33rd Annual ArtSpan San Francisco Open Studios
Weekend 1: Saturday, October 4 Private Preview Gala, Sunday, October 5 Exhibition Opening
All Weekend 2-5 events: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Weekend 2: October 11-12 Western SF
Weekend 3: October 18-19 Central SF
Weekend 4: October 25-26 Eastern SF
Weekend 5: November 1-2 Hunters Point Shipyard
The crisp scent of fall in the air doesn't just mean that the Cal Bears' football season has begun; that redolence of promise also indicates that it's time for ArtSpan's 33rd annual Open Studios. The event takes place over the next four weekends, beginning October 4 with the Private Preview Gala, and concluding November 1 & 2 with the crowd favorite, Hunters Point Shipyard artist colony. This is your chance to emulate a modern day de Medici and become the patron of a working local artist.
Click here for the full story: www.thestarkguide.com/artjournalism
Guns, Sand and Seals: Art at Ocean Beach
Dean Rader is an associate professor at the University of San Francisco where he holds the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair. At present he’s writing a book on recent American Indian art, literature, and film. He also curates an arts and culture blog entitled The Weekly Rader. Read his recent contribution to the SF Chron on Native American poetry here.
If the unseasonably warm weather hasn’t lured you to the beach, would the juicy carrot of the oddest public art exhibit to hit the Bay Area in years do the trick? Part-19th century re-enactment, part still life painting, and part outdoor art installation, Thom Ross’s “Buffalo Bill and The Indians on the Beach” is a bizarre blend of history and high camp set against the dramatic backdrop of Seal Rock, Ocean Beach, and the Pacific Ocean.
Check out the full article at www.thestarkguide.com/artjournalismGallery 16 Celebrates Fifteen Year Anniversary Thanks to Jesse Helms
Gallery 16 Fifteenth Anniversary Group Show: These Are The People In Your Neighborhood through November 7, 2008; Opening reception on Friday September 12 from 6 - 9pm with live band "Or, The Whale"; 501 3rd St (at Bryant); San Francisco; Mon-Fri 9-5 Sat 11-5; (415) 626-7495; www.gallery16.com
Numerologists have yet to opine but there must have been something auspicious about 1616 16th Street when Gallery 16 and Urban Digital Color opened there in 1993. Back then, the neighborhood was so isolated (before California College of the Arts established its Potrero campus and the blocks around the Design Center were built up) that principal Griff Williams thought for sure they'd be shuttered within a year.
Numerologists have yet to opine but there must have been something auspicious about 1616 16th Street when Gallery 16 and Urban Digital Color opened there in 1993. Back then, the neighborhood was so isolated (before California College of the Arts established its Potrero campus and the blocks around the Design Center were built up) that principal Griff Williams thought for sure they'd be shuttered within a year.
Griff Williams founded Gallery 16 at a time when the outlook for publicly funded art in America was dim. Williams was intimately familiar with the political drama playing out in D.C., not only because he was a newly minted San Francisco Art Institute MFA grad but because his father, Senator Pat Williams (D Montana), was leading the fight against Senator Jesse Helms’s crusade to eviscerate the National Endowment for the Arts.
Click here for the full story: www.thestarkguide.com/artjournalismSchoultz, Andrew: Murals With Morals
Andrew Schoultz, "In Gods We Trust" opening reception Thursday, September 4, 5:30-7:30 PM, on view through October 25, 2008; Marx & Zavattero; 77 Geary St, 2nd fl, San Francisco, 415.627.9111, www.marxzav.com
Click here for images: http://www.marxzav.com/artist.php?artistID=52
Wondering why artists seem to be silent on the topic of the United States' hegemonic hubris? Or why there is no contemporary version of Picasso's Guernica, especially from artists in San Francisco, a city with a long history of policial activisim?
Andrew Schoultz is doing his part. That last "s" in the title of Schoultz's new show at Marx & Zavattero, "One Nation Under Gods," is not a typo, it's a statement. Schoultz's images of Armaggedon are inspired by our government's track record of arrogance, especially when dealing with countries shaped by religions other than Christianity. His outrage over the state of our environment is palpable as well. Schoultz's expression developed in the antiestablishment arena of graffiti murals, in itself an act of defiance.
Click here for images: http://www.marxzav.com/artist.php?artistID=52
Wondering why artists seem to be silent on the topic of the United States' hegemonic hubris? Or why there is no contemporary version of Picasso's Guernica, especially from artists in San Francisco, a city with a long history of policial activisim?
Andrew Schoultz is doing his part. That last "s" in the title of Schoultz's new show at Marx & Zavattero, "One Nation Under Gods," is not a typo, it's a statement. Schoultz's images of Armaggedon are inspired by our government's track record of arrogance, especially when dealing with countries shaped by religions other than Christianity. His outrage over the state of our environment is palpable as well. Schoultz's expression developed in the antiestablishment arena of graffiti murals, in itself an act of defiance. Click here for the full story: www.thestarkguide.com/artjournalism
Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio: Letter of Support
To the Presidio Trust,
I think CAMP is probably the greatest gift to the city of San Francisco that one family has ever offered. The Fishers' art is the most important private collection of modern and contemporary art in the world. Its quality, breadth and depth rivals that of most major museums. When it is completed we will be a destination city for international visitors interested in art and culture.
The proposed location at the top of the parade ground at the Main Post is befitting. We would be lucky to have Richard Gluckman's beautifully designed building as-is.
Sincerely,
Marianna Stark
Publisher
The Stark Guide
Dear Marianna,
We received your letter of support. Thank you so much for supporting the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio. Your support brings us one step closer to accomplishing our goal- to give the public access to an internationally renowned art collection, hands-on art studios, and educational arts programming.
We are collecting 1,000 letters of support for CAMP, and every letter counts. Could you ask five people in your network to send me a letter a similar letter of support? A sample letter is pasted below. Public comment on this issue ends on September, 10th 2008.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at 415 – 291 – 9501.
Thank you again,
Jordana Stein
Community Outreach Coordinator
Jordana@gfpublicaffairs.com
PARAGRAPH OF SUPPORT
To the Presidio Trust:
I'm writing in support of the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio(CAMP)at the Main Post. The CAMP proposal presents a rare opportunity to simultaneously revitalize and honor one of San Francisco's most important historical landmarks. As a privately funded gift to the city, CAMP would serve as an important educational and cultural resource accessible to families, students, and residents from every part of the city and the greater Bay Area without depleting city budgets. This project is an incredibly valuable addition to the Presidio and entire SF community. Please don't deprive the city of this opportunity - if CAMP is approved, the Presidio will become an inviting place that we cherish not only for its history, but also for its future.
I think CAMP is probably the greatest gift to the city of San Francisco that one family has ever offered. The Fishers' art is the most important private collection of modern and contemporary art in the world. Its quality, breadth and depth rivals that of most major museums. When it is completed we will be a destination city for international visitors interested in art and culture.
The proposed location at the top of the parade ground at the Main Post is befitting. We would be lucky to have Richard Gluckman's beautifully designed building as-is.
Sincerely,
Marianna Stark
Publisher
The Stark Guide
Dear Marianna,
We received your letter of support. Thank you so much for supporting the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio. Your support brings us one step closer to accomplishing our goal- to give the public access to an internationally renowned art collection, hands-on art studios, and educational arts programming.
We are collecting 1,000 letters of support for CAMP, and every letter counts. Could you ask five people in your network to send me a letter a similar letter of support? A sample letter is pasted below. Public comment on this issue ends on September, 10th 2008.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at 415 – 291 – 9501.
Thank you again,
Jordana Stein
Community Outreach Coordinator
Jordana@gfpublicaffairs.com
PARAGRAPH OF SUPPORT
To the Presidio Trust:
I'm writing in support of the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio(CAMP)at the Main Post. The CAMP proposal presents a rare opportunity to simultaneously revitalize and honor one of San Francisco's most important historical landmarks. As a privately funded gift to the city, CAMP would serve as an important educational and cultural resource accessible to families, students, and residents from every part of the city and the greater Bay Area without depleting city budgets. This project is an incredibly valuable addition to the Presidio and entire SF community. Please don't deprive the city of this opportunity - if CAMP is approved, the Presidio will become an inviting place that we cherish not only for its history, but also for its future.
Silverman Gallery: Shades of Fluxus
Mini Market through August 30, 2008; Silverman Gallery; 804 Sutter Street at Jones; San Francisco; 415.255.9508; Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–6pm; http://www.silverman-gallery.com/; jess@jessicasilverman.com
Click here for images: http://look-boutique.blogspot.com/
This is a great time to visit Silverman Gallery. "Mini Market," on view through the end of the month, brings “the art of shopping and shopping for art” under one roof. It follows in the summer tradition of a group show, which is timed to give the gallery and its loyal collectors a respite after a spring season of solo exhibitions, as well as to take advantage of a city-tripping audience.
A plywood booth dominates the gallery floor, crammed with hard-to-find items: canvas totes branded with the word “shoplifter” by exhibition collaborator CITIZEN:Citizen ($27); lace jewelry from Airya Rockefeller’s May in December line ($40–$60); and ceramic butt plugs by California College of the Arts MFA and MA grad Eric Scollon ($100), whose work is also featured in Yerba Buena Center for the Art’s Bay Area Now—if you have to ask, you don’t need one. Acrylic on panel cereal boxes by '08 CCA MFA grad, Luke Butler, are a steal at $800 each. Mini Market was co-curated by Carolina Aramis, Silverman’s partner on this project and in life.
Jessica Silverman is serious about curating. She has had art on her mind since she was a kid hanging out with her grandparents, renowned Fluxus collectors Gilbert and Lila Silverman. Her exposure to the most important private collection of Fluxus art in the world gave her a big head-start among her art-world peers.
The Fluxus movement is advanced stuff—not found in Art History 101 like Impressionism or Cubism. This arcane yet influential conceptual art movement was active from 1962–1978. Fluxus artists often blended different artistic media including music and literature, in fact, the name implies movement and a flow of ideas. Fluxus work is simple, short, and often humorous. Note to civilians: Yoko Ono, John Cage, and Joseph Bueys are identified with this movement.
Silverman’s exhibition program is unique in that she often borrows important works from private collections and encourages her artists to create new work for their Silverman Gallery shows based on the influence of these pieces. New work is then displayed side by side with the inspiration piece, an art history lesson for the viewer, and for the artist it's a chance to grow from the exposure to important historical work. Silverman also has relationships with galleries abroad and sponsors an exchange program of sorts, introducing emerging international artists to
When Silverman moved her gallery from edgy Dogpatch to the border of
Silverman’s c.v. proves that she’s been using her time wisely since entering L.A’s
She arrived in
In her own gallery, Silverman works with a few queer artists exploring queer themes, but this is a coincidence. As a professionally successful, queer, female gallery owner, she is often approached by artists who may not feel welcomed by more conservative curators. Silverman artists include critically acclaimed Bay Area based artists, including Desiree Holman who won this year’s SFMOMA SECA award; and Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough, ‘08 SECA finalist.
Silverman’s mix is a dynamic, intellectually challenging program—
Stark Picks for the Week Ending 8/2/08
Hello Art Enthusiasts!
This summer I have been hard at work preparing for the fall launch of http://www.thestarkguide.com/, a comprehensive resource for collecting art in San Francisco. More details on that soon!
This week I am introducing a new Stark Guide feature: my picks for the week. When merited, I’ll let you know of great art events taking place around town.
My selections will consist of artist talks, curator lectures, and open houses: great ways to learn more about art while socializing with artists, art professionals, and fellow enthusiasts.
If you’re looking for information on regular gallery openings and listings, I recommend the San Francisco Chronicle’s 96 Hours, available as an insert in the paper every Thursday.
Art for Obama
Tuesday, July 29, 2008; 6:30 - 9:00 pm
77 Geary between Kearny and Grant
The gang at 77 Geary is collaborating to host a unique fundraising event for our next President: “Art for Obama.” All galleries are participating: Adler & Co, Rena Bransten, George Krevsky, Marx & Zavaterro, Patricia Sweetow, and Togonon. $5 minimum donation & a percent of art sold that evening will go to Obama's campaign.
For more information contact contact Lori Sottile lori@georgekrevskygallery.com (415) 397-9748
Rene de Guzman in conversation with Mark Tribe
Friday, August 1, 2008; 6:30 pm
James Moore Theatre, Oakland Museum
Directions from San Francisco: http://www.museumca.org/visit/map.html
Join Rene de Guzman, Sr. Curator, Oakland Museum, for a preview of the film Chicago 10 (6:30 pm) followed by a discussion with Mark Tribe about his Port Huron Project, a series of reenactments of protest speeches from the New Left movements of the 1960s and '70s (7:30 pm)
Event details: http://www.museumca.org/cal-public/calendar.cgi?month=08
More on the Port Huron Project: http://www.nothing.org/porthuronproject/index.html
What is Bay Area Art Now?
Saturday, August 2, 2008; 2:00 pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street btw 3rd and 4th Streets
For 15 years, YBCA has been championing the work of emerging artists of the Bay Area, in a triennial showcase that has launched many careers, but is the concept of a regional exhibition outmoded? What does it mean to be a Bay Area artist in a world that is both local and global? Moderated by YBCA Executive Director Kenneth Foster, this conversation brings together YBCA’s multidisciplinary offering of BAN 5 artists including Todd Brown, Co-Director of the Red Poppy Art House; performance artist, Dohee Lee; Madeleine Lim, Executive Director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP); visual artist Lauren Woods; and a surprise guest. (Free.)
Event Details: http://www.ybca.org/tickets/production/view.aspx?id=6001
Eleanor Harwood Closing Reception and Artist Talk
Saturday, August 2, 2008; 4:00-6:00 pm
Lincart
1632 C Market Street (btw Franklin and Gough near Zuni)
Join Eleanor Harwood in conversation about her paintings on view at Lincart. Enjoy cake baked by the artist at this closing reception.
(Take the historic Market Street F-line trolley door to door.)
Event Details: http://www.lincart.com/
Enjoy!
This summer I have been hard at work preparing for the fall launch of http://www.thestarkguide.com/, a comprehensive resource for collecting art in San Francisco. More details on that soon!
This week I am introducing a new Stark Guide feature: my picks for the week. When merited, I’ll let you know of great art events taking place around town.
My selections will consist of artist talks, curator lectures, and open houses: great ways to learn more about art while socializing with artists, art professionals, and fellow enthusiasts.
If you’re looking for information on regular gallery openings and listings, I recommend the San Francisco Chronicle’s 96 Hours, available as an insert in the paper every Thursday.
Art for Obama
Tuesday, July 29, 2008; 6:30 - 9:00 pm
77 Geary between Kearny and Grant
The gang at 77 Geary is collaborating to host a unique fundraising event for our next President: “Art for Obama.” All galleries are participating: Adler & Co, Rena Bransten, George Krevsky, Marx & Zavaterro, Patricia Sweetow, and Togonon. $5 minimum donation & a percent of art sold that evening will go to Obama's campaign.
For more information contact contact Lori Sottile lori@georgekrevskygallery.com (415) 397-9748
Rene de Guzman in conversation with Mark Tribe
Friday, August 1, 2008; 6:30 pm
James Moore Theatre, Oakland Museum
Directions from San Francisco: http://www.museumca.org/visit/map.html
Join Rene de Guzman, Sr. Curator, Oakland Museum, for a preview of the film Chicago 10 (6:30 pm) followed by a discussion with Mark Tribe about his Port Huron Project, a series of reenactments of protest speeches from the New Left movements of the 1960s and '70s (7:30 pm)
Event details: http://www.museumca.org/cal-public/calendar.cgi?month=08
More on the Port Huron Project: http://www.nothing.org/porthuronproject/index.html
What is Bay Area Art Now?
Saturday, August 2, 2008; 2:00 pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street btw 3rd and 4th Streets
For 15 years, YBCA has been championing the work of emerging artists of the Bay Area, in a triennial showcase that has launched many careers, but is the concept of a regional exhibition outmoded? What does it mean to be a Bay Area artist in a world that is both local and global? Moderated by YBCA Executive Director Kenneth Foster, this conversation brings together YBCA’s multidisciplinary offering of BAN 5 artists including Todd Brown, Co-Director of the Red Poppy Art House; performance artist, Dohee Lee; Madeleine Lim, Executive Director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP); visual artist Lauren Woods; and a surprise guest. (Free.)
Event Details: http://www.ybca.org/tickets/production/view.aspx?id=6001
Eleanor Harwood Closing Reception and Artist Talk
Saturday, August 2, 2008; 4:00-6:00 pm
Lincart
1632 C Market Street (btw Franklin and Gough near Zuni)
Join Eleanor Harwood in conversation about her paintings on view at Lincart. Enjoy cake baked by the artist at this closing reception.
(Take the historic Market Street F-line trolley door to door.)
Event Details: http://www.lincart.com/
Enjoy!
Harwood, Eleanor: And She Paints, Too
Through August 2, 2008; Lincart, 1632 C Market Street, San Francisco;
(415) 503-1981; Tue - Sat 12 to 6; http://www.lincart.com/; contact hope@lincart.com
Click here to see images: http://lincart.com/artists/album04/InvisiblePyramid
Eleanor Harwood is like that popular girl who you admired in High School: pretty, funny, friends with all the cliques, varsity athlete, class valedictorian … and she can paint, too. (Harwood claims she was not popular in High School, but will admit to being voted “most unique.”) Harwood’s career is the true story of a talented artist who found herself in the right place at the right time and took advantage of every opportunity presented to her. These days she is known for her eponymous gallery in that alternative-chic neighborhood where the Outer Mission blends with Potrero Hill, but she didn’t start out intending to be a dealer.
Her collage paintings at Lincart are magical and mysterious, with a sprinkling of retro contact paper so artfully applied that the printed laminate patterns blend seamlessly with her brushstrokes. (The effect is partly due to her use of thick acrylic polymer that she molds into the texture of wood grain.) This show is a mini-retrospective of her work, including pieces painted over the past three years.
“Invisible Pyramid Above Three Women” ($4,200) was painted in 2005 and was exhibited in her MFA show, though it looked like a different painting and has been reincarnated for this show. This is a large scale piece (48” x 48”) of fantasy sci-fi. An enormous, dead, wood grain-contact paper tree rises up in the foreground and divides the barren, apocalyptic landscape in two. Anonymous figures, completely shrouded by voluminous robes, expectantly face a sheltered cove framed by glaciers.
“A Path of Garnets Sometimes Leads You To Diamonds” ($2,000) was painted in 2008. Eye-chart detail is packed into this small 16”x 20” canvas. “Garnets” is the ultimate Easter egg hunt: jewels spill out in plain sight across a steep, fairyland cliff, tumbling into the ocean.
Harwood is influenced by the magical realism of Peter Doig’s tranquil yet eerie landscapes and by the distorted, unglamorous portraits painted during the fecund Weimar Republic in Germany, right before WWII. You can also see the impact that environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert has had on Harwood’s work, namely her Cassandra-like articles written for The New Yorker. Both artists draw our attention to the slow death of our planet.
Early on, film and video were an important part of Harwood’s body of work. In fact, storytelling is a strong element throughout her oeuvre. From 2000-2002 she participated in BAVC, the Bay Area Video Coalition (video art collecting pioneer Dick Kramlich is a board member), and before that was recognized by one of Art Forum’s contributing writers as "top ten" talent in 2001.
Part of Harwood’s cult status comes from being one of the first young curators to mold the program at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. With used books stacked to the ceiling and the scent of patchouli redolent in the air, Adobe perpetuates the mythic 60s counter culture atmosphere. The gallery in the back is no more than 88 square feet but the volunteer curators have a track record for showing raw emerging talent- artists who often go on to greater acclaim quickly after their Adobe experience.
Early exhibitions of Harwood’s own work in the Bay Area include a 2003 group show at alternative project space a.o.v. gallery (now defunct), then co-curated by a rising star talent in her own right, Julie Casemore (who is now an integral part of the staff at Stephen Wirtz Gallery), and Jonathan Fogel, editor of Tribal Arts magazine.
In 2004 Harwood received the Murphy-Cadogan Fellowship, granted to MFA candidates of exceptional promise who were nominated by their teachers. She continued to curate Adobe with artist pals Misako Inaoka and Sarah Bostwick until 2006.
In 2005 she was invited to participate in Miami’s Aqua Art Fair and decided that she should follow the calling. She attended the first fair under the name of Adobe Books Backroom Gallery and then as Eleanor Harwood Gallery in ’06 and ’07.
Nine months after that first fair, Harwood raised the funding required to launch her gallery space and has since continued to impress the art community with her keen eye for choosing artists who are both strong technicians and dedicated to their craft. One of her artists, Paul Wackers, recently won the Tournesol Award, granted by Headlands Center for the Arts to one promising Bay Area emerging painter each year.
If Harwood is the popular girl-next-door, Charles Linder is The Fonz, the cool lone wolf who all the girls wanted to date and all the boys envied. His Lincart Gallery is geographically and figuratively at the crossroads between Hayes Valley and the Mission, showing artists who don’t fit neatly into any category, like Tucker Nichols (minimalist doodles with wise literary captions) and Matt Gonzales, former SF Supervisor who makes collages with found objects. Like Harwood, Linder is also an artist-dealer who trained locally. Linder attended the San Francisco Art Institute and shows his found metal sculpture at Gallery 16.
Harwood hasn’t had much time to paint in the last few years, but the Lincart show allowed her to rearrange her priorities. She’s hiring gallery interns right now so she can devote more time to painting – perhaps a great opportunity for an aspiring artist to get swept up in her whirl. Those bound by tradition need not apply.
(415) 503-1981; Tue - Sat 12 to 6; http://www.lincart.com/; contact hope@lincart.com
Click here to see images: http://lincart.com/artists/album04/InvisiblePyramid
Eleanor Harwood is like that popular girl who you admired in High School: pretty, funny, friends with all the cliques, varsity athlete, class valedictorian … and she can paint, too. (Harwood claims she was not popular in High School, but will admit to being voted “most unique.”) Harwood’s career is the true story of a talented artist who found herself in the right place at the right time and took advantage of every opportunity presented to her. These days she is known for her eponymous gallery in that alternative-chic neighborhood where the Outer Mission blends with Potrero Hill, but she didn’t start out intending to be a dealer.
Her collage paintings at Lincart are magical and mysterious, with a sprinkling of retro contact paper so artfully applied that the printed laminate patterns blend seamlessly with her brushstrokes. (The effect is partly due to her use of thick acrylic polymer that she molds into the texture of wood grain.) This show is a mini-retrospective of her work, including pieces painted over the past three years.
“Invisible Pyramid Above Three Women” ($4,200) was painted in 2005 and was exhibited in her MFA show, though it looked like a different painting and has been reincarnated for this show. This is a large scale piece (48” x 48”) of fantasy sci-fi. An enormous, dead, wood grain-contact paper tree rises up in the foreground and divides the barren, apocalyptic landscape in two. Anonymous figures, completely shrouded by voluminous robes, expectantly face a sheltered cove framed by glaciers.
“A Path of Garnets Sometimes Leads You To Diamonds” ($2,000) was painted in 2008. Eye-chart detail is packed into this small 16”x 20” canvas. “Garnets” is the ultimate Easter egg hunt: jewels spill out in plain sight across a steep, fairyland cliff, tumbling into the ocean.
Harwood is influenced by the magical realism of Peter Doig’s tranquil yet eerie landscapes and by the distorted, unglamorous portraits painted during the fecund Weimar Republic in Germany, right before WWII. You can also see the impact that environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert has had on Harwood’s work, namely her Cassandra-like articles written for The New Yorker. Both artists draw our attention to the slow death of our planet.
Early on, film and video were an important part of Harwood’s body of work. In fact, storytelling is a strong element throughout her oeuvre. From 2000-2002 she participated in BAVC, the Bay Area Video Coalition (video art collecting pioneer Dick Kramlich is a board member), and before that was recognized by one of Art Forum’s contributing writers as "top ten" talent in 2001.
Part of Harwood’s cult status comes from being one of the first young curators to mold the program at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. With used books stacked to the ceiling and the scent of patchouli redolent in the air, Adobe perpetuates the mythic 60s counter culture atmosphere. The gallery in the back is no more than 88 square feet but the volunteer curators have a track record for showing raw emerging talent- artists who often go on to greater acclaim quickly after their Adobe experience.
Early exhibitions of Harwood’s own work in the Bay Area include a 2003 group show at alternative project space a.o.v. gallery (now defunct), then co-curated by a rising star talent in her own right, Julie Casemore (who is now an integral part of the staff at Stephen Wirtz Gallery), and Jonathan Fogel, editor of Tribal Arts magazine.
In 2004 Harwood received the Murphy-Cadogan Fellowship, granted to MFA candidates of exceptional promise who were nominated by their teachers. She continued to curate Adobe with artist pals Misako Inaoka and Sarah Bostwick until 2006.
In 2005 she was invited to participate in Miami’s Aqua Art Fair and decided that she should follow the calling. She attended the first fair under the name of Adobe Books Backroom Gallery and then as Eleanor Harwood Gallery in ’06 and ’07.
Nine months after that first fair, Harwood raised the funding required to launch her gallery space and has since continued to impress the art community with her keen eye for choosing artists who are both strong technicians and dedicated to their craft. One of her artists, Paul Wackers, recently won the Tournesol Award, granted by Headlands Center for the Arts to one promising Bay Area emerging painter each year.
If Harwood is the popular girl-next-door, Charles Linder is The Fonz, the cool lone wolf who all the girls wanted to date and all the boys envied. His Lincart Gallery is geographically and figuratively at the crossroads between Hayes Valley and the Mission, showing artists who don’t fit neatly into any category, like Tucker Nichols (minimalist doodles with wise literary captions) and Matt Gonzales, former SF Supervisor who makes collages with found objects. Like Harwood, Linder is also an artist-dealer who trained locally. Linder attended the San Francisco Art Institute and shows his found metal sculpture at Gallery 16.
Harwood hasn’t had much time to paint in the last few years, but the Lincart show allowed her to rearrange her priorities. She’s hiring gallery interns right now so she can devote more time to painting – perhaps a great opportunity for an aspiring artist to get swept up in her whirl. Those bound by tradition need not apply.
Sean Talley at Jancar Jones Gallery: Spare Meets Sparer
Sean Talley at Jancar Jones Gallery, June 6 – 28, 965 Mission St. Suite 120, between 5th and 6th Streets, San Francisco, 94103, (415) 281-3770, http://www.jancarjones.com/, Thu-Sat 12-6
Click here for images: http://www.jancarjones.com/current/sean-talley/
The Jancar Jones Gallery itself deserves an award for its supporting performance in Sean Talley’s first solo show. The art and the exhibition space happen to be complementary exhibitions in restraint.
Talley’s silkscreen prints on paper (in editions of two and five) are distant cousins to Ellsworth Kelly’s primary colored shaped canvasses and Kazimir Malevich’s stark colored graphic shapes on white background from his Suprematist period.
The clean backgrounds of these prints are startlingly pure. Printed geometric shapes like “Yellow Triangle” and “Orange Rectangle” make their white paper vibrate with energy. Stand outs in the show include: “White Rectangle” (delicate white on white) and her companion, “Black Rectangle.” “Green Curve,” is an exquisite tease. Framed, $250-$550, floating mount.
Talley's resume and blog list primarily video work. This is the artist's first experience with printmaking and traditional visual art, though the influence of his nine-to-five job as a graphic designer shows through. Talley honed his printmaking skills after receiving his BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute by taking classes at the Mission Cultural Center.
Smallest Gallery in San Francisco
Jancar Jones Gallery is a diminutive 75 square feet of exhibition space that feels like a perfect reproduction of a whitewashed Chelsea warehouse space in miniature.
965 Mission Street is a funky building that time forgot between downtrodden Sixth and burgeoning Fifth Streets. Designed in 1909 by “starchitect” Albert Pissis for the California Casket Company, you’ll feel like you’re entering a Dashiell Hammett novel as you wait for JJ to buzz you in. (Other famous Pissis- rhymes with crisis- buildings are The White House department store on Sutter and Grant, now Banana Republic, and The Emporium, now Bloomingdale’s.) Once you’re inside, follow the reassuring signs through labyrinthine hallways to the gallery suite. A half flight of stairs services only this petite space, and makes it bigger by doubling as a foyer.
Ava Jancar is the daughter of Tom Jancar of Jancar Gallery in Los Angeles, who showed such artists as Richard Prince in the 70s and has a new space that launched in late ’06 (Richard Prince is the guy who made the Marlboro Man into a work of art). Young Jancar received her BA in Art History from UCLA and completed one year of her MFA in Curatorial Studies from SFAI before they cut the program (Curatorial Studies was later reinvented as Exhibition and Museum Studies). She splits her time between her new business and her job as an assistant at Jack Hanley Gallery on Valencia and 14th.
Jancar met her business partner, Eric Jones, through the SFAI network after graduation. Jones received his BFA in the SFAI New Genres program. In addition to being responsible for the pristine look of the Jancar Jones Gallery, he is the Store Graphic Artist at Whole Foods.
Artists who have shown at JJG since its opening include Lucas DeGiulio (group show in March), whose work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and was a finalist for the 2008 SFMOMA SECA Award.
Jancar and Jones describe their aesthetic as clean and precise, not too flashy, and leaning towards non-representational: decidedly post-Mission School and perfectly in keeping with their jewel-box of a gallery.
Click here for images: http://www.jancarjones.com/current/sean-talley/
The Jancar Jones Gallery itself deserves an award for its supporting performance in Sean Talley’s first solo show. The art and the exhibition space happen to be complementary exhibitions in restraint.
Talley’s silkscreen prints on paper (in editions of two and five) are distant cousins to Ellsworth Kelly’s primary colored shaped canvasses and Kazimir Malevich’s stark colored graphic shapes on white background from his Suprematist period.
The clean backgrounds of these prints are startlingly pure. Printed geometric shapes like “Yellow Triangle” and “Orange Rectangle” make their white paper vibrate with energy. Stand outs in the show include: “White Rectangle” (delicate white on white) and her companion, “Black Rectangle.” “Green Curve,” is an exquisite tease. Framed, $250-$550, floating mount.
Talley's resume and blog list primarily video work. This is the artist's first experience with printmaking and traditional visual art, though the influence of his nine-to-five job as a graphic designer shows through. Talley honed his printmaking skills after receiving his BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute by taking classes at the Mission Cultural Center.
Smallest Gallery in San Francisco
Jancar Jones Gallery is a diminutive 75 square feet of exhibition space that feels like a perfect reproduction of a whitewashed Chelsea warehouse space in miniature.
965 Mission Street is a funky building that time forgot between downtrodden Sixth and burgeoning Fifth Streets. Designed in 1909 by “starchitect” Albert Pissis for the California Casket Company, you’ll feel like you’re entering a Dashiell Hammett novel as you wait for JJ to buzz you in. (Other famous Pissis- rhymes with crisis- buildings are The White House department store on Sutter and Grant, now Banana Republic, and The Emporium, now Bloomingdale’s.) Once you’re inside, follow the reassuring signs through labyrinthine hallways to the gallery suite. A half flight of stairs services only this petite space, and makes it bigger by doubling as a foyer.
Ava Jancar is the daughter of Tom Jancar of Jancar Gallery in Los Angeles, who showed such artists as Richard Prince in the 70s and has a new space that launched in late ’06 (Richard Prince is the guy who made the Marlboro Man into a work of art). Young Jancar received her BA in Art History from UCLA and completed one year of her MFA in Curatorial Studies from SFAI before they cut the program (Curatorial Studies was later reinvented as Exhibition and Museum Studies). She splits her time between her new business and her job as an assistant at Jack Hanley Gallery on Valencia and 14th.
Jancar met her business partner, Eric Jones, through the SFAI network after graduation. Jones received his BFA in the SFAI New Genres program. In addition to being responsible for the pristine look of the Jancar Jones Gallery, he is the Store Graphic Artist at Whole Foods.
Artists who have shown at JJG since its opening include Lucas DeGiulio (group show in March), whose work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and was a finalist for the 2008 SFMOMA SECA Award.
Jancar and Jones describe their aesthetic as clean and precise, not too flashy, and leaning towards non-representational: decidedly post-Mission School and perfectly in keeping with their jewel-box of a gallery.
Headlands Center for the Arts: Gary Sangster and the Art of Administration
HEADLANDS 2008 BENEFIT AUCTION, Thursday, June 12, 6pm – 9pm, Herbst International Exhibition Hall, The Presidio, San Francisco. For tickets: www.headlands.org/auction, email: auction@headlands.org, 415.331.2787 x33, $90 for Headlands Members, $100 for the General Public. Auction items include work by Chris Ballantyne, Thomas Campbell, Reed Danziger, KateEric, Amanda Hughen, Misako Inaoka, Packard Jennings, Lead Pencil Studio, Yoon Lee, Barry McGee, Leslie Shows, Shinique Smith, Hank Willis Thomas, William T. Wiley, and more.
Headlands Center for the Arts, 944 Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA 94965, (415) 331-2787
Check the website for upcoming public programs: www.headlands.org
What is Headlands Center for the Arts?
Clever collectors scan artists’ resumes for mention of Headlands Center for the Arts. The Center’s “alumni news” celebrates former residents who’ve participated in cutting edge exhibitions like the Venice Biennial, the Whitney Biennial, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts “Bay Area Now,” and at influential SF, NY, & LA galleries. Just being named as a finalist for the Headlands’ residency program is so prestigious that artists proudly list the Headlands Center’s annual January “Close Calls” exhibition on their CV’s.
Founded in 1987, Headlands has just entered her 20s. But what differentiates her from her older non-profit siblings (Intersection for the Arts founded 1965, New Langton Arts and Southern Exposure founded 1975), is not just the artist-in-residence program but the international roster of participants and the exquisite natural setting.
Headlands’s greatest strength, its location in a national park, is also its Achilles’ Heel: it’s not walking distance from 49 Geary. The facility itself is a cluster of whitewashed, 100-year old rustic military buildings in the quiet and foggy Marin Headlands. Because of its aspirational mission and other-worldly venue, Headlands is a hive of creativity where artists of every discipline come to cross-pollinate during their stays, while in their adjoining studios, or during meal times in the community mess hall, or on hikes in the irresistible coastal terrain that surrounds them.
There are other international residency programs for artists, but none sit in a bucolic national park minutes away from the most beautiful city in the world. Remarkably, artists are invited to explore their talent without making a commitment to a finished product. Headlands provides emerging and established artists with the valuable resources of time (usually three months) and studio space for open-ended investigation, experimentation, and collaboration - free from the usual imperative to create finished artistic “product.”
Additional inspiration comes from the facility itself, a living artwork in its own right, made up of four installations: the Ann Hamilton designed dining room; the David Ireland Conference Room and Lecture Hall; and the Bruce Tomb and John Randolph Latrine (yes, latrine). And the first site-specific commission in twenty years is being installed right now- a large scale planter box (which will grow herbs for the community kitchen) by Michael Swaine and Amy Franceschini, who received the SFMOMA SECA Award in 2006 for her conceptual art project reviving the Victory Garden from WWII.
Focus on Gary Sangster
Gary Sangster is the third Executive Director in the organization’s history. In the first two decades of its existence, Headlands established itself as an important incubator of local talent. Since Sangster’s arrival in 2005, Headlands has become more visible on both the local and international scenes. Walking through the pre-eminent North American art fair, The Armory Show, in New York last March, Sangster was continually recognized and greeted with cheer by international art world colleagues.
Beyond being well-known, what makes Sangster unique? In addition to decades of curating and teaching experience, Sangster participates. Gary can be found at happenings, fundraising events, and intimate gatherings all over town, usually wearing his disarming, trademark windbreaker and baseball cap. Despite his formal “Executive Director” title, he is engaging and gregarious with all, yet can always be counted on to lob in a trademark “tough question,” shaking up a dull art lecture during the Q&A session. Invariably his endearing Aussie accent warms his audience and he often ends up revealing a worthwhile art truth through his participation.
Steven Wolf of Steven Wolf Fine Arts explains Sangster’s universal appeal: “Gary's an intellectual. He's thoughtful and he’s an iconoclast… he's intellectually independent and open minded… about most of what goes on in the art world.”
Catching headwinds from efforts put in place before Sangster’s arrival, applications for the 2008 residency program jumped by 50% to a record 900+ applications. Due to funding and space limitations, only 50 were invited to participate- just 5% of total applicants. There are work/live accommodations for just over a dozen artists each season. These few resources are distributed each year to artists of every discipline: visual, literary, dance/performance, music, film video, even arts professionals.
Sangster’s 14-page CV lists experiences from over 30 years in the art world. The first half of his career was spent at Newcastle University, near Sydney, Australia. Sangster began as Assistant Professor of Art Education and ended up chairing the department of Art History and Theory, which may explain his signature “tough question” during art talk Q&A’s. After four years as director of Artspace in Sydney, followed by two years as chief curator of the National Gallery of New Zealand, Sangster came to the US.
Sangster gained valuable experience in the East before coming to Marin County: Curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; Chief Curator of the Jersey City Museum; Executive Director of the Cleveland Center of Contemporary Art; Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore; Director and Dean of the Art Institute of Boston.
After all of those years at specialized institutions, Sangster came to Headlands with tremendously honed skills and has implemented innovative programs (like a recent panel discussion called “Uncharted Waters: Understanding the Emerging Art Market”), and reinvigorated favorites, like the three “open house” days each year when visitors can meet artists in their studio space.
Sangster is acutely aware that in this changing economy, non-profits can no longer rely exclusively on grants and private donations, and he is intent on associating Headlands with the for-profit community, to both expand its audience and develop new revenue streams.
Owen Seitel, Chair of Headlands’s board of directors, lists some of Sangster’s contributions since arriving: “…attracting and developing a dynamic and well-respected staff, better integrating Headlands into the San Francisco Bay Area community, and placing an emphasis on documenting our programs and getting the word out to the community at large.” High praise coming from founding partner of Idell & Seitel, LLP, a San Francisco firm that specializes in intellectual property law.
Under Sangster’s leadership, the newsletter has become more robust and detailed, packed with entertaining and accessible writing about the artists-in-residence. The website has also been beefed up to include an alumni database, a full-year calendar of events, and tons of information about how Headlands inspires its visiting artists.
Recent additions to the staff include Director of Development sharon maidenberg (legally spelled all lower case), whose resume includes development positions at New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, and YBCA. Program Director Anuradha Vikram was in the first graduating class of the California College of the Arts’ Masters in Curatorial Studies program and one of her first jobs was Curatorial Assistant & Studio Manager of the Claes Oldenburg- Coosie van Bruggen Studio. Vikram has since established herself as a respected local curator, writer, and teacher.
In a move the Gen Y set can appreciate, Sangster struck up an innovative partnership with Timbuk2, the local manufacturer of chic messenger bags. Headlands artists will design a limited-edition line of bags, marketed internationally, and proceeds will support the Center.
How You Can Participate
Headlands’s range of programs open to the public have always included seasonal “open houses,” where fans can visit artists working in their studios and then join them for dinner, family-style, and then do the dishes together, too.
The Headlands auction takes place off-campus at parking-friendly Herbst International Exhibition Hall in the Presidio on Thursday, June 12. Buying art through the auction is a great way to begin or augment a fine art collection, thanks to the donations of many bold-faced-named Headlands alums. Introduce yourself to Gary and before you know it you’ll have signed up to be a member of the Center. Plan to sit next to him at the next Dinner Program.
Headlands Center for the Arts, 944 Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA 94965, (415) 331-2787
Check the website for upcoming public programs: www.headlands.org
What is Headlands Center for the Arts?
Clever collectors scan artists’ resumes for mention of Headlands Center for the Arts. The Center’s “alumni news” celebrates former residents who’ve participated in cutting edge exhibitions like the Venice Biennial, the Whitney Biennial, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts “Bay Area Now,” and at influential SF, NY, & LA galleries. Just being named as a finalist for the Headlands’ residency program is so prestigious that artists proudly list the Headlands Center’s annual January “Close Calls” exhibition on their CV’s.
Founded in 1987, Headlands has just entered her 20s. But what differentiates her from her older non-profit siblings (Intersection for the Arts founded 1965, New Langton Arts and Southern Exposure founded 1975), is not just the artist-in-residence program but the international roster of participants and the exquisite natural setting.
Headlands’s greatest strength, its location in a national park, is also its Achilles’ Heel: it’s not walking distance from 49 Geary. The facility itself is a cluster of whitewashed, 100-year old rustic military buildings in the quiet and foggy Marin Headlands. Because of its aspirational mission and other-worldly venue, Headlands is a hive of creativity where artists of every discipline come to cross-pollinate during their stays, while in their adjoining studios, or during meal times in the community mess hall, or on hikes in the irresistible coastal terrain that surrounds them.
There are other international residency programs for artists, but none sit in a bucolic national park minutes away from the most beautiful city in the world. Remarkably, artists are invited to explore their talent without making a commitment to a finished product. Headlands provides emerging and established artists with the valuable resources of time (usually three months) and studio space for open-ended investigation, experimentation, and collaboration - free from the usual imperative to create finished artistic “product.”
Additional inspiration comes from the facility itself, a living artwork in its own right, made up of four installations: the Ann Hamilton designed dining room; the David Ireland Conference Room and Lecture Hall; and the Bruce Tomb and John Randolph Latrine (yes, latrine). And the first site-specific commission in twenty years is being installed right now- a large scale planter box (which will grow herbs for the community kitchen) by Michael Swaine and Amy Franceschini, who received the SFMOMA SECA Award in 2006 for her conceptual art project reviving the Victory Garden from WWII.
Focus on Gary Sangster
Gary Sangster is the third Executive Director in the organization’s history. In the first two decades of its existence, Headlands established itself as an important incubator of local talent. Since Sangster’s arrival in 2005, Headlands has become more visible on both the local and international scenes. Walking through the pre-eminent North American art fair, The Armory Show, in New York last March, Sangster was continually recognized and greeted with cheer by international art world colleagues.
Beyond being well-known, what makes Sangster unique? In addition to decades of curating and teaching experience, Sangster participates. Gary can be found at happenings, fundraising events, and intimate gatherings all over town, usually wearing his disarming, trademark windbreaker and baseball cap. Despite his formal “Executive Director” title, he is engaging and gregarious with all, yet can always be counted on to lob in a trademark “tough question,” shaking up a dull art lecture during the Q&A session. Invariably his endearing Aussie accent warms his audience and he often ends up revealing a worthwhile art truth through his participation.
Steven Wolf of Steven Wolf Fine Arts explains Sangster’s universal appeal: “Gary's an intellectual. He's thoughtful and he’s an iconoclast… he's intellectually independent and open minded… about most of what goes on in the art world.”
Catching headwinds from efforts put in place before Sangster’s arrival, applications for the 2008 residency program jumped by 50% to a record 900+ applications. Due to funding and space limitations, only 50 were invited to participate- just 5% of total applicants. There are work/live accommodations for just over a dozen artists each season. These few resources are distributed each year to artists of every discipline: visual, literary, dance/performance, music, film video, even arts professionals.
Sangster’s 14-page CV lists experiences from over 30 years in the art world. The first half of his career was spent at Newcastle University, near Sydney, Australia. Sangster began as Assistant Professor of Art Education and ended up chairing the department of Art History and Theory, which may explain his signature “tough question” during art talk Q&A’s. After four years as director of Artspace in Sydney, followed by two years as chief curator of the National Gallery of New Zealand, Sangster came to the US.
Sangster gained valuable experience in the East before coming to Marin County: Curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; Chief Curator of the Jersey City Museum; Executive Director of the Cleveland Center of Contemporary Art; Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore; Director and Dean of the Art Institute of Boston.
After all of those years at specialized institutions, Sangster came to Headlands with tremendously honed skills and has implemented innovative programs (like a recent panel discussion called “Uncharted Waters: Understanding the Emerging Art Market”), and reinvigorated favorites, like the three “open house” days each year when visitors can meet artists in their studio space.
Sangster is acutely aware that in this changing economy, non-profits can no longer rely exclusively on grants and private donations, and he is intent on associating Headlands with the for-profit community, to both expand its audience and develop new revenue streams.
Owen Seitel, Chair of Headlands’s board of directors, lists some of Sangster’s contributions since arriving: “…attracting and developing a dynamic and well-respected staff, better integrating Headlands into the San Francisco Bay Area community, and placing an emphasis on documenting our programs and getting the word out to the community at large.” High praise coming from founding partner of Idell & Seitel, LLP, a San Francisco firm that specializes in intellectual property law.
Under Sangster’s leadership, the newsletter has become more robust and detailed, packed with entertaining and accessible writing about the artists-in-residence. The website has also been beefed up to include an alumni database, a full-year calendar of events, and tons of information about how Headlands inspires its visiting artists.
Recent additions to the staff include Director of Development sharon maidenberg (legally spelled all lower case), whose resume includes development positions at New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, and YBCA. Program Director Anuradha Vikram was in the first graduating class of the California College of the Arts’ Masters in Curatorial Studies program and one of her first jobs was Curatorial Assistant & Studio Manager of the Claes Oldenburg- Coosie van Bruggen Studio. Vikram has since established herself as a respected local curator, writer, and teacher.
In a move the Gen Y set can appreciate, Sangster struck up an innovative partnership with Timbuk2, the local manufacturer of chic messenger bags. Headlands artists will design a limited-edition line of bags, marketed internationally, and proceeds will support the Center.
How You Can Participate
Headlands’s range of programs open to the public have always included seasonal “open houses,” where fans can visit artists working in their studios and then join them for dinner, family-style, and then do the dishes together, too.
The Headlands auction takes place off-campus at parking-friendly Herbst International Exhibition Hall in the Presidio on Thursday, June 12. Buying art through the auction is a great way to begin or augment a fine art collection, thanks to the donations of many bold-faced-named Headlands alums. Introduce yourself to Gary and before you know it you’ll have signed up to be a member of the Center. Plan to sit next to him at the next Dinner Program.
Paloma, Kottie: Many Strangers Look Alike
“Kottie Paolma and the Daily Strangers”; April 24- May 7, 2008; Fecal Face Dot Gallery; 66 Gough St. @ Market, San Francisco, 94102; Wednesday 3-8pm and Sunday 12-6pm; gallery@fecalface.com
Click here for images: http://www.fecalface.com/gallery/kottie.html
If you can’t make it to FFDG by May 7th, check out Booklyn Artist Alliance:
http://www.booklyn.org/artists/%3Ch2%3EKottie%20Paloma,%20San%20Francisco,%20CA%3C/h2%3E.php
People familiar with Kottie Paloma's work know that it is geared for, um, an adult audience. With titles like “Everybody F*cks” and “Drunk Tiger,” his book art could be described as "South Park unmuzzled." But while this show is safely rated PG, it sacrifices none of the artist's trademark edginesss.
“Kottie Paloma and the Daily Strangers” documents the people you see on a regular basis but never meet formally: the corner store clerk; the muni driver who always skips your stop; neighbors in your rent-controlled apartment building; urban campers who bed down in front of your office building.
This is the third exhibition to hang in brand new Fecal Face Dot Gallery. Though the gallery is new, the FF brand name is a stalwart of the local emerging artists scene. http://www.fecalface.com/ is a vibrant online magazine founded in 2000 that covers street, lowbrow and Mission School styles in depth.
In the bricks and mortar space, over 250 five by seven graphite portraits hang together densely like a fraternity composite. According to the artist, installation was a puzzle. It was hard to decide which of the strangers should hang next to each other.
You’re not imagining it- Paloma’s strangers do look alike. As you gaze at the funny looking people, the same patterns begin to emerge on the men and the women: straight bangs, dated-looking square framed glasses, 5 o’clock shadows, shiny bald pates. But it’s the awkward, grimaced expression on each individual that makes them all look related in this wacky family portrait. ($100 each.)
Paloma drew a few portraits a day between assigments while working for Russian Hill framing shop, Frame-O-Rama. Each canvas started out as a discarded, archival, matte board that the artist cut down in the course of the work day and would have otherwise been thrown away.
Paloma’s purposefully naïve style of drawing belies his formal training. Because he didn’t officially graduate from California College of the Arts, Paloma modestly leaves his nearly completed MFA in painting and drawing off his resume. (Scholarship money fell through with just four credits to complete.) Influences include Twombly, Bacon, Warhol, Guston, and Pettibon.
Since art school, Paloma has caught the eye of quite a few young curators who have a talent for spotting emerging talent, including Eleanor Harwood, Joyce Grimm of Triple Base Gallery, and Kerry Johnston of Blankspace Gallery.
Paloma was raised in Huntington Beach but rejected “beach culture” and came to San Francisco in 1996 for the punk rock music scene. But he had begun drawing long before that. His talent was revealed as a kid while pen-paling with his family’s Swedish exchange student. Despite the house guest’s long visit, the friends were unable to correspond in Swedish or English so they drew pictures instead.
Paloma is prolific and multi-faceted, working on multiple projects and series at once. In addition to “The Daily Strangers,” there is “Soft Sculpture” and “Flag Project,” to name just two.
The original soft sculpture guy, Claes Oldenburg, made the seminal “Soft Bathtub” in 1966. Paloma puts his trademark edgy spin on the concept, depicting subject matter that reflects the perils of his Sixth and Market address, including guns, cigarettes, a sack lunch, and whiskey bottle. (Robert Crumb’s brother happens to live next door.)
“Flag Project” gently mocks the Market Street Beautification Project. Artists and non-artists alike are invited to sew a flag and hang it from the pvc flagpole mounted outside Paloma’s third floor windowsill. No theme is required and there are no rules. Brian Pederson's contribution was "Tighty-Whities"; Joan Zamora’s composition featured familiar Sixth Street icons, including a pigeon and a chicken leg.
But book art is how this versatile artist is making his mark on the art world.
Different chapters from Paloma’s ribald, audio-accompanied “Books on Tape Series Vol. 2” were recently aquired by three prestigous institutions including UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, Stanford University Library, and most recently the Library of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria.
Marshall Weber, Director of Collection Development at Booklyn Artist Alliance (Brooklyn, NY), describes Paloma’s appeal to curators and collectors: “Kottie tells it like it is – really heartfelt work, with no pulled punches, real stories about poverty, violence, shitty romance, the crappy artworld and its dorky myths, he’s the bomb.”
Learn more about book art by attending a panel discussion this 4pm this Saturday, May 3, at New Langton Arts: http://www.newlangtonarts.org/view_event.php?category=Gallery&archive=&&eventId=408
Click here for images: http://www.fecalface.com/gallery/kottie.html
If you can’t make it to FFDG by May 7th, check out Booklyn Artist Alliance:
http://www.booklyn.org/artists/%3Ch2%3EKottie%20Paloma,%20San%20Francisco,%20CA%3C/h2%3E.php
People familiar with Kottie Paloma's work know that it is geared for, um, an adult audience. With titles like “Everybody F*cks” and “Drunk Tiger,” his book art could be described as "South Park unmuzzled." But while this show is safely rated PG, it sacrifices none of the artist's trademark edginesss.
“Kottie Paloma and the Daily Strangers” documents the people you see on a regular basis but never meet formally: the corner store clerk; the muni driver who always skips your stop; neighbors in your rent-controlled apartment building; urban campers who bed down in front of your office building.
This is the third exhibition to hang in brand new Fecal Face Dot Gallery. Though the gallery is new, the FF brand name is a stalwart of the local emerging artists scene. http://www.fecalface.com/ is a vibrant online magazine founded in 2000 that covers street, lowbrow and Mission School styles in depth.
In the bricks and mortar space, over 250 five by seven graphite portraits hang together densely like a fraternity composite. According to the artist, installation was a puzzle. It was hard to decide which of the strangers should hang next to each other.
You’re not imagining it- Paloma’s strangers do look alike. As you gaze at the funny looking people, the same patterns begin to emerge on the men and the women: straight bangs, dated-looking square framed glasses, 5 o’clock shadows, shiny bald pates. But it’s the awkward, grimaced expression on each individual that makes them all look related in this wacky family portrait. ($100 each.)
Paloma drew a few portraits a day between assigments while working for Russian Hill framing shop, Frame-O-Rama. Each canvas started out as a discarded, archival, matte board that the artist cut down in the course of the work day and would have otherwise been thrown away.
Paloma’s purposefully naïve style of drawing belies his formal training. Because he didn’t officially graduate from California College of the Arts, Paloma modestly leaves his nearly completed MFA in painting and drawing off his resume. (Scholarship money fell through with just four credits to complete.) Influences include Twombly, Bacon, Warhol, Guston, and Pettibon.
Since art school, Paloma has caught the eye of quite a few young curators who have a talent for spotting emerging talent, including Eleanor Harwood, Joyce Grimm of Triple Base Gallery, and Kerry Johnston of Blankspace Gallery.
Paloma was raised in Huntington Beach but rejected “beach culture” and came to San Francisco in 1996 for the punk rock music scene. But he had begun drawing long before that. His talent was revealed as a kid while pen-paling with his family’s Swedish exchange student. Despite the house guest’s long visit, the friends were unable to correspond in Swedish or English so they drew pictures instead.
Paloma is prolific and multi-faceted, working on multiple projects and series at once. In addition to “The Daily Strangers,” there is “Soft Sculpture” and “Flag Project,” to name just two.
The original soft sculpture guy, Claes Oldenburg, made the seminal “Soft Bathtub” in 1966. Paloma puts his trademark edgy spin on the concept, depicting subject matter that reflects the perils of his Sixth and Market address, including guns, cigarettes, a sack lunch, and whiskey bottle. (Robert Crumb’s brother happens to live next door.)
“Flag Project” gently mocks the Market Street Beautification Project. Artists and non-artists alike are invited to sew a flag and hang it from the pvc flagpole mounted outside Paloma’s third floor windowsill. No theme is required and there are no rules. Brian Pederson's contribution was "Tighty-Whities"; Joan Zamora’s composition featured familiar Sixth Street icons, including a pigeon and a chicken leg.
But book art is how this versatile artist is making his mark on the art world.
Different chapters from Paloma’s ribald, audio-accompanied “Books on Tape Series Vol. 2” were recently aquired by three prestigous institutions including UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, Stanford University Library, and most recently the Library of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria.
Marshall Weber, Director of Collection Development at Booklyn Artist Alliance (Brooklyn, NY), describes Paloma’s appeal to curators and collectors: “Kottie tells it like it is – really heartfelt work, with no pulled punches, real stories about poverty, violence, shitty romance, the crappy artworld and its dorky myths, he’s the bomb.”
Learn more about book art by attending a panel discussion this 4pm this Saturday, May 3, at New Langton Arts: http://www.newlangtonarts.org/view_event.php?category=Gallery&archive=&&eventId=408
HANG ART: The Original Egalitarian Gallery Celebrates 10 Years in the Biz
HANG ART’s Ten Year Anniversary: "Then and Now," June 1- June 30, 2008, Opening Reception June 5, 2008 6-8pm; HANG ART & HANG ART annex; 556 & 567 Sutter Street; San Francisco 94102, 415 434 4264; Mon-Sat 10-6, Sun 12-5 (annex hoursTues-Sat 10-6); http://www.hangart.com/
When Shanna McBurney founded HANG ART 10 years ago, the idea of posting price tags next to the art was considered gauche by other gallerists, but the customers loved it.
Over the past 10 years, HANG ART has evolved to play an important role in the community as a “starter” gallery for collectors, artists, and arts professionals alike. Man-on-the-street reviews posted on yelp.com are effusive: “low-key, unpretentious, nice.” For some collecting virgins, HANG is the only gallery that they can recall by name. Many a HANG artist sells enough work to paint full time.
The appeal to new collectors is obvious: a comfortable atmosphere created by friendly, down-to-earth customer service, eggshell colored walls (because that’s the color your walls are at home), a rent-to-own program, and a thirty-day full refund return policy. The average price point is $1500 with plenty of choices under four figures.
As many as 60 artists are represented by the gallery, all from the Bay Area, all painters and sculptors, all ages (currently 21-74). HANG's practice of displaying one example of each of its artists' work at all times is unique and is a great way for a rookie collector to decide what styles of art she likes. Customers are cheerfully beckoned to the enormous stock room to see more if they express interest in an artist on display.
350 artists submit their portfolios every year. Staff scour ArtSpan’s annual “Open Studios” and the local BFA and MFA shows. Each artist is reviewed by the entire staff, many of whom are artists themselves. Senior staff serve on jury panels; future participation includes Director DJ Harmon helping out at an Academy of Art show and Manager Denise Ruiz at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.
HANG benefits from heavy foot traffic on its busy block of Sutter between Powell and Mason: tourists sent over by the Sir Francis Drake concierge; students filtering in and out of the Academy of Art campus buildings; ladies-who-lunch teetering up the hill on their way to the Francisca and Metropolitan clubs; and of course the masses of regular folk going in and out of 450 Suffer all day.
Tobias B. Wolff, former professor of law at UC Davis, now with UPenn, credits HANG with getting him into collecting. “It was HANG that introduced me to the idea of collecting artwork. The staff are uniformly knowledgeable, friendly and enthusiastic, and they talk about their artists like family. I feel very fortunate to have found them.” Wolff has gone on to purchase 12 more pieces for his collection since his initiation in 2003 with “Kristin: Homage to Chuck Close,” by Kevin Moore. After "Kristin," nine came from HANG and four more Moores from Hespe Gallery.
Many an artist who got his first break at HANG has gone on to galleries that also feature the work of mid-career and established artists. Alums whose work will be on display at the June 10th anniversary show include Kevin Moore, who graduated to Hespe in 2004, Anna Conti, now with Newmark, and Saundra McPherson, now with Andrea Schwarz.
Nick Coley is a typical example of an artist who is hoping to join the ranks at HANG. This Beaux Arts-trained 37 year-old has been featured in group shows around town over the years but hasn't yet been able to reach the brass ring of gallery representation. His vibrant oil paintings of urban landscapes are the intimate vistas only the locals know: a look up the north flank of Divisadero; the Richardson Bay overpass; the wide expanse of asphalt parade ground at the Presidio Main Post. He’s built up a following that pays the bills from meeting collectors while out and about painting plein air. However, Coley would prefer to split his profit with HANG in the hopes of finding an even wider audience.
HANG has been good for Addie Shevlin’s business. McBurney discovered Shevlin in the continuing education program at CCAC (now CCA) in 1998. Shevlin paints abstract landscapes with an Asian influence. Over the years she has sold hundreds of pieces through HANG and has caught the eye of many local collectors, including Rick Turley and Brendan Koon, and Kim Swig. Knowing that she had a solid customer base at HANG has allowed her take risks and as a result her work continues to evolve and grow.
Unsurprisingly, Shanna McBurney, who excelled in her undergraduate elective art history classes at Pomona, was an art world outsider when she launched HANG. As a newly minted Stanford MBA with a background in marketing medical devices she decided to apply her sales know-how to selling art. At one point in the earl 00’s, HANG had four locations: 556 and 567 Sutter, University Avenue in Palo Alto (closed 2003 during the last recession), and a partnership with Canvas Café Gallery at 9th and Lincoln (shuttered 2007).
McBurney has always had confidence in her staff, and for a long time now has been completely hands-off. Current and former employees speak highly of McBurney’s empowering leadership, and many go on to positions of increased responsibility in the art world following her tutelage.
Michelle Townsend was director of the Sutter Street location from 1998-2004. She’s currently the director of Portola Valley’s SPUR Projects but soon will be managing the international exhibition of “The Missing Peace” full time and returning part-time to the consulting business she founded in 2004 called Art Scout. “Shanna McBurney gave me tremendous freedom to recruit artists and create the exhibition program. This freedom went hand-in-hand with the need to test HANG as a [place] to have a first-rate customer experience.”
Lea Feinstein, a former studio arts professor at prestigious east coast institutions before her tenure at HANG, is now a full-time artist and widely published writer in high profile art publications such as ARTnews. She was the director of the Palo Alto location from 2001-2003. Feinstein is proud of HANG’s pioneering mission and felt a great deal of freedom under McBurney to shape the programming: “I wanted the gallery to be a place where people could learn about art, and where artists could grow and develop while they sold their works...a place where any question was an OK question.”
Christian Frock, now Associate Director at Catharine Clark Gallery and also curating her own venture, invisiblevenue.com, was Associate Director of the Palo Alto branch from 2001-2003. Frock sees McBurney as an important mentor in her career. “When I first was accepted to the curatorial program at Goldsmith’s, I called Shanna to let her know that I would be moving to London and, to my thinking, moving on.” But McBurney said, ”Well, that’s great Christian! But how are you going to continue your responsibilities at HANG?” Frock continued to work for the gallery long-distance for some time after that.
HANG’s business model has evolved to include a healthy rental and corporate art business and has tapped into a new corporate trend: companies abandoning their indoor landscaping programs and redirecting that money to art leasing. Some use Hang's leasing program as a reward, allowing select employees to pick the pieces that will be on display. When these employees visit HANG to make their selections, it is usually their first time inside a gallery… and often they become customers.
When Shanna McBurney founded HANG ART 10 years ago, the idea of posting price tags next to the art was considered gauche by other gallerists, but the customers loved it.
Over the past 10 years, HANG ART has evolved to play an important role in the community as a “starter” gallery for collectors, artists, and arts professionals alike. Man-on-the-street reviews posted on yelp.com are effusive: “low-key, unpretentious, nice.” For some collecting virgins, HANG is the only gallery that they can recall by name. Many a HANG artist sells enough work to paint full time.
The appeal to new collectors is obvious: a comfortable atmosphere created by friendly, down-to-earth customer service, eggshell colored walls (because that’s the color your walls are at home), a rent-to-own program, and a thirty-day full refund return policy. The average price point is $1500 with plenty of choices under four figures.
As many as 60 artists are represented by the gallery, all from the Bay Area, all painters and sculptors, all ages (currently 21-74). HANG's practice of displaying one example of each of its artists' work at all times is unique and is a great way for a rookie collector to decide what styles of art she likes. Customers are cheerfully beckoned to the enormous stock room to see more if they express interest in an artist on display.
350 artists submit their portfolios every year. Staff scour ArtSpan’s annual “Open Studios” and the local BFA and MFA shows. Each artist is reviewed by the entire staff, many of whom are artists themselves. Senior staff serve on jury panels; future participation includes Director DJ Harmon helping out at an Academy of Art show and Manager Denise Ruiz at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.
HANG benefits from heavy foot traffic on its busy block of Sutter between Powell and Mason: tourists sent over by the Sir Francis Drake concierge; students filtering in and out of the Academy of Art campus buildings; ladies-who-lunch teetering up the hill on their way to the Francisca and Metropolitan clubs; and of course the masses of regular folk going in and out of 450 Suffer all day.
Tobias B. Wolff, former professor of law at UC Davis, now with UPenn, credits HANG with getting him into collecting. “It was HANG that introduced me to the idea of collecting artwork. The staff are uniformly knowledgeable, friendly and enthusiastic, and they talk about their artists like family. I feel very fortunate to have found them.” Wolff has gone on to purchase 12 more pieces for his collection since his initiation in 2003 with “Kristin: Homage to Chuck Close,” by Kevin Moore. After "Kristin," nine came from HANG and four more Moores from Hespe Gallery.
Many an artist who got his first break at HANG has gone on to galleries that also feature the work of mid-career and established artists. Alums whose work will be on display at the June 10th anniversary show include Kevin Moore, who graduated to Hespe in 2004, Anna Conti, now with Newmark, and Saundra McPherson, now with Andrea Schwarz.
Nick Coley is a typical example of an artist who is hoping to join the ranks at HANG. This Beaux Arts-trained 37 year-old has been featured in group shows around town over the years but hasn't yet been able to reach the brass ring of gallery representation. His vibrant oil paintings of urban landscapes are the intimate vistas only the locals know: a look up the north flank of Divisadero; the Richardson Bay overpass; the wide expanse of asphalt parade ground at the Presidio Main Post. He’s built up a following that pays the bills from meeting collectors while out and about painting plein air. However, Coley would prefer to split his profit with HANG in the hopes of finding an even wider audience.
HANG has been good for Addie Shevlin’s business. McBurney discovered Shevlin in the continuing education program at CCAC (now CCA) in 1998. Shevlin paints abstract landscapes with an Asian influence. Over the years she has sold hundreds of pieces through HANG and has caught the eye of many local collectors, including Rick Turley and Brendan Koon, and Kim Swig. Knowing that she had a solid customer base at HANG has allowed her take risks and as a result her work continues to evolve and grow.
Unsurprisingly, Shanna McBurney, who excelled in her undergraduate elective art history classes at Pomona, was an art world outsider when she launched HANG. As a newly minted Stanford MBA with a background in marketing medical devices she decided to apply her sales know-how to selling art. At one point in the earl 00’s, HANG had four locations: 556 and 567 Sutter, University Avenue in Palo Alto (closed 2003 during the last recession), and a partnership with Canvas Café Gallery at 9th and Lincoln (shuttered 2007).
McBurney has always had confidence in her staff, and for a long time now has been completely hands-off. Current and former employees speak highly of McBurney’s empowering leadership, and many go on to positions of increased responsibility in the art world following her tutelage.
Michelle Townsend was director of the Sutter Street location from 1998-2004. She’s currently the director of Portola Valley’s SPUR Projects but soon will be managing the international exhibition of “The Missing Peace” full time and returning part-time to the consulting business she founded in 2004 called Art Scout. “Shanna McBurney gave me tremendous freedom to recruit artists and create the exhibition program. This freedom went hand-in-hand with the need to test HANG as a [place] to have a first-rate customer experience.”
Lea Feinstein, a former studio arts professor at prestigious east coast institutions before her tenure at HANG, is now a full-time artist and widely published writer in high profile art publications such as ARTnews. She was the director of the Palo Alto location from 2001-2003. Feinstein is proud of HANG’s pioneering mission and felt a great deal of freedom under McBurney to shape the programming: “I wanted the gallery to be a place where people could learn about art, and where artists could grow and develop while they sold their works...a place where any question was an OK question.”
Christian Frock, now Associate Director at Catharine Clark Gallery and also curating her own venture, invisiblevenue.com, was Associate Director of the Palo Alto branch from 2001-2003. Frock sees McBurney as an important mentor in her career. “When I first was accepted to the curatorial program at Goldsmith’s, I called Shanna to let her know that I would be moving to London and, to my thinking, moving on.” But McBurney said, ”Well, that’s great Christian! But how are you going to continue your responsibilities at HANG?” Frock continued to work for the gallery long-distance for some time after that.
HANG’s business model has evolved to include a healthy rental and corporate art business and has tapped into a new corporate trend: companies abandoning their indoor landscaping programs and redirecting that money to art leasing. Some use Hang's leasing program as a reward, allowing select employees to pick the pieces that will be on display. When these employees visit HANG to make their selections, it is usually their first time inside a gallery… and often they become customers.
Buckingham, David: Clean, Sober and Politically Incorrect
Through May 3, 2008; David Buckingham “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People”
MM Galleries, 101 Townsend St. @ 2nd Street, Suite 207, San Francisco
Hours: Tuesday - Friday: 11am - 5pm, Saturday, 12pm- 4pm, phone: 415.543.1550
email: info@mmgalleries.com, http://www.mmgalleries.com/
Click here to see images from the show: http://www.mmgalleries.com/artists/buckingham.html
It’s hard to tell you’re in San Francisco when you arrive at “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People” and are welcomed from across the room by David Buckingham’s assemblage sculpture made of welded found metal, ”English, Motherf*cker!” No, this is not angry commentary against illegal immigration; this is an homage to the movie Pulp Fiction.
Kit Schulte, co-director of MM Galleries, thought that she’d found an out-of-town buyer for “English,” the most expensive piece in the exhibition. But, on the day that Buckingham’s show opened, she received a call from the potential British buyer who sheepishly backed out of the deal. According to Schulte, “his wife wouldn’t let him buy it.” Chicken.
“Blam!” transcends the adolescent humor of mere recitation of movie lines and is a great example of Buckingham perfecting his metalworking craft. “Blam!” (lettered the Marvel Comics way) is framed by two layers of spiky explosion behind it, a triple layer cake of joyful kidstuff. (Someone please tell Berkeley comics-loving writer Michael Chabon that this piece is calling his name.)
"(Star)f*cker", a 10-foot vertical lamppost of a piece, and "Lisp", letters spelling out the sound gag "homothexual," were crafted with an L.A. audience in mind. Not all of Buckingham's work relies on incendiary wordplay. There are some more restful G-rated pieces, such as polka-dotted color studies of candy colored metal laced with rust streaks that look like futuristic board games.
‘How to Talk Dirty and Influence People” is the perfect name for the exhibition of the work of this jaded former ad man. It’s a direct lift from obscene, 50s satirist Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, which itself is a riff on the 1937 best-seller self-help book by sales guru Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
Surprisingly, Buckingham is not a native of Los Angeles, although his life sounds like a Hollywood story.
Buckingham’s art is made more compelling by his personal history, which is marked by cycles of nadir and rebirth. Originally from New Orleans, for years he was a peripatetic advertising creative director hooked on heroin before planting roots in L.A. He learned the craft of welding from Ray Kelly, founder of New York City’s Rivington School, a loose association of free spirits who hung out in the early 90s and believed that anyone could be an artist and anything could be art.
Buckingham hit rock bottom in ’99 doing time in a California jail. He’s been clean ever since. He speaks with a jittery, jumpy cadence that comes from too much coffee and too many cigarettes. He doesn’t disagree that his art saved his life.
The artist’s studio in downtown Los Angeles is a corrugated steel shack that is stiflingly hot and smells of stale cigarette smoke. A rotating standing fan offers no relief but instead stirs up metal shavings every few seconds. Sheared, colored metal dusts the floor, the aftermath of his blowtorch.
When he requires new raw materials for his art, he jumps into his rusty pickup truck and sputters off into the L.A. desert, collecting old car doors and road signs that litter the desert floor, and a few that are still tacked up. In describing this process, Buckingham hints at Deliverance-style danger as he risks his personal safety poaching metal in the lawless desert. "What I look for are old, battered, colorful metal things that have had a previous life and have the scars to prove it. I want to make art from things that have a story to tell," says Buckingham.
Buckingham was featured last year in a group show at the Riverside Art Museum called “Greetings From the American Dream,” a show examining the de-mystification of American consumerism. His piece “Holy Triptych”, three near-identical two-dimensional dollar signs fashioned from No-Trespassing signs from the California Aqueduct, was labeled as “neo-Warholian pop art.”
The word art sculpture grew up late last year when he was tapped to do the illustration for William Safire’s annual mea culpa-themed “On Language” column in the New York Times on December 23, 2007. A piece that normally would take a week or two to make was rushed to completion in three days for photographing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/magazine/23wwln-safire-t.html
Buckingham will have additional dealer representation in L.A. this summer when he joins the ranks of Peter Mendenhall’s new gallery on Wilshire Boulevard (and hangs side by side with Oakland’s Squeak Carnwath). The artist accepts commissions if you want to see your favorite movie quote in repurposed road signs. This is his first solo show with MM Galleries.
MM Galleries, 101 Townsend St. @ 2nd Street, Suite 207, San Francisco
Hours: Tuesday - Friday: 11am - 5pm, Saturday, 12pm- 4pm, phone: 415.543.1550
email: info@mmgalleries.com, http://www.mmgalleries.com/
Click here to see images from the show: http://www.mmgalleries.com/artists/buckingham.html
It’s hard to tell you’re in San Francisco when you arrive at “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People” and are welcomed from across the room by David Buckingham’s assemblage sculpture made of welded found metal, ”English, Motherf*cker!” No, this is not angry commentary against illegal immigration; this is an homage to the movie Pulp Fiction.
Kit Schulte, co-director of MM Galleries, thought that she’d found an out-of-town buyer for “English,” the most expensive piece in the exhibition. But, on the day that Buckingham’s show opened, she received a call from the potential British buyer who sheepishly backed out of the deal. According to Schulte, “his wife wouldn’t let him buy it.” Chicken.
“Blam!” transcends the adolescent humor of mere recitation of movie lines and is a great example of Buckingham perfecting his metalworking craft. “Blam!” (lettered the Marvel Comics way) is framed by two layers of spiky explosion behind it, a triple layer cake of joyful kidstuff. (Someone please tell Berkeley comics-loving writer Michael Chabon that this piece is calling his name.)
"(Star)f*cker", a 10-foot vertical lamppost of a piece, and "Lisp", letters spelling out the sound gag "homothexual," were crafted with an L.A. audience in mind. Not all of Buckingham's work relies on incendiary wordplay. There are some more restful G-rated pieces, such as polka-dotted color studies of candy colored metal laced with rust streaks that look like futuristic board games.
‘How to Talk Dirty and Influence People” is the perfect name for the exhibition of the work of this jaded former ad man. It’s a direct lift from obscene, 50s satirist Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, which itself is a riff on the 1937 best-seller self-help book by sales guru Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
Surprisingly, Buckingham is not a native of Los Angeles, although his life sounds like a Hollywood story.
Buckingham’s art is made more compelling by his personal history, which is marked by cycles of nadir and rebirth. Originally from New Orleans, for years he was a peripatetic advertising creative director hooked on heroin before planting roots in L.A. He learned the craft of welding from Ray Kelly, founder of New York City’s Rivington School, a loose association of free spirits who hung out in the early 90s and believed that anyone could be an artist and anything could be art.
Buckingham hit rock bottom in ’99 doing time in a California jail. He’s been clean ever since. He speaks with a jittery, jumpy cadence that comes from too much coffee and too many cigarettes. He doesn’t disagree that his art saved his life.
The artist’s studio in downtown Los Angeles is a corrugated steel shack that is stiflingly hot and smells of stale cigarette smoke. A rotating standing fan offers no relief but instead stirs up metal shavings every few seconds. Sheared, colored metal dusts the floor, the aftermath of his blowtorch.
When he requires new raw materials for his art, he jumps into his rusty pickup truck and sputters off into the L.A. desert, collecting old car doors and road signs that litter the desert floor, and a few that are still tacked up. In describing this process, Buckingham hints at Deliverance-style danger as he risks his personal safety poaching metal in the lawless desert. "What I look for are old, battered, colorful metal things that have had a previous life and have the scars to prove it. I want to make art from things that have a story to tell," says Buckingham.
Buckingham was featured last year in a group show at the Riverside Art Museum called “Greetings From the American Dream,” a show examining the de-mystification of American consumerism. His piece “Holy Triptych”, three near-identical two-dimensional dollar signs fashioned from No-Trespassing signs from the California Aqueduct, was labeled as “neo-Warholian pop art.”
The word art sculpture grew up late last year when he was tapped to do the illustration for William Safire’s annual mea culpa-themed “On Language” column in the New York Times on December 23, 2007. A piece that normally would take a week or two to make was rushed to completion in three days for photographing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/magazine/23wwln-safire-t.html
Buckingham will have additional dealer representation in L.A. this summer when he joins the ranks of Peter Mendenhall’s new gallery on Wilshire Boulevard (and hangs side by side with Oakland’s Squeak Carnwath). The artist accepts commissions if you want to see your favorite movie quote in repurposed road signs. This is his first solo show with MM Galleries.
21st Annual Solo Mujeres Show, "Women on War": These Artists Will Not Be Voting For McCain
Through March 29, 2007; Women on War: Solo Mujeres 21st Annual Juried Show; $5 admission; Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission Street @ 25th Street, San Francisco; hours Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 10am-10pm; 415-821-1155
http://www.missionculturalcenter.org/gallery08.htm
Looking at political art doesn’t have to be the cultural equivalent of eating your vegetables. “Women on War” is a satisfyingly varied show featuring works of art that have great range in scale, tone, and craft. The prescient show organizers chose the theme for this year’s 21st annual “Solo Mujeres” (only women) show at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts long before the Republican candidate for President shared his vision for a 100 year sleepover in Iraq.
This year the Mission Cultural Center invited the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art to participate in their annual "Solo Mujeres" show. Both these groups have a long history of activism. The MCCLA was established in 1977 in San Francisco’s Mission District in order to preserve and develop the Latino cultural arts. The art gallery is just one aspect of their programming which also includes contemporary and folkloric dance, music, printmaking, and youth programs. Themes for “Solo Mujeres” in recent years have been “Tactics & Strategy” and “Visionary Women.”
WCA was founded in 1972 in San Francisco during the 61st College Arts Association conference, to protest the lack of women in the ranks of that national professional organization for visuals arts teachers. The Northern California chapter, one of the oldest, was formed later that year. That was long before the masked performance art troupe “Guerilla Girls” were beating their chests in frustration over male domination of the art world.
Karen Tsujimoto, Senior Curator of Art at the Oakland Museum, juried the show and picked an array of work by 25 artists, culled down from over 200 submissions. Tsujimoto is a 25+ year veteran of the Bay Area art world, and an expert on California art. She has published books on Wayne Thiebaud, Joan Brown and Peter Voulkos, to name a few. She made her selections based on the artistic merit of each work in combination with the artist’s statement about how each piece relates to the theme of war.
Tsujimoto says she was impressed by the variety of war-related subject matter represented including WWII Japan, manifest destiny, women in the military, and the desaparecidos (the term for people kidnapped and murdered at the hands of various South American military dictatorships, never to be found by their loved ones). Each artist’s words are posted next to her piece to provide context and insight for the viewer.
Nuala Creed’s “Babes in Arms” ($1,600) are sweet ceramic babies outfitted with machine guns, helmets, and gas masks. Creed started this series after the irony of her participation in the 2002 White House Christmas Tree project struck her: three months after she took part in that innocent tradition we invaded Iraq. (The first babe in the series was sold to famous, droll, conceptual/message artist Jenny Holzer, whose most widely recognized work employs scrolling LED message signs as her canvas.)
Claudia Chapline of the eponymous Stinson Beach gallery (celebrating its 20th anniversary this year), did a wall installation of dozens of small crosses made of found materials ($150-$1,500). The dense aggregation of homespun devotional objects looks like those spontaneous shrines that show up at the site of tragic car accidents, gang killings, even the one for Diana that piled up outside Buckingham Palace in the immediate days after her death.
"Nightmare 1,2,3,4" ($600) by Eileen Zevallos, is called out by the show’s organizers as a seminal piece in this artist’s maturing career. This hauntingly beautiful mixed media piece has a dreamlike quality; collaged photographed figures wander ghost-like through a watercolor crimson fog.
Also going on at the Mission Cultural Center is a retrospective of the work of Yolanda Lopez, an American Chicana, painter, printmaker, and filmmaker. Lopez was a student at S.F. State in the early 60s and the morals of the civil rights movement affected her deeply. Her work varies from the strong stuff of United Farm Workers strike propaganda to a loving celebration of her own family’s blue collar matriarchy. The connection between this exhibition and "Women on War" is that Lopez is the 2008 recipient of the Women’s Caucus for Art lifetime achievement award.
http://www.missionculturalcenter.org/gallery08.htm
Looking at political art doesn’t have to be the cultural equivalent of eating your vegetables. “Women on War” is a satisfyingly varied show featuring works of art that have great range in scale, tone, and craft. The prescient show organizers chose the theme for this year’s 21st annual “Solo Mujeres” (only women) show at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts long before the Republican candidate for President shared his vision for a 100 year sleepover in Iraq.
This year the Mission Cultural Center invited the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art to participate in their annual "Solo Mujeres" show. Both these groups have a long history of activism. The MCCLA was established in 1977 in San Francisco’s Mission District in order to preserve and develop the Latino cultural arts. The art gallery is just one aspect of their programming which also includes contemporary and folkloric dance, music, printmaking, and youth programs. Themes for “Solo Mujeres” in recent years have been “Tactics & Strategy” and “Visionary Women.”
WCA was founded in 1972 in San Francisco during the 61st College Arts Association conference, to protest the lack of women in the ranks of that national professional organization for visuals arts teachers. The Northern California chapter, one of the oldest, was formed later that year. That was long before the masked performance art troupe “Guerilla Girls” were beating their chests in frustration over male domination of the art world.
Karen Tsujimoto, Senior Curator of Art at the Oakland Museum, juried the show and picked an array of work by 25 artists, culled down from over 200 submissions. Tsujimoto is a 25+ year veteran of the Bay Area art world, and an expert on California art. She has published books on Wayne Thiebaud, Joan Brown and Peter Voulkos, to name a few. She made her selections based on the artistic merit of each work in combination with the artist’s statement about how each piece relates to the theme of war.
Tsujimoto says she was impressed by the variety of war-related subject matter represented including WWII Japan, manifest destiny, women in the military, and the desaparecidos (the term for people kidnapped and murdered at the hands of various South American military dictatorships, never to be found by their loved ones). Each artist’s words are posted next to her piece to provide context and insight for the viewer.
Nuala Creed’s “Babes in Arms” ($1,600) are sweet ceramic babies outfitted with machine guns, helmets, and gas masks. Creed started this series after the irony of her participation in the 2002 White House Christmas Tree project struck her: three months after she took part in that innocent tradition we invaded Iraq. (The first babe in the series was sold to famous, droll, conceptual/message artist Jenny Holzer, whose most widely recognized work employs scrolling LED message signs as her canvas.)
Claudia Chapline of the eponymous Stinson Beach gallery (celebrating its 20th anniversary this year), did a wall installation of dozens of small crosses made of found materials ($150-$1,500). The dense aggregation of homespun devotional objects looks like those spontaneous shrines that show up at the site of tragic car accidents, gang killings, even the one for Diana that piled up outside Buckingham Palace in the immediate days after her death.
"Nightmare 1,2,3,4" ($600) by Eileen Zevallos, is called out by the show’s organizers as a seminal piece in this artist’s maturing career. This hauntingly beautiful mixed media piece has a dreamlike quality; collaged photographed figures wander ghost-like through a watercolor crimson fog.
Also going on at the Mission Cultural Center is a retrospective of the work of Yolanda Lopez, an American Chicana, painter, printmaker, and filmmaker. Lopez was a student at S.F. State in the early 60s and the morals of the civil rights movement affected her deeply. Her work varies from the strong stuff of United Farm Workers strike propaganda to a loving celebration of her own family’s blue collar matriarchy. The connection between this exhibition and "Women on War" is that Lopez is the 2008 recipient of the Women’s Caucus for Art lifetime achievement award.
Museum of Craft and Folk Art: A Niche Arts Non-Profit That the Tourists Can Find but the Locals Can’t
The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, Globalization, February 15-April 27, 2008; $5 admission; 51 Yerba Buena Lane @ Mission btw. 3rd – 4th; San Francisco, 94103, 415-227-4888, M-F 11-6 (CLOSED WEDNESDAYS), Sat-Sun 11-5; http://www.mocfa.org/
Not sure where Yerba Buena Lane is? Ask Jennifer McCabe, the new Executive Director, who’s had her eye on the Museum of Craft and Folk Art for a long time. Late last year, McCabe chose to make the professional leap from well-respected experimental non-profit New Langton Arts to jewel-box niche non-profit MOCFA, the only folk art museum in Northern California.
The new show on display is The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, Globalization. McCabe was able to put her stamp on this long-planned show that is traveling from the Godwin-Ternback Museum at Queens College. For MOCFA’s intimate space, she reorganized the installation of over 30 garments and textiles from the original chronological order to one constrasting silhouettes and styles, all the better to show the links between cultures across time. Additionally, she’s also infused the exhibition with the work of contemporary textile designers to show where the medium is going. Garments from ancient cultures sit next to pieces by the house of Chanel, scrunch queen Mary McFadden, Pucci and the fashions of Carla Fernandez, a contemporary Mexico City based designer who uses sewing techniques from indigenous Mexican cultures.
In December 2005, the Museum of Craft and Folk Art moved from its 20-year home in Fort Mason to a petite storefront on Yerba Buena Lane. The Museum of Craft and Folk Art is tucked along the newly minted pedestrian alley (master-planned by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency in the ‘80s), and is patiently waiting for blockbuster big sis, the new Contemporary Jewish Museum, to open directly across the way in Fall 2008.
When you go, be aware that the museum is small, about 1500 sq ft, but your $5 admission is well worth it. The MOCFA is a carefully curated jewel box, making the most of every inch of space. The price of your ticket also funds the museum’s education program for elementary school students, which is designed to integrate the arts with cultural studies and social sciences.
McCabe is going to shake things up while still honoring the museum’s existing tradition of strong scholarship. She’ll bring in more contemporary artists and build on her community ties by bringing in the work of local artists. Benevolent landlord Millenium Partners is allowing McCabe to take advantage of the (for now) empty storefronts along the lane and showcase the work of CCA (California College of the Arts) students and grads. (CCA used to have the word craft in its name-California College of Arts and Crafts- and its undergraduate programming still has a heavy emphasis on craft with majors including Ceramics, Fashion Design, Furniture, Glass, Jewelry/Metal Arts, and Textiles.)
The retail store, an important revenue-generator for the museum, will remerchandise its assortment to feature more work from Bay Area artisans. The new Buyer, Heather Griggs, hails from SF based specialty retailer Williams-Sonoma Inc. She’s in search of more local jewelry designers and craft artists like Olivia Competente, Corinne Okada, and one-namer “Maja.”
Curating is all in the family for this newlywed. McCabe's husband Julio Cesar Morales is an artist, curator, gallery director (Queen’s Nails Annex) and professor (San Francisco Art Institute). He will participate in a panel discussion about the current MOCFA show on Saturday March 15 at 2:00 pm titled Cross Reference: fashion, music and film. McCabe and Morales met when he was commissioned to produce a new work by New Langton Arts in 2005.
Beginning in 2004, McCabe spent three years with New Langton Arts, leapfrogging from Program Manager to Assistant Director. Shortly after arriving at N.L.A. she organized the first retrospective of the career of Tony Labat, a conceptual and performance artist and teacher at San Francisco Art Institute. She also regularly teaches classes in contemporary art history at Mills, SF State and City College.
History of the Museum
The Museum of Craft & Folk Art was founded in 1983 by Gertrud and Harold Parker (no relation to the former director of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, Harry S. Parker III). Gertrud is an accomplished fiber artist who began her training in the textile arts as a child in Vienna. A resident of the Bay Area since 1939, she studied and experimented further with textile arts through the 1970s. She was inspired to start the museum in 1981 after visiting the Contemporary Craft Museum in New York, whose permanent collection was dominated by Bay Area artists.
Back in SF, friends who learned of Gertrud Parker’s new mission introduced her to Margery Annenberg, a gold and silversmith who had started a gallery in 1966. The two women joined forces and a modest space was secured at 626 Balboa Street. Then, with infusions of cash first from The San Francisco Foundation then from the James Irvine Foundation, the museum was able to secure a proper gallery space at Fort Mason where it thrived for the next 20 years.
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend at the de Young Museum last year was a terrific show but contemporary quilts have been covered by a museum in this town before. In 1988 MCFA held their groundbreaking show, “Who’d a Thought It,” featuring the work of Bay Area African-American women. This was the first MOCFA show to be underwritten by the National Endowment for the Arts, and it traveled to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., the American Craft Museum in New York and the Field Museum in Chicago.
1991 was another pivotal year for MOCFA. A consultant from the American Association of Museums recommended that the board de-accession the permanent collection in order to free up valuable resources (money and staff time) that were required to house catalog records and the collection in a climate controlled environment. The proceeds from the sale of the collection were reinvested in an endowment fund and the staff were then able to concentrate on education through exhibitions and publications.
Fast forward to today. MOCFA resides in a stunning flagship location on pedestrian-only Yerba Buena Lane and the Parkers are still active members of the board on a first name basis with the staff.
Making the Most of Your Visit to Yerba Buena Lane
If you're already downtown, the dead end of Grant Ave. at Market is directly across the street from Yerba Buena Lane. If you're driving, park at the Jessie Square Garage (enter from Stevenson which is off Third Street between Mission and Market). Upon exiting the garage, walk south to Mission and you’ll see Beard Papa, a Japanese chain of made-to-order cream puffs. You’ve arrived at the foot of the alley. While you’re eating your pastry, look directly east at St. Patrick’s Church, one of the few pre-war buildings that remains since the Redevelopment Agency began the nieghborhood’s facelift over 20 years ago.
After visiting the Museum’s exhibition space and gift shop, continue towards Market Street (it’s OK to take a moment in St. John Knits) and head to the 5th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel to see their permanent collection of the work of contemporary California artists.
Start at the concierge’s desk and ask fot the pamphlet, The Four Seasons Art Experience; A Walking Tour of the Hotel’s Art Collection Featuring Works of Bay Area Artists. They have a good combination of emerging and established artists like Jennifer Starkweather, Katherine Sherwood, Deboarh Orpallo and David Ireland. You can download the tour on your own ipod for free before you go or borrow one while you’re there: http://www.fourseasons.com/sanfrancisco/podcast/art/
Southern Exposure’s talented “audio lead” Tim Halbur interviewed the artsits for the podcast and produced the piece.
When the Jewish Museum opens its doors across the lane and when some of the high profile retailers fill the storefronts, Yerba Buena Lane should become the vibrant throughfare that it is meant to be. For now, even the postman is having trouble finding MOCFA.
Not sure where Yerba Buena Lane is? Ask Jennifer McCabe, the new Executive Director, who’s had her eye on the Museum of Craft and Folk Art for a long time. Late last year, McCabe chose to make the professional leap from well-respected experimental non-profit New Langton Arts to jewel-box niche non-profit MOCFA, the only folk art museum in Northern California.
The new show on display is The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, Globalization. McCabe was able to put her stamp on this long-planned show that is traveling from the Godwin-Ternback Museum at Queens College. For MOCFA’s intimate space, she reorganized the installation of over 30 garments and textiles from the original chronological order to one constrasting silhouettes and styles, all the better to show the links between cultures across time. Additionally, she’s also infused the exhibition with the work of contemporary textile designers to show where the medium is going. Garments from ancient cultures sit next to pieces by the house of Chanel, scrunch queen Mary McFadden, Pucci and the fashions of Carla Fernandez, a contemporary Mexico City based designer who uses sewing techniques from indigenous Mexican cultures.
In December 2005, the Museum of Craft and Folk Art moved from its 20-year home in Fort Mason to a petite storefront on Yerba Buena Lane. The Museum of Craft and Folk Art is tucked along the newly minted pedestrian alley (master-planned by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency in the ‘80s), and is patiently waiting for blockbuster big sis, the new Contemporary Jewish Museum, to open directly across the way in Fall 2008.
When you go, be aware that the museum is small, about 1500 sq ft, but your $5 admission is well worth it. The MOCFA is a carefully curated jewel box, making the most of every inch of space. The price of your ticket also funds the museum’s education program for elementary school students, which is designed to integrate the arts with cultural studies and social sciences.
McCabe is going to shake things up while still honoring the museum’s existing tradition of strong scholarship. She’ll bring in more contemporary artists and build on her community ties by bringing in the work of local artists. Benevolent landlord Millenium Partners is allowing McCabe to take advantage of the (for now) empty storefronts along the lane and showcase the work of CCA (California College of the Arts) students and grads. (CCA used to have the word craft in its name-California College of Arts and Crafts- and its undergraduate programming still has a heavy emphasis on craft with majors including Ceramics, Fashion Design, Furniture, Glass, Jewelry/Metal Arts, and Textiles.)
The retail store, an important revenue-generator for the museum, will remerchandise its assortment to feature more work from Bay Area artisans. The new Buyer, Heather Griggs, hails from SF based specialty retailer Williams-Sonoma Inc. She’s in search of more local jewelry designers and craft artists like Olivia Competente, Corinne Okada, and one-namer “Maja.”
Curating is all in the family for this newlywed. McCabe's husband Julio Cesar Morales is an artist, curator, gallery director (Queen’s Nails Annex) and professor (San Francisco Art Institute). He will participate in a panel discussion about the current MOCFA show on Saturday March 15 at 2:00 pm titled Cross Reference: fashion, music and film. McCabe and Morales met when he was commissioned to produce a new work by New Langton Arts in 2005.
Beginning in 2004, McCabe spent three years with New Langton Arts, leapfrogging from Program Manager to Assistant Director. Shortly after arriving at N.L.A. she organized the first retrospective of the career of Tony Labat, a conceptual and performance artist and teacher at San Francisco Art Institute. She also regularly teaches classes in contemporary art history at Mills, SF State and City College.
History of the Museum
The Museum of Craft & Folk Art was founded in 1983 by Gertrud and Harold Parker (no relation to the former director of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, Harry S. Parker III). Gertrud is an accomplished fiber artist who began her training in the textile arts as a child in Vienna. A resident of the Bay Area since 1939, she studied and experimented further with textile arts through the 1970s. She was inspired to start the museum in 1981 after visiting the Contemporary Craft Museum in New York, whose permanent collection was dominated by Bay Area artists.
Back in SF, friends who learned of Gertrud Parker’s new mission introduced her to Margery Annenberg, a gold and silversmith who had started a gallery in 1966. The two women joined forces and a modest space was secured at 626 Balboa Street. Then, with infusions of cash first from The San Francisco Foundation then from the James Irvine Foundation, the museum was able to secure a proper gallery space at Fort Mason where it thrived for the next 20 years.
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend at the de Young Museum last year was a terrific show but contemporary quilts have been covered by a museum in this town before. In 1988 MCFA held their groundbreaking show, “Who’d a Thought It,” featuring the work of Bay Area African-American women. This was the first MOCFA show to be underwritten by the National Endowment for the Arts, and it traveled to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., the American Craft Museum in New York and the Field Museum in Chicago.
1991 was another pivotal year for MOCFA. A consultant from the American Association of Museums recommended that the board de-accession the permanent collection in order to free up valuable resources (money and staff time) that were required to house catalog records and the collection in a climate controlled environment. The proceeds from the sale of the collection were reinvested in an endowment fund and the staff were then able to concentrate on education through exhibitions and publications.
Fast forward to today. MOCFA resides in a stunning flagship location on pedestrian-only Yerba Buena Lane and the Parkers are still active members of the board on a first name basis with the staff.
Making the Most of Your Visit to Yerba Buena Lane
If you're already downtown, the dead end of Grant Ave. at Market is directly across the street from Yerba Buena Lane. If you're driving, park at the Jessie Square Garage (enter from Stevenson which is off Third Street between Mission and Market). Upon exiting the garage, walk south to Mission and you’ll see Beard Papa, a Japanese chain of made-to-order cream puffs. You’ve arrived at the foot of the alley. While you’re eating your pastry, look directly east at St. Patrick’s Church, one of the few pre-war buildings that remains since the Redevelopment Agency began the nieghborhood’s facelift over 20 years ago.
After visiting the Museum’s exhibition space and gift shop, continue towards Market Street (it’s OK to take a moment in St. John Knits) and head to the 5th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel to see their permanent collection of the work of contemporary California artists.
Start at the concierge’s desk and ask fot the pamphlet, The Four Seasons Art Experience; A Walking Tour of the Hotel’s Art Collection Featuring Works of Bay Area Artists. They have a good combination of emerging and established artists like Jennifer Starkweather, Katherine Sherwood, Deboarh Orpallo and David Ireland. You can download the tour on your own ipod for free before you go or borrow one while you’re there: http://www.fourseasons.com/sanfrancisco/podcast/art/
Southern Exposure’s talented “audio lead” Tim Halbur interviewed the artsits for the podcast and produced the piece.
When the Jewish Museum opens its doors across the lane and when some of the high profile retailers fill the storefronts, Yerba Buena Lane should become the vibrant throughfare that it is meant to be. For now, even the postman is having trouble finding MOCFA.
Koen, Seth: Witty Whittled Punctuation
Through March 1, 2008, Seth Koen “Ellipsis,” 49 Geary Street, Fifth Floor, San Francisco 94108, 415-296-9661, info@gregorylindgallery.com, Tuesday through Saturday 10:30am - 5:30pm. http://gregorylindgallery.com/
Click here for images:
http://gregorylindgallery.com/exhibitions/2008/koen/#clickimage
Seth Koen’s work has evolved dramatically from the knitted amoebic soft sculpture he had been carefully crocheting for years. His new pieces are delicate long stretches of unvarnished maple that seem to defy gravity as they soar in the air. If you’re searching for a way to classify this style of sculpture, Koen suggests “friendly minimalism.”
The spirits of Sol LeWitt’s conceptual line drawings, Alexander Calder’s playful mobiles and Constantine Brancusi’s graceful abstract birds are present in the gallery with Koen’s work. “Cardinal Point” looks like a flying lasso. “Sway” is two wishbones. “Simple Gift” is an empty vase waiting for Valentine’s Day flowers.
The special effects secret is tiny pins that secure the pieces to the wall or custom designed shelf (also called “display furniture”). Fortunately the display furniture comes with your purchase of the sculpture, in case you were wondering how you could set one up in your own home.
These sculptures are essentially line drawings in three dimensions. Carving wood and crocheting yarn turn out to be similar processes for Koen, each very methodical and incremental. In fact, Koen’s interest in line goes all the way back to the undergraduate thesis show he exhibited at Hampshire College, “Sculpture or Drawing?”
Since his days in the intimate MFA program at Mills College in ’01-’02, he has been knitting his signature whimsical organic shapes (many with sperm-like tails) in bright jellybean colors. The soft work is all done using the single crochet stitch, the most basic and simple one available to real-life knitters. Koen’s work got him noticed at Mills, where he won two prestigious awards as a student: the Murphy Cadogan Fellowship, awarded to Bay Area MFA students nominated by their teachers in between their first and second years, and the equally prestigious Jay DeFeo Prize.
The Jay DeFeo Prize is awarded annually by Mills College to a graduating Master of Fine Arts student in the Art Department whose work demonstrates excellence and great promise. It is unique in that it bestows a substantial gift of money, exactly what a newly minted MFA needs, intended to help the emerging artist make the transition from school to the real world. The funds for this endowed Prize were stipulated in the will of the artist Jay DeFeo (American, 1929-1989), who was a professor of painting at Mills College from 1981 until her death. Koen considers himself fortunate to have been able to apply the money to a couple years’ rent on a comfortable studio space.
Another opportunity that helped bridge the gap from student to working artist was the invitation to work as an assistant in the studio of his Mills teacher and mentor, sculptor Ron Nagle. While Nagle’s media and methods are very different from Koen’s, the sensibility and attention to detail are common factors. (Legendary California ceramicist Nagle is represented by the Rena Bransten Gallery.)
Right after graduating from Mills, Koen was asked to participate in a group show at the nascent Gregory Lind Gallery. Lind says that he took notice of Koen because the artist already had developed “his own vocabulary… his own language.” Lind began to officially represent Koen as his dealer in 2003. This is Koen’s third solo show with the Gregory Lind Gallery.
Gregory Lind is known for showing art with clean, colorful graphics plus an intellectual zing, usually a tie to art history or science. He has a track record of discovering emerging artists and propelling them to national and international recognition. Sarah Bostwick, Marti Cormand and Sarah Walker are all young artists whose work has been purchased by major U.S. museums since signing on with Lind.
Click here for images:
http://gregorylindgallery.com/exhibitions/2008/koen/#clickimage
Seth Koen’s work has evolved dramatically from the knitted amoebic soft sculpture he had been carefully crocheting for years. His new pieces are delicate long stretches of unvarnished maple that seem to defy gravity as they soar in the air. If you’re searching for a way to classify this style of sculpture, Koen suggests “friendly minimalism.”
The spirits of Sol LeWitt’s conceptual line drawings, Alexander Calder’s playful mobiles and Constantine Brancusi’s graceful abstract birds are present in the gallery with Koen’s work. “Cardinal Point” looks like a flying lasso. “Sway” is two wishbones. “Simple Gift” is an empty vase waiting for Valentine’s Day flowers.
The special effects secret is tiny pins that secure the pieces to the wall or custom designed shelf (also called “display furniture”). Fortunately the display furniture comes with your purchase of the sculpture, in case you were wondering how you could set one up in your own home.
These sculptures are essentially line drawings in three dimensions. Carving wood and crocheting yarn turn out to be similar processes for Koen, each very methodical and incremental. In fact, Koen’s interest in line goes all the way back to the undergraduate thesis show he exhibited at Hampshire College, “Sculpture or Drawing?”
Since his days in the intimate MFA program at Mills College in ’01-’02, he has been knitting his signature whimsical organic shapes (many with sperm-like tails) in bright jellybean colors. The soft work is all done using the single crochet stitch, the most basic and simple one available to real-life knitters. Koen’s work got him noticed at Mills, where he won two prestigious awards as a student: the Murphy Cadogan Fellowship, awarded to Bay Area MFA students nominated by their teachers in between their first and second years, and the equally prestigious Jay DeFeo Prize.
The Jay DeFeo Prize is awarded annually by Mills College to a graduating Master of Fine Arts student in the Art Department whose work demonstrates excellence and great promise. It is unique in that it bestows a substantial gift of money, exactly what a newly minted MFA needs, intended to help the emerging artist make the transition from school to the real world. The funds for this endowed Prize were stipulated in the will of the artist Jay DeFeo (American, 1929-1989), who was a professor of painting at Mills College from 1981 until her death. Koen considers himself fortunate to have been able to apply the money to a couple years’ rent on a comfortable studio space.
Another opportunity that helped bridge the gap from student to working artist was the invitation to work as an assistant in the studio of his Mills teacher and mentor, sculptor Ron Nagle. While Nagle’s media and methods are very different from Koen’s, the sensibility and attention to detail are common factors. (Legendary California ceramicist Nagle is represented by the Rena Bransten Gallery.)
Right after graduating from Mills, Koen was asked to participate in a group show at the nascent Gregory Lind Gallery. Lind says that he took notice of Koen because the artist already had developed “his own vocabulary… his own language.” Lind began to officially represent Koen as his dealer in 2003. This is Koen’s third solo show with the Gregory Lind Gallery.
Gregory Lind is known for showing art with clean, colorful graphics plus an intellectual zing, usually a tie to art history or science. He has a track record of discovering emerging artists and propelling them to national and international recognition. Sarah Bostwick, Marti Cormand and Sarah Walker are all young artists whose work has been purchased by major U.S. museums since signing on with Lind.
Mencher, Kenney: Under 21 Not Allowed
Lovers and Liars: Kenney Mencher on display through March 1, 2008, Varnish Fine Art, 77 Natoma between 1st and 2nd St. and Mission and Howard, San Francisco, 94105, 415-222-6131, Tues-Fri 11am-11pm-ish [wine bar opens at 5pm] and Sat 1pm-5pm http://www.varnishfineart.com/
Click here for images:http://www.varnishfineart.com/artwork/show.php?s=57
Jonesing for some tele-noir? You are if you’re an NPR junkie. All last year we listened to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross and her frequent guest, TV critic David Bianculli, first grieve the loss of The Sopranos, then beat the drum slowly for The Wire. As the Hollywood writers’ strike approaches its twelfth week, the networks have run out of fresh episodes of television serials and are resorting to reruns and late-night experiments. Fortunately, you can get your fix this month at Varnish Fine Art where Kenney Mencher’s campy pulp fiction-inspired oil paintings are on display.
With titles like “After School Special” (sold) and “Hotel/Motel,” Mencher’s work features heaving bosoms, blindfolds and grand gestures painted in a loose realist style. (Imagine an unbuttoned Edward Hopper.) Much like Jeff Wall’s artistic process, he stages his paintings first with live models in costume, then works from photographs. Often the models get into the act by suggesting storylines and poses, turning the photo shoot into a piece of performance art.
Mencher is a guy who’s gotta paint. He graduated with a BA (CUNY) and an MFA (UC Davis) in Art History, then completed his trifecta of advanced art degrees with an MA in painting from the University of Cincinnati. He has been an Associate Professor of Art & Art History since 1999 with Ohlone, a Junior College in Fremont. Influences include Duane Hanson, 20’s and 30’s pulp fiction illustrations and N.C. Wyeth, the early 20th Century illustrator who also worked from composed scenes.
Mencher has a little bit of a reputation. He was dismissed from Hang Art in 2003 by then gallery director Michelle Townsend (now with Portola Valley’s SPUR Projects), who, in an oft-repeated quote, said the gallery employees felt his work was too “wry and perverted.”
The following year, his work was pulled off the walls of a consultant-curated federal office in Sacramento. It probably was a little too ribald for the California State Teachers' Retirement System building. (He’s in good company, though; some nudes by North Beach notable Lawrence Ferlinghetti, represented by George Krevsky, were recently pulled down from the halls of the B of A building with no explanation.)
Perhaps Mencher, whose collectors include KQED’s quirky Josh Kornbluth, hasn’t found the right venue for his work. Hang prides itself on being highly accessible to rookie collectors who may not be ready for a guy whose thesis in grad school was "Vampires, the Audiences They Consume.” Varnish is more like it, with a track record of showing pop surrealism that veers closer to fine art than lowbrow art. Mencher’s next show after this is at Stanford Art Spaces beginning February 15.
The kitschy subject matter will be at home in this alternative space. Varnish Fine Art is different from other local art bars not because it extends its reach into fine art, or because it features artists who are decidedly mid-career. What distinguishes Varnish from most San Francisco art venues is that 30-40% of their exhibitions are dedicated to cast metal sculpture. (And they are also the only art bar that was an unwitting participant in the J.T. LeRoy hoax, the greatest literary scandal of the oughties.)
Business partners Jennifer Rogers and Kerri Stephens are both trained metal sculptors and became friends while working at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry in the early nineties, which happened to be the same time that the work of famous sculptors like De Staebler, Voulkos, Asawa, Neri, and Oliviera was being cast there. They are still part of the close-knit cast metal sculpture community that centers around Artworks.
These days, Rogers dedicates herself 100% to being Varnish gallery director. Stephens still practices her art in her spare time and has her own furnace for casting in her Point Richmond backyard. You can see their formal training in the patinaed cast steel of the Varnish bar, stairs and loft balcony railing, all of which Stephens designed herself.
Rogers and Stephens opened their space in 2003 and plan to close in 2009. Not because they want to but because they have to. After lovingly restoring the old shell of a warehouse space, they got word that the city would exercise eminent domain and take possession of the property as part of the Transbay Terminal project. The neighborhood association’s “Friends of Second Street” wasn’t successful fighting City Hall.
Wherever the women end up relocating Varnish after they leave Natoma Street, they’ll continue to be a venue for San Francisco institution Litquake and happenings like “Green Drinks,” a monthly happy hour where people who work in the environmental field meet up for socializing and networking.
Click here for images:http://www.varnishfineart.com/artwork/show.php?s=57
Jonesing for some tele-noir? You are if you’re an NPR junkie. All last year we listened to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross and her frequent guest, TV critic David Bianculli, first grieve the loss of The Sopranos, then beat the drum slowly for The Wire. As the Hollywood writers’ strike approaches its twelfth week, the networks have run out of fresh episodes of television serials and are resorting to reruns and late-night experiments. Fortunately, you can get your fix this month at Varnish Fine Art where Kenney Mencher’s campy pulp fiction-inspired oil paintings are on display.
With titles like “After School Special” (sold) and “Hotel/Motel,” Mencher’s work features heaving bosoms, blindfolds and grand gestures painted in a loose realist style. (Imagine an unbuttoned Edward Hopper.) Much like Jeff Wall’s artistic process, he stages his paintings first with live models in costume, then works from photographs. Often the models get into the act by suggesting storylines and poses, turning the photo shoot into a piece of performance art.
Mencher is a guy who’s gotta paint. He graduated with a BA (CUNY) and an MFA (UC Davis) in Art History, then completed his trifecta of advanced art degrees with an MA in painting from the University of Cincinnati. He has been an Associate Professor of Art & Art History since 1999 with Ohlone, a Junior College in Fremont. Influences include Duane Hanson, 20’s and 30’s pulp fiction illustrations and N.C. Wyeth, the early 20th Century illustrator who also worked from composed scenes.
Mencher has a little bit of a reputation. He was dismissed from Hang Art in 2003 by then gallery director Michelle Townsend (now with Portola Valley’s SPUR Projects), who, in an oft-repeated quote, said the gallery employees felt his work was too “wry and perverted.”
The following year, his work was pulled off the walls of a consultant-curated federal office in Sacramento. It probably was a little too ribald for the California State Teachers' Retirement System building. (He’s in good company, though; some nudes by North Beach notable Lawrence Ferlinghetti, represented by George Krevsky, were recently pulled down from the halls of the B of A building with no explanation.)
Perhaps Mencher, whose collectors include KQED’s quirky Josh Kornbluth, hasn’t found the right venue for his work. Hang prides itself on being highly accessible to rookie collectors who may not be ready for a guy whose thesis in grad school was "Vampires, the Audiences They Consume.” Varnish is more like it, with a track record of showing pop surrealism that veers closer to fine art than lowbrow art. Mencher’s next show after this is at Stanford Art Spaces beginning February 15.
The kitschy subject matter will be at home in this alternative space. Varnish Fine Art is different from other local art bars not because it extends its reach into fine art, or because it features artists who are decidedly mid-career. What distinguishes Varnish from most San Francisco art venues is that 30-40% of their exhibitions are dedicated to cast metal sculpture. (And they are also the only art bar that was an unwitting participant in the J.T. LeRoy hoax, the greatest literary scandal of the oughties.)
Business partners Jennifer Rogers and Kerri Stephens are both trained metal sculptors and became friends while working at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry in the early nineties, which happened to be the same time that the work of famous sculptors like De Staebler, Voulkos, Asawa, Neri, and Oliviera was being cast there. They are still part of the close-knit cast metal sculpture community that centers around Artworks.
These days, Rogers dedicates herself 100% to being Varnish gallery director. Stephens still practices her art in her spare time and has her own furnace for casting in her Point Richmond backyard. You can see their formal training in the patinaed cast steel of the Varnish bar, stairs and loft balcony railing, all of which Stephens designed herself.
Rogers and Stephens opened their space in 2003 and plan to close in 2009. Not because they want to but because they have to. After lovingly restoring the old shell of a warehouse space, they got word that the city would exercise eminent domain and take possession of the property as part of the Transbay Terminal project. The neighborhood association’s “Friends of Second Street” wasn’t successful fighting City Hall.
Wherever the women end up relocating Varnish after they leave Natoma Street, they’ll continue to be a venue for San Francisco institution Litquake and happenings like “Green Drinks,” a monthly happy hour where people who work in the environmental field meet up for socializing and networking.
Southern Exposure: Magical Portals in Four Site Specific Installations
Southern Exposure, through February 23, 2008; 417 14th Street (@ Valencia), San Francisco, CA 94103, t: (415) 863-2141, Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm http://www.soex.org/
The four site-specific installations that are on view right now at Southern Exposure employ the gallery’s bare four walls to deliver their message and rely on the viewer’s imagination for that secret ingredient to bring the work to life. It’s fitting that this exhibition puts the walls to work; this is the first show planned for the venerable non-profit’s new space since the 34 year old, envelope-pushing institution moved to 14th & Valencia from its old home in the Mission/Potrero flats. Busy nine-to-fivers will be happy to hear that the best time of day to see this show is at after work when it’s dusk, about 5:45 PM.
But before you go you’ll have to recalibrate. Looking at art like this requires a slower pace and more introspection. There’s no Oprah “ah-hah” moment. The story arc is much flatter, like an open-ended character study instead of a juicy piece of plot-laden fiction. Conceptual installation art like this is a distant cousin of the Mad Lib- you supply the punch line.
Chris Bell’s “Slow Pan Interior” is installed in the first room of the gallery. Close the door behind you because this is a video piece and the room has to be dark. Bell has dressed up this plain room with a rotating video piece. The projector pans around the room and plays back an image of the room itself, recognizable from the signature bead board. First there’s an image of a ladder as if its there in the room leaning up against the wall. Then when the projector hits the windows, you see an escapist panoramic view of the beach, as if the gallery’s address is the Great Highway instead of 14th Street.
Bell was an established artist in his home country of Australia before coming to the Bay Area for the MFA program at Stanford. He just completed a three month residency with the Headlands Center for the Arts. Industrial design and electro-mechanics, his first focus of study before becoming an artist, is the dominant theme in his work.
Jennifer Wofford’s Phillipino heritage influences much of her work, including this piece for SOEX, “Unseen Forces.” (One of her many expressions is as a member of the provocatively named, tongue-in-cheek, performance art group called Mail Order Brides.) But before you can walk into the jungle fantasy of her muraled space you are reminded of the unavoidable ritual of travel: dreaded metal detectors. Although they are made of particle board, they do have the intended effect of conjuring an airport and transporting us out of the Mission district. The mojo was so strong on the night of the exhibit’s opening Friday, January 11, that party guests were purposefully walking around the fake detectors. Wofford has her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and just received her master’s in 2007 from Cal. She teaches at CCA, USF and DVC.
It’s about 6:00 PM now and the gallery is closing, a perfect time to leave because Elaine Buckholz’s light installation piece is turning on. “Scenes for a Box Carnival” projects dappled kaleidoscope broken light onto the storefront. It’s a happy wintery scene and a friendly announcement to the neighbors that SOEX has moved in. Buckholz has worked as a lighting and visual designer in the Bay Area for 20 years and is a teacher in Stanford’s Art and Art History Department. She received her MFA from Stanford in 2006.
For the last piece, you’ll have to leave the gallery and hop on the Number 26 bus and travel to 1240 Valencia between 23rd and 24th. This is a conceptual piece and the co-collaborator is the entire population of the Mission District. Bruce Tomb bought the former police station about a decade ago and turned the property into his residence. Shortly after moving in, Tomb learned that the former police station was a target for taggers. Tomb decided to go with the flow. The (de) Appropriation Archive (http://www.deappropriationproject.net/) documents the layers upon layers of graffiti and posters that have been coated on week after week, year after year. On January 30th there will be a public meeting about the wall at SOEX where the neighbors are invited to speak their minds. Tomb is an architect by trade and has been teaching since 1989. He is an adjunct professor at CCA in the architecture and sculpture program.
Mark your calendar for the annual Monster Drawing Rally at SOEX on January 22, 2008. It’s a live drawing and fundraising event with over 100 artists participating. As the drawings are completed they are hung on the wall and can be purchased for $50 each.
The four site-specific installations that are on view right now at Southern Exposure employ the gallery’s bare four walls to deliver their message and rely on the viewer’s imagination for that secret ingredient to bring the work to life. It’s fitting that this exhibition puts the walls to work; this is the first show planned for the venerable non-profit’s new space since the 34 year old, envelope-pushing institution moved to 14th & Valencia from its old home in the Mission/Potrero flats. Busy nine-to-fivers will be happy to hear that the best time of day to see this show is at after work when it’s dusk, about 5:45 PM.
But before you go you’ll have to recalibrate. Looking at art like this requires a slower pace and more introspection. There’s no Oprah “ah-hah” moment. The story arc is much flatter, like an open-ended character study instead of a juicy piece of plot-laden fiction. Conceptual installation art like this is a distant cousin of the Mad Lib- you supply the punch line.
Chris Bell’s “Slow Pan Interior” is installed in the first room of the gallery. Close the door behind you because this is a video piece and the room has to be dark. Bell has dressed up this plain room with a rotating video piece. The projector pans around the room and plays back an image of the room itself, recognizable from the signature bead board. First there’s an image of a ladder as if its there in the room leaning up against the wall. Then when the projector hits the windows, you see an escapist panoramic view of the beach, as if the gallery’s address is the Great Highway instead of 14th Street.
Bell was an established artist in his home country of Australia before coming to the Bay Area for the MFA program at Stanford. He just completed a three month residency with the Headlands Center for the Arts. Industrial design and electro-mechanics, his first focus of study before becoming an artist, is the dominant theme in his work.
Jennifer Wofford’s Phillipino heritage influences much of her work, including this piece for SOEX, “Unseen Forces.” (One of her many expressions is as a member of the provocatively named, tongue-in-cheek, performance art group called Mail Order Brides.) But before you can walk into the jungle fantasy of her muraled space you are reminded of the unavoidable ritual of travel: dreaded metal detectors. Although they are made of particle board, they do have the intended effect of conjuring an airport and transporting us out of the Mission district. The mojo was so strong on the night of the exhibit’s opening Friday, January 11, that party guests were purposefully walking around the fake detectors. Wofford has her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and just received her master’s in 2007 from Cal. She teaches at CCA, USF and DVC.
It’s about 6:00 PM now and the gallery is closing, a perfect time to leave because Elaine Buckholz’s light installation piece is turning on. “Scenes for a Box Carnival” projects dappled kaleidoscope broken light onto the storefront. It’s a happy wintery scene and a friendly announcement to the neighbors that SOEX has moved in. Buckholz has worked as a lighting and visual designer in the Bay Area for 20 years and is a teacher in Stanford’s Art and Art History Department. She received her MFA from Stanford in 2006.
For the last piece, you’ll have to leave the gallery and hop on the Number 26 bus and travel to 1240 Valencia between 23rd and 24th. This is a conceptual piece and the co-collaborator is the entire population of the Mission District. Bruce Tomb bought the former police station about a decade ago and turned the property into his residence. Shortly after moving in, Tomb learned that the former police station was a target for taggers. Tomb decided to go with the flow. The (de) Appropriation Archive (http://www.deappropriationproject.net/) documents the layers upon layers of graffiti and posters that have been coated on week after week, year after year. On January 30th there will be a public meeting about the wall at SOEX where the neighbors are invited to speak their minds. Tomb is an architect by trade and has been teaching since 1989. He is an adjunct professor at CCA in the architecture and sculpture program.
Mark your calendar for the annual Monster Drawing Rally at SOEX on January 22, 2008. It’s a live drawing and fundraising event with over 100 artists participating. As the drawings are completed they are hung on the wall and can be purchased for $50 each.
Park, Maria: Acrylic Science Fiction
“Crystal Leisure” by Maria Park; through January 31, 2008. Toomey Tourell Gallery, 49 Geary Street, San Francisco, 94108, Phone: 415-989-6444, Tuesday through Friday: 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Saturday: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
http://www.toomey-tourell.com/
Alerting all closet Sci-Fi fans! Maria Park’s recent work on view at Toomey Tourell, “Crystal Leisure,” is inspired by the quintessential science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here, Park has meticulously recreated closing scenes from the classic Stanley Kubrick film. Roger Ebert, who was present in the theater on the night of the 1968 premier, summed it up: “The closing sequences, with the astronaut inexplicably finding himself in a bedroom somewhere beyond Jupiter, were baffling.” Park’s paintings should allow an outlet for those who still want to talk about Kubrick’s intentionally opaque treatment of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel.
Park has been interested in science fiction- and this movie in particular- since she was a child. The overarching theme in the body of her work is the impact of science and digital technology on society. As the daughter of a physicist and sibling of computer scientists, expressing scientific concepts through her art seems like a natural course for this artist.
The first paintings in “Crystal Leisure” are faithful reproductions of that enigmatic bedroom somewhere near Jupiter. Park explains: “This current body of work arose out of a former series titled “Stasis” (2005), which was inspired by the final scenes of 2001… these scenes depict a man secluded in a strangely pristine interior where the only evidence of human culture and history resides in furnishings and art, perhaps most strikingly in the series of rococo-like paintings depicting people at play.”
In this series, Park appropriates images from the work of Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), which is similar to the paintings in the 2001 bedroom. Lancret was a second-rate peer of Watteau, whose work, along with that of Bouchet and Fragonard, is synonymous with French Rococo. That style of painting can be described as frivolous, excessive and confectionary, with an element of PG-13 scandal thrown in for good measure.
The majority of the pieces in the show leaves the 2001 bedroom behind and riffs on three of Lancret’s paintings that feature the Rococo sport of banqueting. The figures that are alternatively preening or posing are, in Park’s words, “frozen forever in a state of mirth… revealing the weight of guilt and pain often hidden under displays of wealth and certitude”.
The Lancret characters are painted in reverse underneath a sheet of polycarbonate and the surface is covered with swirls of thickly applied paint. Transfers and letraset lines on mylar depict the mechanics and gears behind the figures, like a blue print.
Finally, thick opaque acrylic paint is applied to the outside of the clear plastic frame and coats it like shaving cream, billowing off the surface and swallowing up that last evidence of human culture from the bedroom walls in Kubrick’s film.
Park’s exhibition is noteworthy because this is a homecoming of sorts for her. Though Park is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Cornell University, she started her career as an artist here in San Francisco.
Park graduated with her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in ’95, showed her work in group shows for a few years, and then directed her efforts toward graduate work. She was awarded a scholarship to study painting at the MFA program in Painting at Washington University in St. Louis in 2000. In 2002 she came back to San Francisco to enroll in the SFAI MFA Painting program. After her first year of studies she was awarded the prestigious Murphy-Cadogan Fellowship, given to Bay Area MFA students who are nominated by their teachers.
Toomey Tourell Gallery discovered her work in 2003. “We found her at the SFAI Vernissage,” says Nancy Toomey. Vernissage is the name of the annual opening reception for the SFAI Master of Fine Arts Graduate exhibition. When asked what quality most distinguishes Park, Toomey pays her a high compliment: “her concepts are as strong as her execution.”
After graduating from SFAI, she left California and returned to Missouri to teach art at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and then in 2006 joined the teaching staff at Cornell. Park has exhibited her works nationally and internationally. “Strange Passages,” an installation at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas, in 2005, was her first solo museum show. This is her third show with Toomey Tourell.
http://www.toomey-tourell.com/
Alerting all closet Sci-Fi fans! Maria Park’s recent work on view at Toomey Tourell, “Crystal Leisure,” is inspired by the quintessential science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here, Park has meticulously recreated closing scenes from the classic Stanley Kubrick film. Roger Ebert, who was present in the theater on the night of the 1968 premier, summed it up: “The closing sequences, with the astronaut inexplicably finding himself in a bedroom somewhere beyond Jupiter, were baffling.” Park’s paintings should allow an outlet for those who still want to talk about Kubrick’s intentionally opaque treatment of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel.
Park has been interested in science fiction- and this movie in particular- since she was a child. The overarching theme in the body of her work is the impact of science and digital technology on society. As the daughter of a physicist and sibling of computer scientists, expressing scientific concepts through her art seems like a natural course for this artist.
The first paintings in “Crystal Leisure” are faithful reproductions of that enigmatic bedroom somewhere near Jupiter. Park explains: “This current body of work arose out of a former series titled “Stasis” (2005), which was inspired by the final scenes of 2001… these scenes depict a man secluded in a strangely pristine interior where the only evidence of human culture and history resides in furnishings and art, perhaps most strikingly in the series of rococo-like paintings depicting people at play.”
In this series, Park appropriates images from the work of Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), which is similar to the paintings in the 2001 bedroom. Lancret was a second-rate peer of Watteau, whose work, along with that of Bouchet and Fragonard, is synonymous with French Rococo. That style of painting can be described as frivolous, excessive and confectionary, with an element of PG-13 scandal thrown in for good measure.
The majority of the pieces in the show leaves the 2001 bedroom behind and riffs on three of Lancret’s paintings that feature the Rococo sport of banqueting. The figures that are alternatively preening or posing are, in Park’s words, “frozen forever in a state of mirth… revealing the weight of guilt and pain often hidden under displays of wealth and certitude”.
The Lancret characters are painted in reverse underneath a sheet of polycarbonate and the surface is covered with swirls of thickly applied paint. Transfers and letraset lines on mylar depict the mechanics and gears behind the figures, like a blue print.
Finally, thick opaque acrylic paint is applied to the outside of the clear plastic frame and coats it like shaving cream, billowing off the surface and swallowing up that last evidence of human culture from the bedroom walls in Kubrick’s film.
Park’s exhibition is noteworthy because this is a homecoming of sorts for her. Though Park is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Cornell University, she started her career as an artist here in San Francisco.
Park graduated with her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in ’95, showed her work in group shows for a few years, and then directed her efforts toward graduate work. She was awarded a scholarship to study painting at the MFA program in Painting at Washington University in St. Louis in 2000. In 2002 she came back to San Francisco to enroll in the SFAI MFA Painting program. After her first year of studies she was awarded the prestigious Murphy-Cadogan Fellowship, given to Bay Area MFA students who are nominated by their teachers.
Toomey Tourell Gallery discovered her work in 2003. “We found her at the SFAI Vernissage,” says Nancy Toomey. Vernissage is the name of the annual opening reception for the SFAI Master of Fine Arts Graduate exhibition. When asked what quality most distinguishes Park, Toomey pays her a high compliment: “her concepts are as strong as her execution.”
After graduating from SFAI, she left California and returned to Missouri to teach art at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and then in 2006 joined the teaching staff at Cornell. Park has exhibited her works nationally and internationally. “Strange Passages,” an installation at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas, in 2005, was her first solo museum show. This is her third show with Toomey Tourell.
ArtSpan Selections: The Best of the Open Studios Artists
ArtSpan Selections 2007, December 6 - 29, 2007, 111 Minna Gallery, http://www.111minnagallery.com/2007/11/27/selections-2007-dec-6-29-2007/
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 6, 2007, Reception ($75), 5 - 7pm, General Reception, 7 - 8:30pm, 111 Minna Gallery, http://www.artspan.org/ www.eventbrite.com/event/83774572
David Avery, Johanna Baruch, Marie Bourget, Rebecca Chang, Mitchell Confer, Elaine Coombs, Katie Gilmartin, James Gleeson, Joshua Hagler, Ivy Jacobsen, Mark Jaremko, Mike Kimball, Jim Leff, Christopher Leib, Christina Mazza, Laurel Roth, Terry Sauvé, Kathryn St. Clair, Lena Tsakmaki, Christopher Wiedmann
Curious to know whose work was the best of this year’s Open Studios? Well here’s your chance to find out and purchase it as well. The unveiling of the juried ArtSpan “Selections” winners will go on display this Thursday at 111 Minna. If you choose to attend the $75 fundraiser event from 5-7pm this Thursday, December 6, you’ll get to hear the curators who chose the winners speak and you’ll be supporting a worthy grassroots organization at the same time (plus enjoy great apps and an open bar).
The not-for-profit ArtSpan isn’t a one trick pony. It's a critical resource for independent artists who don’t have gallery representation and may not have the connections that are a benefit of coming up through the local MFA (Master of Fine Arts) Greek system.
In addition to managing the massive logistics and marketing for the 800+ artists who participate in Open Studios every year, ArtSpan offers valuable professional development services to its members and sponsors Art for City Youth which introduces elementary school students to artists. All this for annual dues of $135.
Juried awards are a common and popular way for the art community to recognize Talent. A typical panel involves a few judges that fit the following archetypes: curator from local museum or non-profit, teacher from an MFA program, gallery director, rounded out by Bay Area artist who has already received critical acclaim. Being picked by a jury panel of this make-up is extremely prestigious and is a great resume builder for an emerging artist.
The Selections jury follows this model. Participating on this panel is Gabe Scott and Eleanor Harwood, their first collaboration with ArtSpan. Their participation is a testament to the efforts of the current Board of Directors which reached out to the two and invited them to participate. (Fellow juror Rene de Guzman has been a friend of ArtSpan for many years.) This board is also responsible for the jazzed up Open Studios program guide this year, which made the neighborhood-by-neighborhood event the easiest it’s ever been to navigate.
Eleanor Harwood of the eponymous Mission-Potrero gallery is a CCA trained artist herself. She made the “Backroom” at Adobe Books famous during her tenure curating that space. This funky cobwebby counter-culture bookstore on 16th Street in the Mission is the place that time forgot. Step gingerly over stacks of books and past the aging hippies engrossed in their manifestos; your reward is a postage stamp sized dynamic art space that generates a lot of talk among art world insiders.
The second judge is Gabe Scott, the director of 111 Minna Gallery where the show will be on display for the next month. 111 Minna is the original art gallery/bar in the city, fittingly located just steps away from SFMOMA’s back door. 111 Minna is known for showing “lowbrow” art and "street art" and for being a big booster of the art community in general, often lending its space to events like this.
Rounding out the panel is Rene de Guzman who needs no introduction to the Bay Area art community. De Guzman was one of the original staff members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and is credited with being the force behind “Bay Area Now,” a must-see show that takes place every three years. After nearly fifteen years with YBCA the Oakland Museum managed to woo him away, an acquisition that bodes well for that venerable institution. De Guzman and a snazzy makeover of the galleries scheduled to start in early ’08 should serve to make that space back into a premier destination.
De Guzman did visit some open studios in October and say he saw some things he liked. “I saw some artists that were new to me and took down their names to follow up later.” De Guzman speaks very highly of ArtSpan and its importance to the San Francisco art community. “I’m very impressed with ArtSpan and their complete commitment to supporting the city’s artists. ArtSpan allows its artists to not only be known in the community at large but also to know each other and strengthen themselves through that dialogue. ArtSpan works with the level of artist who needs the most support: artists who are beginning their practice. We need that foundation to be strong in order for everyone to be successful.”
Harwood also thinks that artists who are dues-paying members of ArtSpan get a valuable service in return. “I think that any organization that manages to give artists exposure is valuable. ArtSpan Selections provides its artists with access to curators that they wouldn’t normally have.”
Eleanor goes on to explain how this jury experience was different from other panel reviews. “This selection process was different from others I have curated in that the review process was ‘blind.’ Usually a curator acting as a juror would review the CV and the artist statement and unavoidably take note if the artist had already received recognition or acclaim in some other format. The work completely spoke for itself using this method of selection.”
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 6, 2007, Reception ($75), 5 - 7pm, General Reception, 7 - 8:30pm, 111 Minna Gallery, http://www.artspan.org/ www.eventbrite.com/event/83774572
David Avery, Johanna Baruch, Marie Bourget, Rebecca Chang, Mitchell Confer, Elaine Coombs, Katie Gilmartin, James Gleeson, Joshua Hagler, Ivy Jacobsen, Mark Jaremko, Mike Kimball, Jim Leff, Christopher Leib, Christina Mazza, Laurel Roth, Terry Sauvé, Kathryn St. Clair, Lena Tsakmaki, Christopher Wiedmann
Curious to know whose work was the best of this year’s Open Studios? Well here’s your chance to find out and purchase it as well. The unveiling of the juried ArtSpan “Selections” winners will go on display this Thursday at 111 Minna. If you choose to attend the $75 fundraiser event from 5-7pm this Thursday, December 6, you’ll get to hear the curators who chose the winners speak and you’ll be supporting a worthy grassroots organization at the same time (plus enjoy great apps and an open bar).
The not-for-profit ArtSpan isn’t a one trick pony. It's a critical resource for independent artists who don’t have gallery representation and may not have the connections that are a benefit of coming up through the local MFA (Master of Fine Arts) Greek system.
In addition to managing the massive logistics and marketing for the 800+ artists who participate in Open Studios every year, ArtSpan offers valuable professional development services to its members and sponsors Art for City Youth which introduces elementary school students to artists. All this for annual dues of $135.
Juried awards are a common and popular way for the art community to recognize Talent. A typical panel involves a few judges that fit the following archetypes: curator from local museum or non-profit, teacher from an MFA program, gallery director, rounded out by Bay Area artist who has already received critical acclaim. Being picked by a jury panel of this make-up is extremely prestigious and is a great resume builder for an emerging artist.
The Selections jury follows this model. Participating on this panel is Gabe Scott and Eleanor Harwood, their first collaboration with ArtSpan. Their participation is a testament to the efforts of the current Board of Directors which reached out to the two and invited them to participate. (Fellow juror Rene de Guzman has been a friend of ArtSpan for many years.) This board is also responsible for the jazzed up Open Studios program guide this year, which made the neighborhood-by-neighborhood event the easiest it’s ever been to navigate.
Eleanor Harwood of the eponymous Mission-Potrero gallery is a CCA trained artist herself. She made the “Backroom” at Adobe Books famous during her tenure curating that space. This funky cobwebby counter-culture bookstore on 16th Street in the Mission is the place that time forgot. Step gingerly over stacks of books and past the aging hippies engrossed in their manifestos; your reward is a postage stamp sized dynamic art space that generates a lot of talk among art world insiders.
The second judge is Gabe Scott, the director of 111 Minna Gallery where the show will be on display for the next month. 111 Minna is the original art gallery/bar in the city, fittingly located just steps away from SFMOMA’s back door. 111 Minna is known for showing “lowbrow” art and "street art" and for being a big booster of the art community in general, often lending its space to events like this.
Rounding out the panel is Rene de Guzman who needs no introduction to the Bay Area art community. De Guzman was one of the original staff members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and is credited with being the force behind “Bay Area Now,” a must-see show that takes place every three years. After nearly fifteen years with YBCA the Oakland Museum managed to woo him away, an acquisition that bodes well for that venerable institution. De Guzman and a snazzy makeover of the galleries scheduled to start in early ’08 should serve to make that space back into a premier destination.
De Guzman did visit some open studios in October and say he saw some things he liked. “I saw some artists that were new to me and took down their names to follow up later.” De Guzman speaks very highly of ArtSpan and its importance to the San Francisco art community. “I’m very impressed with ArtSpan and their complete commitment to supporting the city’s artists. ArtSpan allows its artists to not only be known in the community at large but also to know each other and strengthen themselves through that dialogue. ArtSpan works with the level of artist who needs the most support: artists who are beginning their practice. We need that foundation to be strong in order for everyone to be successful.”
Harwood also thinks that artists who are dues-paying members of ArtSpan get a valuable service in return. “I think that any organization that manages to give artists exposure is valuable. ArtSpan Selections provides its artists with access to curators that they wouldn’t normally have.”
Eleanor goes on to explain how this jury experience was different from other panel reviews. “This selection process was different from others I have curated in that the review process was ‘blind.’ Usually a curator acting as a juror would review the CV and the artist statement and unavoidably take note if the artist had already received recognition or acclaim in some other format. The work completely spoke for itself using this method of selection.”
Electric Works: State of the Art Printmakers Offer Something for Everyone
Group Show featuring emerging artists: Civil Twilight, November 30 - January 5, 2008, 130 8th Street San Francisco, California 94103, Monday - Friday 10 AM - 6 PM, Saturday 10:30 AM - 5:30 PM, 415 626 5496, http://www.sfelectricworks.com/, noah@sfelectricworks.com
Electric Works is not just a print shop with special to-the-trade high-tech services; it’s a collaborative space with a community spirit.
Emerging collectors can start an art collection with the $40 Mini Print Program. Universally appealing is the gift shop is stocked for the holiday season with unique and affordable artistic collectibles. This is the perfect place to find gifts under $25 for all ages including every issue of Cabinet Magazine in print ($10), limited edition book art by David Byrne ($24) and David Mamet ($19.95), natural beeswax crayons ($11/$25/$45), charming old-fashioned tin toys ($10-$15), and incredibly hard-to-find Japanese Steampunk watches (already collectors' items, priced upon request).
For established collectors, not only is there the opportunity to purchase 2D and 3D print editions worthy of the Achenbach Collection, there is also a service that would make Stanley Marcus take notice. Looking for a holiday gift for the art collector who has everything? Electric Works will bring their high-tech equipment to your home and photograph your collection. You'll get a leather bound book with pictures of everything you own - perfect for when a guest comes over and an important piece is on loan (and doubles as a record for insurance purposes).
The Lang Family is such an important part of the San Francisco Bay Area art community that it seems like Electric Works has been in the city forever. But no, this family enterprise just relocated from its old incarnation (Trillium Press) in Brisbane to its new home on Eighth between Mission and Howard last Spring. The Langs were part of Trillium for over ten years and it was there that they established their reputation as master printmakers with an appetite for experimentation and envelope-pushing (other venerable printmakers bring projects they can’t execute to Trillium and EW). Dad Richard and son Noah searched for a long time for the right spot and then kismet brought them to the historic Buzzell Building which for decades housed a machine repair shop. It was such a good match that the Langs adopted the name of the former tenants, perfect for printmakers who specialize in state of the art printmaking.
First a quick primer on prints. A print is not the faded Monet Water Lillies poster you bought in college that has managed to follow you from apartment to apartment ever since. An original print is a work of art on paper which has been conceived by the artist to be realized as a print, rather than as a photographic reproduction of a work in another medium. Each impression should be approved and signed by the artist and the master image destroyed or cancelled. An original print is not a copy of anything else; it is a work of art in its own right.
Electric Works has quickly built a niche business in digital prints. To create these, artists use a computer to create or manipulate their works often use a large-scale ink jet printer to print them. These complex printers use a sophisticated print head to disperse the ink on the paper in a fine mist of minute droplets in order to deliver a continuous tone image.
Electric Works’ strength is its breadth of programming, the affable personality of the Lang family and their commitment to philanthropy. The Foyer Gallery features work from its Venture Philanthropy program which supports non-profit organizations through the commission of limited edition prints. Fundraising projects on display beginning Nov. 30 benefit Headlands Center for the Arts, the Magic Theater and 826 Valencia. Past partners include New Langton Arts and Friends of the Urban Forest.
All three Langs are artists themselves. Richard originally conceived of the versatile gallery while enrolled in the M.A. sculpture program at the University of Wisconsin. Wife Judith Selby Lang (who does the PR) creates multi-media art installations with an ardent Green message. She is often wearing eye-catching accessories that she fashions from found materials. She has taught art for thirty years in to higher-ed students in Bay Area schools as well as arts and crafts to those in convalescent hospitals with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
After receiving his masters in German Literature, Noah heard the siren call of the gallery and moved home to help with the high tech aspects of the print shop. When not taking the gallery’s offerings on the road to art fairs or searching out new items for the gift shop, Noah makes conceptual sculpture and volunteers his time as a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery Advisory Board.
Electric Works business partner Anthony Luzi is an artist as well, and is the CEO of Raven Motors. Luzi and Lang became friends through their mutual appreciation for the work of William Wiley. He is responsible for bringing in artists Ron Davis and Nathan Redwood. Visit the gallery and you’ll see a Raven, a bright green, single passenger, three-wheeled car which registers and parks as a motorcycle, gets seventy miles to the gallon, has an airbag and a design patented for your safety.
Since its grand opening in May, the Langs have featured a fifty-year retrospective of California artist Ronald Davis’ abstract geometrics, Paul Madonna’s dreamy drawings of the view along I5, the results of Amanda Hughen & Jennifer Starkweather’s collaboration for the SFAC “Art on Market Street” program, brainy doodler Tucker Nichols and Katherine Sherwood, professor of Art at UC Berkeley with an incredible personal story of rebirth that is an integral part of her work.
Love the work you see in an Electric Works show but can’t afford it? The $40 Mini Print Program was designed for you. Every headliner artist who shows in the gallery is invited to make an original work of art for this program. You can buy just one (unframed) or subscribe to the series. Each month you’ll receive the same number in the print series (such as 23/100). Email Noah directly if you’d like to sign up: noah@sfelectricworks.com.
Electric Works is not just a print shop with special to-the-trade high-tech services; it’s a collaborative space with a community spirit.
Emerging collectors can start an art collection with the $40 Mini Print Program. Universally appealing is the gift shop is stocked for the holiday season with unique and affordable artistic collectibles. This is the perfect place to find gifts under $25 for all ages including every issue of Cabinet Magazine in print ($10), limited edition book art by David Byrne ($24) and David Mamet ($19.95), natural beeswax crayons ($11/$25/$45), charming old-fashioned tin toys ($10-$15), and incredibly hard-to-find Japanese Steampunk watches (already collectors' items, priced upon request).
For established collectors, not only is there the opportunity to purchase 2D and 3D print editions worthy of the Achenbach Collection, there is also a service that would make Stanley Marcus take notice. Looking for a holiday gift for the art collector who has everything? Electric Works will bring their high-tech equipment to your home and photograph your collection. You'll get a leather bound book with pictures of everything you own - perfect for when a guest comes over and an important piece is on loan (and doubles as a record for insurance purposes).
The Lang Family is such an important part of the San Francisco Bay Area art community that it seems like Electric Works has been in the city forever. But no, this family enterprise just relocated from its old incarnation (Trillium Press) in Brisbane to its new home on Eighth between Mission and Howard last Spring. The Langs were part of Trillium for over ten years and it was there that they established their reputation as master printmakers with an appetite for experimentation and envelope-pushing (other venerable printmakers bring projects they can’t execute to Trillium and EW). Dad Richard and son Noah searched for a long time for the right spot and then kismet brought them to the historic Buzzell Building which for decades housed a machine repair shop. It was such a good match that the Langs adopted the name of the former tenants, perfect for printmakers who specialize in state of the art printmaking.
First a quick primer on prints. A print is not the faded Monet Water Lillies poster you bought in college that has managed to follow you from apartment to apartment ever since. An original print is a work of art on paper which has been conceived by the artist to be realized as a print, rather than as a photographic reproduction of a work in another medium. Each impression should be approved and signed by the artist and the master image destroyed or cancelled. An original print is not a copy of anything else; it is a work of art in its own right.
Electric Works has quickly built a niche business in digital prints. To create these, artists use a computer to create or manipulate their works often use a large-scale ink jet printer to print them. These complex printers use a sophisticated print head to disperse the ink on the paper in a fine mist of minute droplets in order to deliver a continuous tone image.
Electric Works’ strength is its breadth of programming, the affable personality of the Lang family and their commitment to philanthropy. The Foyer Gallery features work from its Venture Philanthropy program which supports non-profit organizations through the commission of limited edition prints. Fundraising projects on display beginning Nov. 30 benefit Headlands Center for the Arts, the Magic Theater and 826 Valencia. Past partners include New Langton Arts and Friends of the Urban Forest.
All three Langs are artists themselves. Richard originally conceived of the versatile gallery while enrolled in the M.A. sculpture program at the University of Wisconsin. Wife Judith Selby Lang (who does the PR) creates multi-media art installations with an ardent Green message. She is often wearing eye-catching accessories that she fashions from found materials. She has taught art for thirty years in to higher-ed students in Bay Area schools as well as arts and crafts to those in convalescent hospitals with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
After receiving his masters in German Literature, Noah heard the siren call of the gallery and moved home to help with the high tech aspects of the print shop. When not taking the gallery’s offerings on the road to art fairs or searching out new items for the gift shop, Noah makes conceptual sculpture and volunteers his time as a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery Advisory Board.
Electric Works business partner Anthony Luzi is an artist as well, and is the CEO of Raven Motors. Luzi and Lang became friends through their mutual appreciation for the work of William Wiley. He is responsible for bringing in artists Ron Davis and Nathan Redwood. Visit the gallery and you’ll see a Raven, a bright green, single passenger, three-wheeled car which registers and parks as a motorcycle, gets seventy miles to the gallon, has an airbag and a design patented for your safety.
Since its grand opening in May, the Langs have featured a fifty-year retrospective of California artist Ronald Davis’ abstract geometrics, Paul Madonna’s dreamy drawings of the view along I5, the results of Amanda Hughen & Jennifer Starkweather’s collaboration for the SFAC “Art on Market Street” program, brainy doodler Tucker Nichols and Katherine Sherwood, professor of Art at UC Berkeley with an incredible personal story of rebirth that is an integral part of her work.
Love the work you see in an Electric Works show but can’t afford it? The $40 Mini Print Program was designed for you. Every headliner artist who shows in the gallery is invited to make an original work of art for this program. You can buy just one (unframed) or subscribe to the series. Each month you’ll receive the same number in the print series (such as 23/100). Email Noah directly if you’d like to sign up: noah@sfelectricworks.com.
John Berggruen Gallery: Take Note of These Emerging Artists on Display
November 1- December 15, 2007, Displaced: Jonathan Callan, Frank Ebert,Armando Miguelez, Julio Ceaser Morales, Gabrielle Teschner, Hours 9:30am -5:30pm Monday through Friday, 10:30am - 5:00pm Saturday, 228 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, 94108, 415-781-4629
Click here to see images under Menu, Exhibitions, Current, Displaced: http://www.berggruen.com/
The list of artists shown over the past thirty plus years at John Berggruen Gallery includes a who's-who from the pantheon of California greats: Thiebaud, Diebenkorn, Oliveira and Bischoff to name a few.
But the show on view in the gallery's third floor through mid-December is noteworthy because it features emerging artists, something Berggruen hasn't done in ages. (For the purpose of this article, "emerging" is defined as very recently graduated from grad school and/or as yet "untested"by a commercial gallery with an international reputation.)
1997 was the last time Berggruen featured artists at such an early career stage, in a group show that included the work of Barry McGee. That was the year that McGee’s work was revealed to the art community as one of the winners of the SFMOMA SECA Award show. (The Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art was founded in 1960 by San Francisco Bay Area art community notables including Ruth Braunstein and Rene di Rosa and recognizes a handful of outstanding local emerging artists every other year who invariably go on to receive national recognition.) Since then McGee has ascended to the position of Godfather of the home grown Mission School movement.
Two of the artists on view in "Displaced" just received their MFA's from California College of the Arts last Spring. Frank Ebert's photorealist graphite on paper drawings ($1,500-$3,200) are the ultimate grown-up rock and roll poster. Gabrielle Teschner also bowed at CCA in May; her "Altered Maps" ($1,400-$2,200) are found vintage maps with stenciled cut-outs of tongue in cheek cartographer's jargon.
Although Julio Cesar Morales is also included in the "Displaced" show, "emerging" is not the right description for this accomplished artist. Morales is the founder of the provocative alternative gallery space called "Queen's Nails Annex" (which really is next door to a beauty shop in the outer Mission called Queen's Nails). He is a graduate of San Francisco Art Institute and now teaches there in the New Genres department. The Rockefeller Foundation and The Fleishhacker Foundation are among the many venerable institutions that have recognized his talent.
The Tijuana born artist's work is highly charged with border politics featuring the desperate attempts of illegal immigrants to smuggle themselves into the US. (It is not a surprise that his provocative work is featured in the permanent collection of the San Diego Museum of Art in a city on the front lines of this issue.) The soft watercolors look like science fiction cartoon cels but are horrifyingly real and depict actual cases documented by the border patrol. This is serious political art that makes its point effectively. ($5,000-$5,500)
New blood on the Berggruen staff has something to do with it. Mike Bianco just signed on full-time with the gallery after graduating from the Curatorial Practice Master's program at CCA, and this is the first show he has curated there. Bianco's not exactly brand new to Berggruen. He had been working part-time for the gallery while enrolled in CCA ever since Mr. Berggruen discovered him in 2005 in the American Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennial where he was an assistant in the Ed Ruscha exhibit.
Bianco leads a second life in Marfa, Texas, where he runs a space called "The Way Point" (www.thewaypoint.org) that he curates during Chinati season. The contemporary art world knows Marfa as a town that is synonymous with the Chinati Foundation, founded by Donald Judd in the early 1980's, to provide a home for large scale minimalist/conceptual sculpture. Forget Burning Man; during "Chinati Season" the tiny town (population 2,121) is a happening, overrun with artists and curators. (Julio Morales is also a Marfite.)
Next time Bianco is scheduled to curate something big for Berggruen is not until Fall ’08 so be sure to stop by while “Displaced” is still up on the walls.
Click here to see images under Menu, Exhibitions, Current, Displaced: http://www.berggruen.com/
The list of artists shown over the past thirty plus years at John Berggruen Gallery includes a who's-who from the pantheon of California greats: Thiebaud, Diebenkorn, Oliveira and Bischoff to name a few.
But the show on view in the gallery's third floor through mid-December is noteworthy because it features emerging artists, something Berggruen hasn't done in ages. (For the purpose of this article, "emerging" is defined as very recently graduated from grad school and/or as yet "untested"by a commercial gallery with an international reputation.)
1997 was the last time Berggruen featured artists at such an early career stage, in a group show that included the work of Barry McGee. That was the year that McGee’s work was revealed to the art community as one of the winners of the SFMOMA SECA Award show. (The Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art was founded in 1960 by San Francisco Bay Area art community notables including Ruth Braunstein and Rene di Rosa and recognizes a handful of outstanding local emerging artists every other year who invariably go on to receive national recognition.) Since then McGee has ascended to the position of Godfather of the home grown Mission School movement.
Two of the artists on view in "Displaced" just received their MFA's from California College of the Arts last Spring. Frank Ebert's photorealist graphite on paper drawings ($1,500-$3,200) are the ultimate grown-up rock and roll poster. Gabrielle Teschner also bowed at CCA in May; her "Altered Maps" ($1,400-$2,200) are found vintage maps with stenciled cut-outs of tongue in cheek cartographer's jargon.
Although Julio Cesar Morales is also included in the "Displaced" show, "emerging" is not the right description for this accomplished artist. Morales is the founder of the provocative alternative gallery space called "Queen's Nails Annex" (which really is next door to a beauty shop in the outer Mission called Queen's Nails). He is a graduate of San Francisco Art Institute and now teaches there in the New Genres department. The Rockefeller Foundation and The Fleishhacker Foundation are among the many venerable institutions that have recognized his talent.
The Tijuana born artist's work is highly charged with border politics featuring the desperate attempts of illegal immigrants to smuggle themselves into the US. (It is not a surprise that his provocative work is featured in the permanent collection of the San Diego Museum of Art in a city on the front lines of this issue.) The soft watercolors look like science fiction cartoon cels but are horrifyingly real and depict actual cases documented by the border patrol. This is serious political art that makes its point effectively. ($5,000-$5,500)
New blood on the Berggruen staff has something to do with it. Mike Bianco just signed on full-time with the gallery after graduating from the Curatorial Practice Master's program at CCA, and this is the first show he has curated there. Bianco's not exactly brand new to Berggruen. He had been working part-time for the gallery while enrolled in CCA ever since Mr. Berggruen discovered him in 2005 in the American Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennial where he was an assistant in the Ed Ruscha exhibit.
Bianco leads a second life in Marfa, Texas, where he runs a space called "The Way Point" (www.thewaypoint.org) that he curates during Chinati season. The contemporary art world knows Marfa as a town that is synonymous with the Chinati Foundation, founded by Donald Judd in the early 1980's, to provide a home for large scale minimalist/conceptual sculpture. Forget Burning Man; during "Chinati Season" the tiny town (population 2,121) is a happening, overrun with artists and curators. (Julio Morales is also a Marfite.)
Next time Bianco is scheduled to curate something big for Berggruen is not until Fall ’08 so be sure to stop by while “Displaced” is still up on the walls.
Triple Base Gallery: White Glove Inspection
Triple Base Gallery, Thursday-Sunday 12-5pm, (please check for special evening hours), 3041 24th Street @ Treat (btw Folsom & Harrison) San Francisco, CA 94110, triplebase@gmail.com, phone: 415.643.3943, www.basebasebase.com
Do you ever dream about being able to do the one-stop-shopping thing and get an overview of the work of Bay Area emerging artists in one gallery visit?
Well, close your eyes and imagine an art gallery that’s open on a Sunday in a cool neighborhood next to a joint where you can get a great fish taco. Now imagine that the gallery owner likes you and lets you look through her inventory in a no-pressure environment and takes the time to educate you about each artist whose work you’re viewing. And there’s more: the majority of pieces for sale are in your price range. (No uncomfortable embarrassment while the gallery director and assistant unwrap canvas after canvas while you know all along you can’t afford anything they’re showing you.)
Now open your eyes- it’s not a dream. You’re at Triple Base in the Mission and you’re wearing white gloves and looking through the “flat files,” metal cabinets with shallow drawers which store works on paper numbering close to 300 and featuring the work of over 30 different young artists. Prices start at $75 and range up to $2000, with the majority around $500 (unframed). The only thing that’s different from your dream is that there are two gallery directors: Joyce Grimm and Dina Pugh.
You now know you’re not asleep but the fantasy goes on. Joyce and Dina have just invited you to their next dinner lecture held at a real live-work loft where the Dean of CCA, Larry Rinder, will give a talk about Triple Base’s featured artist of the month and the dinner is catered by underground chef Leif Hedendal who serves an I-can’t-believe-this-is-vegan organic gourmet three course dinner. And no, you don’t need to pinch yourself; you DO see Jack Hanley, Gary Sangster, Executive Director of Headlands Center for the Arts, Svea Lin Vezzone of Swarm and Terri Kwiatek, Co-President of SFMOMA’s SECA, all enjoying the party too.
Joyce and Dina became friends while enrolled in the Masters of Curatorial Practice graduate program at California College of the Arts. Larry Rinder was Dina’s thesis advisor and has since taken the pair under his wing. Rinder says, “They have thrown themselves totally into the cultural mix of our city. And they've done so in a way that combines idealism and pragmatism extremely effectively. When they took over Triple Base, the space already had an excellent reputation. They kept a lot of what Oliver had started alive, in terms of the warm and generous connection to local artists, and added some ideas of their own, like flat-files and the dinner talks. Triple Base is now one of the most vital and dynamic of any Bay Area arts organizations. Dina and Joyce have shown that you can make a really important contribution without a great deal of money. Their dedication, talent, and inclusive spirit naturally draw others around them. It's not surprising at all that so many people are cheering them on.”
The gallery was founded in 2003 by two artists Oliver Halsman Rosenberg and Clint Tanaguchi who used the storefront as their studio and as a community project space. The founders moved on to make their art in New York and Tokyo, respectively, and entrusted Triple Base to the women before they left. (The original name, Triple Base, was a reference to a vision of being one of many “bases” with similar vision connected internationally.)
Having a curatorial background comes in handy when you’re working with young artists who don’t yet have a mature body of work. The two agree that Joyce is slightly more hands-on in the creative process and Dina is more hands-off but both women enjoy their role as mentor, drawing out strong potential that they see in the work.
Modeled after the Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, the “flat files” pay the rent and allow the co-directors to use the rest of the space for sheer artistic expression including experimental performance and installation art. Artwork in the files is rotated out every six months and every month or so a new artist is added to the mix.
Time management is an art form here as well. Both women have been holding down full-time jobs while simultaneously running Triple Base Gallery. It is truly a labor of love.
Joyce is Gallery Assistant at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (your tax dollars at work). Meg Shiffler, Gallery Director, is supportive of their mission as well: “Joyce and Dina have [contributed to the San Francisco art community] by developing a space that is not a nonprofit alternative space and not a commercial gallery. It is important in this age of dwindling arts funding to come up with new models that address long-term stability. This is an agile space that can easily transform itself to suit the needs of each exhibition/artist. Triple Base offers patrons of the arts an opportunity to see works by young artists at the beginning of their careers - long industrious careers if Joyce and Dina have anything to say about it!"
Until this week, Dina was the Director of the Jack Hanley Gallery. (Hanley has galleries in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, and represents a number of critically acclaimed young San Francisco artists including Tauba Auerbach, Leslie Shows, Simon Evans, Chris Johanson, and Shaun O’Dell.) But after a valuable year working with Jack Hanley, Dina has resigned from the position, making the weighty decision to dedicate herself 100% to running Triple Base. While they are lucky to have three talented interns, the business partners decided it was important to have one of the two principals in the space at all times. Dina will use this gift of additional time to further Triple Base’s work with artists, manage the logistics of participating in national and international art fairs and raise funding.
Do you ever dream about being able to do the one-stop-shopping thing and get an overview of the work of Bay Area emerging artists in one gallery visit?
Well, close your eyes and imagine an art gallery that’s open on a Sunday in a cool neighborhood next to a joint where you can get a great fish taco. Now imagine that the gallery owner likes you and lets you look through her inventory in a no-pressure environment and takes the time to educate you about each artist whose work you’re viewing. And there’s more: the majority of pieces for sale are in your price range. (No uncomfortable embarrassment while the gallery director and assistant unwrap canvas after canvas while you know all along you can’t afford anything they’re showing you.)
Now open your eyes- it’s not a dream. You’re at Triple Base in the Mission and you’re wearing white gloves and looking through the “flat files,” metal cabinets with shallow drawers which store works on paper numbering close to 300 and featuring the work of over 30 different young artists. Prices start at $75 and range up to $2000, with the majority around $500 (unframed). The only thing that’s different from your dream is that there are two gallery directors: Joyce Grimm and Dina Pugh.
You now know you’re not asleep but the fantasy goes on. Joyce and Dina have just invited you to their next dinner lecture held at a real live-work loft where the Dean of CCA, Larry Rinder, will give a talk about Triple Base’s featured artist of the month and the dinner is catered by underground chef Leif Hedendal who serves an I-can’t-believe-this-is-vegan organic gourmet three course dinner. And no, you don’t need to pinch yourself; you DO see Jack Hanley, Gary Sangster, Executive Director of Headlands Center for the Arts, Svea Lin Vezzone of Swarm and Terri Kwiatek, Co-President of SFMOMA’s SECA, all enjoying the party too.
Joyce and Dina became friends while enrolled in the Masters of Curatorial Practice graduate program at California College of the Arts. Larry Rinder was Dina’s thesis advisor and has since taken the pair under his wing. Rinder says, “They have thrown themselves totally into the cultural mix of our city. And they've done so in a way that combines idealism and pragmatism extremely effectively. When they took over Triple Base, the space already had an excellent reputation. They kept a lot of what Oliver had started alive, in terms of the warm and generous connection to local artists, and added some ideas of their own, like flat-files and the dinner talks. Triple Base is now one of the most vital and dynamic of any Bay Area arts organizations. Dina and Joyce have shown that you can make a really important contribution without a great deal of money. Their dedication, talent, and inclusive spirit naturally draw others around them. It's not surprising at all that so many people are cheering them on.”
The gallery was founded in 2003 by two artists Oliver Halsman Rosenberg and Clint Tanaguchi who used the storefront as their studio and as a community project space. The founders moved on to make their art in New York and Tokyo, respectively, and entrusted Triple Base to the women before they left. (The original name, Triple Base, was a reference to a vision of being one of many “bases” with similar vision connected internationally.)
Having a curatorial background comes in handy when you’re working with young artists who don’t yet have a mature body of work. The two agree that Joyce is slightly more hands-on in the creative process and Dina is more hands-off but both women enjoy their role as mentor, drawing out strong potential that they see in the work.
Modeled after the Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, the “flat files” pay the rent and allow the co-directors to use the rest of the space for sheer artistic expression including experimental performance and installation art. Artwork in the files is rotated out every six months and every month or so a new artist is added to the mix.
Time management is an art form here as well. Both women have been holding down full-time jobs while simultaneously running Triple Base Gallery. It is truly a labor of love.
Joyce is Gallery Assistant at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (your tax dollars at work). Meg Shiffler, Gallery Director, is supportive of their mission as well: “Joyce and Dina have [contributed to the San Francisco art community] by developing a space that is not a nonprofit alternative space and not a commercial gallery. It is important in this age of dwindling arts funding to come up with new models that address long-term stability. This is an agile space that can easily transform itself to suit the needs of each exhibition/artist. Triple Base offers patrons of the arts an opportunity to see works by young artists at the beginning of their careers - long industrious careers if Joyce and Dina have anything to say about it!"
Until this week, Dina was the Director of the Jack Hanley Gallery. (Hanley has galleries in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, and represents a number of critically acclaimed young San Francisco artists including Tauba Auerbach, Leslie Shows, Simon Evans, Chris Johanson, and Shaun O’Dell.) But after a valuable year working with Jack Hanley, Dina has resigned from the position, making the weighty decision to dedicate herself 100% to running Triple Base. While they are lucky to have three talented interns, the business partners decided it was important to have one of the two principals in the space at all times. Dina will use this gift of additional time to further Triple Base’s work with artists, manage the logistics of participating in national and international art fairs and raise funding.
Wall, Jeff: A Movie in Every Photograph
Saturday, October 27, 2007 - Sunday, January 27, 2008
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street (between Mission and Howard Streets), San Francisco, 94103, Telephone: 415.357.4000, Mon &Tues 11:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.,
Wed CLOSED, Thurs 11:00 a.m. - 8:45 p.m., Fri – Sun 11:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.
Click here for images: http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/exhib_detail.asp?id=266
SFMOMA’s Fall/Holiday offering is an embarrassment of riches: Joseph Cornell’s intimate dioramas, Olafur Eliasson’s new age appropriation of the entire 5th floor, Douglas Gordon’s outrageous video art, and newcomer Lucy McKenzie’s hand drawn interiors reminiscent of a 50’s movie set are all worth visiting. It will be interesting to see how the influence of these exhibitions shows up in the work of San Francisco Bay Area artists over the next few years.
But if you can only make time to visit one museum show before the end of the year, the Jeff Wall retrospective at SFMOMA is the one to see. This is highly entertaining photography that will appeal to art aficionados and novices alike.
Wall has only produced 130 or so finished light box transparencies since he devised this format in 1977, and here you can see a full 30% of this work. 40 of his signature staged oversize photographs are on view, beginning with his first foray into this format and concluding with the thrilling denouement of new masterpiece “In Front of a Nightclub,” a promised gift to SFMOMA.
The limited production stems from the fact that he strives for originality in every work; he does not like to repeat himself. The result is a dazzlingly varied array of subject matter but all with the characteristic Wall look: expansive, epic, rich in detail and a satisfying beginning, middle and open-end, just like a great short story.
Wall (born 1946 in Vancouver, B.C.) is a member of an elite club of superstar living photographers (including Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth) who are pushing the medium forward at a rapid pace. Wall takes photography to the next level by mounting the transparencies in a light box (larger than the movie screens at Opera Plaza in some cases). In fact these works are so wide that if you look closely you can see the seam linking the 50” film. Wall first started using this method of presentation when it was new to the world of commercial advertising and it has since become his signature.
Wall’s greatness stems from the fact that his work is a Napoleon pastry of academic layers and yet is egalitarian at heart. Knowledge of cinematography, great film direction, literature, and art history all provide extra satisfaction to the trained viewer but are not necessary to enjoy his work.
Those that did sit through an art history survey will appreciate that Wall spent a decade of his life teaching that class to undergrads and his work is heavily influenced by the monumental scale and dynamic axes of greats like Carravagio and Delacroix, as well as the intimate social-boundary pushing depictions of the bourgeois by Manet and Renoir.
Knowing his process makes the pictures even more interesting. He carefully plans the scene he will stage and photograph, exactly if he were directing a movie, including holding dress rehearsals. In fact he did collaborate on making films for many years but nothing ever quite came to fruition. Wall has also curated a fall film series at SFMOMA that features a “who’s who” roster of important ‘60’s and ‘70’s directors. Click here for the screening schedule:
http://www.sfmoma.org/calendar/calendar_event.asp?eventid=1124&etype=2&func=repeat
This exhibit is unique in that it is co-curated by the Director of SFMOMA himself, Neal Benezra. It is a rare occurrence that someone of Mr. Benezra’s station takes time from his demanding day job of running the museum to do any curating project, let alone a blockbuster traveling show like this.
Don’t miss: “Destroyed Room” (parents, rest easy, you’ve never had it this bad), “Milk,” “Insomnia,” “Tattoos and Shadows,” and “After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Prologue.” If you ever daydreamed during AP Lit about what 1.369 light bulbs hanging from the bedroom ceiling might look like, Wall has improved upon your vision.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street (between Mission and Howard Streets), San Francisco, 94103, Telephone: 415.357.4000, Mon &Tues 11:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.,
Wed CLOSED, Thurs 11:00 a.m. - 8:45 p.m., Fri – Sun 11:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.
Click here for images: http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/exhib_detail.asp?id=266
SFMOMA’s Fall/Holiday offering is an embarrassment of riches: Joseph Cornell’s intimate dioramas, Olafur Eliasson’s new age appropriation of the entire 5th floor, Douglas Gordon’s outrageous video art, and newcomer Lucy McKenzie’s hand drawn interiors reminiscent of a 50’s movie set are all worth visiting. It will be interesting to see how the influence of these exhibitions shows up in the work of San Francisco Bay Area artists over the next few years.
But if you can only make time to visit one museum show before the end of the year, the Jeff Wall retrospective at SFMOMA is the one to see. This is highly entertaining photography that will appeal to art aficionados and novices alike.
Wall has only produced 130 or so finished light box transparencies since he devised this format in 1977, and here you can see a full 30% of this work. 40 of his signature staged oversize photographs are on view, beginning with his first foray into this format and concluding with the thrilling denouement of new masterpiece “In Front of a Nightclub,” a promised gift to SFMOMA.
The limited production stems from the fact that he strives for originality in every work; he does not like to repeat himself. The result is a dazzlingly varied array of subject matter but all with the characteristic Wall look: expansive, epic, rich in detail and a satisfying beginning, middle and open-end, just like a great short story.
Wall (born 1946 in Vancouver, B.C.) is a member of an elite club of superstar living photographers (including Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth) who are pushing the medium forward at a rapid pace. Wall takes photography to the next level by mounting the transparencies in a light box (larger than the movie screens at Opera Plaza in some cases). In fact these works are so wide that if you look closely you can see the seam linking the 50” film. Wall first started using this method of presentation when it was new to the world of commercial advertising and it has since become his signature.
Wall’s greatness stems from the fact that his work is a Napoleon pastry of academic layers and yet is egalitarian at heart. Knowledge of cinematography, great film direction, literature, and art history all provide extra satisfaction to the trained viewer but are not necessary to enjoy his work.
Those that did sit through an art history survey will appreciate that Wall spent a decade of his life teaching that class to undergrads and his work is heavily influenced by the monumental scale and dynamic axes of greats like Carravagio and Delacroix, as well as the intimate social-boundary pushing depictions of the bourgeois by Manet and Renoir.
Knowing his process makes the pictures even more interesting. He carefully plans the scene he will stage and photograph, exactly if he were directing a movie, including holding dress rehearsals. In fact he did collaborate on making films for many years but nothing ever quite came to fruition. Wall has also curated a fall film series at SFMOMA that features a “who’s who” roster of important ‘60’s and ‘70’s directors. Click here for the screening schedule:
http://www.sfmoma.org/calendar/calendar_event.asp?eventid=1124&etype=2&func=repeat
This exhibit is unique in that it is co-curated by the Director of SFMOMA himself, Neal Benezra. It is a rare occurrence that someone of Mr. Benezra’s station takes time from his demanding day job of running the museum to do any curating project, let alone a blockbuster traveling show like this.
Don’t miss: “Destroyed Room” (parents, rest easy, you’ve never had it this bad), “Milk,” “Insomnia,” “Tattoos and Shadows,” and “After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Prologue.” If you ever daydreamed during AP Lit about what 1.369 light bulbs hanging from the bedroom ceiling might look like, Wall has improved upon your vision.
Steven Wolf Fine Arts: Journalist’s Sensibility Pervades Artistic Choices
October 4-29: Derek Boshier, Magazine / Colleen Asper, The Trial;
http://www.stevenwolffinearts.com/
Steven Wolf Fine Arts, 49 Geary St., Suite 411, San Francisco, CA 94108, 415-263-3677 info@stevenwolffinearts.com
Steven Wolf has a well respected reputation in the San Francisco art community as someone who features intellectually rigorous work and takes risks with his programming choices. Steven Wolf’s aesthetic is informed by his undergraduate degree in philosophy, growing up surrounded by his parents’ collection of Americana, and his first career as a newspaper reporter covering politics, crime, business and theater in New York and Los Angeles.
He is also universally liked and considered to be friendly and approachable, especially to young artists and gallery directors. He makes a point to keep track of what’s happening in the smaller and newer galleries. Svea Lin Vezzone of nascent Swarm Gallery + Studios in Oakland agrees: “I really like visiting his gallery because it's a guarantee I'll see something I've never seen before. The work he shows is experimental and often humorous. We have the type of relationship that I can call him with a question or idea and he is generous with his perspective and knowledge.”
Wolf chooses the work he shows using the filter of a futuristic/historical perspective. If he thinks that the work will still resonate with an audience thirty years from now, then it’s a candidate for a gallery show. Quirky, droll and thought provoking are all adjectives that Wolf uses to describe his choices. “If it really looks like art, it makes me uncomfortable.”
The current show is no exception. The work of New York based Colleen Asper features blank courtroom scenes that are chilling in their anonymity and lack of narrative detail. The three untitled triptychs of witness, judge, and prosecuting attorney each flanked by two flags are viewed by you, the impotent defendant. Characters bear a resemblance to players in famous televised trials. The installation in fact mimics a courtroom set up and is well worth the trip to the gallery to see in person. ($3800-$4200 per triptych.)
Established British artist Derek Boshier’s cartoony and vibrantly colored magazine covers parody celebrity and sports star worship, the new religion of modern science, and fake geo-political boundaries that were arbitrarily imposed by jingoistic Western nations. The $18,000+ pricepoints for the enormous 80"x60" works reflect the great size and Boshier’s station. The smaller pieces are highly collectible at $2000 each.
Click here to see pictures of this show: http://www.stevenwolffinearts.com/dynamic/exhibit.asp
The painting featured on the splash page on the gallery website is a fitting icon for Steven Wolf Fine Arts. The irreverent piece by 60’s pop artist John Clem Clarke (“Stuart-George Washington”) is a paint-by-numbers copy of a 1806 piece by then portraitist-to-the-stars Gilbert Stuart, featuring our first president and his trusty steed’s large rear end. http://www.stevenwolffinearts.com/gallery.asp
Wolf and his wife relocated to San Francisco from New York in the early nineties. While covering his new Bay Area reporter's beat he came in frequent contact with the rich legacy of 1930’s and 40’s Works Project Administration (WPA) left-wing propaganda artwork which blankets our public buildings.
He also found himself in strange corners of the city and took the time to explore the underground network of thrift stores and flea markets. After discovering a Nathan Oliveira collage in a second-hand shop for $10, he actively enlisted the junkmen to keep on the lookout and put aside found artwork for him. Butterfield & Butterfield’s estate sale auctions were a wealth of forgotten treasures. After reading Carolyn Jones' seminal text, Bay Area Figurative Art, and learning about the California School of Fine Arts’ (now San Francisco Art Institute) influential post-war GI Bill scholarship students, he was hooked on collecting Bay Area art.
When he opened his first art gallery a few doors down from Zuni Café on Market Street in 1995, he shared space and customers with a business that sold second hand architectural furniture from the same 30’s and 40’s period that interested him. A few years later Wolf’s second gallery space at Jones and Sutter focused on “eccentric, under appreciated California artists.”
In 2003 he “got bored with the traditional notion of commercial galleries” and decided he “didn’t want to revive dead artists anymore.” He moved downtown to prestigious 49 Geary and modified his programming to feature emerging artists of the Bay Area and beyond, one of just a few of that ilk in the building at the time (including Stephen Wirtz and since relocated Catharine Clark).
Noteworthy artists represented by SWFA include Molly Springfield (MFA U.C. Berkeley) who creates conceptual work and drawings that comment on the place of books in our lives, Kaz Oshiro who recreates nostalgic suburban icons with verisimilitude such as dorm refrigerators, electric guitar amplifiers, and shopping mall trash cans and Hamburger Eyes, a San Francisco envelope pushing photo studio collective that offers darkroom classes and nurtures young talent.
Wolf is always on the lookout for new talent. He finds his artists through referrals from other artists and at the international art fairs, collaborating with galleries in other cities in order to give an artist national exposure. In fact he is just back from the Pulse London art fair this week so be sure to ask him about it when you stop by.
http://www.stevenwolffinearts.com/
Steven Wolf Fine Arts, 49 Geary St., Suite 411, San Francisco, CA 94108, 415-263-3677 info@stevenwolffinearts.com
Steven Wolf has a well respected reputation in the San Francisco art community as someone who features intellectually rigorous work and takes risks with his programming choices. Steven Wolf’s aesthetic is informed by his undergraduate degree in philosophy, growing up surrounded by his parents’ collection of Americana, and his first career as a newspaper reporter covering politics, crime, business and theater in New York and Los Angeles.
He is also universally liked and considered to be friendly and approachable, especially to young artists and gallery directors. He makes a point to keep track of what’s happening in the smaller and newer galleries. Svea Lin Vezzone of nascent Swarm Gallery + Studios in Oakland agrees: “I really like visiting his gallery because it's a guarantee I'll see something I've never seen before. The work he shows is experimental and often humorous. We have the type of relationship that I can call him with a question or idea and he is generous with his perspective and knowledge.”
Wolf chooses the work he shows using the filter of a futuristic/historical perspective. If he thinks that the work will still resonate with an audience thirty years from now, then it’s a candidate for a gallery show. Quirky, droll and thought provoking are all adjectives that Wolf uses to describe his choices. “If it really looks like art, it makes me uncomfortable.”
The current show is no exception. The work of New York based Colleen Asper features blank courtroom scenes that are chilling in their anonymity and lack of narrative detail. The three untitled triptychs of witness, judge, and prosecuting attorney each flanked by two flags are viewed by you, the impotent defendant. Characters bear a resemblance to players in famous televised trials. The installation in fact mimics a courtroom set up and is well worth the trip to the gallery to see in person. ($3800-$4200 per triptych.)
Established British artist Derek Boshier’s cartoony and vibrantly colored magazine covers parody celebrity and sports star worship, the new religion of modern science, and fake geo-political boundaries that were arbitrarily imposed by jingoistic Western nations. The $18,000+ pricepoints for the enormous 80"x60" works reflect the great size and Boshier’s station. The smaller pieces are highly collectible at $2000 each.
Click here to see pictures of this show: http://www.stevenwolffinearts.com/dynamic/exhibit.asp
The painting featured on the splash page on the gallery website is a fitting icon for Steven Wolf Fine Arts. The irreverent piece by 60’s pop artist John Clem Clarke (“Stuart-George Washington”) is a paint-by-numbers copy of a 1806 piece by then portraitist-to-the-stars Gilbert Stuart, featuring our first president and his trusty steed’s large rear end. http://www.stevenwolffinearts.com/gallery.asp
Wolf and his wife relocated to San Francisco from New York in the early nineties. While covering his new Bay Area reporter's beat he came in frequent contact with the rich legacy of 1930’s and 40’s Works Project Administration (WPA) left-wing propaganda artwork which blankets our public buildings.
He also found himself in strange corners of the city and took the time to explore the underground network of thrift stores and flea markets. After discovering a Nathan Oliveira collage in a second-hand shop for $10, he actively enlisted the junkmen to keep on the lookout and put aside found artwork for him. Butterfield & Butterfield’s estate sale auctions were a wealth of forgotten treasures. After reading Carolyn Jones' seminal text, Bay Area Figurative Art, and learning about the California School of Fine Arts’ (now San Francisco Art Institute) influential post-war GI Bill scholarship students, he was hooked on collecting Bay Area art.
When he opened his first art gallery a few doors down from Zuni Café on Market Street in 1995, he shared space and customers with a business that sold second hand architectural furniture from the same 30’s and 40’s period that interested him. A few years later Wolf’s second gallery space at Jones and Sutter focused on “eccentric, under appreciated California artists.”
In 2003 he “got bored with the traditional notion of commercial galleries” and decided he “didn’t want to revive dead artists anymore.” He moved downtown to prestigious 49 Geary and modified his programming to feature emerging artists of the Bay Area and beyond, one of just a few of that ilk in the building at the time (including Stephen Wirtz and since relocated Catharine Clark).
Noteworthy artists represented by SWFA include Molly Springfield (MFA U.C. Berkeley) who creates conceptual work and drawings that comment on the place of books in our lives, Kaz Oshiro who recreates nostalgic suburban icons with verisimilitude such as dorm refrigerators, electric guitar amplifiers, and shopping mall trash cans and Hamburger Eyes, a San Francisco envelope pushing photo studio collective that offers darkroom classes and nurtures young talent.
Wolf is always on the lookout for new talent. He finds his artists through referrals from other artists and at the international art fairs, collaborating with galleries in other cities in order to give an artist national exposure. In fact he is just back from the Pulse London art fair this week so be sure to ask him about it when you stop by.
ArtSpan Open Studios: An Easy How-To
32nd Annual ArtSpan San Francisco Open Studios http://www.artspan.org/
Weekend 1: October 6 Private Preview Gala, October 7 Exhibition Opening
All Weekend 2-5 events: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Weekend 2: October 13-14 Western SF
Weekend 3: October 20-21 Central SF
Weekend 4: October 27-28 Eastern SF
Weekend 5: November 3-4 Hunters Point Shipyard
Yes, “Open Studios” is daunting. Exhausting. Even those of us with limitless stamina for seeing art feel weak the day-of and choose to stay in and swiffer the apartment instead. But this is the ultimate backstage pass. It’s an amazing opportunity- not only to buy art that makes your heart flutter at the very reasonable prices, but to also make friends with the artist himself. And there's a one-in-a-zillion chance that this same painting could pay for your kid’s college education some day.
No, you’re not imagining it; there is a distinct similarity to the undignified modern courtship ritual called speed-dating. For the unscorched, here's a quick synopsis: arrive at a downtown bar that is indistinguishably waxing or waning in popularity, sign in with the host. Speak to 20 members of the opposite sex for 5 minutes each (ladies stay seated as the men switch seats) and record important characteristics in dim light with a pen that is running out of ink. When you get home that night and log on to fill in the online ballot, hope that the clues you wrote to yourself are enough to jog your memory and that your can’t-take-it-back Y or N vote for each of the people you met that night is what you really want, and that the object of your affection feels the same way. However, unlike speed-dating, the Open Studios artist always wants you. With little effort on your part, you are guaranteed to find yourself in her bedroom because it doubles as her studio.
In past years, Open Studios caused brain fog and temporary amnesia after a day of driving, parking, looking for quarters, climbing to mold-scented attics and basements, begging forgiveness from meter maids, and then getting back in the car to go to the next studio.
But this year things will be different. There are ways to make the eight weekend days easier to navigate.
1. Narrow it down. Visit the Open Studios Exhibition at SomArts Gallery, 934 Brannan Street at 8th, Wednesday-Friday, Noon-4pm, Saturday & Sunday, 10am-5pm through October 28. Almost every artist participating in Open Studios has donated a work to this exhibition. Artists’ featured works are a good representation of their overall oeuvre so you can quickly see what appeals to you. Most of the paintings and sculptures on view (priced from $100-$3000) sold at the opening night party on Saturday, October 7, so don’t get frustrated if you see something you would have liked to buy. Just make a mental note to attend the kick-off party next year.
2. Get the guide. If you can’t make it to SomArts, go to this website http://www.artspan.org/guide.php to learn where you can pick up a copy near you. It’s a beautiful glossy magazine style book with an example of each artist’s work and clear mapping and scheduling information.
3. Do a little homework. Don’t just peruse the guide. Spend some time looking at the websites of the artists you have decided you like. Plot out who you will see each weekend.
4. Hire a car service. PlanetTran eco-friendly hybrid car service http://www.planettran.com/ costs $60 per hour. Avoiding parking drama makes the investment a bargain. (Invite two friends and divide by three.)
5. Bring your checkbook. These guys do not take credit cards. Open Studios’ artists run the gamut from gallery-represented types to newly minted, just-quit-my-job-to-paint-full-time artists who have barely managed to scrape together the $175 fee to participate in the program.
6. Do not haggle. These prices are already low. IF you are buying more than one piece from a single artist then it is acceptable to ask if the artist would consider giving you a discount on your second purchase.
7. Don’t dawdle. If you walk in the door and don’t care for what you see, two minutes and a pleasant “thank you” is enough.
8. Sign the guest book. Get on the mailing list and follow his career!
Weekend 1: October 6 Private Preview Gala, October 7 Exhibition Opening
All Weekend 2-5 events: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Weekend 2: October 13-14 Western SF
Weekend 3: October 20-21 Central SF
Weekend 4: October 27-28 Eastern SF
Weekend 5: November 3-4 Hunters Point Shipyard
Yes, “Open Studios” is daunting. Exhausting. Even those of us with limitless stamina for seeing art feel weak the day-of and choose to stay in and swiffer the apartment instead. But this is the ultimate backstage pass. It’s an amazing opportunity- not only to buy art that makes your heart flutter at the very reasonable prices, but to also make friends with the artist himself. And there's a one-in-a-zillion chance that this same painting could pay for your kid’s college education some day.
No, you’re not imagining it; there is a distinct similarity to the undignified modern courtship ritual called speed-dating. For the unscorched, here's a quick synopsis: arrive at a downtown bar that is indistinguishably waxing or waning in popularity, sign in with the host. Speak to 20 members of the opposite sex for 5 minutes each (ladies stay seated as the men switch seats) and record important characteristics in dim light with a pen that is running out of ink. When you get home that night and log on to fill in the online ballot, hope that the clues you wrote to yourself are enough to jog your memory and that your can’t-take-it-back Y or N vote for each of the people you met that night is what you really want, and that the object of your affection feels the same way. However, unlike speed-dating, the Open Studios artist always wants you. With little effort on your part, you are guaranteed to find yourself in her bedroom because it doubles as her studio.
In past years, Open Studios caused brain fog and temporary amnesia after a day of driving, parking, looking for quarters, climbing to mold-scented attics and basements, begging forgiveness from meter maids, and then getting back in the car to go to the next studio.
But this year things will be different. There are ways to make the eight weekend days easier to navigate.
1. Narrow it down. Visit the Open Studios Exhibition at SomArts Gallery, 934 Brannan Street at 8th, Wednesday-Friday, Noon-4pm, Saturday & Sunday, 10am-5pm through October 28. Almost every artist participating in Open Studios has donated a work to this exhibition. Artists’ featured works are a good representation of their overall oeuvre so you can quickly see what appeals to you. Most of the paintings and sculptures on view (priced from $100-$3000) sold at the opening night party on Saturday, October 7, so don’t get frustrated if you see something you would have liked to buy. Just make a mental note to attend the kick-off party next year.
2. Get the guide. If you can’t make it to SomArts, go to this website http://www.artspan.org/guide.php to learn where you can pick up a copy near you. It’s a beautiful glossy magazine style book with an example of each artist’s work and clear mapping and scheduling information.
3. Do a little homework. Don’t just peruse the guide. Spend some time looking at the websites of the artists you have decided you like. Plot out who you will see each weekend.
4. Hire a car service. PlanetTran eco-friendly hybrid car service http://www.planettran.com/ costs $60 per hour. Avoiding parking drama makes the investment a bargain. (Invite two friends and divide by three.)
5. Bring your checkbook. These guys do not take credit cards. Open Studios’ artists run the gamut from gallery-represented types to newly minted, just-quit-my-job-to-paint-full-time artists who have barely managed to scrape together the $175 fee to participate in the program.
6. Do not haggle. These prices are already low. IF you are buying more than one piece from a single artist then it is acceptable to ask if the artist would consider giving you a discount on your second purchase.
7. Don’t dawdle. If you walk in the door and don’t care for what you see, two minutes and a pleasant “thank you” is enough.
8. Sign the guest book. Get on the mailing list and follow his career!
Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship: “Skull & Bones” of the Bay Area Art Schools? (pssst… bring your checkbook)
September 15 - October 26, 2007, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, 401 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102, P: 415.554.6080, F: 415.252.2595, http://www.sfacgallery.org/
http://www.sfacgallery.org/exhibitions_detail.fsp?id=338907
Better than the students who are tapped by their peers for membership in the Yale secret society Skull & Bones and then go on to be "bold faced names," these second-year grad students have been recognized for their great potential by their teachers. This year’s twenty-four 2007 winners of the San Francisco Foundation’s Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts are students from the best MFA programs in the Bay Area: Academy of Art University, California College of the Arts, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State University and Stanford University.
Be sure to bring your checkbook. Prices are double-take reasonable (many pieces below $1000) and this work will appreciate as these artists hone their skills and acquire gallery representation.
This also may be the only chance to buy pieces from these series; the work is so new that students are not even sure if they will include it in their MFA grad shows next Spring, the rite of passion every art student goes through as they complete their two year program.
Don’t be startled if the person behind the counter says “hello” when you walk in the door of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and then a minute later “would you like to see a pricelist?” Because this space is a non-profit funded with your tax dollars, there is a distinctive friendly feeling. Not only is the staff charged with the responsibility of ensuring that you feel welcomed in the gallery, they invite your questions and have the time to give detailed answers. If you are interested you can even ask for a guided tour of the show.
Dana Hemenway, recently promoted to Gallery Manager, has participated in producing the show for years, and shared her insights on this year's show. According to Dana there are two overlapping themes. The first is a theme of copying or representation, though in an indirect way. The second theme is the information age. The side effect of the combination is that the show is extremely accessible to someone who may be new to seeing contemporary art. However in this case accessible also means thought-provoking and entertaining.
Here are descriptions of just a few of the pieces that evoked lively conversation between artists, collectors, Arts Commission board members and art journalists at the special collector’s reception last Friday night.
Matthew Jones' (Stanford) undulating sculpture “The Shape of Something Always Moving” is mesmerizing. The small cherry wood joints were hand carved by the artist and delicately wired together like a multi-celled organism or a Tactile Dome on Miracle Grow. The piece sits on a motorized base that moves up and down and pushes the sculpture around on the pedestal like an amoeba.
If you are one of those people who wonders what the draw is to those video games that allow you to create an avatar (or recreation) of yourself in the virtual world, Marque Cornblatt’s piece is a must-see. The artist created this 40 minute video piece, “Self-Portrait, Corleone Enforcer” using the Godfather video game. Marque’s avatar wanders the streets of 1940’s Manhattan in a menacing trance, ignoring innocent bystanders and threatening gangsters alike, confusing the game which is designed for interaction and violence. (Probably not a coincidence that Marque attends San Francisco State University, alma mater of Godfather Director Francis Ford Coppola.)
“My Memory of George W Bush as Described to and Drawn by Various Police Officers Certified in Drawing For Law” by another SF State student, Lizabeth Rossof, gets a chuckle at first because residents of the Left Coast already think of “Dubya” as a crook. But there is a second layer here relating to the reliability of witnesses, the subjective art of drawing from a third party description, and innocent people going to jail based on well-intentioned yet inaccurate recovered memories. The nine portraits look nothing alike other than their buck teeth and expressionistic wide forehead. One portrait even turned out African American.
And finally, plan your visit for a Saturday and call ahead to ensure that Sara Thacher of the Vacation Surrogate Travel Agency is open for business. Ms. Thacker has carefully typecast herself as an anachronistic travel agent down to the gelled spiky hair and mismatched khaki separates. Sara is the only M&C Fellow who is not enrolled in a traditional practice of art program. Sara is a student in the California College of the Arts Field of Social Practice, which trains its students to intervene within existing social systems to inspire debate or catalyze social exchange. The Surrogate Travel Agency pairs people who want to travel to San Francisco but cannot with San Franciscans who take the dream vacation on their behalf. The art here is the act of creating a connection between people who would otherwise never meet and forcing an inured San Franciscan to see his hometown in a new light. Buy film.
http://www.sfacgallery.org/exhibitions_detail.fsp?id=338907
Better than the students who are tapped by their peers for membership in the Yale secret society Skull & Bones and then go on to be "bold faced names," these second-year grad students have been recognized for their great potential by their teachers. This year’s twenty-four 2007 winners of the San Francisco Foundation’s Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts are students from the best MFA programs in the Bay Area: Academy of Art University, California College of the Arts, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State University and Stanford University.
Be sure to bring your checkbook. Prices are double-take reasonable (many pieces below $1000) and this work will appreciate as these artists hone their skills and acquire gallery representation.
This also may be the only chance to buy pieces from these series; the work is so new that students are not even sure if they will include it in their MFA grad shows next Spring, the rite of passion every art student goes through as they complete their two year program.
Don’t be startled if the person behind the counter says “hello” when you walk in the door of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and then a minute later “would you like to see a pricelist?” Because this space is a non-profit funded with your tax dollars, there is a distinctive friendly feeling. Not only is the staff charged with the responsibility of ensuring that you feel welcomed in the gallery, they invite your questions and have the time to give detailed answers. If you are interested you can even ask for a guided tour of the show.
Dana Hemenway, recently promoted to Gallery Manager, has participated in producing the show for years, and shared her insights on this year's show. According to Dana there are two overlapping themes. The first is a theme of copying or representation, though in an indirect way. The second theme is the information age. The side effect of the combination is that the show is extremely accessible to someone who may be new to seeing contemporary art. However in this case accessible also means thought-provoking and entertaining.
Here are descriptions of just a few of the pieces that evoked lively conversation between artists, collectors, Arts Commission board members and art journalists at the special collector’s reception last Friday night.
Matthew Jones' (Stanford) undulating sculpture “The Shape of Something Always Moving” is mesmerizing. The small cherry wood joints were hand carved by the artist and delicately wired together like a multi-celled organism or a Tactile Dome on Miracle Grow. The piece sits on a motorized base that moves up and down and pushes the sculpture around on the pedestal like an amoeba.
If you are one of those people who wonders what the draw is to those video games that allow you to create an avatar (or recreation) of yourself in the virtual world, Marque Cornblatt’s piece is a must-see. The artist created this 40 minute video piece, “Self-Portrait, Corleone Enforcer” using the Godfather video game. Marque’s avatar wanders the streets of 1940’s Manhattan in a menacing trance, ignoring innocent bystanders and threatening gangsters alike, confusing the game which is designed for interaction and violence. (Probably not a coincidence that Marque attends San Francisco State University, alma mater of Godfather Director Francis Ford Coppola.)
“My Memory of George W Bush as Described to and Drawn by Various Police Officers Certified in Drawing For Law” by another SF State student, Lizabeth Rossof, gets a chuckle at first because residents of the Left Coast already think of “Dubya” as a crook. But there is a second layer here relating to the reliability of witnesses, the subjective art of drawing from a third party description, and innocent people going to jail based on well-intentioned yet inaccurate recovered memories. The nine portraits look nothing alike other than their buck teeth and expressionistic wide forehead. One portrait even turned out African American.
And finally, plan your visit for a Saturday and call ahead to ensure that Sara Thacher of the Vacation Surrogate Travel Agency is open for business. Ms. Thacker has carefully typecast herself as an anachronistic travel agent down to the gelled spiky hair and mismatched khaki separates. Sara is the only M&C Fellow who is not enrolled in a traditional practice of art program. Sara is a student in the California College of the Arts Field of Social Practice, which trains its students to intervene within existing social systems to inspire debate or catalyze social exchange. The Surrogate Travel Agency pairs people who want to travel to San Francisco but cannot with San Franciscans who take the dream vacation on their behalf. The art here is the act of creating a connection between people who would otherwise never meet and forcing an inured San Franciscan to see his hometown in a new light. Buy film.
galleryThree: 66-6th Street, the Number of the Beast.
Kevin E. Taylor at "galleryThree" a new art space owned and operated by The Shooting
Gallery, opening reception Friday - September 7th, 2007, 7pm - 10pm, showing through October 4, 2007, 66 6th St. San Francisco CA 94109, 415.724.2140
By appointment only for a few months so please call to make an appointment before coming by.
http://www.shootinggallerysf.com/gallerythreekevintaylor.html
This block of Sixth Street is not for the faint of heart. It’s a dense block of small businesses that cater to the SRO (Single Room Occupancy) Hotel residents. Barber shops, pawn shops, bodegas, and one-dollar-sign ethnic eateries are the majority. But Justin Giarla’s third art gallery, galleryThree, is the latest culture pioneer in this neighborhood.
The envelope-pushing Luggage Store Gallery came first (1007 Market at 6th) then Cal Modern (1035 Market). And now the fashionistas are getting into the mix. Reported in the Chronicle last month, Yetunde Schuhmann, first president of the San Francisco Innovative Design Council, is waging a campaign to make this block of Sixth a fashion design incubator both because of the low rents and because this neighborhood could use an infusion of culture and youth. Now galleryThree opens its doors for the first time this Friday at 66 - 6th St.
Justin’s other two locations, Shooting Gallery and White Walls (co-owned by Andres Guerrero) on Larkin between O’Farrell and Geary, are in an equally gritty neighborhood, ameliorated only by child-friendly Sergeant John Macaulay Mini Park on the corner (named after the San Francisco police officer who was killed in the adjacent Myrtle alley while on duty in 1992).
The Tenderloin is not a deterrent to Justin’s customers, drawn by Justin's distinctive eye. The influences on Justin’s taste in art run the gamut from skateboard culture, punk and rockabilly, tattoos, erotica, anime and Outsider Art. Justin’s business card sums it up: “Kick ass art for kick ass people.”
Justin’s path to the business of art is atypical, to say the least. When asked to fill in the blanks of his resume before he opened his first space in 2003, he proves his authentic appreciation of urban art. “I managed night clubs here in SF for years like 1015 Folsom, Sound Factory & Townsend. I grew up in Marin & SF, barely graduated high school, didn't go to college.”
Justin is opening a third location because he thinks there still aren’t enough venues for the kinds of artists that he loves. He feels it is his responsibility to provide another showcase for this talent that isn’t represented by mainstream galleries. The difference between this new space and the other two is that space will specialize in the “big break.” He’ll use this space as a showcase to feature artists who have never before had a gallery show.
Why choose another tough block? “I chose 6th St. because it’s ready for a big change. I like moving into gritty or edgy neighborhoods so that I may not only see the changes for myself but so I can help make the change happen. Bring something beautiful to a part of SF that needs it. Give people a reason to be proud of their street.” He means it. Justin also serves on the Hospitality House Art Auction committee where he gives back to the Tenderloin community that houses his galleries.
Taylor, Kevin E.: galleryThree Inaugural Show Not for the Faint of Heart
Kevin E Taylor at "galleryThree" a new art space owned and operated by The Shooting Gallery, opening reception Friday, September 7th, 2007, 7pm - 10pm, showing through October 4, 2007, 66 6th St. San Francisco CA 94109, 415.724.2140, By appointment only for a few months so please call to make an appointment before coming by.
http://www.shootinggallerysf.com/gallerythreekevintaylor.html
As 666 (the street address of Justin Giarla’s brand new galleryThree) is the symbolic “Number of the Beast,” it is fitting that Kevin Earl Taylor’s work is featured in the inaugural show. In Kevin’s work there is a recurring theme of nightmarish anthropomorphic animals. These futuristic creatures are Kevin’s premonition of how the species will evolve, when the lines between man and beast have blurred irrevocably. The macabre portraits beg for backstory but Kevin won’t supply it. These are the creatures from the dreams you can’t quite remember.
Oil on wood, oil on masonite and works on paper are all intricately rendered with virtuosic, if wince-inducing, draftsmanship.
There is also a theme of forlorn figures sometimes violently dismembered but bandaged lovingly. The artist finds traditional figure drawing boring and hates to draw clothes. Like 6th Street, this work is for people with strong character.
Justin Giarla, owner of galleryThree, describes Kevin’s work as “extremely dark but fresh and really quite free and expressive. I think he’s just around the corner from doing some amazing things.”
Kevin’s story is noteworthy because he arrived in San Francisco just a little over one year ago and has made amazing in-roads. He debuted in the project space at Swarm, then on to Gallery AD in San Jose, A Bitchin’ Space in Sacto, bowed at the Shooting Gallery in a one night show, participated in Noisepop, recently Madrone Lounge, plus he’s found time to curate gallery shows in Sacramento and Atlanta. In all, ten different exhibitions of his work since arriving in the Bay Area in April ‘06.
He attributes his tenacious track record to his experience in hometown Charleston, S.C. When he graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a B.F.A. Illustration in 1994, there weren’t any galleries who would even consider showing the art of skateboarding and punk rock culture. Over the years he learned to market himself and not to take no for an answer. In the beginning when he was really hungry he resorted to posting his art on plywood boards in public spaces, anything to show his work. Over the years he became more comfortable with promoting himself and became “a big fish in a small pond.”
About the time of his 33rd birthday he decided it was time for a change of scenery and chose San Francisco, the home of Thrasher Magazine, where he knew there was a larger audience for his kind of work. He also looked forward to a larger community of artists making art in a similar style. A few years earlier he'd tried San Diego because his good friend, Shepard Fairey, was living there (he’s now in LA). A noted artist/graphic designer/illustrator, Shephard is most known for the “Obey Giant” Malcolm Gladwellesque phenomenon.
San Diego wasn’t the right fit but San Francisco is.
http://www.shootinggallerysf.com/gallerythreekevintaylor.html
As 666 (the street address of Justin Giarla’s brand new galleryThree) is the symbolic “Number of the Beast,” it is fitting that Kevin Earl Taylor’s work is featured in the inaugural show. In Kevin’s work there is a recurring theme of nightmarish anthropomorphic animals. These futuristic creatures are Kevin’s premonition of how the species will evolve, when the lines between man and beast have blurred irrevocably. The macabre portraits beg for backstory but Kevin won’t supply it. These are the creatures from the dreams you can’t quite remember.
Oil on wood, oil on masonite and works on paper are all intricately rendered with virtuosic, if wince-inducing, draftsmanship.
There is also a theme of forlorn figures sometimes violently dismembered but bandaged lovingly. The artist finds traditional figure drawing boring and hates to draw clothes. Like 6th Street, this work is for people with strong character.
Justin Giarla, owner of galleryThree, describes Kevin’s work as “extremely dark but fresh and really quite free and expressive. I think he’s just around the corner from doing some amazing things.”
Kevin’s story is noteworthy because he arrived in San Francisco just a little over one year ago and has made amazing in-roads. He debuted in the project space at Swarm, then on to Gallery AD in San Jose, A Bitchin’ Space in Sacto, bowed at the Shooting Gallery in a one night show, participated in Noisepop, recently Madrone Lounge, plus he’s found time to curate gallery shows in Sacramento and Atlanta. In all, ten different exhibitions of his work since arriving in the Bay Area in April ‘06.
He attributes his tenacious track record to his experience in hometown Charleston, S.C. When he graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a B.F.A. Illustration in 1994, there weren’t any galleries who would even consider showing the art of skateboarding and punk rock culture. Over the years he learned to market himself and not to take no for an answer. In the beginning when he was really hungry he resorted to posting his art on plywood boards in public spaces, anything to show his work. Over the years he became more comfortable with promoting himself and became “a big fish in a small pond.”
About the time of his 33rd birthday he decided it was time for a change of scenery and chose San Francisco, the home of Thrasher Magazine, where he knew there was a larger audience for his kind of work. He also looked forward to a larger community of artists making art in a similar style. A few years earlier he'd tried San Diego because his good friend, Shepard Fairey, was living there (he’s now in LA). A noted artist/graphic designer/illustrator, Shephard is most known for the “Obey Giant” Malcolm Gladwellesque phenomenon.
San Diego wasn’t the right fit but San Francisco is.
Cardon, Shell: Synesthesia on Canvas
Shell Cardon: Hear with your Eyes – Visual Rock ‘n Roll
September 6 - October 13, 2007
Reception Thursday, September 6, 5:00 to 7:00pm
MM Galleries, 101 Townsend Street @ 2nd, Suite 207, San Francisco, CA 94107, phone: 415.543.1550, Tuesday - Friday: 11am - 5pm, Saturday, 12pm- 4pm and always by appt.
http://www.mmgalleries.com/artists/cardon.html
No, synesthesia is not a fancy art term. It’s an involuntary condition that describes the phenomenon of attributing colors and personalities to numbers, days of the week or sounds.
Shell Cardon has not been diagnosed with this creative condition but the description of her artistic process and subject matter suggests that she is happily afflicted.
Shell’s paintings capture the simultaneous feeling of joy and mortality that you get in your gut when you think back to those seminal character-building “first” moments in your life: the first time you stood at the top of a diving board and gulped as your friends egged you on (High Dive), discovered the onomatopoeia of a comic strip’s “THWACK!” (Flash Gordon), tasted the explosion of watermelon candy in your mouth (Jolly Rancher) or heard your first earshock of the Stones (Gimme Shelter).
Her paintings beg to be touched. The layers of acrylic paint beckon like an orphaned inflatable toy in the swimming pool- same high gloss, same bold friendly vivid color, same plasticky pillowy surface.
You’ll immediately recognize the strong impact of 60’s pop art and op art in her work. Ellsworth Kelly and Andy Warhol are influences. Imagine Roy Lichtenstein’s signature benday dots viewed under a microscope.
Shell has taken a circuitous route to becoming a full time artist. Born into a family of “doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs” in a conservative Washington D.C. suburb, she attended law school after UCLA undergrad because that was what she was supposed to do. After graduating from Loyola Marymount she dutifully entered the practice of law.
But she exercised her creative side nights and weekends moonlighting for a decorative arts painter who she helped do elaborate murals in home interiors. This experience introduced her to what would later become her medium of choice, commercial latex paint.
After years of this rote, she came to her senses and quit the law. She chose to enroll in San Francisco’s Academy of Art in order to study fashion. There she perfected her figure-drawing skills and fully intended to become a fashion designer after graduation. (Gladys Perint Palmer, Executive Director of the Academy’s School of Fashion is a strong influence.) Although she didn’t end up in the business of fashion, this part of her artistic nature is thriving. Shell was short listed as one of the city’s three best dressed women by San Francisco Magazine in the September ’07 Fall Arts + Fashion issue.
She is a regular at independent G&R Paint on Sutter Street where she spends hours with the guys mixing the exact right shade and sheen of custom color. She doesn’t use brushes but instead pours the paint directly on the canvas. It is hard to imagine this diminutive figure leaning over a 4’x5’ canvas with a heavy paint can in her hands, perspiring in the heat of her L.A. studio and carefully allowing just a few tablespoons to stream out. Her pieces take ages to dry because the pools of color can be up to seven layers deep.
However her time consuming process, plus the capricious So-Cal humidity, do not slow her down her output. There is a wait list for commissions and her work is already featured in the art collections of many of San Francisco’s bright young things including Kimberly and Nicolo Bini, Alex Turner, Renee Singh, Alex Chases, Christina and Jad Dunning, Joel Goodrich, Charlot and Greg Malin and Jennifer Madjarov and Matt McCormick.
Shell’s new alliance with MM Galleries was chosen for many thoughtful reasons: its affiliation with (now departed) founder Michael Martin’s MMG Foundation which funds art programs in the public schools, her friendly rapport with the new co-directors Kit Schulte and Marina Cain and the gallery’s partnership with other San Francisco home-grown artists including Henry Jackson and Rex Ray.
Fortunately the Symphony has shifted its opening from its traditional Wednesday after Labor Day to later in the month. Now you’ll have plenty of energy to do both the opening of the Opera on Friday and the reception for Shell the night before, Thursday September 6th from 5:00-7:00 pm.
September 6 - October 13, 2007
Reception Thursday, September 6, 5:00 to 7:00pm
MM Galleries, 101 Townsend Street @ 2nd, Suite 207, San Francisco, CA 94107, phone: 415.543.1550, Tuesday - Friday: 11am - 5pm, Saturday, 12pm- 4pm and always by appt.
http://www.mmgalleries.com/artists/cardon.html
No, synesthesia is not a fancy art term. It’s an involuntary condition that describes the phenomenon of attributing colors and personalities to numbers, days of the week or sounds.
Shell Cardon has not been diagnosed with this creative condition but the description of her artistic process and subject matter suggests that she is happily afflicted.
Shell’s paintings capture the simultaneous feeling of joy and mortality that you get in your gut when you think back to those seminal character-building “first” moments in your life: the first time you stood at the top of a diving board and gulped as your friends egged you on (High Dive), discovered the onomatopoeia of a comic strip’s “THWACK!” (Flash Gordon), tasted the explosion of watermelon candy in your mouth (Jolly Rancher) or heard your first earshock of the Stones (Gimme Shelter).
Her paintings beg to be touched. The layers of acrylic paint beckon like an orphaned inflatable toy in the swimming pool- same high gloss, same bold friendly vivid color, same plasticky pillowy surface.
You’ll immediately recognize the strong impact of 60’s pop art and op art in her work. Ellsworth Kelly and Andy Warhol are influences. Imagine Roy Lichtenstein’s signature benday dots viewed under a microscope.
Shell has taken a circuitous route to becoming a full time artist. Born into a family of “doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs” in a conservative Washington D.C. suburb, she attended law school after UCLA undergrad because that was what she was supposed to do. After graduating from Loyola Marymount she dutifully entered the practice of law.
But she exercised her creative side nights and weekends moonlighting for a decorative arts painter who she helped do elaborate murals in home interiors. This experience introduced her to what would later become her medium of choice, commercial latex paint.
After years of this rote, she came to her senses and quit the law. She chose to enroll in San Francisco’s Academy of Art in order to study fashion. There she perfected her figure-drawing skills and fully intended to become a fashion designer after graduation. (Gladys Perint Palmer, Executive Director of the Academy’s School of Fashion is a strong influence.) Although she didn’t end up in the business of fashion, this part of her artistic nature is thriving. Shell was short listed as one of the city’s three best dressed women by San Francisco Magazine in the September ’07 Fall Arts + Fashion issue.
She is a regular at independent G&R Paint on Sutter Street where she spends hours with the guys mixing the exact right shade and sheen of custom color. She doesn’t use brushes but instead pours the paint directly on the canvas. It is hard to imagine this diminutive figure leaning over a 4’x5’ canvas with a heavy paint can in her hands, perspiring in the heat of her L.A. studio and carefully allowing just a few tablespoons to stream out. Her pieces take ages to dry because the pools of color can be up to seven layers deep.
However her time consuming process, plus the capricious So-Cal humidity, do not slow her down her output. There is a wait list for commissions and her work is already featured in the art collections of many of San Francisco’s bright young things including Kimberly and Nicolo Bini, Alex Turner, Renee Singh, Alex Chases, Christina and Jad Dunning, Joel Goodrich, Charlot and Greg Malin and Jennifer Madjarov and Matt McCormick.
Shell’s new alliance with MM Galleries was chosen for many thoughtful reasons: its affiliation with (now departed) founder Michael Martin’s MMG Foundation which funds art programs in the public schools, her friendly rapport with the new co-directors Kit Schulte and Marina Cain and the gallery’s partnership with other San Francisco home-grown artists including Henry Jackson and Rex Ray.
Fortunately the Symphony has shifted its opening from its traditional Wednesday after Labor Day to later in the month. Now you’ll have plenty of energy to do both the opening of the Opera on Friday and the reception for Shell the night before, Thursday September 6th from 5:00-7:00 pm.
Gallery 1988: 80’s Time Warp Replicates in Lower Polk Gulch
Gallery 1988, 1173 Sutter St. at Polk, San Francisco, 94109, Hours Tues-Sat 12-7pm, phone 415.409.1376
http://www.nineteeneightyeight.com/
Welcome Gallery 1988, San Francisco’s newest arrival on the scene. The grand opening in April was just as much a SF debut for G1988 as it was a homecoming for Co-Director Katie Cromwell, who grew up in Marin County and is an alum of The Branson School.
This is the second location for Gallery 1988. Since opening its Melrose flagship in 2004, G1988 has established its reputation as a purveyor of kitschy 80’s themes that evoke childhood nostalgia including plush animals, skateboarding, early video games, TV cartoons, and Disney. The name hearkens back to a good year for Los Angeles: the Dodgers and the Lakers were champions, Yo MTV Raps was born, and the gallery owners were about to hit puberty.
At the opening party of the current show, Skate Life: Skateboard Inspired Sculptures and Paintings by J. Shea and Freddi C, Katie’s mom and sis were serving beer from the cooler-keg and her dad was hanging back just behind them looking over the scene (her supportive family comes to all of the openings). The guests were a mix of skateboard industry types, graf guys and friends. The collaborative show (up through August 21) features J. Shea’s sculptures of miniature boarders made of Model Magic doing tricks off Freddi C’s camo street-scene painted plywood boards. The figures are loaded with personality and movement and the landscapes are strongly influenced by J. Shea’s background in textile design. ($60-$2,500)http://g1988preview.blogspot.com/2007/08/skate-life-preview.html
Katie started out as an art major at the University of Southern California, inspired by the talent of her mother, Jean Cromwell, an artist and graphic designer. (She is not related to legendary Trojan track coach Dean Cromwell.) But after taking the mandatory survey art history course required for the practice of art curriculum, she was hooked. When making the decision to switch her studies, her parents asked her to curate a professional career for herself at the same time, and a business plan was born.
After graduation she learned the basics working as a gallery assistant for a short time at Louis Stern Fine Art in West Hollywood. She started her gallery in 2004 with her college sweetheart, Jensen Karp. Jensen did not have an art background, but being a cult rapper and a collector of 80's pop culture memorabilia, he did have his finger on the pulse of youth culture. Living together and starting a small business together took its toll on the relationship. They’ve since broken up and successfully transitioned to be amicable business partners.
When they secured their space off the beaten path in an old Saks Fifth Avenue store on Melrose at La Brea, they weren’t sure of what their focus would be. They knew there was a need for affordable original art and that there was a young customer base who didn’t bat an eye at spending big bucks for fancy designer handbags, so why not introduce this crowd to art? Serendipitously, Acme Game Store moved in next door only one month later and was targeting a similar clientele. A beautiful friendship developed.
Katie and Jensen started out by showing artists who they knew from running around LA, then showed those artists’ friends. In fact, mining those "favorite links" lists that artists post on their websites is the primary way they find new artists. G1988 still has relationships with all four artists featured in their first show: Plastic God (Doug Murphy). ESM (Kerri Sakurai), Nikki Van Pelt and Topher.
Then, a freelance journalist doing a story on next door neighbor Acme happened to stop by the gallery and the idea for what would become their big break was hatched. Writer Jon Gibson, Katie and Jensen worked together to curate “I AM 8 BIT,” art inspired by classic videogames of the ‘80s. (Think portraits of Donkey Kong’s Mario and head shots of Ms. Pac Man.) Limited edition prints are still available: http://www.nineteeneightyeight.com/8bit.html
The opening was timed to coincide with E3 Expo, the annual video game convention, and Jon excercised his media contacts to publicize the show. At the same time, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was showing video game art in a show called "Into the Pixel."
Over 1,500 people showed up for the opening night reception. Not only were most of the paintings sold, Gibson secured a book deal with Chronicle Books. Acme Games closed after about a year, but G1988’s good fortune with neighbors continued when Golden Apple Comics took over the space.
After making the decision to move back to SF and open a second location, Katie looked for affordable gallery space for months. Natoma and Valencia streets were considered, but Sutter at Polk won out because of StrangeCo, with whom G1988 now shares space. Artists and galleries (including G1988 and Fifty24SF Gallery) collaborate with StrangeCo. to make limited edition, vinyl toys. http://www.strangeco.com/index_home.php
The Belvedere native’s commitment to the neighborhood is not lip service, she is also a TenderNob resident. She lives a just few blocks away near Bell Market and walks to work with her companion, Finnigan, a miniature Doberman.
Future G1988 shows will feature San Francisco artists Nathan Stapley, Scott Campbell, and Rueben Rood. Jensen and Katie intend to cross-pollinate artists between the two locations.
G1988 is not the first art gallery in the neighborhood. Pioneers Justin Giarla of Shooting Gallery and his partner Andres Guerrero of White Walls (835 and 839 Larkin at O’Farrell) have been friendly and welcoming to the newbie. There’s also funky Space Gallery, the art bar on Polk at Sutter.
But …ahem…, we’re not calling it "Lower Polk Gulch" any more. This notorious section of Polk has been rechristened “Polk Village.” If you need proof, just take a look at the awning of O’Reilly’s Holy Grail (formerly the historic Mayes Oyster House). This rebirth was midwifed by the Polk Corridor Business Association and real estate developers Vanguard, transforming old SRO hotels into condos for seniors (note the proximity to St. Francis Hospital) and yuppies alike.
Stark Guide looks forward to watching Gallery 1988 and Polk Village grow up together.
http://www.nineteeneightyeight.com/
Welcome Gallery 1988, San Francisco’s newest arrival on the scene. The grand opening in April was just as much a SF debut for G1988 as it was a homecoming for Co-Director Katie Cromwell, who grew up in Marin County and is an alum of The Branson School.
This is the second location for Gallery 1988. Since opening its Melrose flagship in 2004, G1988 has established its reputation as a purveyor of kitschy 80’s themes that evoke childhood nostalgia including plush animals, skateboarding, early video games, TV cartoons, and Disney. The name hearkens back to a good year for Los Angeles: the Dodgers and the Lakers were champions, Yo MTV Raps was born, and the gallery owners were about to hit puberty.
At the opening party of the current show, Skate Life: Skateboard Inspired Sculptures and Paintings by J. Shea and Freddi C, Katie’s mom and sis were serving beer from the cooler-keg and her dad was hanging back just behind them looking over the scene (her supportive family comes to all of the openings). The guests were a mix of skateboard industry types, graf guys and friends. The collaborative show (up through August 21) features J. Shea’s sculptures of miniature boarders made of Model Magic doing tricks off Freddi C’s camo street-scene painted plywood boards. The figures are loaded with personality and movement and the landscapes are strongly influenced by J. Shea’s background in textile design. ($60-$2,500)http://g1988preview.blogspot.com/2007/08/skate-life-preview.html
Katie started out as an art major at the University of Southern California, inspired by the talent of her mother, Jean Cromwell, an artist and graphic designer. (She is not related to legendary Trojan track coach Dean Cromwell.) But after taking the mandatory survey art history course required for the practice of art curriculum, she was hooked. When making the decision to switch her studies, her parents asked her to curate a professional career for herself at the same time, and a business plan was born.
After graduation she learned the basics working as a gallery assistant for a short time at Louis Stern Fine Art in West Hollywood. She started her gallery in 2004 with her college sweetheart, Jensen Karp. Jensen did not have an art background, but being a cult rapper and a collector of 80's pop culture memorabilia, he did have his finger on the pulse of youth culture. Living together and starting a small business together took its toll on the relationship. They’ve since broken up and successfully transitioned to be amicable business partners.
When they secured their space off the beaten path in an old Saks Fifth Avenue store on Melrose at La Brea, they weren’t sure of what their focus would be. They knew there was a need for affordable original art and that there was a young customer base who didn’t bat an eye at spending big bucks for fancy designer handbags, so why not introduce this crowd to art? Serendipitously, Acme Game Store moved in next door only one month later and was targeting a similar clientele. A beautiful friendship developed.
Katie and Jensen started out by showing artists who they knew from running around LA, then showed those artists’ friends. In fact, mining those "favorite links" lists that artists post on their websites is the primary way they find new artists. G1988 still has relationships with all four artists featured in their first show: Plastic God (Doug Murphy). ESM (Kerri Sakurai), Nikki Van Pelt and Topher.
Then, a freelance journalist doing a story on next door neighbor Acme happened to stop by the gallery and the idea for what would become their big break was hatched. Writer Jon Gibson, Katie and Jensen worked together to curate “I AM 8 BIT,” art inspired by classic videogames of the ‘80s. (Think portraits of Donkey Kong’s Mario and head shots of Ms. Pac Man.) Limited edition prints are still available: http://www.nineteeneightyeight.com/8bit.html
The opening was timed to coincide with E3 Expo, the annual video game convention, and Jon excercised his media contacts to publicize the show. At the same time, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was showing video game art in a show called "Into the Pixel."
Over 1,500 people showed up for the opening night reception. Not only were most of the paintings sold, Gibson secured a book deal with Chronicle Books. Acme Games closed after about a year, but G1988’s good fortune with neighbors continued when Golden Apple Comics took over the space.
After making the decision to move back to SF and open a second location, Katie looked for affordable gallery space for months. Natoma and Valencia streets were considered, but Sutter at Polk won out because of StrangeCo, with whom G1988 now shares space. Artists and galleries (including G1988 and Fifty24SF Gallery) collaborate with StrangeCo. to make limited edition, vinyl toys. http://www.strangeco.com/index_home.php
The Belvedere native’s commitment to the neighborhood is not lip service, she is also a TenderNob resident. She lives a just few blocks away near Bell Market and walks to work with her companion, Finnigan, a miniature Doberman.
Future G1988 shows will feature San Francisco artists Nathan Stapley, Scott Campbell, and Rueben Rood. Jensen and Katie intend to cross-pollinate artists between the two locations.
G1988 is not the first art gallery in the neighborhood. Pioneers Justin Giarla of Shooting Gallery and his partner Andres Guerrero of White Walls (835 and 839 Larkin at O’Farrell) have been friendly and welcoming to the newbie. There’s also funky Space Gallery, the art bar on Polk at Sutter.
But …ahem…, we’re not calling it "Lower Polk Gulch" any more. This notorious section of Polk has been rechristened “Polk Village.” If you need proof, just take a look at the awning of O’Reilly’s Holy Grail (formerly the historic Mayes Oyster House). This rebirth was midwifed by the Polk Corridor Business Association and real estate developers Vanguard, transforming old SRO hotels into condos for seniors (note the proximity to St. Francis Hospital) and yuppies alike.
Stark Guide looks forward to watching Gallery 1988 and Polk Village grow up together.
Artsource Consulting: Make Time for a Quickie at 101 Cal
8:00 AM - 6:00 PM, August 6-September 21, 101 California Street Lobby, curated by Artsource Consulting http://www.artsourceinc.com/
On your next lunch hour in the financial district be sure to stop by 101 California and visit the lobby installation curated by Artsource Consulting. The atrium lobby is a soaring space infused with light and life. Walk through the revolving door and you are transported to an equatorial paradise, surrounded by potted palms and flourishing orchids.
Artsource is a ten year old fine art consulting firm whose impressive client list includes HP, PG&E and the U.S. State Department's art in embassies program.
Benicia Gantner's futuristic lush vinyl landscapes were designed for and are perfectly suited to the soaring verdant greenhouse space.
http://starkguide.blogspot.com/2007/08/gantner-benicia-lush-vinyl-landscapes_07.html
Karen Weiner's mixed media sculpture and works on paper are an imaginary world of miniature house perched on trees. Luxury birdy vacation homes or is this how we'll all be living once sea level rises?
http://starkguide.blogspot.com/2007/08/weiner-karen-ultimate-imaginary-housing.html
On your next lunch hour in the financial district be sure to stop by 101 California and visit the lobby installation curated by Artsource Consulting. The atrium lobby is a soaring space infused with light and life. Walk through the revolving door and you are transported to an equatorial paradise, surrounded by potted palms and flourishing orchids.
Artsource is a ten year old fine art consulting firm whose impressive client list includes HP, PG&E and the U.S. State Department's art in embassies program.
Benicia Gantner's futuristic lush vinyl landscapes were designed for and are perfectly suited to the soaring verdant greenhouse space.
http://starkguide.blogspot.com/2007/08/gantner-benicia-lush-vinyl-landscapes_07.html
Karen Weiner's mixed media sculpture and works on paper are an imaginary world of miniature house perched on trees. Luxury birdy vacation homes or is this how we'll all be living once sea level rises?
http://starkguide.blogspot.com/2007/08/weiner-karen-ultimate-imaginary-housing.html
Gantner, Benicia: Lush Vinyl Landscapes
8:00 AM - 6:00 PM, August 6-September 21, 101 California Street Lobby, curated by Artsource Consulting
http://www.beniciagantner.com/
Benicia’s work is astonishing because from afar it looks as if it were made without the human hand. High gloss vinyl film is meticulously sliced into snowflake-intricate floral patterns, evoking a stylized version of 19th century Arts and Crafts decorative arts master William Morris.
These are huge works that were made for this space and perfectly echo the riot of plant life and sunshine streaming in. Centered above the elevator bays is an enormous triptych, Sun Stream + Green, which has hanging folds of yellow sun over the contrived, overgrown landscape. Bloom 1 (pearlescent gray cast acrylic) and Bloom 2 (a vibrant pea shoot green) flank the Sun Stream altarpiece over the security desk. Benicia has made three strong pieces that stand out with confidence in this imposing space while still remaining true to her delicate style.
Benicia uses plexiglass mounted on wood frame often in her work, but at 8’ x 12’ “Sun Stream” is the largest piece that she has ever produced. When she first started making these carefully choreographed landscapes she cut the plastic strips by hand. Now that demand for her work has increased, she uses a sign maker’s plotter after creating the original stencil template. In fact her materials are traditional sign making supplies which she can't find locally and must import from L.A. (Fun fact: Benicia and Tauba Auerbach, whose work is also also influenced by commerical sign making, both went to San Francisco University High School.)
Are you thinking that the name Benicia sounds familiar? You’re right, the artist is not only a San Francisco native but is a descendant of Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo and her husband the General.
Benicia has had quite a few noteworthy achievements herself including kicking off Berkeley gallery Traywick’s 10th anniversary year with a solo show in January '07 and being honored as a finalist for the SFMOMA SECA Award (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) last year.
http://www.beniciagantner.com/
Benicia’s work is astonishing because from afar it looks as if it were made without the human hand. High gloss vinyl film is meticulously sliced into snowflake-intricate floral patterns, evoking a stylized version of 19th century Arts and Crafts decorative arts master William Morris.
These are huge works that were made for this space and perfectly echo the riot of plant life and sunshine streaming in. Centered above the elevator bays is an enormous triptych, Sun Stream + Green, which has hanging folds of yellow sun over the contrived, overgrown landscape. Bloom 1 (pearlescent gray cast acrylic) and Bloom 2 (a vibrant pea shoot green) flank the Sun Stream altarpiece over the security desk. Benicia has made three strong pieces that stand out with confidence in this imposing space while still remaining true to her delicate style.
Benicia uses plexiglass mounted on wood frame often in her work, but at 8’ x 12’ “Sun Stream” is the largest piece that she has ever produced. When she first started making these carefully choreographed landscapes she cut the plastic strips by hand. Now that demand for her work has increased, she uses a sign maker’s plotter after creating the original stencil template. In fact her materials are traditional sign making supplies which she can't find locally and must import from L.A. (Fun fact: Benicia and Tauba Auerbach, whose work is also also influenced by commerical sign making, both went to San Francisco University High School.)
Are you thinking that the name Benicia sounds familiar? You’re right, the artist is not only a San Francisco native but is a descendant of Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo and her husband the General.
Benicia has had quite a few noteworthy achievements herself including kicking off Berkeley gallery Traywick’s 10th anniversary year with a solo show in January '07 and being honored as a finalist for the SFMOMA SECA Award (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) last year.
Weiner, Karen: The Ultimate Imaginary Housing Project
8:00 AM - 6:00 PM, August 6-September 21, 101 California Street Lobby, curated by Artsource Consulting
http://www.ziehersmith.com/a_weiner.html
Vermont based Weiner is represented by ZieherSmith in NY, and just had a one person show at Sixspace in L.A. Walking through the smaller space in the southeast lobby reminded me of a miniature version of It’s A Small World at Disneyland. A crop of tree houses rises up from felt and calico stuffed leaves and lily ponds. Intricate miniature houses of all sorts from ski lodge to double-wide are perched on birch tree trunks. Mixed media collages on the walls sport humorous scenes of birds carrying household appliances and consumer goods, another shows the little houses piled into an ark. Apparently the birds will survive The Great Warming even if we don't.
http://www.ziehersmith.com/a_weiner.html
Vermont based Weiner is represented by ZieherSmith in NY, and just had a one person show at Sixspace in L.A. Walking through the smaller space in the southeast lobby reminded me of a miniature version of It’s A Small World at Disneyland. A crop of tree houses rises up from felt and calico stuffed leaves and lily ponds. Intricate miniature houses of all sorts from ski lodge to double-wide are perched on birch tree trunks. Mixed media collages on the walls sport humorous scenes of birds carrying household appliances and consumer goods, another shows the little houses piled into an ark. Apparently the birds will survive The Great Warming even if we don't.
New York Art Diary
7.26.07 Neo Rauch at the Met. First zipped through the new Greek and Roman galleries. Thank goodness the hospital cafeteria is gone from this glorious space. Had trouble finding the exhibit I was looking for. I had never been in this obscure gallery before, hidden in the SW corner of the museum on the second floor. Rauch didn’t like the space much either which I know because the museum listed this piece of info in the introduction essay. I liked the show a lot. The invented iconography (with no legend for translation) reminded me of Matthew Barney. The primary color palette glows with an otherworldliness (the word “para” for paranormal etc shows up repeatedly). Fun to invent stories to go with the outlandish narratives.
Afternoon visit to Jeff Koons studio in Chelsea thanks to my new friend who is Koons assistant, realist painter James Seward.
http://www.jameslseward.com
Walk in to this brightly lit space and see dozens of assistants buzzing to complete sales from the Gagosian “Hulk Elvis” show in London.
http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/britannia-street-2007-06-jeff-koons/
At night, Grey Gardens the musical with tix bought at the half price booth at 6pm. Both Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson won tony awards for their roles. The 1975 movie of the same name revolutionized the genre of documentary film making.
7.25.07 First a quick visit to the Frick to see my favorite painting there, Manet's Bullfighters, but it was not on view! The Fragonard Room is being updated with a new state of the art lighting system so the East Gallery tenants have been moved into storage to accommodate the houseguest Progress of Love panels.
And finally... Richard Serra at MOMA! Not crowded on a Wed. afternoon. We felt dizzy walking through the curved labyrinths and involuntarily leaned to the side as the steel walls loomed over us at 60 degree angles. Definitely worth the trip! On display through September 10th if you are in town.
Last today saw Louise Nevelson at The Jewish Museum. This poignant show is coming to the DeYoung in October (10/27/07-1/13/08) so you'll be able to see it too. Nevelson (1899-1988) made totemic sculpture of found wood objects painted uniformly with a matte coating of black or white paint (never mixing the two in the same piece). After making art for forty years she was "discovered" in 1969 when she was selected to participate in a MOMA show called Sixteen Americans. Her first white piece, Dawn's Wedding Feast, was featured along side work by youngsters Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenburg and Frank Stella (whose show of recent work is down the block at the Metropolitan right now).
Nevelson's work is heavily influenced by her identity as an Eastern European Jewish immigrant and a dissatisfied society housewife who left her husband in order to pursue her art. Her delicate minimalist Holocaust memorial pieces from the end of her career were my favorite. We are lucky to have a piece of public art by Nevelson in San Francisco. On your next lunch hour take a walk to Three Embarcadero Center to see Sky Tree, a soaring structure of black Corten steel set in a reflecting pool.
http://www.verlang.com/sfbay0004ref_public_art_005.html#Clay-Battery_Nevelson
7.24.07 Museums closed on Tuesday. Dinner at Lever House Restaurant in the famed Gordon Bunshaft/Skidmore, Owings and Merrill building: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_House. Evening performance of Nixon/Frost with Best Actor Tony Award winner Frank Langella as Nixon.
7.23.07 Monsoon. Today because of the deluge all we could handle was one museum and chose to see Klimt's Adele Bloche Bauer at the Neue Gallery. Much different in person than we expected. The gold is softer. We think she has a resigned look in her eye that indicates she knows what's in store for Austria. Tonight we met a friend of a friend, Suzi Matthews, at her studio in Greenwich Village. http://www.suzimatthews.com/ She does collage landscapes that look alternatively terrestrial or underwater. Letters and numbers of varying size and shape and color create that patterns that form her compositions.
Afternoon visit to Jeff Koons studio in Chelsea thanks to my new friend who is Koons assistant, realist painter James Seward.
http://www.jameslseward.com
Walk in to this brightly lit space and see dozens of assistants buzzing to complete sales from the Gagosian “Hulk Elvis” show in London.
http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/britannia-street-2007-06-jeff-koons/
At night, Grey Gardens the musical with tix bought at the half price booth at 6pm. Both Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson won tony awards for their roles. The 1975 movie of the same name revolutionized the genre of documentary film making.
7.25.07 First a quick visit to the Frick to see my favorite painting there, Manet's Bullfighters, but it was not on view! The Fragonard Room is being updated with a new state of the art lighting system so the East Gallery tenants have been moved into storage to accommodate the houseguest Progress of Love panels.
And finally... Richard Serra at MOMA! Not crowded on a Wed. afternoon. We felt dizzy walking through the curved labyrinths and involuntarily leaned to the side as the steel walls loomed over us at 60 degree angles. Definitely worth the trip! On display through September 10th if you are in town.
Last today saw Louise Nevelson at The Jewish Museum. This poignant show is coming to the DeYoung in October (10/27/07-1/13/08) so you'll be able to see it too. Nevelson (1899-1988) made totemic sculpture of found wood objects painted uniformly with a matte coating of black or white paint (never mixing the two in the same piece). After making art for forty years she was "discovered" in 1969 when she was selected to participate in a MOMA show called Sixteen Americans. Her first white piece, Dawn's Wedding Feast, was featured along side work by youngsters Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenburg and Frank Stella (whose show of recent work is down the block at the Metropolitan right now).
Nevelson's work is heavily influenced by her identity as an Eastern European Jewish immigrant and a dissatisfied society housewife who left her husband in order to pursue her art. Her delicate minimalist Holocaust memorial pieces from the end of her career were my favorite. We are lucky to have a piece of public art by Nevelson in San Francisco. On your next lunch hour take a walk to Three Embarcadero Center to see Sky Tree, a soaring structure of black Corten steel set in a reflecting pool.
http://www.verlang.com/sfbay0004ref_public_art_005.html#Clay-Battery_Nevelson
7.24.07 Museums closed on Tuesday. Dinner at Lever House Restaurant in the famed Gordon Bunshaft/Skidmore, Owings and Merrill building: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_House. Evening performance of Nixon/Frost with Best Actor Tony Award winner Frank Langella as Nixon.
7.23.07 Monsoon. Today because of the deluge all we could handle was one museum and chose to see Klimt's Adele Bloche Bauer at the Neue Gallery. Much different in person than we expected. The gold is softer. We think she has a resigned look in her eye that indicates she knows what's in store for Austria. Tonight we met a friend of a friend, Suzi Matthews, at her studio in Greenwich Village. http://www.suzimatthews.com/ She does collage landscapes that look alternatively terrestrial or underwater. Letters and numbers of varying size and shape and color create that patterns that form her compositions.
Pilgrimage to MOMA
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/serra/
Stark Guide is on hiatus for the remainder of the month, traveling to New York to see the Richard Serra retrospective. Like Matthew Barney's "Cremaster Cycle" at the Guggenheim in 2003 and Christo's "Central Park Gates" in 2005, this is another once-in-a-lifetime show that cannot travel, for obvious reasons. A typical steel Serra sculpture can weigh up to 100 tons!
Back on the beat in August...
Stark Guide is on hiatus for the remainder of the month, traveling to New York to see the Richard Serra retrospective. Like Matthew Barney's "Cremaster Cycle" at the Guggenheim in 2003 and Christo's "Central Park Gates" in 2005, this is another once-in-a-lifetime show that cannot travel, for obvious reasons. A typical steel Serra sculpture can weigh up to 100 tons!
Back on the beat in August...
Heather Marx Gallery: Modern Day Salon
July 14 – August 18, 2007, Ominous Atmosphere, Heather Marx Gallery, 77 Geary Street @ Grant Avenue, Tuesday through Friday: 10:30 AM - 5:30 PM, Saturday: 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM, and by appointment. 415.627.9111 http://www.heathermarxgallery.com/
Heather Marx and Co-Director, husband Steve Zavattero, are early adopters of a nascent art world trend that is described in Adam Lindeman’s new book, Collecting Contemporary. In this confectionary book that proclaims itself "the most talked-about art book of the year," we learn that galleries are collaborating with collectors to curate shows.
At 50,000 feet, Dakis Jannou, Greek tycoon who funds the Deste art foundation in Athens and Jeffrey Deitch of flashy Deitch Projects in New York’s Soho district, are the most high-profile example of this trend.
Closer to solid ground, this new twist on the traditional buyer-seller relationship actually makes the otherwise mysterious if not chilly art gallery more egalitarian. Far from a cold biz-dev tactic, this trend in practice will bring more people to the world of art appreciation. Collector aquires a new skill and experience, feels a greater connection with gallery owner and as a result of the show that they curate together, introduces his own circle of friends to the gallery, expanding the customer base. A win-win situation.
HMG’s current show, Ominous Atmosphere, is co-curated by local collector Jeff Dauber. Dauber is an Apple exec whose hip art gallery- er…, home- was featured in the February 2007 issue of Dwell magazine. Berkeley architect Thom Faulders even made the ceiling into a work of art.
Once or twice a year HMG puts on a group show featuring artists they don’t necessarily represent. Heather and Steve knew Jeff would be perfect to help with this edgy show. According to the press release, “the conceptual nature of fear and the undefined ways in which we sense or unleash fear” is the focus of this exhibition. Dauber is known for taking chances on interesting local artists and his collection includes challenging pieces by Hung Liu and Rigo. In fact Dauber purchased the most important piece in the 2005 HMG/ David Hevel show titled "It's Official...Britney's Pregnant!"
Dauber was an active participant in the process, recommending artists that fit in with the theme but that HMG had never worked with before such as Christoph Draeger and Al Farrow. One innovative contribution by Dauber was the placement of Paredón (Firing Squad) by Jeanette Chávez. Installed horizontally on the wall at chest level are six bronze rifle barrels. Jeff suggested placing this work directly opposite the entrance to the gallery space in a place that is actually part of the office backroom. “We live in this space and he saw it with a fresh eye,” said Marx.
When I arrived, Heather was walking through the gallery with a Chicago-based art consultant who they had met at the 2003 Scope New York art fair. Heather and Steve’s commitment to promoting the gallery outside of San Francisco has paid off. Three to four art fairs each year are an important part of their business and are well worth the effort both from a sales standpoint as well as an intellectual one. They use this time to cultivate relationships with art professionals from all over the U.S. Next Pulse Miami (one of several satellite fairs of Miami Basel, the crown jewel in the U.S. art fair circuit), all of the dealers who are their friends and colleagues will stay in the same hotel and throw a collective cocktail party inviting artists, collectors and curators to thank them for their friendship and patronage.
Despite this jet-set lifestyle, Marx and Zavattero are refreshingly low-key. Heather is warm and outspoken. Her curvy yet petite frame sported a chic DVF wrap dress. Square red frame glasses give her the art dealer “look” even though she has the resume in spades. Many a first-time visitor mistakes her for a “gallerina” instead of the eponymous proprietor.
Heather’s strong academic background in art history (B.A. and M.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara) is combined with business savvy acquired working in the gallery business for many years before going out on her own. Her undergrad focus was on Le Corbusier and her grad work was on the 19th C. British Pre-Raphaelites. “I have a strong, feminist theoretical base that can be seen in my choices,” she says with a big smile and a cheerful laugh. “But I chose to leave academics because I wanted to be out there making art history, not studying it.”
In between college and grad school Heather worked for Los Angeles' Mark Moore Gallery and there learned the ropes: bookkeeping, installation, and the complex social relationship between the gallery and artist. During grad school, Heather worked for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Heather and Steve met sixteen years ago, a few years after college, and were married in 1996. They settled in San Francisco because he’d moved a few times for her career and it was his turn to pick. He’s a third generation San Franciscan and was ready to move home.
Heather got a job working with Hackett Freedman Galleries and there she learned how to sell. As Associate Director of Sales, she balanced out her skill set, mastering the art of P.R. and working with the press. After nearly six years she went out on her own.
Zavattero is a talkative, energetic guy who plays an important role in setting the tone of the gallery. With a combined degree in social sciences and communications from the University of Southern California’s prestigious Annenberg School, Steve brings an interesting current events perspective when the two are curating shows.
“We choose work that reflects our personality and interests.” Work that continues the dialogue of art history, “has an academic foundation, shows a strong attention to craft and contributes something to the world around us.” Political commentary, social issues, humor, and sexual themes all show up in their artists’ offerings.
Steve is also in charge of marketing, PR, the website, and much of the logistical planning that goes into the gallery’s participation in the art fairs. He has a Before-Art background in radio and television and was a part of “web 1.0,” he says jokingly. He recently began a podcast reporting on the San Francisco art scene. His reporting style is conversational and is just as much about the personalities of the artists and gallerists as the art. (See Stark Guide link under San Francisco Bay Area Contemporary Art Journalism.)
The couple is candid about the challenges of being small business owners. In 2001 the team opened HMG in the wake of the dot-com crash and 9/11. “We had signed the lease a few months earlier. When 9/11 happened, we were in the middle of demolition. We had to keep going.” It took them about three years to hit their stride as a business, not out of the ordinary for any entrepreneurial one-shop retailer.
HMG is the feisty baby of the 77 Geary family. In fact, HMG is more alternative than most of the downtown galleries, but Heather thinks the neighborhood is appropriate because she’s just as serious about her business as her neighbors are.
Heather and Steve are good friends with Greg Lind, Steven Wolf and Catharine Clark, fellow gallerists with a similar flair who feature emerging/mid-career artists. In fact they have such a strong relationship that the gang sometimes staggers their opening receptions so visitors don’t have to choose which event to attend.
Catharine Clark was the pioneer of the bunch and they were a little sad to see her move south of market to her new museum district location (Stark Guide 6/5/07). Steve does some dee-jaying in his spare time and helped out by providing the music at Clark’s opening party. Another example of their relationship, HMG borrowed two pieces (by Draeger and Farrow respectively) from Catharine Clark for the current show.
Note to collectors: Libby Black is the rising star in the HMG stable. Black creates hand made paper sculpture of coveted luxury goods like Louis Vuitton trunks, inspired by the materialism she observed while growing up in the susburbs of Dallas. She even replicated a complete Kate Spade store in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 2005 show, “Bay Area Now 4.” Black was a finalist for the 2006 SFMOMA SECA Award and was recently named the "Artist to Watch" by San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker in the July issue of Art+Auction magazine. Mark your calendar for Black's second solo show with HMG September 6-October 27, 2007. Opening reception September 6, 5:30-7:30.
Heather Marx and Co-Director, husband Steve Zavattero, are early adopters of a nascent art world trend that is described in Adam Lindeman’s new book, Collecting Contemporary. In this confectionary book that proclaims itself "the most talked-about art book of the year," we learn that galleries are collaborating with collectors to curate shows.
At 50,000 feet, Dakis Jannou, Greek tycoon who funds the Deste art foundation in Athens and Jeffrey Deitch of flashy Deitch Projects in New York’s Soho district, are the most high-profile example of this trend.
Closer to solid ground, this new twist on the traditional buyer-seller relationship actually makes the otherwise mysterious if not chilly art gallery more egalitarian. Far from a cold biz-dev tactic, this trend in practice will bring more people to the world of art appreciation. Collector aquires a new skill and experience, feels a greater connection with gallery owner and as a result of the show that they curate together, introduces his own circle of friends to the gallery, expanding the customer base. A win-win situation.
HMG’s current show, Ominous Atmosphere, is co-curated by local collector Jeff Dauber. Dauber is an Apple exec whose hip art gallery- er…, home- was featured in the February 2007 issue of Dwell magazine. Berkeley architect Thom Faulders even made the ceiling into a work of art.
Once or twice a year HMG puts on a group show featuring artists they don’t necessarily represent. Heather and Steve knew Jeff would be perfect to help with this edgy show. According to the press release, “the conceptual nature of fear and the undefined ways in which we sense or unleash fear” is the focus of this exhibition. Dauber is known for taking chances on interesting local artists and his collection includes challenging pieces by Hung Liu and Rigo. In fact Dauber purchased the most important piece in the 2005 HMG/ David Hevel show titled "It's Official...Britney's Pregnant!"
Dauber was an active participant in the process, recommending artists that fit in with the theme but that HMG had never worked with before such as Christoph Draeger and Al Farrow. One innovative contribution by Dauber was the placement of Paredón (Firing Squad) by Jeanette Chávez. Installed horizontally on the wall at chest level are six bronze rifle barrels. Jeff suggested placing this work directly opposite the entrance to the gallery space in a place that is actually part of the office backroom. “We live in this space and he saw it with a fresh eye,” said Marx.
When I arrived, Heather was walking through the gallery with a Chicago-based art consultant who they had met at the 2003 Scope New York art fair. Heather and Steve’s commitment to promoting the gallery outside of San Francisco has paid off. Three to four art fairs each year are an important part of their business and are well worth the effort both from a sales standpoint as well as an intellectual one. They use this time to cultivate relationships with art professionals from all over the U.S. Next Pulse Miami (one of several satellite fairs of Miami Basel, the crown jewel in the U.S. art fair circuit), all of the dealers who are their friends and colleagues will stay in the same hotel and throw a collective cocktail party inviting artists, collectors and curators to thank them for their friendship and patronage.
Despite this jet-set lifestyle, Marx and Zavattero are refreshingly low-key. Heather is warm and outspoken. Her curvy yet petite frame sported a chic DVF wrap dress. Square red frame glasses give her the art dealer “look” even though she has the resume in spades. Many a first-time visitor mistakes her for a “gallerina” instead of the eponymous proprietor.
Heather’s strong academic background in art history (B.A. and M.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara) is combined with business savvy acquired working in the gallery business for many years before going out on her own. Her undergrad focus was on Le Corbusier and her grad work was on the 19th C. British Pre-Raphaelites. “I have a strong, feminist theoretical base that can be seen in my choices,” she says with a big smile and a cheerful laugh. “But I chose to leave academics because I wanted to be out there making art history, not studying it.”
In between college and grad school Heather worked for Los Angeles' Mark Moore Gallery and there learned the ropes: bookkeeping, installation, and the complex social relationship between the gallery and artist. During grad school, Heather worked for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Heather and Steve met sixteen years ago, a few years after college, and were married in 1996. They settled in San Francisco because he’d moved a few times for her career and it was his turn to pick. He’s a third generation San Franciscan and was ready to move home.
Heather got a job working with Hackett Freedman Galleries and there she learned how to sell. As Associate Director of Sales, she balanced out her skill set, mastering the art of P.R. and working with the press. After nearly six years she went out on her own.
Zavattero is a talkative, energetic guy who plays an important role in setting the tone of the gallery. With a combined degree in social sciences and communications from the University of Southern California’s prestigious Annenberg School, Steve brings an interesting current events perspective when the two are curating shows.
“We choose work that reflects our personality and interests.” Work that continues the dialogue of art history, “has an academic foundation, shows a strong attention to craft and contributes something to the world around us.” Political commentary, social issues, humor, and sexual themes all show up in their artists’ offerings.
Steve is also in charge of marketing, PR, the website, and much of the logistical planning that goes into the gallery’s participation in the art fairs. He has a Before-Art background in radio and television and was a part of “web 1.0,” he says jokingly. He recently began a podcast reporting on the San Francisco art scene. His reporting style is conversational and is just as much about the personalities of the artists and gallerists as the art. (See Stark Guide link under San Francisco Bay Area Contemporary Art Journalism.)
The couple is candid about the challenges of being small business owners. In 2001 the team opened HMG in the wake of the dot-com crash and 9/11. “We had signed the lease a few months earlier. When 9/11 happened, we were in the middle of demolition. We had to keep going.” It took them about three years to hit their stride as a business, not out of the ordinary for any entrepreneurial one-shop retailer.
HMG is the feisty baby of the 77 Geary family. In fact, HMG is more alternative than most of the downtown galleries, but Heather thinks the neighborhood is appropriate because she’s just as serious about her business as her neighbors are.
Heather and Steve are good friends with Greg Lind, Steven Wolf and Catharine Clark, fellow gallerists with a similar flair who feature emerging/mid-career artists. In fact they have such a strong relationship that the gang sometimes staggers their opening receptions so visitors don’t have to choose which event to attend.
Catharine Clark was the pioneer of the bunch and they were a little sad to see her move south of market to her new museum district location (Stark Guide 6/5/07). Steve does some dee-jaying in his spare time and helped out by providing the music at Clark’s opening party. Another example of their relationship, HMG borrowed two pieces (by Draeger and Farrow respectively) from Catharine Clark for the current show.
Note to collectors: Libby Black is the rising star in the HMG stable. Black creates hand made paper sculpture of coveted luxury goods like Louis Vuitton trunks, inspired by the materialism she observed while growing up in the susburbs of Dallas. She even replicated a complete Kate Spade store in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 2005 show, “Bay Area Now 4.” Black was a finalist for the 2006 SFMOMA SECA Award and was recently named the "Artist to Watch" by San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker in the July issue of Art+Auction magazine. Mark your calendar for Black's second solo show with HMG September 6-October 27, 2007. Opening reception September 6, 5:30-7:30.
Fernandez, Ana Teresa: Strong Socio-Political Statement Delivered In A Sexy Surrealist Style
June 28–July 28, 2007, Ana Teresa Fernandez: Pressing Matters, Braunstein/Quay Gallery, 430 Clementina, San Francisco, CA 94103, Located between 5th & 6th St. parallel to Howard and Folsom, Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 5:30 PM, Phone: 415/278-9850, Email: bquayg@pacbell.net
http://www.bquayartgallery.com/archive/fernandez2007.html
Ana Teresa Fernandez is hitting a nerve and is being noticed for it, having received just the latest in a string of awards and grants this spring from San Francisco Arts Commission and Headlands Center for the Arts.
There is a lot going on in her paintings. The eternal Mexican-Catholic polemic of woman as whore/Madonna is augmented by the contemporary themes of illegal immigration, the high-class problem of illegal domestic help, and the universal dissatisfied homemaker who is slave to the never-ending cycle of cleaning up after others. Fernandez’s current show, Pressing Matters at Braunstein/Quay, is a comprehensive survey of this young artist’s work
Fernandez is a modern-day Betty Freidan. Her work is a haunting commentary on the role of women in the family, workplace and home. Beyond the overt sexuality of supermodel-shaped characters bending provocatively over ironing boards, there is hard-hitting social commentary. Her message resonates because it is softened by her velvet brush. The figures are round and sculptural, wrapped in fabric like the Greek goddesses in the frieze of the Parthenon. Long afternoon shadows make the would-be docile scene more dramatic and lazy at the same time.
The images you see in Pressing Matters are not a figment of her imagination- anymore. Fernandez stages performance art pieces that are recorded by a photographer. The brown skinned women in their little black dresses up-to-here pose like fashion models, extending their legs and arms like ballet dancers while… cleaning bathrooms. It is surprising to learn that the protagonist in every piece is Fernandez herself. In real life this scrubbed looking post-grad looks every inch the hipster art student in frayed layered tees, jeans and a heavy leather belt. Her youthful beauty is masked by angular black resin glasses frames and long brown hair tied back in a loose unruly ponytail.
Fernendez had not heard of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, but why would she have? Growing up in small town Tampico, Mexico, all the women in her life were domestics of one sort or another, either paid by wealthier families or unpaid by their own. Ana had not yet developed career aspirations at the age of eleven when her cardiologist father moved the family to San Diego in order to further his career and provide a better life for his family.
While Ana was growing up in Tampico and San Diego, her mother was a traditional stay-at-home mom. Though Maria Teresa Fernandez was a happy wife and mother and is still married to Ana’s father today, Ana observed her mother’s unrealized potential and this later became an important theme in her work. Ana's intuition was true. In the last ten years Maria has become an accomplished documentary photographer in her own right. She has spent countless hours documenting the San Diego-Tijuana border and the destitute neighborhoods that buffer it, inspiring another important theme in her daughter's work.
Fernandez was plucked from the obscurity of the San Diego Community College system the day the San Francisco Art Institute came to call. When asked to show her portfolio, the greenhorn art major didn’t know what that meant but quickly assembled snapshots of her work for the school rep’s review. She was offered a scholarship on the spot.
While an undergrad at SFAI her advisor convinced her to put aside her first calling, sculpture, and try another medium. It was during this time that Ana asked her mother to collaborate with her on the border performance-art series. No Puedo Pasar (Performance Documentation 2005, oil on canvas, 60”x72”) is made all the more impactful when you learn that the corrugated metal border fence pictured was made from recycled Gulf War airport runway strips. The border as graffiti-etched wailing wall is a character in the painting in its own right and proclaims: “I can’t stand to be indifferent amongst the pain of so many people.”
When Ruth Braunstein of Braunstein/Quay was at Fernandez’s MFA show and saw “Untitled 2,” a record of a performance art piece which took place at the border in 2006, she offered her a gallery show on the spot. “I haven’t done something like that in twenty years,” said Braunstein.
And the recognition and awards flow. After the four year undergraduate program at SFAI she was awarded another scholarship to make the MFA program possible. While doing her graduate studies, her work was shown and placed in many Bay Area juried shows. Earlier this year Fernandez received the San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Individual Artist Award Grant which recognizes artists from historically underserved communities. And the most recent is a biggie: the prestigious Headlands Tournesol Award recognizes one innovative emerging painter each year. The studio facilities granted to all Headlands’ artists-in-residence is topped with an anonymously funded $10,000 grant.
All signs indicate Fernandez has only just begun her ascent.
This show: $1600-$10000
Swarm: A Good Reason to Go to Oakland
Svea Lin Vezzone, Director and founder of Swarm Studios + Gallery, will make you feel like the trek was worth the effort. This tall brunette beauty’s smile is welcoming and infectious and hints at her non-profit background. Swarm is just the tip of the iceberg of reasons to go to Oakland to see art these days but if you need just one reason, this is it.
Of course, the Oakland Museum has been there forever, quietly and articulately chronicling the history of California art. Cal and Mills graduate fine artists every year. But a recent groundswell of art-making and art-selling has been fueled by several serendipitous factors: the late-nineties dot-com exodus of San Francisco artists in search of more affordable rents, former mayor Jerry Brown's revitalization of the downtown area, and the relocation of Pro-Arts, the non-profit that sponsors Oakland's open studios events, to Jack London Square.
In 2005, Svea developed a business idea to take advantage of all of these trends. The concept is ingenious: gallery space in the front of the building and 11 individual income-generating studios sharing common resources in the rear. The 24/7 accessible space is affordable ($250-$580 per month based on size) and even includes insurance and wifi. Swarm Studios attracts a gregarious tenant because this communal, visitor-friendly workspace is a lot different from the normally solitary lifestyle of studio work.
Despite that beehive (pun courtesy of Svea) of activity in back, the front of the house is the draw. The west-facing glass-fronted gallery is exposed to dazzling natural light, an effect most museums try in vain to replicate. A former ironworks building servicing waterfront industry, the structure underwent major surgery for its second life. The hum and chug (and bleat) of trains just a few blocks away is a comforting and charming reminder of the neighborhood's industrial roots.
But that's not all. Swarm Project Space is a small gallery off the main gallery and features installations, video pieces and conceptual works focusing on the constant shaping and reshaping of the city of Oakland.
Svea has been an insider of the brewing East Bay art scene for many years. She was an intern in the Oakland Museum's Department of Photography in 2000. Then after receiving her Masters in Museum Studies from John F. Kennedy University in 2001, she moved to Pro-Arts. Her tenture there as the Director of Exhibitions and Programming concluded in 2004, just before that outfit moved from downtown to the waterfront. From 2003-2005 she was the Arts Editor of Tea Party, a non-profit arts & culture magazine. Swarm opened in early 2006 and then she was appointed to the Alameda County Arts Commission.
Swarm shows mostly emerging artists and Svea spends a lot of time tracking down new talent. In fact she's so busy that she's hiring a co-director whose identity is a secret for now but will be revealed soon. She keeps track of the annual deluge of MFA grads, finds new talent on the web and asks artists whose work she admires for their recommendations.
Svea’s arts management expertise and friendly rapport caught business partner Merritt Sher’s attention when she was still working at Pro-Arts. In addition to having the ultimate made-in-Oakland name, Sher is a leading real estate developer with a staggering resume (Terranomics, Metrovation) who is known in his industry for his innovative approach. (Sher may have been hanging around the gallery and neighborhood because he played a key role in the transformation of Jack London Square.) Together they picked some buildings that had the potential to be Swarm and the winning location happened to be next door to the new Pro-Arts.
Svea keeps current on the San Francisco museum scene through friends Tim Burgard, Curator of American Art at SFFAM and Apsara DiQuinzio, recently promoted Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. Svea is also a member of a gallery owners' collective called Quorum. In San Francisco, the list of galleries she admires includes Catharine Clark (see Stark Guide 6/5/07), Steven Wolf, Triple Base and Electric Works (see Stark Guide 6/12/07).
The current show is called "ZONAL CONFLUENCE: Merging Perspectives on Land and Environment from four California College of the Arts MFA Graduates." For this show, Svea picked artists who are wreaking havoc with the traditional genre of landscape art.
Walk in the door of the gallery and you are almost blown over by Renee Gertler's towering Funnel Cloud- a 10'+ sculpture tornado traveling through the gallery. While the work looks like it was made for this space, it was part of Gertler's contribution to the CCA MFA show in May. Gertler had quite a graduation present this Spring- her work was featured in the San Francisco Arts Commission Window Installation Site (155 Grove) in May and June. The work presented there was another natural disaster; over the course of one month Gertler turned a slow leak into a flood. The artist uses model-making materials and techniques to create fantastical versions of natural phenomena such as waterfalls, tornadoes and meteors.
The other artists included in this Swarm show, David Gurman, Jessalyn Haggenjos, and Elizabeth Mooney, are also showing their best work from the CCA MFA show.
This show $450-$7000
June 23 - August 5, 2007, Swarm Studios + Gallery, 560 Second Street, Oakland, CA 94607, Tel/Fax 510/839-2787 (ARTS), info@swarmstudios.net, Tuesday - Sunday, 12 - 6 PM and by appointment
Of course, the Oakland Museum has been there forever, quietly and articulately chronicling the history of California art. Cal and Mills graduate fine artists every year. But a recent groundswell of art-making and art-selling has been fueled by several serendipitous factors: the late-nineties dot-com exodus of San Francisco artists in search of more affordable rents, former mayor Jerry Brown's revitalization of the downtown area, and the relocation of Pro-Arts, the non-profit that sponsors Oakland's open studios events, to Jack London Square.
In 2005, Svea developed a business idea to take advantage of all of these trends. The concept is ingenious: gallery space in the front of the building and 11 individual income-generating studios sharing common resources in the rear. The 24/7 accessible space is affordable ($250-$580 per month based on size) and even includes insurance and wifi. Swarm Studios attracts a gregarious tenant because this communal, visitor-friendly workspace is a lot different from the normally solitary lifestyle of studio work.
Despite that beehive (pun courtesy of Svea) of activity in back, the front of the house is the draw. The west-facing glass-fronted gallery is exposed to dazzling natural light, an effect most museums try in vain to replicate. A former ironworks building servicing waterfront industry, the structure underwent major surgery for its second life. The hum and chug (and bleat) of trains just a few blocks away is a comforting and charming reminder of the neighborhood's industrial roots.
But that's not all. Swarm Project Space is a small gallery off the main gallery and features installations, video pieces and conceptual works focusing on the constant shaping and reshaping of the city of Oakland.
Svea has been an insider of the brewing East Bay art scene for many years. She was an intern in the Oakland Museum's Department of Photography in 2000. Then after receiving her Masters in Museum Studies from John F. Kennedy University in 2001, she moved to Pro-Arts. Her tenture there as the Director of Exhibitions and Programming concluded in 2004, just before that outfit moved from downtown to the waterfront. From 2003-2005 she was the Arts Editor of Tea Party, a non-profit arts & culture magazine. Swarm opened in early 2006 and then she was appointed to the Alameda County Arts Commission.
Swarm shows mostly emerging artists and Svea spends a lot of time tracking down new talent. In fact she's so busy that she's hiring a co-director whose identity is a secret for now but will be revealed soon. She keeps track of the annual deluge of MFA grads, finds new talent on the web and asks artists whose work she admires for their recommendations.
Svea’s arts management expertise and friendly rapport caught business partner Merritt Sher’s attention when she was still working at Pro-Arts. In addition to having the ultimate made-in-Oakland name, Sher is a leading real estate developer with a staggering resume (Terranomics, Metrovation) who is known in his industry for his innovative approach. (Sher may have been hanging around the gallery and neighborhood because he played a key role in the transformation of Jack London Square.) Together they picked some buildings that had the potential to be Swarm and the winning location happened to be next door to the new Pro-Arts.
Svea keeps current on the San Francisco museum scene through friends Tim Burgard, Curator of American Art at SFFAM and Apsara DiQuinzio, recently promoted Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. Svea is also a member of a gallery owners' collective called Quorum. In San Francisco, the list of galleries she admires includes Catharine Clark (see Stark Guide 6/5/07), Steven Wolf, Triple Base and Electric Works (see Stark Guide 6/12/07).
The current show is called "ZONAL CONFLUENCE: Merging Perspectives on Land and Environment from four California College of the Arts MFA Graduates." For this show, Svea picked artists who are wreaking havoc with the traditional genre of landscape art.
Walk in the door of the gallery and you are almost blown over by Renee Gertler's towering Funnel Cloud- a 10'+ sculpture tornado traveling through the gallery. While the work looks like it was made for this space, it was part of Gertler's contribution to the CCA MFA show in May. Gertler had quite a graduation present this Spring- her work was featured in the San Francisco Arts Commission Window Installation Site (155 Grove) in May and June. The work presented there was another natural disaster; over the course of one month Gertler turned a slow leak into a flood. The artist uses model-making materials and techniques to create fantastical versions of natural phenomena such as waterfalls, tornadoes and meteors.
The other artists included in this Swarm show, David Gurman, Jessalyn Haggenjos, and Elizabeth Mooney, are also showing their best work from the CCA MFA show.
This show $450-$7000
June 23 - August 5, 2007, Swarm Studios + Gallery, 560 Second Street, Oakland, CA 94607, Tel/Fax 510/839-2787 (ARTS), info@swarmstudios.net, Tuesday - Sunday, 12 - 6 PM and by appointment
Oakland First Friday: Getting Around
You can take the ferry, take BART, or drive. ONCE YOU ARE THERE, THERE IS A FREE SHUTTLE! First Friday was originally organized by Art Murmur and is in the process of switching to the aegis of OADA, the Oakland Art Dealers' Association. Third Thursday is in the works as well. Get yourself to Swarm and the shuttle will pick you up right in front.
*Note Swarm is open this Friday, July 6, but Swarm Director, Svea Lin Vezzone won't be there. She'll be back next week but call first if you want to make sure she is there when you want to visit.
First Fridays Free Shuttle Sponsored by the City of Oakland
Shuttle runs 5 p.m. – 10 p.m. Last loop starts at 10 p.m. Be at your stop by 10p to ensure
pick-up. Shuttle arrives at each stop approximately every 30-45 minutes
First Friday:
http://www.oaklandartmurmur.com/pages/about.php
First Friday Shuttle Schedule:
http://www.swarmstudios.net/pdfs/Shuttle%20Stops.pdf
BART: Exit at the 12th Street/City Center Station. Ride the 72R or 72M to 2nd Street just before Jack London Square. Swarm is two blocks west of Broadway at Clay Street. Walking from the 12th Street BART station takes 10-15 minutes. Following Broadway to Second Street, turn right and walk two blocks to Clay Street. (http://www.bart.gov/index.asp)
FERRY: Take the Alameda/Oakland Ferry from San Francisco, board either at PIER 41 or the Ferry Building. Walk 3 blocks west to Clay Street and 1 block north to Second. (http://www.eastbayferry.com// or 510-522-3300)
Ferry Schedule:
http://www.eastbayferry.com/when/printable.html
General Oakland-SF public transportation info:
http://www.eastbayferry.com/what/transit.html
Mapquest to Swarm:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?address=560%202nd%20St&city=Oakland&state=CA&zipcode=94607%2d3543&country=US&geodiff=1
AC TRANSIT: Ride the 72R or 72M to Jack London Square. Swarm is two blocks west of Broadway on Second at Clay Street. (http://www.actransit.org/)
AMTRAK: Jack London Square is home to the award winning C.L. Dellums AMTRAK station located just one block from the center of the Square on Alice Street and the Embarcedero. Once you deboard the train, walk 3 blocks west to Clay Street and 1 block north to Second. (http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/HomePage%00)
*Note Swarm is open this Friday, July 6, but Swarm Director, Svea Lin Vezzone won't be there. She'll be back next week but call first if you want to make sure she is there when you want to visit.
First Fridays Free Shuttle Sponsored by the City of Oakland
Shuttle runs 5 p.m. – 10 p.m. Last loop starts at 10 p.m. Be at your stop by 10p to ensure
pick-up. Shuttle arrives at each stop approximately every 30-45 minutes
First Friday:
http://www.oaklandartmurmur.com/pages/about.php
First Friday Shuttle Schedule:
http://www.swarmstudios.net/pdfs/Shuttle%20Stops.pdf
BART: Exit at the 12th Street/City Center Station. Ride the 72R or 72M to 2nd Street just before Jack London Square. Swarm is two blocks west of Broadway at Clay Street. Walking from the 12th Street BART station takes 10-15 minutes. Following Broadway to Second Street, turn right and walk two blocks to Clay Street. (http://www.bart.gov/index.asp)
FERRY: Take the Alameda/Oakland Ferry from San Francisco, board either at PIER 41 or the Ferry Building. Walk 3 blocks west to Clay Street and 1 block north to Second. (http://www.eastbayferry.com// or 510-522-3300)
Ferry Schedule:
http://www.eastbayferry.com/when/printable.html
General Oakland-SF public transportation info:
http://www.eastbayferry.com/what/transit.html
Mapquest to Swarm:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?address=560%202nd%20St&city=Oakland&state=CA&zipcode=94607%2d3543&country=US&geodiff=1
AC TRANSIT: Ride the 72R or 72M to Jack London Square. Swarm is two blocks west of Broadway on Second at Clay Street. (http://www.actransit.org/)
AMTRAK: Jack London Square is home to the award winning C.L. Dellums AMTRAK station located just one block from the center of the Square on Alice Street and the Embarcedero. Once you deboard the train, walk 3 blocks west to Clay Street and 1 block north to Second. (http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/HomePage%00)
Triangle Gallery: Hiding in Plain Sight
http://www.triangle-sf.com/
For someone who has been an art dealer for 46 years, Jack Van Hiele’s most notable professional quality may be his ability to stay in the background and let his artists speak for themselves. Mr. Van Hiele lists no personal bio on the Triangle Gallery website and nothing comes up if you google him. Out-of-print “Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945-1980” by the late Chronicle art critic Thomas Albright is handy on a gallery table for quick reference and will have to serve as the gallerist's calling card. (This book is a must-read for anyone who is serious about learning the history of San Francisco Bay Area art- it is the one and only text on the subject.)
Van Hiele features contemporary American, Japanese and Chinese painting, graphics, sculpture and photography. He is not new to the contemporary Asian trend that is rocking the international art fairs and shocking people at Sotheby’s and Christie’s with off the charts auction prices for yet untested Chinese and Japanese young artists. In fact, he’s been paying attention to that market and developing relationships with its artists for over thirty years.
First a note about the neighborhood because that is part of the fun of the visit. The first block of Kearny is in transition as the original San Francisco Chronicle building on the corner at Market is undergoing an astonishing transformation. It’s been masquerading as an ugly office building for years and now the Ritz-Carlton is literally peeling off the outer skin to expose the original red brick grandeur. The trade-off for another few dozen luxury timeshares and condos is that the building’s rediscovered character greatly improves the personality of the intersection.
Triangle is right there in the middle of everything. (Paule Anglim & 49 Geary are around the corner and SFMOMA just down the street.) It’s a little awkward getting in the door of 47 Kearny because a heavily cologned security guard will require you to sign in. (He was surprised to hear I wasn’t going to Dorota European Skin Care on 6.) But Triangle knows and offers its regrets from the “Contact Us” page of its website: “Our apologies: Building management requires visitors to sign in at the lobby. We regret the inconvenience.”
I regret that Mr. Van Hiele was taking his annual holiday when I visited Triangle however I really lucked-out getting to meet his understudy for the weekend, photographer Robert Hartman. The Professor of Art Emeritus from UC Berkeley (1961-1991) also happened to be one of Andy Black’s professors at Cal (see more below) and is represented by the gallery himself.
Robert showed me the dozen or so examples of his work in the back room of the gallery and explained his approach. A self described addict of low-altitude flight, Robert flies over the Bay Area recording human impact on the earth. He used to fly the plane himself but heart problems a few years ago have turned him into a back-seat flyer. “It’s not quite as good.” he said.
Photos look like abstract paintings at first because he uses infrared film. The 19” x 23” series is framed in simple unvarnished pine, a neat juxtaposition with the high-tech work. This unusal medium transforms the water of the delta, salt flats and irrigated farm plots into black or red, only once in a while do they develop into vivid turquoise. Old World hand-painted maps of not-yet-explored continents come to mind. There’s a piece in the hallway that looks like finger-painting but once your eyes adjust to the light you can make out ant-scale construction equipment decimating the landscape of San Ramon for a new housing development.
http://www.triangle-sf.com/artists/hartman/hartman.html
Lynn Sondag’s watercolor landscapes are beautiful- she captures the lime and marine greens that you remember from past visits to Golden Gate Park and the Legion Of Honor but won’t be there if you go back to double check. ($650-$1500). M.F.A., Painting: California College of the Arts, 1997 and B.F.A., Painting, Savannah College of Art and Design (cum laude), 1990. She teaches at Dominican and CCA.
http://www.triangle-sf.com/artists/sondag/sondag.html
Andy Black’s intimate oil on paper abstract expressionist pieces are noteworthy for their intense masculine colors and for recording the action of painting. You can see how the paint was pushed before the brush was pulled away leaving wake like fresh vacuum cleaner tracks. ($400-$1200). Andy is influenced by the beauty of geometry; each piece begins with a compass & straightedge construction of a Golden Rectangle. B.F.A. Drawing & Painting: CSU Long Beach, 1981 and M.A., M.F.A. (Painting): UC Berkeley, 1983, 1984.
http://www.triangle-sf.com/artists/black/black.html
Hope Kroll is the headliner for the show ($300-$1200). Her work would be perfect for the interior of a Tim Burton-designed gothic dollhouse. She intricately cuts up pictures from books, the topics of which range from science and medicine to mysticism and nature, giving the effect of a frozen drama or illustration for a story. M.F.A., Painting 1992, San Francisco Art Institute and B.F.A. 1990 University of Illinois.
http://www.triangle-sf.com/artists/kroll/kroll.html
This show $400-$1500
Through July 21, Triangle Gallery, 47 Kearny, San Francisco, 11 AM - 5 PM Tuesday through Saturday, Tel.: 415.392.1686
For someone who has been an art dealer for 46 years, Jack Van Hiele’s most notable professional quality may be his ability to stay in the background and let his artists speak for themselves. Mr. Van Hiele lists no personal bio on the Triangle Gallery website and nothing comes up if you google him. Out-of-print “Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945-1980” by the late Chronicle art critic Thomas Albright is handy on a gallery table for quick reference and will have to serve as the gallerist's calling card. (This book is a must-read for anyone who is serious about learning the history of San Francisco Bay Area art- it is the one and only text on the subject.)
Van Hiele features contemporary American, Japanese and Chinese painting, graphics, sculpture and photography. He is not new to the contemporary Asian trend that is rocking the international art fairs and shocking people at Sotheby’s and Christie’s with off the charts auction prices for yet untested Chinese and Japanese young artists. In fact, he’s been paying attention to that market and developing relationships with its artists for over thirty years.
First a note about the neighborhood because that is part of the fun of the visit. The first block of Kearny is in transition as the original San Francisco Chronicle building on the corner at Market is undergoing an astonishing transformation. It’s been masquerading as an ugly office building for years and now the Ritz-Carlton is literally peeling off the outer skin to expose the original red brick grandeur. The trade-off for another few dozen luxury timeshares and condos is that the building’s rediscovered character greatly improves the personality of the intersection.
Triangle is right there in the middle of everything. (Paule Anglim & 49 Geary are around the corner and SFMOMA just down the street.) It’s a little awkward getting in the door of 47 Kearny because a heavily cologned security guard will require you to sign in. (He was surprised to hear I wasn’t going to Dorota European Skin Care on 6.) But Triangle knows and offers its regrets from the “Contact Us” page of its website: “Our apologies: Building management requires visitors to sign in at the lobby. We regret the inconvenience.”
I regret that Mr. Van Hiele was taking his annual holiday when I visited Triangle however I really lucked-out getting to meet his understudy for the weekend, photographer Robert Hartman. The Professor of Art Emeritus from UC Berkeley (1961-1991) also happened to be one of Andy Black’s professors at Cal (see more below) and is represented by the gallery himself.
Robert showed me the dozen or so examples of his work in the back room of the gallery and explained his approach. A self described addict of low-altitude flight, Robert flies over the Bay Area recording human impact on the earth. He used to fly the plane himself but heart problems a few years ago have turned him into a back-seat flyer. “It’s not quite as good.” he said.
Photos look like abstract paintings at first because he uses infrared film. The 19” x 23” series is framed in simple unvarnished pine, a neat juxtaposition with the high-tech work. This unusal medium transforms the water of the delta, salt flats and irrigated farm plots into black or red, only once in a while do they develop into vivid turquoise. Old World hand-painted maps of not-yet-explored continents come to mind. There’s a piece in the hallway that looks like finger-painting but once your eyes adjust to the light you can make out ant-scale construction equipment decimating the landscape of San Ramon for a new housing development.
http://www.triangle-sf.com/artists/hartman/hartman.html
Lynn Sondag’s watercolor landscapes are beautiful- she captures the lime and marine greens that you remember from past visits to Golden Gate Park and the Legion Of Honor but won’t be there if you go back to double check. ($650-$1500). M.F.A., Painting: California College of the Arts, 1997 and B.F.A., Painting, Savannah College of Art and Design (cum laude), 1990. She teaches at Dominican and CCA.
http://www.triangle-sf.com/artists/sondag/sondag.html
Andy Black’s intimate oil on paper abstract expressionist pieces are noteworthy for their intense masculine colors and for recording the action of painting. You can see how the paint was pushed before the brush was pulled away leaving wake like fresh vacuum cleaner tracks. ($400-$1200). Andy is influenced by the beauty of geometry; each piece begins with a compass & straightedge construction of a Golden Rectangle. B.F.A. Drawing & Painting: CSU Long Beach, 1981 and M.A., M.F.A. (Painting): UC Berkeley, 1983, 1984.
http://www.triangle-sf.com/artists/black/black.html
Hope Kroll is the headliner for the show ($300-$1200). Her work would be perfect for the interior of a Tim Burton-designed gothic dollhouse. She intricately cuts up pictures from books, the topics of which range from science and medicine to mysticism and nature, giving the effect of a frozen drama or illustration for a story. M.F.A., Painting 1992, San Francisco Art Institute and B.F.A. 1990 University of Illinois.
http://www.triangle-sf.com/artists/kroll/kroll.html
This show $400-$1500
Through July 21, Triangle Gallery, 47 Kearny, San Francisco, 11 AM - 5 PM Tuesday through Saturday, Tel.: 415.392.1686
Hespe Gallery: How I Spent My Summer
http://www.hespe.com/
Hespe Gallery's current show “Summer Memories” is a reminder that summer means different things to different people. Gone are the days of camp and water vacations. Summer can be a walk through steaming Times Square or an afternoon nap in a familiar year-round messy bedroom.
Charles Hespe’s new space at 251 Post has a happy, urbane personality. Walking in the door you are transported to Soho. Floor to ceiling windows look out on both a New-Yorky urban light well and a brilliantly sunny rooftop view of Geary Street neighbors.
The Hespe mission of ”fostering a high comfort level for established and novice art collectors” alike still holds true despite the new sophisticated location. Charles Hespe founded his gallery in 1993 on Union Street and moved from that more modest locale to Union Square about a year and a half ago. 251 Post is a more intimate version of behemoth neighbor 49 Geary. The lobby doesn’t look like much but the upper floor staircases are dramatic with mammoth intricate banisters supported by delicate spindles.
Despite the location over Bulgari, gallery assistant Ciara Shuttleworth does a great job of representing the egalitarian brand image. She gives a cheerful friendly welcome and has an innate talent for sensing when to offer information or hold back and wait for you to ask.
Another reason that Hespe is a welcoming place is that the work he chooses to feature is comfortingly consistent. Charles Hespe is dedicated to featuring works painted in a representational style. Be it photorealism or a primitivist landscape, a rose is a rose at Hespe.
The democratic mission statement is not just talk. Hespe is an enthusiastic supporter of Root Division, a San Francisco cooperative non-profit that rents affordable studio space in return for elbow grease. Member artist donate their time to teach free art classes and after school programs. http://www.rootdivision.org/ Hespe also has an open casting-call style page on his website that clearly describes how to submit work for his consideration.
I fell in love with the show’s opening pricepoint piece, Welcome to L.A., by Glenn Ness. The sides of a dark downhill LAX escalator tunnel gleam with promise. Like all of L.A., it’s an anonymous place, except for the haunting shadow of the traveller moving uphill in the opposite direction. Every detail of this specific public space is recorded, including the teeth of the moving steps. Ness’ Boy From Oz is a spooky deserted night scene of Times Square. The riotous White Way billboards are juxtaposed by the calming influence of diamond patterned slate gray sidewalk and puddled street.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=23
Melissa Hutton’s Waiting To Get Out is a barren snowy landscape punctuated by a few benday-dot quonset huts. The painting is actually dripping with melting ice (epoxy resin) so you can feel the determination of the snowed-in residents to escape. The partner piece is in Hespe’s office, Still Waiting shows the same landscape in Summer, huts now serenely resting on a vibrant green meadow under a fiery red sky.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=13
The piece featured on the postcard is Robert Townsend’s Cadillac, a breathtaking technical masterpiece of watercolor, a notoriously hard-to-control paint. Every chrome shine and reflection is beautifully captured. Even the dirt is recorded in this epistle to a once-loved classic car.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=26
Eric Zener’s Calm Before a Turbulent Sea is the requisite contemplative bather piece. An angry body of water beckons a strong female swimmer.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=1
Tony Chimento’s Afternoon Nap is what you are doing if you’re not swimming out-of-doors.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=10
Don't rush out too quickly. Take a moment to browse through neighbor Newmark Gallery's cozy serene gallery next door currently featuring abstract "wastescapes" by Kevin Pincus. At the opposite end of the hall, pass through the door of Meyerovich Gallery and you are instantly transported to our own Manhattan MOMA Richard Serra show.
This show $3200-$55000
June 12 to August 4, Hespe Gallery, 251 Post Street, Suite 420, Tuesday- Friday, 11:00a.m - 5:30p.m. and Saturday, 11:00a.m. - 5:00p.m, 415.776.5918, info@hespe.com
Hespe Gallery's current show “Summer Memories” is a reminder that summer means different things to different people. Gone are the days of camp and water vacations. Summer can be a walk through steaming Times Square or an afternoon nap in a familiar year-round messy bedroom.
Charles Hespe’s new space at 251 Post has a happy, urbane personality. Walking in the door you are transported to Soho. Floor to ceiling windows look out on both a New-Yorky urban light well and a brilliantly sunny rooftop view of Geary Street neighbors.
The Hespe mission of ”fostering a high comfort level for established and novice art collectors” alike still holds true despite the new sophisticated location. Charles Hespe founded his gallery in 1993 on Union Street and moved from that more modest locale to Union Square about a year and a half ago. 251 Post is a more intimate version of behemoth neighbor 49 Geary. The lobby doesn’t look like much but the upper floor staircases are dramatic with mammoth intricate banisters supported by delicate spindles.
Despite the location over Bulgari, gallery assistant Ciara Shuttleworth does a great job of representing the egalitarian brand image. She gives a cheerful friendly welcome and has an innate talent for sensing when to offer information or hold back and wait for you to ask.
Another reason that Hespe is a welcoming place is that the work he chooses to feature is comfortingly consistent. Charles Hespe is dedicated to featuring works painted in a representational style. Be it photorealism or a primitivist landscape, a rose is a rose at Hespe.
The democratic mission statement is not just talk. Hespe is an enthusiastic supporter of Root Division, a San Francisco cooperative non-profit that rents affordable studio space in return for elbow grease. Member artist donate their time to teach free art classes and after school programs. http://www.rootdivision.org/ Hespe also has an open casting-call style page on his website that clearly describes how to submit work for his consideration.
I fell in love with the show’s opening pricepoint piece, Welcome to L.A., by Glenn Ness. The sides of a dark downhill LAX escalator tunnel gleam with promise. Like all of L.A., it’s an anonymous place, except for the haunting shadow of the traveller moving uphill in the opposite direction. Every detail of this specific public space is recorded, including the teeth of the moving steps. Ness’ Boy From Oz is a spooky deserted night scene of Times Square. The riotous White Way billboards are juxtaposed by the calming influence of diamond patterned slate gray sidewalk and puddled street.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=23
Melissa Hutton’s Waiting To Get Out is a barren snowy landscape punctuated by a few benday-dot quonset huts. The painting is actually dripping with melting ice (epoxy resin) so you can feel the determination of the snowed-in residents to escape. The partner piece is in Hespe’s office, Still Waiting shows the same landscape in Summer, huts now serenely resting on a vibrant green meadow under a fiery red sky.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=13
The piece featured on the postcard is Robert Townsend’s Cadillac, a breathtaking technical masterpiece of watercolor, a notoriously hard-to-control paint. Every chrome shine and reflection is beautifully captured. Even the dirt is recorded in this epistle to a once-loved classic car.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=26
Eric Zener’s Calm Before a Turbulent Sea is the requisite contemplative bather piece. An angry body of water beckons a strong female swimmer.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=1
Tony Chimento’s Afternoon Nap is what you are doing if you’re not swimming out-of-doors.
http://www.hespe.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=10
Don't rush out too quickly. Take a moment to browse through neighbor Newmark Gallery's cozy serene gallery next door currently featuring abstract "wastescapes" by Kevin Pincus. At the opposite end of the hall, pass through the door of Meyerovich Gallery and you are instantly transported to our own Manhattan MOMA Richard Serra show.
This show $3200-$55000
June 12 to August 4, Hespe Gallery, 251 Post Street, Suite 420, Tuesday- Friday, 11:00a.m - 5:30p.m. and Saturday, 11:00a.m. - 5:00p.m, 415.776.5918, info@hespe.com
6/16/07 Green Furniture Happening
http://www.sfnpc.org/node/299
There's going to be a "happening" this Saturday at Dolores Park (at 19th). That's a happening in the 50's performance art kind of way. Be on the lookout for an environmentally friendly "pop-up cafe" from 4:00-8:00 pm. Green furniture designers Jon Brumit and Mike Farruggia will supply the benches and tables and Ritual Coffee Roasters is bringing the fair-trade coffee. And there's a green party favor too- you'll get a reusable coffee mug. What's the Stark Guide angle? Sculpture that happens to be beautifully designed furniture made of recycled materials.
Do you remember the photo of the mayor sitting on a grass couch in front of city hall? It was taken last year for the lanch of the letsgreenthiscity program. The movement is a contemporary dichotomy of big business and green effort. PG&E is the sponsor and the purpose is to make renewable energy cool, to make San Francisco the "greenest" city in the nation. (Isn't is already?)
There's going to be a "happening" this Saturday at Dolores Park (at 19th). That's a happening in the 50's performance art kind of way. Be on the lookout for an environmentally friendly "pop-up cafe" from 4:00-8:00 pm. Green furniture designers Jon Brumit and Mike Farruggia will supply the benches and tables and Ritual Coffee Roasters is bringing the fair-trade coffee. And there's a green party favor too- you'll get a reusable coffee mug. What's the Stark Guide angle? Sculpture that happens to be beautifully designed furniture made of recycled materials.
Do you remember the photo of the mayor sitting on a grass couch in front of city hall? It was taken last year for the lanch of the letsgreenthiscity program. The movement is a contemporary dichotomy of big business and green effort. PG&E is the sponsor and the purpose is to make renewable energy cool, to make San Francisco the "greenest" city in the nation. (Isn't is already?)
Jon and Mike are alumni of the prestigious Artist in Residence program at SF Recycling & Disposal (AKA the Dump). http://starkguide.blogspot.com/2007/06/market-street-gallery-reart-co.html. These two are talented, multi-dimensional artists who happen to be furniture designers as well. Paul Fresina, director of the program, suggested them as good candidates for the project when PG&E's PR agency, Venables Bell, embarked on assisting the energy vendor with this aspirational effort. The combination of their design skills and green art provenance was a winning combination for this project.
When you go on Saturday, you'll see 3 legged tables made of bike parts, lounge chairs from shopping carts and quite a few riffs on the ever-adaptable wine barrel. Mike and Jon collaborated on the suite of pieces and enjoyed working together on the project.
What's going to happen to the furniture afterwards? Well, they're not sure. One idea is to auction off the pieces to the highest bidder in an auction that raises money for green causes. There will be six or seven more of these "pop-up cafes" as the summer progesses so maybe you can put in an "absentee bid plus one" for after the series has concluded.
http://www.mikefarrugia.com/, http://www.jonbrumit.com/, http://www.letsgreenthiscity.com/Market Street Gallery: ReArt, Co-Sponsored By Scrap (Not Crap)
http://www.marketstreetgallery.com/
Something unusual was happening at the opening reception for ReArt at Market Street Gallery on Friday night: people were having a really good time. Multi-generational packs of visitors were smiling and laughing and pointing at works on the crowded gallery's walls. Mike Kimball, Director of the gallery's MesArts program was mingling and chatting good naturedly with guests. All this before the wine was poured!
29 of 72 submissions using recycled materials were selected for this show by Paul Fresina, director of the Artist in Residence Program at San Francisco Recycling & Disposal, Inc., Christina La Sala, from the Lab Gallery and Steven Wolf of Steven Wolf Fine Arts.
ReArt is co-presented by Scrap, the 501(c)(3) Scroungers' Center for Reusable Art Parts. San Francisco residents and businesses are encouraged to donate their clean old stuff that could be used as found materials for artwork. And yes, you'll get a tax deduction. Museums, neighborhood centers, senior groups, summer camps, theater groups and childcare centers use Scrap materials. www.scrap-sf.org
Three of the artists featured in the show (Claudia Chapline, Mike Farruggia, Michael Kerbow) are alumni of the prestigious program at the dump. Don't turn your nose up, it's as hard to get into as an Ivy League school. For the sixty to eighty annual applicants there are only four to eight slots (Harvard's Fall 2007 acceptance rate was 9%). Artists are selected by a discerning bunch including Catharine Clark and Richard Newirth, outgoing Director of the San Francisco Arts Commission. Sixty-eight artists have participated in the program since it was founded by Jo Hanson in 1990. http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/AIR/index.htm
The most successful pieces in the ReArt show are the ones that don't take themselves too seriously, giving a wink to the viewer and a nod to their humble origins. Jerry Chatham's schmaltzy but endearing bridge view called Alcatraz, Daybreak at The Gate employs rock, glass, cable, plastic, metal and wood. Michael Kerbow's Code Red suggests that Harvey lost his foot in Brisbane. The oversize clown-nose-red rabbit's foot fob is attached to a circus ring hoop loaded with hundreds of lost keys. Hilary William's soft sculpture Ferd Jardine is a two-headed, fourlegged lovable small person monster complete with a bustle.
Be careful not to miss the best piece in the show. You might think you're looking through a fun house mirror when you see Mike Farruggia's Door Table. Covered with postcards and brochures advertising all things repurposed, you'll think it's just a piece of furniture unless you notice it at the very end of the 29 item exhibit checklist. About 24" of the top and bottom of the door were removed and reattached at 45 degree angles, hinges and rubber stop still attached. The joins connecting the three pieces are so smooth you have to look twice.
This show $40-$5500
June 4th - June 29th, Market Street Gallery, 1554 Market St., San Francisco, Hours: Noon-6 p.m. Tues.-Wed. and Fri.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., noon-8 p.m. Thurs., Phone: 415-290-1441
Something unusual was happening at the opening reception for ReArt at Market Street Gallery on Friday night: people were having a really good time. Multi-generational packs of visitors were smiling and laughing and pointing at works on the crowded gallery's walls. Mike Kimball, Director of the gallery's MesArts program was mingling and chatting good naturedly with guests. All this before the wine was poured!
29 of 72 submissions using recycled materials were selected for this show by Paul Fresina, director of the Artist in Residence Program at San Francisco Recycling & Disposal, Inc., Christina La Sala, from the Lab Gallery and Steven Wolf of Steven Wolf Fine Arts.
ReArt is co-presented by Scrap, the 501(c)(3) Scroungers' Center for Reusable Art Parts. San Francisco residents and businesses are encouraged to donate their clean old stuff that could be used as found materials for artwork. And yes, you'll get a tax deduction. Museums, neighborhood centers, senior groups, summer camps, theater groups and childcare centers use Scrap materials. www.scrap-sf.org
Three of the artists featured in the show (Claudia Chapline, Mike Farruggia, Michael Kerbow) are alumni of the prestigious program at the dump. Don't turn your nose up, it's as hard to get into as an Ivy League school. For the sixty to eighty annual applicants there are only four to eight slots (Harvard's Fall 2007 acceptance rate was 9%). Artists are selected by a discerning bunch including Catharine Clark and Richard Newirth, outgoing Director of the San Francisco Arts Commission. Sixty-eight artists have participated in the program since it was founded by Jo Hanson in 1990. http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/AIR/index.htm
The most successful pieces in the ReArt show are the ones that don't take themselves too seriously, giving a wink to the viewer and a nod to their humble origins. Jerry Chatham's schmaltzy but endearing bridge view called Alcatraz, Daybreak at The Gate employs rock, glass, cable, plastic, metal and wood. Michael Kerbow's Code Red suggests that Harvey lost his foot in Brisbane. The oversize clown-nose-red rabbit's foot fob is attached to a circus ring hoop loaded with hundreds of lost keys. Hilary William's soft sculpture Ferd Jardine is a two-headed, fourlegged lovable small person monster complete with a bustle.
Be careful not to miss the best piece in the show. You might think you're looking through a fun house mirror when you see Mike Farruggia's Door Table. Covered with postcards and brochures advertising all things repurposed, you'll think it's just a piece of furniture unless you notice it at the very end of the 29 item exhibit checklist. About 24" of the top and bottom of the door were removed and reattached at 45 degree angles, hinges and rubber stop still attached. The joins connecting the three pieces are so smooth you have to look twice.
This show $40-$5500
June 4th - June 29th, Market Street Gallery, 1554 Market St., San Francisco, Hours: Noon-6 p.m. Tues.-Wed. and Fri.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., noon-8 p.m. Thurs., Phone: 415-290-1441
Catharine Clark Gallery: Grnad Opening
http://www.cclarkgallery.com/
No, that's not a typo! It's the name of a piece in Catharine Clark's grand opening show at her new digs. This homegrown gallerist has relocated her eponymous space from 49 Geary to 150 Minna. Be assured, this move is a political statement. Clark abandoned her spot in the tony yet frosty A-list Union Square building in favor of the burgeoning egalatarian Museum District, carefully cultivated over the past fifteen-plus years by the San Francisco City Planning Department. Right across the street are SFMOMA and YCBA (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts). The Museum for the African Diaspora around the corner just opened last year and The Contemporary Jewish Museum one block away is almost complete. Clark's timing is perfect.
The new space on the immaculate alleyway (the brand new fancy St. Regis Hotel next door may have something to do with the pristine environment) went through quite a metamorphosis. Formerly a farming equipment warehouse, LA based architectural designer Tim Campbell was in charge of the overhaul.
Clark has invited sixteen artists to participate in this auspicious show. These are artists old and new to Clark and each will be featured more in-depth over the next eighteen months. Clark’s new space is the only gallery in the City to date which features a dedicated video project room- another pitch perfect decision. She replicated the media room installed in the old gallery in 2002, presaging SFMOMA’s January 2006 decision to hire its first curator of media arts, Rudolf Frieling.
As you approach the gallery you first see Nina Katchadourian’s GRNAD OPENING Banner, 2006. This vinyl swath recreates a scene she saw in her Brooklyn neighborhood, and represents the forfeit of control in a new endeavor (perhaps the difficulty of learning a new language as well?). This is a friendly, disarming welcome. Next you are startled by Ray Beldner’s site specific work Ground Breaking or In Advance of the Broken Shovel, a nod to Duchamp’s In Advance of a Broken Arm. The upright shovels are frozen at attention and buried a few inches in the poured concrete floor. You can buy just one if that’s what you want.
Clark’s first gallery, Morphos, opened in Hayes Valley in 1991. Before getting into the business of art, she was an art journalist writing for Cambio, a weekly East Bay Marxist newspaper. It was inappropriate to write about the art market for that publication, so she established her voice and eye by examining the intellectual aspects of the work she featured. Her brand still reflects those origins.
Bordering the neighborhood on the west side are pioneering Braunstein/Quay (pronounced "key") and Hosfelt who share a duplex style warehouse space at 430 Clementina Alley. Both used to be at Union Square but made the one mile move southwest during the dot-com boom. The neighborhood's development "paused" after the crash, but is fulfilling its promise now. It's just a ten minute walk from Minna and Third to Clementina and Fifth so fortify yourself with something to eat at Caffè Museo and then stroll three blocks through the Howard Street corridor to your destination.
This show: $975-$52000
June 2 - July 7, Catharine Clark Gallery, 150 Minna, Ground Floor, San Francisco, 94105, info@clarkgallery.com, 415.399.1439, Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 10:30 - 5:30, Saturday, 11 - 5:30
No, that's not a typo! It's the name of a piece in Catharine Clark's grand opening show at her new digs. This homegrown gallerist has relocated her eponymous space from 49 Geary to 150 Minna. Be assured, this move is a political statement. Clark abandoned her spot in the tony yet frosty A-list Union Square building in favor of the burgeoning egalatarian Museum District, carefully cultivated over the past fifteen-plus years by the San Francisco City Planning Department. Right across the street are SFMOMA and YCBA (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts). The Museum for the African Diaspora around the corner just opened last year and The Contemporary Jewish Museum one block away is almost complete. Clark's timing is perfect.
The new space on the immaculate alleyway (the brand new fancy St. Regis Hotel next door may have something to do with the pristine environment) went through quite a metamorphosis. Formerly a farming equipment warehouse, LA based architectural designer Tim Campbell was in charge of the overhaul.
Clark has invited sixteen artists to participate in this auspicious show. These are artists old and new to Clark and each will be featured more in-depth over the next eighteen months. Clark’s new space is the only gallery in the City to date which features a dedicated video project room- another pitch perfect decision. She replicated the media room installed in the old gallery in 2002, presaging SFMOMA’s January 2006 decision to hire its first curator of media arts, Rudolf Frieling.
As you approach the gallery you first see Nina Katchadourian’s GRNAD OPENING Banner, 2006. This vinyl swath recreates a scene she saw in her Brooklyn neighborhood, and represents the forfeit of control in a new endeavor (perhaps the difficulty of learning a new language as well?). This is a friendly, disarming welcome. Next you are startled by Ray Beldner’s site specific work Ground Breaking or In Advance of the Broken Shovel, a nod to Duchamp’s In Advance of a Broken Arm. The upright shovels are frozen at attention and buried a few inches in the poured concrete floor. You can buy just one if that’s what you want.
Clark’s first gallery, Morphos, opened in Hayes Valley in 1991. Before getting into the business of art, she was an art journalist writing for Cambio, a weekly East Bay Marxist newspaper. It was inappropriate to write about the art market for that publication, so she established her voice and eye by examining the intellectual aspects of the work she featured. Her brand still reflects those origins.
Bordering the neighborhood on the west side are pioneering Braunstein/Quay (pronounced "key") and Hosfelt who share a duplex style warehouse space at 430 Clementina Alley. Both used to be at Union Square but made the one mile move southwest during the dot-com boom. The neighborhood's development "paused" after the crash, but is fulfilling its promise now. It's just a ten minute walk from Minna and Third to Clementina and Fifth so fortify yourself with something to eat at Caffè Museo and then stroll three blocks through the Howard Street corridor to your destination.
This show: $975-$52000
June 2 - July 7, Catharine Clark Gallery, 150 Minna, Ground Floor, San Francisco, 94105, info@clarkgallery.com, 415.399.1439, Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 10:30 - 5:30, Saturday, 11 - 5:30
Ross Smith, Bayeté: Provocative Portraits Prove We Are What We Wear
http://bayeterosssmith.com/
That Bayeté Ross Smith is relaxed and easy going can be inferred from his colorful wrinkled button down shirt, oversized sport coat, and soft knitted driver’s cap. When I asked the artist if it is “fair” that people are judged by their outward appearance, Bayeté commented that this is a "very San Francisco-type of question." Fair or unfair, this is life.
The portrait series called “Our Kind of People” is a full scale expansion of work that was first shown at the artist's MFA show in 2004, then at the 2005 San Francisco GenArt juried Emerge exhibition. The four part series (six 20” x 24” light jet prints each) features regular people of different ethnic backgrounds. The subjects wear the exact same neutral expression in each image- no smile, face at rest, not even a hint of personality comes from the eyes. The photos were taken with the same lighting, from the same distance, with the same plain white background. It is this spartan combination that allows each subject to change, chameleon-like, from professional, suit wearing dilbert, to sweat-clad student, to hipster, to gangster (signified by wife-beater tank and colored bandana). Bayeté was the stylist on the shoot as well, working with his subjects (who also happen to be his friends) to pick the costumes from their own closets.
New work "Passing" (light jet prints 30" x 40") tells a similar story. A man with skin the color of creamy coffee and close cropped curly black hair is pictured on multiple passports: Brazil, Ethiopia, Israel, Sudan, Cuba, US, Netherlands, South Africa etc. The same issue is raised here- we make assumptions about people based on our assumptions about appearances, "facts," and what we do or don't know about the larger world community.
Bayeté received his Bachelor of Science in Photography ’99 from Florida A&M University. FAMU has a prestigious photography program through the School of Journalism and Graphic Communication. Although the artist has been taking photos since he became interested in the medium at age 14, Bayete picked FAMU because it was a Black College with a great business program. "My experiences as a business major, at a Black school in the South, are the foundation for much of my work about identity." The photography curriculum at FAMU emphasizes the service industry aspects of photography. "It caused me to learn about creating images that convey a narrative and could be accessible to people from a broad range of backgrounds and education levels. It has been invaluable in my work as an artist. It has allowed me to create projects that are relevant to regular people, not just 'art' people."
The Bachelor of Science was then complimented with formal training in the fine arts through an MFA in photography '04 from the California College of the Arts. Notable accolades on his resume include 25 Under 25 2003 photography show curated by Iris Tillman, New York University and the companion text 25 Under 25, Up and Coming American Photographers, by the Center for Documentary Studies and Power House Books. Bayeté is most proud of being invited to present his work at the California Judiciary Council's 2006 Conference on Language Access in the courts where he presented work from Our Kind of People, Passing, and Upwardly Mobile.
Bayeté is an active member of the community, teaching at several schools and non-profits in the Bay Area including including the East Oakland Youth Development Center, Far West High School in North Oakland, Art-Esteem in West Oakland, Southern exposure's Mission Voices program in the Mission District, McClymond H.S.'s Young Photographer's program in West Oakland, and Out Of Site center for the Arts in S.F. In addition to being a strong role model and mentor, he teaches art, photography, video, painting and drawing, collage and hip hop art & culture.
Bayete's is one of three featured photographers in this show. The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, in a programmatic partnership with PhotoAlliance, presents Lens on Life; an exhibition featuring artists involved in the exploration of place and identity from both African and African American perspectives. This special exhibition is supported by the San Francisco International Arts Festival and the Museum of the African Diaspora.
This show $475-$2500
The show is on view at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery through June 22, 2007. The gallery is in the basement of City Hall, open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. For installation information, contact San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, 94102 (415) 554-6080 http://www.sfacgallery.org/
That Bayeté Ross Smith is relaxed and easy going can be inferred from his colorful wrinkled button down shirt, oversized sport coat, and soft knitted driver’s cap. When I asked the artist if it is “fair” that people are judged by their outward appearance, Bayeté commented that this is a "very San Francisco-type of question." Fair or unfair, this is life.
The portrait series called “Our Kind of People” is a full scale expansion of work that was first shown at the artist's MFA show in 2004, then at the 2005 San Francisco GenArt juried Emerge exhibition. The four part series (six 20” x 24” light jet prints each) features regular people of different ethnic backgrounds. The subjects wear the exact same neutral expression in each image- no smile, face at rest, not even a hint of personality comes from the eyes. The photos were taken with the same lighting, from the same distance, with the same plain white background. It is this spartan combination that allows each subject to change, chameleon-like, from professional, suit wearing dilbert, to sweat-clad student, to hipster, to gangster (signified by wife-beater tank and colored bandana). Bayeté was the stylist on the shoot as well, working with his subjects (who also happen to be his friends) to pick the costumes from their own closets.
New work "Passing" (light jet prints 30" x 40") tells a similar story. A man with skin the color of creamy coffee and close cropped curly black hair is pictured on multiple passports: Brazil, Ethiopia, Israel, Sudan, Cuba, US, Netherlands, South Africa etc. The same issue is raised here- we make assumptions about people based on our assumptions about appearances, "facts," and what we do or don't know about the larger world community.
Bayeté received his Bachelor of Science in Photography ’99 from Florida A&M University. FAMU has a prestigious photography program through the School of Journalism and Graphic Communication. Although the artist has been taking photos since he became interested in the medium at age 14, Bayete picked FAMU because it was a Black College with a great business program. "My experiences as a business major, at a Black school in the South, are the foundation for much of my work about identity." The photography curriculum at FAMU emphasizes the service industry aspects of photography. "It caused me to learn about creating images that convey a narrative and could be accessible to people from a broad range of backgrounds and education levels. It has been invaluable in my work as an artist. It has allowed me to create projects that are relevant to regular people, not just 'art' people."
The Bachelor of Science was then complimented with formal training in the fine arts through an MFA in photography '04 from the California College of the Arts. Notable accolades on his resume include 25 Under 25 2003 photography show curated by Iris Tillman, New York University and the companion text 25 Under 25, Up and Coming American Photographers, by the Center for Documentary Studies and Power House Books. Bayeté is most proud of being invited to present his work at the California Judiciary Council's 2006 Conference on Language Access in the courts where he presented work from Our Kind of People, Passing, and Upwardly Mobile.
Bayeté is an active member of the community, teaching at several schools and non-profits in the Bay Area including including the East Oakland Youth Development Center, Far West High School in North Oakland, Art-Esteem in West Oakland, Southern exposure's Mission Voices program in the Mission District, McClymond H.S.'s Young Photographer's program in West Oakland, and Out Of Site center for the Arts in S.F. In addition to being a strong role model and mentor, he teaches art, photography, video, painting and drawing, collage and hip hop art & culture.
Bayete's is one of three featured photographers in this show. The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, in a programmatic partnership with PhotoAlliance, presents Lens on Life; an exhibition featuring artists involved in the exploration of place and identity from both African and African American perspectives. This special exhibition is supported by the San Francisco International Arts Festival and the Museum of the African Diaspora.
This show $475-$2500
The show is on view at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery through June 22, 2007. The gallery is in the basement of City Hall, open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. For installation information, contact San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, 94102 (415) 554-6080 http://www.sfacgallery.org/
"Rape of Europa": Riveting Documentary Movie About Nazi Plunder & Present Day Epilogue
Rape of Europa is about power, greed, wealth and war. This movie proves that art history is sexy- anything but the staid slide lectures in darkened auditoriums you avoided in college, I promise. Using rare archival footage and first person interviews of the real life heroes, the movie documents the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and World War II.
Have you been reading about Ronald Lauder's recent $135 million dollar (the most expensive piece of art ever) purchase of Gustave Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer"? You'll learn why the painting is so important to the Jewish community. The title of the movie is the name of a 1640 Polish masterwork painted for King Wladislaw. Polish/Slav culture was deemed "heathen" by the Nazis and slated for systematic eradication, though this painting and others deemed worthy were carried off to be hung in Nazi museums.
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=L898
Actual Films was formed in 1998 by filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, who met while completing their graduate work in the Stanford University Documentary Film Program. Before writing/directing/producing The Rape of Europa, Director Richard Berge was a writer and producer for KQED's SPARK!, the weekly television series about the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. He's another Stanford guy- B.A. History and '94 Masters in Documentary Film. Many important arts organizations provided funding for this film including San Francisco's own Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation.
Actual Films was able to secure a limited run at Landmark Theatre's Embarcadero Cinema after the film's showing at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Like all quality independent films, Rape of Europa depends on word of mouth for publicity and your ticket purchase will convince Landmark (the nation's largest theatre chain dedicated primarily to exhibiting and marketing independent film) to take it national.
http://www.actualfilms.net/index.htm http://www.therapeofeuropa.com/
Not rated. 117 minutes. Now playing at the Landmark Embarcadero Theater, One Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, CA 94111 Moving to Opera Plaza Friday, May 25
Have you been reading about Ronald Lauder's recent $135 million dollar (the most expensive piece of art ever) purchase of Gustave Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer"? You'll learn why the painting is so important to the Jewish community. The title of the movie is the name of a 1640 Polish masterwork painted for King Wladislaw. Polish/Slav culture was deemed "heathen" by the Nazis and slated for systematic eradication, though this painting and others deemed worthy were carried off to be hung in Nazi museums.
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=L898
Actual Films was formed in 1998 by filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, who met while completing their graduate work in the Stanford University Documentary Film Program. Before writing/directing/producing The Rape of Europa, Director Richard Berge was a writer and producer for KQED's SPARK!, the weekly television series about the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. He's another Stanford guy- B.A. History and '94 Masters in Documentary Film. Many important arts organizations provided funding for this film including San Francisco's own Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation.
Actual Films was able to secure a limited run at Landmark Theatre's Embarcadero Cinema after the film's showing at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Like all quality independent films, Rape of Europa depends on word of mouth for publicity and your ticket purchase will convince Landmark (the nation's largest theatre chain dedicated primarily to exhibiting and marketing independent film) to take it national.
http://www.actualfilms.net/index.htm http://www.therapeofeuropa.com/
Not rated. 117 minutes. Now playing at the Landmark Embarcadero Theater, One Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, CA 94111 Moving to Opera Plaza Friday, May 25
Electric Works: Brisbane's Trillium Press Is Reborn
What a location! This former machine shop on the corner of Eighth and arty Minna streets will be easy to find in the Yellow Pages. Former Trillium Press partners haven't changed the name from the Buzzell Building's former incarnation. Big curved orange steel tracks are suspended from the ceiling and dangle pulleys overhead; they used to hoist large motors from one side of the building to another but now serve as inspiration for a George Lucas Star Wars creature. The gallery has inherited opaque sandblasted street-facing windows from the pervious inhabitants; the result is insulation from the gritty neighborhood surroundings and a pristine art-viewing environment.
Trillium Press now Electric Works is most famous for letting the artists they collaborate with do just about anything they want. If you wanted to bring back the puffy-changey-googly-eyed sticker as fine art this would be the place to do it. Their equipment is state of the art; huge electric printing press machines shaped like coffins on legs sport sleek names like Pegasus, Columbus, Triton and Valkyrie.
Principal Richard Lang has collaborated with many famous artists since the publishing program was founded in 2000. The names Enrique Chagoya, Nathan Oliveira and William T. Wiley should whet your appetite to peruse the online gallery: http://www.sfelectricworks.com/gal/gal.php
Tucker Nichols and Katherine Sherwood have the honor of the inaugural show. May 11–June 23
Electric Works; 130 8th St. San Francisco, CA 94101 (415) 626-5496, open Monday-Friday: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm, Saturday: 10:30 am - 4:30 pm, http://www.sfelectricworks.com/
Trillium Press now Electric Works is most famous for letting the artists they collaborate with do just about anything they want. If you wanted to bring back the puffy-changey-googly-eyed sticker as fine art this would be the place to do it. Their equipment is state of the art; huge electric printing press machines shaped like coffins on legs sport sleek names like Pegasus, Columbus, Triton and Valkyrie.
Principal Richard Lang has collaborated with many famous artists since the publishing program was founded in 2000. The names Enrique Chagoya, Nathan Oliveira and William T. Wiley should whet your appetite to peruse the online gallery: http://www.sfelectricworks.com/gal/gal.php
Tucker Nichols and Katherine Sherwood have the honor of the inaugural show. May 11–June 23
Electric Works; 130 8th St. San Francisco, CA 94101 (415) 626-5496, open Monday-Friday: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm, Saturday: 10:30 am - 4:30 pm, http://www.sfelectricworks.com/
Nichols, Tucker: Brainy Placemat Doodles
This series of lunch room placemat art, “Placemats,” will tempt you to borrow your kids’ crayons at the dinner table. It will make you say out loud, “I could have done that.” Except you couldn’t, because you didn’t spend eight years total studying Chinese art history at Brown (BA '93) and Chinese painting at Yale (MFA '98). Don’t confuse the short phrases with naivete or simple- mindedness. His brainy doodles are iconic symbols of modern life and his captions are succinct poems. His past installation wall paintings are modern day ancient Chinese landscape paintings.
Tucker’s work resonates because it is a return to low tech in this high tech world. Seeing Tucker’s hand drawn pen and ink cartoons and wall drawings allows the viewer to relax, let down his guard, and be a part of the moment or a part of the joke, whichever the case may be. It doesn’t hurt that he is also a tall, handsome guy with a winning personality. At the Electric Works opening he held court with a throng of friends and fans around him all at once. Locals will appreciate that Tucker's work has been featured in McSweeny's and The Believer. He has shown a few times at his good friend Charles Linder's gallery, Lincart. Subscribe to his blog at http://www.tuckernichols.com/
Confidential to Art History geeks: I felt great relief when I read Tucker’s review of the 2003 Philip Guston retrospective at SFMOMA. Sometimes a mound of giant cherries is just a mound of giant cherries. http://www.stretcher.org/archives/r1_a/2003_09_02_r1_archive.php
This show $40-$750
Tucker’s work resonates because it is a return to low tech in this high tech world. Seeing Tucker’s hand drawn pen and ink cartoons and wall drawings allows the viewer to relax, let down his guard, and be a part of the moment or a part of the joke, whichever the case may be. It doesn’t hurt that he is also a tall, handsome guy with a winning personality. At the Electric Works opening he held court with a throng of friends and fans around him all at once. Locals will appreciate that Tucker's work has been featured in McSweeny's and The Believer. He has shown a few times at his good friend Charles Linder's gallery, Lincart. Subscribe to his blog at http://www.tuckernichols.com/
Confidential to Art History geeks: I felt great relief when I read Tucker’s review of the 2003 Philip Guston retrospective at SFMOMA. Sometimes a mound of giant cherries is just a mound of giant cherries. http://www.stretcher.org/archives/r1_a/2003_09_02_r1_archive.php
This show $40-$750
Sherwood, Katherine: This Is Your Brain On Archival Digital Pigment Print
Katherine Sherwood’s story is remarkable. The lifelong artist and Cal Professor suffered a stroke in 1997 at the age of 44 and then her art got even better. After the stroke she taught herself how to paint left-handed and her work evolved, becoming freer and more fluid.
Amorphous, glossy vivid color dances around real medical xrays of brains and magnified genes. The bright red and noxious greens are remarkably harmonious. The mysterious organic forms are reminders of our primordial soup origins. Science geeks will not be alone in finding these works intriguing.
Well established before her illness, the awards and shows continued to flow after that: The 1999 SF Art Institute’s Adaline Kent Award for an outstanding, yet under-recognized California artist; inclusion in the Whitney Biennial 2000, and the 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship Award for contributing to our nation's educational and cultural well-being, to name a few.
She received her B.A from the University of California at Davis and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has been a Professor of Art at Cal since 1989, now teaching an innovative course she designed called Art, Medicine & Disability. In San Francisco she is represented by the Paule Anglim Gallery.
This show $1400-$1800
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~sherwood/sherwood/art/sherwoodart.html
Amorphous, glossy vivid color dances around real medical xrays of brains and magnified genes. The bright red and noxious greens are remarkably harmonious. The mysterious organic forms are reminders of our primordial soup origins. Science geeks will not be alone in finding these works intriguing.
Well established before her illness, the awards and shows continued to flow after that: The 1999 SF Art Institute’s Adaline Kent Award for an outstanding, yet under-recognized California artist; inclusion in the Whitney Biennial 2000, and the 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship Award for contributing to our nation's educational and cultural well-being, to name a few.
She received her B.A from the University of California at Davis and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has been a Professor of Art at Cal since 1989, now teaching an innovative course she designed called Art, Medicine & Disability. In San Francisco she is represented by the Paule Anglim Gallery.
This show $1400-$1800
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~sherwood/sherwood/art/sherwoodart.html
6/1/07 Headlands Center for the Arts Benefit Auction
Headlands Center for the Arts’ Board of Trustees and Executive Director Gary Sangster invite you to Headlands Center for the Arts Benefit Auction, an evening of live and silent auction
Auction items include works by Thomas Campbell, Sophie Calle, Santiago Cucullu, Felipe Dulzaides, Anya Gallaccio, Rainer Ganahl, Katy Grannan, Oliver Herring, David Ireland, Hung Liu, Barry McGee, Christine Streuli, Larry Sultan, Yoon Lee and dozens more.
Supporting Galleries: Aicon Gallery, Gallery Paule Anglim, Rena Bransten Gallery, Braunstein/Quay Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Paula Cooper Gallery, Gallery 16, Greenwood Van Doren Gallery, NY, Gregory Lind Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Kent Fine Arts, NY, Heather Marx Gallery, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, Trillium Press, Queen's Nail Annex, Steven Wolf Fine Arts
Time: 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM, Tickets $100. Herbst International Exhibition Hall in the Presidio, 385 Moraga Avenue San Francisco CA, For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit www.headlands.org/auction
Proceeds from Headlands’ Benefit Auction provide direct support for Headlands Center for the Arts programs.
Auction items include works by Thomas Campbell, Sophie Calle, Santiago Cucullu, Felipe Dulzaides, Anya Gallaccio, Rainer Ganahl, Katy Grannan, Oliver Herring, David Ireland, Hung Liu, Barry McGee, Christine Streuli, Larry Sultan, Yoon Lee and dozens more.
Supporting Galleries: Aicon Gallery, Gallery Paule Anglim, Rena Bransten Gallery, Braunstein/Quay Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Paula Cooper Gallery, Gallery 16, Greenwood Van Doren Gallery, NY, Gregory Lind Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Kent Fine Arts, NY, Heather Marx Gallery, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, Trillium Press, Queen's Nail Annex, Steven Wolf Fine Arts
Time: 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM, Tickets $100. Herbst International Exhibition Hall in the Presidio, 385 Moraga Avenue San Francisco CA, For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit www.headlands.org/auction
Proceeds from Headlands’ Benefit Auction provide direct support for Headlands Center for the Arts programs.
Fisher, Don: Cal Alumnus of the Year 2007
This memory of Don Fisher, Gap Inc. Founder and Chairman, was mailed in to the corporate archives department by me as part of a company project to honor his status as the University of California at Berkeley's 2007 Alumnus of the Year.
"I would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Fisher for sharing their breathtaking art collection with the Gap Inc. community. Their collection is second only to MOMA in New York for its breadth, depth and quality of 20th Century art. Our buildings hold works by the most important artists of 1950 to the present. Many rooms in the Two Folsom galleries are mini-museums in thier own right dedicated to one artist, with pieces that are representative of every style and period in that artist's career.
I have taken many, many friends on tours of the galleries over the years so that as many people as possible can benefit from this treasure. Thank you for making Calder, Serra, Warhol, Lichtenstein and Richter (to name just a few) a part of my daily life! Go Bears!"
"I would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Fisher for sharing their breathtaking art collection with the Gap Inc. community. Their collection is second only to MOMA in New York for its breadth, depth and quality of 20th Century art. Our buildings hold works by the most important artists of 1950 to the present. Many rooms in the Two Folsom galleries are mini-museums in thier own right dedicated to one artist, with pieces that are representative of every style and period in that artist's career.
I have taken many, many friends on tours of the galleries over the years so that as many people as possible can benefit from this treasure. Thank you for making Calder, Serra, Warhol, Lichtenstein and Richter (to name just a few) a part of my daily life! Go Bears!"
Auerbach, Tauba: Typeface Can Be Groovy
http://www.taubaauerbach.com/works.html
Just as Alexander Calder started out working for the circus and Richard Serra in steel mills, Auerbach’s first job after graduating from college was sign painter. Like Calder’s mobiles and Serra’s monoliths, Auerbach’s works are indebted to their maker’s early workaday life. Tauba’s pencil, ink and gouache drawings are made up of carefully drafted letters, numbers, lost and arcane alphabets, calligraphy and wordplay.
Her latest gallery show, an anagram title “THE ANSWER/WASN’T HERE” just opened at Jack Hanley Gallery on May 4 on the outskirts of the Mission (closer to Flax Art & Design than La Taqueria). Jack Hanley (locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles) has been showing young and more established conceptually based artists since 1990. When I visited on opening night, 8 of 13 works had pre-sold.
Tauba is a perfectionist- a bellwether in our 80/20 culture. Her work is best when there is a blend of her signature sculptural typeface, harmonios bright color and either humorous or didactic subject matter. “Uh-Huh II,” “Yes and Morph I,” and “Subtraction (Startling)” are examples of this winning combination. This time Tauba has also done a video piece to compliment her work, “Telephone” 8 minutes, is a visual example of how her mind jumps and could translate "startling" into starting, staring, string, sting, sing, sin and finally, I. Work that was new to me featured pure intricate geometric design, now without any letters or symbols. It is large scale and breathtaking in its exactitude; ink on paper is an unforgiving medium.
I first saw Tauba Auberbach’s work with my fellow members of SECA when the artist was being considered for the 2006 SECA Art Award. Her friends at the Luggage Store Gallery had allowed her to set up her work for my group’s review one Saturday morning in the Spring of that year. The biennial award, sponsored by SFMOMA's Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, recognizes local artists of exceptional promise.
Locals will appreciate that Tauba is a native San Franciscan. She attended SF Day School and University High. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Stanford in 1999. She grew up in the Marina but told me she thinks the neighborhood has changed irrevocably. She is wistful for an earlier time, before chain stores took over the mom-and-pops, the kind of stores that would have hung her signs. During her tenure at Damon Styer’s New Bohemia Signs, she worked on some noteworthy projects: Far West Fungi and Miette in the Ferry Building, Stinking Rose and Calzone’s in North Beach, Mollusk Surf, the gold leaf windows at Cable Car Clothiers, as well as smaller businesses like chiropractic offices and psychics.
It is impossible to write about Tauba without mentioning the accolades she has received so early in her career. There has been impressive scholarly art world press about her and noteworthy galleries in San Francisco and New York have shown her work. Her highly original subject matter and beautiful execution makes her one to watch.
This show $3000-$18000
Through May 26. Jack Hanley Gallery, 395/389 Valencia Street, San Francisco 94103, tel: 415/522.1623, fax: 415/522.1631, email: info@jackhanley.com, hours: tuesday - saturday, 11am - 6pm
Just as Alexander Calder started out working for the circus and Richard Serra in steel mills, Auerbach’s first job after graduating from college was sign painter. Like Calder’s mobiles and Serra’s monoliths, Auerbach’s works are indebted to their maker’s early workaday life. Tauba’s pencil, ink and gouache drawings are made up of carefully drafted letters, numbers, lost and arcane alphabets, calligraphy and wordplay.
Her latest gallery show, an anagram title “THE ANSWER/WASN’T HERE” just opened at Jack Hanley Gallery on May 4 on the outskirts of the Mission (closer to Flax Art & Design than La Taqueria). Jack Hanley (locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles) has been showing young and more established conceptually based artists since 1990. When I visited on opening night, 8 of 13 works had pre-sold.
Tauba is a perfectionist- a bellwether in our 80/20 culture. Her work is best when there is a blend of her signature sculptural typeface, harmonios bright color and either humorous or didactic subject matter. “Uh-Huh II,” “Yes and Morph I,” and “Subtraction (Startling)” are examples of this winning combination. This time Tauba has also done a video piece to compliment her work, “Telephone” 8 minutes, is a visual example of how her mind jumps and could translate "startling" into starting, staring, string, sting, sing, sin and finally, I. Work that was new to me featured pure intricate geometric design, now without any letters or symbols. It is large scale and breathtaking in its exactitude; ink on paper is an unforgiving medium.
I first saw Tauba Auberbach’s work with my fellow members of SECA when the artist was being considered for the 2006 SECA Art Award. Her friends at the Luggage Store Gallery had allowed her to set up her work for my group’s review one Saturday morning in the Spring of that year. The biennial award, sponsored by SFMOMA's Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, recognizes local artists of exceptional promise.
Locals will appreciate that Tauba is a native San Franciscan. She attended SF Day School and University High. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Stanford in 1999. She grew up in the Marina but told me she thinks the neighborhood has changed irrevocably. She is wistful for an earlier time, before chain stores took over the mom-and-pops, the kind of stores that would have hung her signs. During her tenure at Damon Styer’s New Bohemia Signs, she worked on some noteworthy projects: Far West Fungi and Miette in the Ferry Building, Stinking Rose and Calzone’s in North Beach, Mollusk Surf, the gold leaf windows at Cable Car Clothiers, as well as smaller businesses like chiropractic offices and psychics.
It is impossible to write about Tauba without mentioning the accolades she has received so early in her career. There has been impressive scholarly art world press about her and noteworthy galleries in San Francisco and New York have shown her work. Her highly original subject matter and beautiful execution makes her one to watch.
This show $3000-$18000
Through May 26. Jack Hanley Gallery, 395/389 Valencia Street, San Francisco 94103, tel: 415/522.1623, fax: 415/522.1631, email: info@jackhanley.com, hours: tuesday - saturday, 11am - 6pm
Guinness, Hugo: Whimsical One-Of-A-Kinds at Kate Spade
There is an established tradition of buying art from high end retailers such as Neiman’s or Barney’s. Now Kate Spade San Francisco jumps into the mix. Hugo Guinness’s iconic subjects are just as quirky as the material he uses to make them. G rated prints titled “banana,” “greyhound bus,” and “tractor” sit side by side with PG “panties,” “panties again,” and “rubber.” He no longer uses linoleum blocks for his work; he’s discovered Speedy Cut’s eraser-like material, much easier to work with. The designs in black ink on handmade Indian paper are simple and universal. He’s cagey when asked if the pieces on display are part of a print series or if they really are one of a kind, and let’s me know in a friendly way that I am missing the point. He's right. $550 for a work that is framed (floating mount on wood panel) and godparented by the Spades is a bargain.
The May 3 launch party at the store happened to be First Thursday, the night when the A list galleries of Union Square stay open a little later so students and 9-to-5 folk can get in to see what’s featured. John and Gretchen Berggruen saw the party from the second floor windows of their gallery across the street and made their way over to introduce themselves to Hugo. The guest-list party was multi-purpose: introduce Hugo's work (only for sale in the San Francisco store) to the SF set, raise money for the Fine Arts Museums’ Junior Committee, and show off the Hugo-Kate clear plastic op-art tote that New York Magazine helpfully points out is a legal airplane carry-on:
http://www.katespade.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2580852&cp=1863844.2180761
Hugo Guinness (along with fellow alum Vivienne Westwood) is a graduate of Harrow College of Art in London. Like most artists, his school emphasis (ceramics) is not what he currently practices. In addition to the charming prints at Kate Spade and John Derian's Bowery boutique, he contributes “spots” to the New Yorker magazine (those little drawings in between the paragraphs) and is an AIGA award winning book-jacket illustrator.
Note to the speculator: 29 of 65 pieces sold that night at the party and prices have gone up 60% since Kate Spade recommended Hugo's work to Time Magazine's Style & Design "The Best of 2004" list.
This show $550
Kate Spade, 227 Grant avenue, San Francisco, 94108, tel: 415.216.0880 fax: 415.216.0878 Hours M-Sat: 10-6, Sun: 12-5, Stefanie Strickland, Manager
The May 3 launch party at the store happened to be First Thursday, the night when the A list galleries of Union Square stay open a little later so students and 9-to-5 folk can get in to see what’s featured. John and Gretchen Berggruen saw the party from the second floor windows of their gallery across the street and made their way over to introduce themselves to Hugo. The guest-list party was multi-purpose: introduce Hugo's work (only for sale in the San Francisco store) to the SF set, raise money for the Fine Arts Museums’ Junior Committee, and show off the Hugo-Kate clear plastic op-art tote that New York Magazine helpfully points out is a legal airplane carry-on:
http://www.katespade.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2580852&cp=1863844.2180761
Hugo Guinness (along with fellow alum Vivienne Westwood) is a graduate of Harrow College of Art in London. Like most artists, his school emphasis (ceramics) is not what he currently practices. In addition to the charming prints at Kate Spade and John Derian's Bowery boutique, he contributes “spots” to the New Yorker magazine (those little drawings in between the paragraphs) and is an AIGA award winning book-jacket illustrator.
Note to the speculator: 29 of 65 pieces sold that night at the party and prices have gone up 60% since Kate Spade recommended Hugo's work to Time Magazine's Style & Design "The Best of 2004" list.
This show $550
Kate Spade, 227 Grant avenue, San Francisco, 94108, tel: 415.216.0880 fax: 415.216.0878 Hours M-Sat: 10-6, Sun: 12-5, Stefanie Strickland, Manager
5/31/07 Hospitality House 22nd Annual Art Auction
Hospitality House's 22nd Annual Art Auction Benefiting the Community Arts Program of Central City Hospitality House, Thursday, May 31, 20076 - 9 PM at the Andrea Schwartz Gallery 525 2nd Street, Honorary Chair: Danielle Steel. An evening of cocktails, hors d'oeuvres,silent and live auction, and live music. $30 in advance ($40 at the door) http://www.hospitalityhouse.org/07auction.htm#tickets Tickets are also available bycontacting Daniel Hlad at 415-749-2184 or at the door the evening of the event. Click here for a list of participating artists and galleries: http://www.hospitalityhouse.org/07artists.htm
Park Life Store: CWA Clement With Attitude
Clement Street has not had such cool since the "Call Me Ms..." boutique and its naughty greeting cards dominated the scene in the early eighties. New arrival Park Life art and design shop flaunts hipster cool as a gallery space plus boutique featuring art books, Japanese gewgaws and decorative accessories for the home. The book selection includes works published by Park Life business partners Derek Song and Jaime Alexander's other venture, Paper Museum Press.
An early alliance with Headlands for the Arts minted their credibility out of the gate. Former Headlands Director now SFMOMA Deputy Director of Development Blair Winn discovered them while strolling down Clement one afternoon and established their reputation by hosting the launch party for the Headlands 20th Anniversary Limited Edition Prints there.
On view now (April 27th through May 23rd, 2007) is commercial skateboard artist Ian Johnson's drawings and paintings featuring portraits of jazz greats. Ian Johnson was born in Syracuse, NY and currently lives and works in San Francisco. Johnson is the Art director for Western Edition Skateboards. His illustrations have appeared in publications that include Straight No Chaser, Wax Poetics, The San Francisco Chronicle, and SB (Japan) among others.
Ian's pen and ink on paper portraits demonstrate strong draftsmanship but the collectibles are the acrylic on wood panel pieces. The show is dynamically curated in the small space, "graffiti style" in a manner that evokes Barry McGee's collage walls.
In the evening, put your name on the list at Burma Star across the street and browse in the store while you wait for your table to come up. By day, it's stroller friendly for the Inner Richmond Mommy crowd.
This show $200-$1200
Park Life Store, 220 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA 94118, Phone: 415.386.7275, Fax: 415.386.7272, Email: info@parklifestore.com Store Hours: 11AM - 8PM Daily, 11AM - 9PM Saturday
An early alliance with Headlands for the Arts minted their credibility out of the gate. Former Headlands Director now SFMOMA Deputy Director of Development Blair Winn discovered them while strolling down Clement one afternoon and established their reputation by hosting the launch party for the Headlands 20th Anniversary Limited Edition Prints there.
On view now (April 27th through May 23rd, 2007) is commercial skateboard artist Ian Johnson's drawings and paintings featuring portraits of jazz greats. Ian Johnson was born in Syracuse, NY and currently lives and works in San Francisco. Johnson is the Art director for Western Edition Skateboards. His illustrations have appeared in publications that include Straight No Chaser, Wax Poetics, The San Francisco Chronicle, and SB (Japan) among others.
Ian's pen and ink on paper portraits demonstrate strong draftsmanship but the collectibles are the acrylic on wood panel pieces. The show is dynamically curated in the small space, "graffiti style" in a manner that evokes Barry McGee's collage walls.
In the evening, put your name on the list at Burma Star across the street and browse in the store while you wait for your table to come up. By day, it's stroller friendly for the Inner Richmond Mommy crowd.
This show $200-$1200
Park Life Store, 220 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA 94118, Phone: 415.386.7275, Fax: 415.386.7272, Email: info@parklifestore.com Store Hours: 11AM - 8PM Daily, 11AM - 9PM Saturday
4/25/07 SFMOMA Annual Artists' Warehouse Sale
Gala Reception Wednesday, April 25, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Music and refreshments, free admission. An annual tradition since 1993, the Artists Warehouse Sale is one of the Bay Area’s most anticipated art events, attended by new and seasoned collectors alike. The five-day sale features paintings, photographs, sculptures, prints, and works on paper at 50 percent off regular retail price. Proceeds benefit the programs of the SFMOMA Artists Gallery, which supports the Museum as well as regional artists.The event begins with a grand opening reception that features complimentary wine and live music, and it closes with an afternoon of live jazz. Throughout the sale, the gallery offers special extended hours. The gallery restocks sale works daily, but visitors are encouraged to attend early for the best selection. The event is free and open to the public. On opening night, a limited number of reserved parking spaces will be offered in the Fort Mason parking lot. Free parking is available outside the gates in the Marina Green.
This year’s sale: April 25 - 29, 2007
Special Sale HoursThursday and Friday, noon - 8:00 p.m.Saturday, noon - 5:30 p.m.Sunday, noon - 4:00 p.m.
This year’s sale: April 25 - 29, 2007
Special Sale HoursThursday and Friday, noon - 8:00 p.m.Saturday, noon - 5:30 p.m.Sunday, noon - 4:00 p.m.
4/26/07 ArtSpan Auction
ArtSpan Annual Benefit Art Show and Auction
Thursday, April 26, 2007 California Modern Gallery 1035 Market Street, between 6th and 7th StreetsPark at US Parking (Mission Street between 6th and 7th Streets) To purchase tickets now, visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/50941367
Bid on more than 140 works by local artists in live and silent auctions. Enjoy desserts, drinks and delectables with a San Francisco flavor and groove to the sounds of DJ Shissler. VIP Ticket Benefits: 6:00-6:30pm (tickets are limited)
Exclusive preview of Artwork with champagne cocktail reception courtesy of Torani / R. Torre & Co, fine wine, and light supper from 6:00pm to 7:00pm.
Art Lecture: "How to Augment your Art Collection," presented by John F. Melvin, Artist, and Risley H. Sams, California Modern Gallery
Reserve parking passes provided for US Parking (Mission Street between 6th and 7th Streets)
Preferred seating for live auction
5% discount on purchase of art (up to $50 per purchase)
Express wrap and checkout General Ticket Benefits: 6:30-9:00pm
Bid paddle and opportunity to grow your art collection
Open Bar
Light hors d'oeuvres Purchase tickets
Thursday, April 26, 2007 California Modern Gallery 1035 Market Street, between 6th and 7th StreetsPark at US Parking (Mission Street between 6th and 7th Streets) To purchase tickets now, visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/50941367
Bid on more than 140 works by local artists in live and silent auctions. Enjoy desserts, drinks and delectables with a San Francisco flavor and groove to the sounds of DJ Shissler. VIP Ticket Benefits: 6:00-6:30pm (tickets are limited)
Exclusive preview of Artwork with champagne cocktail reception courtesy of Torani / R. Torre & Co, fine wine, and light supper from 6:00pm to 7:00pm.
Art Lecture: "How to Augment your Art Collection," presented by John F. Melvin, Artist, and Risley H. Sams, California Modern Gallery
Reserve parking passes provided for US Parking (Mission Street between 6th and 7th Streets)
Preferred seating for live auction
5% discount on purchase of art (up to $50 per purchase)
Express wrap and checkout General Ticket Benefits: 6:30-9:00pm
Bid paddle and opportunity to grow your art collection
Open Bar
Light hors d'oeuvres Purchase tickets
Chacon, Omar: Not Your 1970's Rainbows
The headliner at Lincart is Omar Chacon, back in the larger, more formal gallery space. His work is beautiful. It is happy, joyful and uplifting. The work is just as engaging at close range as it is from far away. The work is alive with the rhythm of bright colors and texture.
Knowing about Chacon's artistic process makes the viewing experience more rewarding. The acrylic multi colored stripes of paint are first formed on wax paper. After they dry they are glued to the work's surface. Although the primary colors sing with familiarity, the combinations are fresh and new. This is the rainbow of your mid-seventies kindergarten classrooms all grown up.
Best are the linear works whose narrow stripes move in unison like shallow surf at Stinson. The most desirable piece in the show is actually many little works hung together in the front window of the gallery. These small pieces are $1000 each but if you bring home just one by itself it will be lonely. The other prevalent style is multi-colored ovals like eggs with many yolks, reminiscent of crowds of people viewed from above. The third style I can only describe as little explosions layered on top of each other, also rainbowed.
Because Omar's strong practice of art background is combined with a scholarly art historian's thoughtfulness, he is the real deal. Omar graduated with a major in art and a minor in art history from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. He did his graduate work in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. He is represented in San Francisco by Charles Linder's Lincart and Greene Contemporary in Sarasota. He showed at Greene Contemporary in New York in January 2007.
This show $1000-$7000
Knowing about Chacon's artistic process makes the viewing experience more rewarding. The acrylic multi colored stripes of paint are first formed on wax paper. After they dry they are glued to the work's surface. Although the primary colors sing with familiarity, the combinations are fresh and new. This is the rainbow of your mid-seventies kindergarten classrooms all grown up.
Best are the linear works whose narrow stripes move in unison like shallow surf at Stinson. The most desirable piece in the show is actually many little works hung together in the front window of the gallery. These small pieces are $1000 each but if you bring home just one by itself it will be lonely. The other prevalent style is multi-colored ovals like eggs with many yolks, reminiscent of crowds of people viewed from above. The third style I can only describe as little explosions layered on top of each other, also rainbowed.
Because Omar's strong practice of art background is combined with a scholarly art historian's thoughtfulness, he is the real deal. Omar graduated with a major in art and a minor in art history from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. He did his graduate work in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. He is represented in San Francisco by Charles Linder's Lincart and Greene Contemporary in Sarasota. He showed at Greene Contemporary in New York in January 2007.
This show $1000-$7000
Gonzales, Matt: Sexy Former Supe Debuts At Lincart
What thinking woman doesn't find a cultured Stanford Law grad who gave years of his life to making the city a better place and cares about the environment attractive? Matt Gonzalez Esq. makes his gallery debut at Lincart, on view April 20th- June 2nd. Opening reception for Gonzalez and Omar Chacon: Thursday, April 19th, 6 to 9pm.
No dispute, Gonzalez's collages are interesting because of who he is. The local celebrity angle is undeniably fun. It's also fun to visit Charles Linder's Lincart, one of the more accessible galleries in town. His is a warm, inviting place that is caj and established. Be sure to stop in at Zuni across the alley afterwards for a balsamic bloody mary. Lincart open Tuesday-Saturday, 12 to 6 pm and by appointment. 1632 C Market Street, San Francisco (415) 503-1981 http://www.lincart.com/
From Lincart's publicity materials: "Matt Gonzalez is best known as a local green party activist, having served terms as the president of the San Francisco board of supervisors and by nearly achieving victory in the last mayoral election. As a long time supporter of the local art community, he hosted numerous art events while in office at city hall, and has written and published essays about beat era artists such as Jack Hirschman and Jack Micheline. He has recently been outed as an accomplished artist himself and we are thrilled to be exhibiting his collages which he crafts from material he finds while walking in the city"
In reviewing some 22 works posted on the Lincart website, my favorite are the ones that tell a story from the found text. The best piece is "Kitchens & Theatres," ticket stubs combined with a valet claim check, collapsed matchbooks, a benefit program and a hint of a social security number. If I owned this I would be tempted to peel off the decoupage and figure out exactly what Matt was up to that night. The narrative pieces that are incomplete stories are less satisfying.
The other main theme in the collection is abstract geometrics. The ones with saturated color such as "Building Folding Tragic Sails," a reassembled turq corrugated cardboard puzzle has nice color and balance. Whimsical titles coupled with bold signature and date scribbles are strong elements that enhance the compositions, but cannot carry them.
I am looking forward to seeing how Gonzalez's work evolves after this modest debut.
This show $600-$800
No dispute, Gonzalez's collages are interesting because of who he is. The local celebrity angle is undeniably fun. It's also fun to visit Charles Linder's Lincart, one of the more accessible galleries in town. His is a warm, inviting place that is caj and established. Be sure to stop in at Zuni across the alley afterwards for a balsamic bloody mary. Lincart open Tuesday-Saturday, 12 to 6 pm and by appointment. 1632 C Market Street, San Francisco (415) 503-1981 http://www.lincart.com/
From Lincart's publicity materials: "Matt Gonzalez is best known as a local green party activist, having served terms as the president of the San Francisco board of supervisors and by nearly achieving victory in the last mayoral election. As a long time supporter of the local art community, he hosted numerous art events while in office at city hall, and has written and published essays about beat era artists such as Jack Hirschman and Jack Micheline. He has recently been outed as an accomplished artist himself and we are thrilled to be exhibiting his collages which he crafts from material he finds while walking in the city"
In reviewing some 22 works posted on the Lincart website, my favorite are the ones that tell a story from the found text. The best piece is "Kitchens & Theatres," ticket stubs combined with a valet claim check, collapsed matchbooks, a benefit program and a hint of a social security number. If I owned this I would be tempted to peel off the decoupage and figure out exactly what Matt was up to that night. The narrative pieces that are incomplete stories are less satisfying.
The other main theme in the collection is abstract geometrics. The ones with saturated color such as "Building Folding Tragic Sails," a reassembled turq corrugated cardboard puzzle has nice color and balance. Whimsical titles coupled with bold signature and date scribbles are strong elements that enhance the compositions, but cannot carry them.
I am looking forward to seeing how Gonzalez's work evolves after this modest debut.
This show $600-$800
4/12/07 "Outsider" art benefit auction for the artist-clients
This annual event and worthy cause features contemporary "Outsider Art" and a marquee of laudably local celebrities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art
Works by adults of all ages with developmental disabilities put their works created in the "Creativity Explored" center up for auction in this annual fundraiser. If you are interested in a funky movement that is high/low concept at the same time then this is for you. Buy a few to tell a story and hang them close together. List prices range $50-$100.
Thursday, April 12, 7PM, 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, $50, (415) 863-2108
http://www.creativityexplored.org/news/#000278
Under #100
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art
Works by adults of all ages with developmental disabilities put their works created in the "Creativity Explored" center up for auction in this annual fundraiser. If you are interested in a funky movement that is high/low concept at the same time then this is for you. Buy a few to tell a story and hang them close together. List prices range $50-$100.
Thursday, April 12, 7PM, 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, $50, (415) 863-2108
http://www.creativityexplored.org/news/#000278
Under #100
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