>> i'm your host of "culturewire," and today, here

at electric works in san francisco. nice to see you today. thanks for inviting us in and showing us your amazing facility today. >> my pleasure. >> how long has electric works been around? >> electric works has been in san francisco since the beginning of 2007. we moved here from brisbane from our old innovation. we do printmaking, gallery shows, and we have a fabulous retail store where there are lots of fun things to find. >> we will look at all of that as we walk around. it is incredible to me how many different things you do. how is it you identify that san francisco was in need of all these different services? >> it came from stepping out of graduate school in 1972. i wrote a little thing about how this is an idea, how our world should work. it should have printmaking, archiving, a gallery.

it should have a retail store. in 1972, i wanted to have art sales, point-of-sale at the grocery store. >> so you go through the manifesto. with the bay area should have. you are making art incredibly accessible in so many different ways, so that is a good segue. let's take a walk around the facilities. here we are in your gallery space. can you tell me about the current show? >> the current show is jeff chadsey. he is working on mylar velum, a smooth, beautiful drawing surface. i do not know anyone that draws as well as he does. it is perfect, following the contours and making the shape of the body. >> your gallery represents artists from all over, not just

the bay area, an artist that work in a lot of different media. how to use some of what you look for in artists you represent? >> it is dependent on people are confident with their materials. that is a really important thing. there is enough stuff in the world already. >> you also have in his current show an artist who makes sculpture out of some really interesting types of materials. let's go over and take a look at that. here we are in a smaller space. project gallery. >> artists used the parameters of this space to find relationships between the work that is not out in the big gallery. >> i noticed a lot of artists doing really site-specific work. >> this is a pile of balloons, something that is so familiar, like a child's balloon. in this proportion, suddenly, it becomes something out of a

dream. >> or a nightmare. >> may be a nightmare. >> this one over here is even harder to figure out what the initial material is. >> this is made out of puffy paint. often, kids use it to decorate their clothes. she has made all these lines of paint. >> for the pieces we are looking at, is there a core of foam or something in the middle of these pieces that she built on top of? >> i'm not telling. >> ah, a secret. >> this silver is aluminum foil, crumbled of aluminum foil. her aesthetic is very much that quiet, japanese spatial thing that i really admire. their attention to the materiality of the things of the world. >> this is a nice juxtaposition you have going on right now. you have a more established

artists alongside and emerging artists. is that something important to you as well? >> very important in this space, to have artists who really have not shown much. now let's look at other aspects of electric works operation. let's go to the bookstore. >> ok. >> in all seriousness, here we are in your store. this is the first space you encounter when you come in off the street. it has evolved since you open here into the most amazingly curious selection of things. >> this was the project for the berkeley art museum. it was -- this is from william wiley's retrospective, when he got up onstage to sing a song, 270 people put on the cat. >> it is not just a bookstore. it is a store. can you talk us through some of your favorites? >> these are made in china, but

they are made out of cattails. >> these pieces of here, you have a whale head and various animals and their health over there, and they are jewelry. >> we do fund raisers for nonprofits, so we are doing a project for the magic theater, so there are some pretty funny cartoons. they are probably not for prime time. >> you sort of have a kind of holistic relationship where you might do merchandise in the store that promotes their work and practice, and also, prince for them. maybe we should go back and look at the print operation now. >> let's go. >> before we go into the print shop, i noticed some incredible items you have talked back here. what are we standing in front of? >> this is william wiley, only

one earth. this is a print edition. there are only eight total, and what we wanted to do was expand the idea of printmaking. this is really an art object. there we go. >> besides the punball machine, what do you produce in limited edition? >> there is the slot machine. if you win the super jackpot, you have saved the world. >> what about work? >> the right design, it was three volumes with lithographs in each volume. the cab of count dracula with 20 lithographs inside and lined with beaver fur. really special.

>> let's move on to the print shop. >> ok. the core of what we do is making things. this is an example. this is a print project that will be a fund-raiser for the contemporary music players. we decided to put it in the portfolio so you could either frame at or have it on your bookshelf. >> so nonprofits can come to you, not just visual are nonprofits, but just nonprofits can come to you, and you will produce prints for them to sell, and the profits, they can keep. >> the return on investment is usually four times to 10 times the amount of investment. this is for the bio reserve in mexico, and this is one of the artists we represent. >> you also make prints for the artists that you represent. over here are some large prints by a phenomenal artist.

>> he writes these beautiful things. anyone who has told you paradise is a book of rules is -- has only appeared through the windows. this is from all over coffee. we are contract printers for all kinds of organizations all across the country. >> thank you very much for showing us around today. i really appreciate you taking the time to let me get better acquainted with the operation and also to share with our "culturewire" team. >> hi. i am cory with san francisco and we're doing stay safe and we're going to talk about what shelter in place or safe enough to stay in your

home means. we're here at the urban center on mission street in san francisco and joined by carla, the deputy director of spur and one of the persons who pushed this shelter in place and safe enough to stay concept and we want to talk about what it means and why it's important to san francisco. >> as you know the bay area as 63% chance of having a major earthquake and it's serious and going to impact a lot of people and particularly people in san francisco because we live on a major fault so what does this mean for us? part of what it means is that potentially 25% of san francisco's building stock

will be uninhibit tabl and people can't stay in their homes after an earthquake. they may have to go to shelters or leave entirely and we don't want that to happen. >> we want a building stock to encourage them to stay in the homes and encourage them to stay and not relocate to other locations and shelters. >> that's right so that means the housing needs to be safe enough to stay and we have been focused in trying to define what that means and you as a former building official knows better than anybody the code says if an earthquake happens it won't kill you but doesn't necessarily say that can you stay in your home and we set out to define what that might mean and you know

because you built this house we're in now and this shows what it's like to be in a place safe enough to stay. it's not going to be perfect. there maybe cracks in the walls and not have gas or electricity within a while but can you essentially camp out within your unit. what's it going to take to get the housing stock up to this standard? we spent time talking about this and one of the building types we talk about was soft story buildings and the ground floor is vulnerable because there are openings for garages or windows and during the earthquake we saw in the marina they went right over and those are -- >> very vulnerable buildings. >> very and there are a lot of apartment buildings in san that that are like that.

>> and time to. >> >> retrofit the buildings so people can stay in them after the earthquake. >> what do they need? do they need information? do they need incentives? mandates? >> that's a good question. i think it starts with information. people think that new buildings are earthquake proof and don't understand the performance the building will have so we want a transparent of letting people know is my building going to be safe in it after an earthquake? is my building so dangers i should be afraid of being injured? so developing a ranking system for buildings would be very important and i think for some of the larger apartment buildings that are soft story we need a mandatory program to fix the buildings, not over night

and not without financial help or incentive, but a phased program over time that is reasonable so we can fix those buildings, and for the smaller soft story buildings and especially in san francisco and the houses over garages we need information and incentives and coaxing the people along and each of the owners want their house to be safe enough. >> we want the system and not just mandate everybody. >> that's right. >> i hear about people talking about this concept of resiliency. as you're fixing your knowledge you're adding to the city wide resiliency. >> >> what does that mean? >> that's a great question. what spur has done is look at that in terms of recovery and in new orleans with katrina and

lost many of the people, hasn't recovered the building stock. it's not a good situation. i think we can agree and in san we want to rebuild well and quickly after a major disaster so we have defined what that means for our life lines. how do we need the gasolines to perform and water perform after an earthquake and the building stock as well, so we have the goal of 95% of our homes to be ready for shelter in place after a major earthquake, and that way people can stay within the city. we don't lose our work force. we don't lose the people that make san francisco so special. we keep everybody here and that allow us to recover our economy, and everything because it's so interdependent. >> so that is a difficult goal but i think we can achieve it over the long time so thank you very much for hosting us and

hosting this great exhibit, and thank you very much for joining