Office of Community Development. She has held a variety of leadership roles in local government for three mayors, helping build resources for community-based economic development in low-income neighborhoods, and addressing capacity and sustainability issues for non-profit organizations. She launched the public-private Partnership for Affordable Non-Profit Space and initiated the ongoing San Francisco Neighborhood Centers Together collaborative (of which the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center is a member).

Nadine Burke, Teresa Goines, Toan Lam, and Donna Sachet are also being honored as San Francisco Local Heroes.