SJ FAM is a proud sponsor of Element 151,  a full service production house that offers a “pre” through “post” workflow for any size film or video project. Using the latest in digital cinema technology coupled with traditional filmmaking they create honest, and original motion picture.

Parallels, an Element 151’s film, is a 2010 Official Selection at Cinequest Film Festival.

Battlefest 360 Live v9

a B Box Entertainment Production

An Event Unlike Any Other

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Battlefest Live 360 v9

Saturday February 27, 2010
Doors Open at 4:30pm

San Jose Civic Auditorium
135 West San Carlos St.
San Jose, CA 95113

Tickets and Information: www.battlefestlive.com

2010 Hall of Fame Awardees:
Culture Shock Los Angeles
Arnel Calvario – CSLA, Kaba Modern, 4H

Competitors (As of 12/30/2009)

Pac Modern – Long Beach
The Odds – San Francisco
ASAP – Sacramento
Expressive Doubt – San Francisco
That One Company – Sacramento
Funk Beyond Control – San Francisco
Beat Jerkeez – Los Angeles
909 – Riverside
Prophecy Inc. – Vallejo
Aftermath – South San Francisco
Wrawsome – San Jose
Main Stacks – Berkeley
Haluan – Santa Cruz
MK Modern – UC Davis

Showcase Performances (As of 12/30/2009)

Groove Against The Machine
Funkanometry SF
De La Femme
Project Em
Culture Shock LA
FLOorganics
Supreme Soul

And Introducing
April Chase

Hosted By:
Frederick Salamat

Resident DJs
DJ 12Style
DJ Dose
DJ Grubber

Sponsors and Supporters
Eener Productions
Bottom Line Clothing
Breezy Excursion
Hvyrsnl
SJ FAM
Temple All Stars
Spinatiks Radio
B Box: Live Sessions
K.Y.R. Apparel
3-Style Attractions, Cerritos All- Stars, Livemixshow.com

Proceeds will benefit our non-profit organization, the B Box Arts Foundation. BBAF is dedicated to building community through art.

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Pre Party -
Thursday Feb 25 – Sabor Lounge
Friday Feb 26 – SF TBA

After Party – Motif Lounge

San Jose native, Aileen Quiambao is an up and coming Bay Area based designer.  Inspired by her surroundings, nature, and the growth of her daughter, Aijhanaya Irie; Quiambao’s designs capture the resiliency of innocence, the beauty of growth and the encounters in everyday life.  Taking such elements and incorporating them into women’s wear and accessories creates a distinct style that embodies the delicacy and strengths of femininity and inner-city flavor.

With the debut of her latest collection: “Urban Contemporary Headwear“, Quiambao weaves together the realness and rawness of urban flair with the purity and elegance into each design.  By taking major hoods around the United States such as Greenwich in NYC, West Hollywood in LA, the Fillmore in SF, Las Vegas, etc., Quiambao creates a classic, yet fresh wear to keep you covered year around.

Check out this runway showcase featuring Quiambao’s Spring 2009 collection that took place at the annual Charity Fashion Show located at Stanford University:

Join Aileen and Reignforest Collective this Friday, Feb. 19th at the Listening Lounge for her official launch party.

For more information, please visit www.aileenquiambao.com.

ADMISSION
A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Lupus Foundation of Northern California

ARTISTS
AG Originals
ARMOgedon 2057
Carly Ivan Garcia
Nick Giannini
Same10
WaDl

STORES
Azuki Boutique
Medium Rare/Oh Dang! Magazine

EXHIBITORS
Adapt
Buddha Apparel
Casanova Fresh
Clout
Cukui
Drastik Tactiks
Fully Laced
Goodjoe
Halloway
IMPRM
Jordan Louie
RADisRAD
Shalom CPP
Shorty Fatz
Sick Star Clothing
Suhreal
The Imaginary Zebra
Unbound Vision

ENTERTAINMENT
DJ Quantum
DJ Traps

SPECIAL PERFORMANCES
The Bangerz

RUNWAY
presented by John Agcaoili {DSOTM}

HAIR
Umbrella Salon

PHOTOGRAPHERS
Jordan Louie

FOOD & BEVERAGES
Hannah {Mini red velvet cupcakes}
Treatbot {Premium ice cream truck}

GIVEAWAYS
Ironlak

For more information, please visit www.bobbivie.com

SJFAM: Tell us about yourself…

Josh: I’m 30. A photographer and writer. I am the 4^th generation of my family to live in San Jose. I majored in history at San Jose State University. I have been taking pictures of San Jose for eight years now.I started with a disposable camera. Then I went through a series of 35mm cameras that only marginally improved in quality with each purchase. I bought film when I could afford it and watched a lot of things pass on while my camera sat empty at home. I saved up enough money to buy a display model digital SLR camera and started to furiously document all I could. With the exception of the “Intro to Photography” class I took in high school, I am self taught. My father had a weekend photography business. Our garage was a studio and our laundry room was a dark room. I grew up watching what he did and was fascinated.

SJFAM: What inspires you?

Josh: History and a hope to connect to the past. I mowed my grandfather’s lawn every weekend from middle school until college and my grandfather would tell me the history of San Jose. He would drive me to places and tell me what used to be there or what it was like when he was young. When I started at San Jose State, I would wander the streets of downtown trying to piece together what my grandfather told me. There was so much that was empty and so much being lost and no one seemed to notice. I started by writing about what was being lost, then I started to photograph it.

SJFAM: What message do you portray in your work?

Josh: I try to show the soul and the character of the places and things I see in San Jose and the places I travel. Buildings and cars and signs are designed and born. They absorb life and soul from the people that worked or lived or shopped around them. When they become empty they start to die and the decay spreads like cancer.  I try to portray their soul one last time in my photos.

SJFAM: What is your favorite picture that you’ve taken so far and why?

Josh: My favorite picture is one titled Dead.  It was a picture of a car left on the train tracks by my home. It was the first photo I took where I felt like what I was trying to portray in my mind was being translated into the photo.

SJFAM: What are your goals as a photographer?

Josh: My goal is to show people what I see.

SJFAM: Any words to the people of San Jose?

Josh: San Jose is a great place. Enjoy it.

Josh Marcotte’s First Solo Show will take place on Feb. 6, 2010 at the Blues Jean Bar in Santana Row. Click here for more information

Also to see more of Josh’s work, check out his site at www.lostsanjose.com.

Date: Saturday, November 7, 2009
Time: 7:30pm – 10:30pm
Location: St. Francis of Assisi Church Gathering Space: 5111 San Felipe Rd. San Jose, CA 95135

The destruction has not ceased, and the people of Southeast Asia & the Pacific are STILL in dire need of aid.

Typhoon Ondoy has flooded various locations within the islands, and has caused great tragedy to the lives of the people, their homes, and their family.

Join us for an evening of entertainment…
SONG : MUSIC : DANCE

Featuring:
Amy Serrata
April Chase
Don P
Tracy Cruz
VIP San Jose
DJ Sigo
DJ Dose

ADMISSION COST: $10
Door Sales Only

This is a family event…all ages are welcome.

SEE YOU THERE!

Proceeds from The Typhoon Ondoy Benefit event will go towards the American Red Cross international response funds and will be designated for the typhoons and floods in the Southeast Asia & the Pacific.

Singer + Songwriter, Amy Serrata creates music intended to heal and bring people together. Amy’s interest in singing arose at an early age listening to the sounds of Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong to name a few. She sung in choir and started singing  lessons at the age of 10 years old when she attended Nido De Aguilas, an international school in Santiago, Chile. As she got older she sung in several gospel choirs and through that experience continued to develop her vocal improvisational skills.

Through college she studied Illustration with an emphasis in Fine Arts. During this time she took a break from singing, little did she know how much she would come to miss it. In 2006, Amy started singing with the Stanford University Gospel Choir. A couple years later a friend of hers encouraged her to create her own music. She let that thought simmer and shortly after began to improvise using poetry that she had previously written. The melodies started to naturally form and she then worked with producers: Hyp, HMD & Nyambezi collaborate with for her first self-titled album, ‘Amy Serrata’.

Amy is currently focused on putting together a band to perform at various venues as well as collaborate with other artists and musicians.

Listen to more of her music at www.myspace.com/amyserrata or visit her site at amyserrata.com

Audacious Art

Painter/illustrator Christine Benjamin, ‘87 Graphic Design, creates masked super-heroines. They fight pollution (Super Bee Girl). They play the bongos (Bongo Chick). They wear aprons and necklaces while sporting pink head horns. They are funky, whimsical miniature felt sculptures with attitude and loads of quirky charm. For a month this past spring they were on view at South First Street Billiards in San José as part of the “Girl Power” show Benjamin curated and exhibited there.

“The idea for the ‘Girl Power’ show came about because there are a lot of women artists, particularly in the Bay Area, who still don’t get to show their work,” Benjamin explains. “You’d think there would be a lot of women artists showing their work everywhere — but that’s not the case. So I wanted to have a show that featured only women artists that addressed women’s issues — any type of women’s issues.”

Benjamin’s own contributions to the show were sly, ironic, political and unapologetically feminist interpretations on the issues at stake.

“I like to make statements with my art,” Benjamin says. “I want to get a reaction — it doesn’t have to be a positive reaction. But I want people to have a strong feeling when they look at my art. There are people who find my art weird. I’m okay with that. I like that reaction much better than when people say: ‘That’s a pretty picture.’”

Accessibility is key

Born and raised in San José, Benjamin is part of a growing legion of artists, working in San José and elsewhere, who are determined to show their art in venues other than what Benjamin dubs “galleries with a lot of white walls.” By showing art at so-called “untraditional venues,” artists are able to expand their audience and connect with viewers who’d never enter one of those white-walled galleries, Benjamin contends. “Getting art out there for the public to see helps educate the public about art,” she says.

Benjamin is an enthusiastic participant in local events such as last June’s Sub- ZERO Festival, held in San José’s SoFA district, defined geographically as South First Street between San Carlos and Reed Streets. During the SubZERO festival, more than 100 performers, musicians and artists took to the streets to bring their particular art form to the public. Benjamin was one of the “live painters,” creating art in real time and on public view. SoFA galleries, including Anno Domini and WORKS/San José, also participated in the revelries, and Benjamin’s “Girl Power” show was held over at South First Street Billiards to be part of the festival.

Wherever there’s a chance of it being seen, Benjamin is game to show her art. She recently exhibited work at a tattoo parlor in Atlanta and a donut shop in Campbell. In January of this year, she exhibited new paintings at San José’s Caffe Trieste in a show called “Real and Imagined Creatures,” headlined by a painting of Red Riding Hood escaping a toothy wolf.

Mom knows best

Benjamin’s mother painted intermittently, so she recognized the artistic bent in her daughter. “My mom completely encouraged me,” Benjamin says. “From a really young age, I drew on the walls so, wisely, she started buying me paper.” An uncle who was “very serious about cartooning and animation” provided another early example of commitment to artistic exploration.

Benjamin attended West Valley College “to get the general education requirements out of the way,” before transferring to SJSU to major in graphic design with a concentration in illustration. At SJSU, she found another influential mentor. At the time, she says, Lanning Stern, professor in the School of Art and Design, “was really into the L.A. low-brow, underground art scene.” His enthusiasm for non-mainstream art helped shape Benjamin’s interest.

And there was, is, and will be, for Benjamin, the great Van Gogh. “He’s always been one of my idols,” she says. “The thickness of paint, the light, the color — everything about his art is just incredible. I admire his paintings and his crazy, hard life.”

Art that isn’t simply for art’s sake

Benjamin is a member of Heart of Chaos, a San José collective of young artists that, in addition to bringing a network of like-minded artists together, makes a priority of using art as a means to help the wider community. (Heart of Chaos sponsored Benjamin’s “Girl Power” show.) The collective fundraises for at-risk youth through its Community Outreach Taskforce. Benjamin has taken part in the Chalk Art Festival and other fundraisers.

“A lot of the money Heart of Chaos raises goes to underprivileged kids,” Benjamin says, a cause close to her heart. “By nature, I’m for the underdog.” In and out of the studio Benjamin does freelance design and illustration work for the likes of Yahoo, Hitatchi, Addison-Wesley and Apple. Recently, for Hasbro, she sculpted clay circus characters that were photographed for a children’s book. In the near future, Benjamin would like to try her hand at illustrating her own children’s book, but for now she’s concentrating on painting.

Her terrain and privacy guarded by a “big bad tiny white dog with a very loud bark,” Benjamin is in her studio every day working, she says. “I work on several pieces at once. I go back and forth between paintings. That really helps me figure out things visually and conceptually. I also do a ton of sketching.”

To mix it up further, Benjamin likes to work collaboratively with Lacey Bryant, Michael Foley and other local artists.

“I work collaboratively with artists who are quite a bit younger. I myself have a lot of energy, but those artists’ energy and creativity really inspire me,” Benjamin says. “When collaborating, you’re forced to be more spontaneous. The piece can morph into something you didn’t expect or plan for — and that is very interesting.”

San José’s art scene has definitely gotten bigger and better in the past five years, with more artists showing work in more venues, Benjamin maintains. “There are so many super-talented artists in San José. You don’t have to go to San Francisco to see great art. A lot is happening right here.”

Written by: Kat Meads

(Source: www.sjsu.edu/wsq/fall09/noteworthy/)

To see more of Christine’s work visit her website at http://cbillustration.squarespace.com/journal/

Goodwill of Silicon Valley presents the Eco-Chic Fashion Show at the Dolce Hayes Mansion on September 11, 2009. The event will showcase environmentally conscious re-purposed fashions and one-of-a-kind pieces pulled directly from the donations made to Goodwill, readily available at all 16 Silicon Valley Goodwill Retail Stores. The event is a part of Goodwill of Silicon Valley’s effort to bring awareness to recycling, repurposing all resources, from clothing to electronics.

Immediately following the 11:45 a.m. Luncheon and the Fashion Show, guests will be able to snag these eco-chic fashions at The Shopping Event, which takes place between 2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. All sales benefits Goodwill’s mission to help those in need through vocational, educational and occupational services and programs.

“This event is a tremendous opportunity for talented designers to showcase their creativity and to literally show Silicon Valley shoppers that used and repurposed clothing is interesting, stylish, fashionable, and most importantly, sustainable,” said Mike Fox, Jr., Goodwill of Silicon Valley CEO.

For this event, Goodwill has partnered with globally recognized fashion designer, Monique Zhang, who will be directing and choreographing the fashion show. Based in San Francisco, Monique is also incorporating her vision to re-purpose donations to make eco-chic outfits.

She is joined by five other fashion designers who have also re-purposed donations. Virtually all involved have donated their time/services to Goodwill in the planning and execution of the show, everyone from the students at the Art Institute of California’s Fashion Show Production class, to the professional runway models themselves.

The 2009 Eco-Chic Fall Fashion Show will be broadcast live at www.goodwillsv.org. These eco-chic pieces will be auctioned off on Goodwill of Silicon Valley’s eBay store.

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ABOUT GOODWILL OF SILICON VALLEY
Since 1926, Goodwill of Silicon Valley has been helping those in need, employing the unemployed, repurposing donated materials and renewing lives through its diverse range of vocational, educational, and occupational services and programs.

For more information please visit: www.goodwillsv.org/ecochic.html

From San Jose, Suicide Jacks is pioneering a culture. Much like how Affliction and TapouT transcended the MMA ring into everyday life, Suicide Jacks is representing the gaming community and Las Vegas lifestyle by bringing it outside the casino. No one representing the gaming community has been able to reflect the lifestyle through apparel in the way Suicide Jacks has through our designs and quality of product. Check out their site to see their fall collection and much more – www.suicidejacks.com.