Over at AF-San Francisco, we’ve been a little bit obsessed lately by the “X a day” category of Foundation applications. They’re discrete, highly do-able, and result in a ton of awesome products being released into the universe. We had such a great time seeing Meredith Scheff’s Scarf-A-Day project take shape last month that we decided to follow up that grant with another project that takes the model in a entirely new and great direction.

To that end, thrilled to announce that our March Awesome Fellowship goes out to the endlessly wonderful Bay Area artist Adam Davis, who is embarking on a mission to paint one hundred bite-sized (around 4” x 4”) and big sized (yet to come!) paintings of dinosaurs over the next month or so. He will then engage in a worldwide hide-and-seek game, caching the dinosaurs in secret locations and releasing clues (some clues leading to yet more clues) to their location on his project blog.

Once the dinosaurs are located, they are yours to keep. Four have been located so far around the Bay Area (including this crazy story and the first dinosaur being hidden at the weird and wonderful Jejune Institute), and there’s many more on the way. There’s tons to love about the project (dinosaurs), and we couldn’t be happier funding the project.

If you’d like to join in the search for dinosaurs, keep an eye out here. Happy hunting!

Next month will mark the 1-year anniversary of the Awesome Foundation San Francisco, and we thought, “Close enough. Let’s have a party!” So on Sunday, February 13th, we held our first Awesome Foundation SF party (hopefully the first of many to come), and invited past recipients and friends to come celebrate with us. In true Awesome fashion, what started off as a just-for-fun get together turned into an inspiring look at how micro-financing of local innovators can encourage large-scale change.

The party was produced on a modest budget with each trustee chipping in just enough to supply a little hummus, some wine, and perhaps 1 too many cases of beer (my bad). Hosted by the lovely people of PariSoma in downtown San Francisco, the spirited crowd was a diverse collection of go-getting artists, scientists, DIY makers, and general do-gooders.

Jesse Taggert, our Dean of Awesome, kicked off the party with a few introductions to the trustees and a quick congrats to this year’s recipients.

Then, since most of them have never met one another, each recipient got an opportunity to say a few words about their project and give thanks to their amazing partners in crime. And thanks to Rod Begbie and his slideshow-slinging skillz, everyone’s phenomenal work was showcased throughout the night on an over-sized projector screen in the main room.

Below are some clips from the event along with a few incriminating pics of the party-goers. Many thanks to this year’s recipients for sharing their work and their inspiration, and for boldly scaling the cliffs of awesome.

See you all at the next one!

We’re positively thrilled to announce today that the trustees of Awesome Foundation San Francisco have chosen Meredith Scheff to be this month’s Fellow for her project Scarf-a-Day, wherein she will make one silly, strange, whimsical, nerdy, electronic, fuzzy, warm, or otherwise totally awesome scarf a day for a whole month — and post how-tos online.

Meredith’s a graduate of the California College of the Art’s Illustration program, though she’s been all over textiles, electronics, soft circuits, and a whole range of geekery in recent years. Specifically, she’s been sewing a ton recently, and it’s already led to a fair quantity of sheer epicness that we figured would be great to have manifested in a showcase of 30 awesome scarves.

These will culminate in a mighty reception show sometime in January/February. So, stay tuned.

You can find more about Meredith on her site and her Twitter. She’s also the creator of the Northskirt — a skirt that always helpfully indicates where due north is — which, if you haven’t seen yet, you really, really should.

If you’d like to help support the Scarf-A-Day, check out Meredith’s Etsy, and you can donate to hear using the handy dandy PayPal button below:

Congratulations Meredith!

Teenage Awesome Alert! For October, the Awesome Foundation (SF) is doing something different. We are awarding a dual grant for two projects that encourages teenage boys and girls to use their wits and bodies to work with the elements.

Hoods to the Woods started as a bootstrap project by Anthony Carranza to get boys living in the Western Addition neighborhood out of the city and onto the slopes a few hours west of San Francisco. Some boys had never traveled further than the Bay Area before, and had never experienced snow. With a $1,000 Awesome Foundation Grant, Anthony hopes to organize another trip this winter. Check ‘em out on Facebook.

“My Life: The Video Game” is a 12-week workshop that will “will teach teenage girls to design, program, and produce their own video games based on situations, systems, or relationships in their own lives. Using the visual programming software Scratch, students will learn to create all aspects of their game including the artwork, sound, and programming.” How awesome is that?  It is organized by Oasis for Girls, which is a well-established  “multidisciplinary arts- and youth-development after-school program providing direct services to low-income, immigrant and girls of color, ages 11-24, throughout San Francisco.”

Next month’s San Francisco Awesome Grant deadline is Thursday November 11, 2010.

Greetings from California! I’m glad to officially announce that, after much deliberation, the September Fellowship of Awesome Foundation SF goes to the superbly fantastic project brewing over at Papergirl SF. The project clearly forwards the interest of awesomeness, and we couldn’t imagine a more perfect summer scheme to support!

Dubbed a “a mail-art and delivery systems art project that is participatory, analogue, non-commercial, and impulsive,” Papergirl SF plans to broadly collect pieces of work mailed to them, and then distribute them in rolled bundles on bikes to random passerbys, old-school paperboy style.

If you’re interested in participating and submitting artwork to be distributed, the deadline for submissions is September 18th (details on how to do that here).

And, best of all, the Papergirl crew will be holding a showcase of all the work submitted on September 26th during the Mission Bicycle Festival at the Women’s Building. We’re definitely planning on being there, and hope you will be too!

There’s more details available on their website here, for the curious. And a Facebook page, for those so inclined. Congratulations!