Artists and Astronauts

More January Openings

2012-02-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

As an ever intrepid art explorer, I felt it was my duty as artist, CCA alum, and blogger to see the following San Francisco Art Openings. Most of my evening out was a CCA-a-thon, where faculty, alumni, and current students all had work displayed for us to pretend to see but where we mostly chatted it up with the rest of our CCA community. In addition to the shows at Patricia Sweetow, Haines, and Altman Siegel, I had the opportunity to see an SFAI affiliate (gasp!) and total art hero, Josephine Taylor, at Catherine Clark with my friend Libby and my little buddy Jasper.

David Huffman "Floating World", Patricia Sweetow Gallery

(January 5 through February 11)

My former professor, David Huffman, recently made a pretty significant shift with these mostly abstract paintings of color and glitter with appearances by one of his familiar representational narrative elements, the basketball. Huffman has included the deep space of water media and cloud-like formations in his previous, more politically explicit work for some time, and it looks like the space has taken over the narrative in a sort of tongue-in-cheek approach to abstraction. While the basketballs reference African American stereotypes, I missed more of the action and story-telling of his former work. With the repetition of this series, I didn't learn or think about anything past the first painting onto the next. They are pretty, though.

Sweetow's space is a sort of in-between level in 77 Geary, with cement floors and lots of pillars.

The paintings appeared in different color schemes, like pastel and below, blacks and browns.

You know I like glitter and washes.

Kota Ezawa, "The Curse of Dimensionality" and Taha Belal, "The Atmosphere from Before the Step Down Returns to the Square" Haines Gallery

(January 5 through February 18)

I thought this show from CCA Faculty Kota Ezawa was pretty great, but it was also so crowded that I didn't get a good look at the massive amounts of work shown inside the gallery. Kota's signature flattened cartoonish imagery was shown as animation, light screens, paintings, view boxes, and sculpture. It almost seemed like a retrospective with the inclusion of his work from as far back as the SECA show OJ Simpson series in 2005, but I found it really inspiring that he has been able to use so many different mediums to communicate a similar theme.

Taha Belal is a CCA MFA Alum from 2008 and a native of Egypt. I remember his work from a few years ago of meticulously cut out newspapers, and it looks like he still uses the same techniques, but has also applied stylized patterns that the cut outs create, reminiscent of Arabian designs. Right? I don't really know what I am talking about. The title of his show in the back room suggests a pretty clear message about Egypt and its political turmoil. Belal has been staying in his country of origin, but that's really all I know. I didn't do my homework very well and couldn't look closely at the images.

This turd with the top-not behind the counter ignored me all three times I went to get a water. Get a grip, gallery intern, and get a new hairstyle too.

Some paintings by Ezawa, my favorite of all the mediums.

Some light boxes on the wall and the floor.

Belal's cut outs.

Group Show with Jessica Dickinson, Liam Everett, Alex Olson, Josh Smith, and Garth Weiser
Altman Siegel

(January 5 through February 25)

I am getting to the point where I don't care who reads what I say. The people at Altman Siegel seem really stuck up. There, I said it. I hate going in there- they never look up and say hello, they serve beer at their openings, and then there was the incident last summer where the asinine artist Chris Johanson asked my friends and I to leave his show because we were talking amongst ourselves during his bad-on-purpose band performance to go with his bad-on-purpose art. All that being said, I do really like CCA grad student, Liam Everett's, artwork so I went to the stuck up palace anyway.

The same crowd moving with me from gallery to gallery.

I kind of liked this piece by Alex Olson.

Goopy.

Something weird was taking place over and over again in front of this beautiful piece by Liam made with acrylic, salt, and alcohol. It made a great backdrop for people to take pictures of themselves, so people kept posing in front of it, instead of taking pictures of the piece itself. I have never seen this phenomenon with an emerging artist's painting, and I thought it was really disrespectful.

So, of course, my buddies David and Chrissie, and I had to mock what everyone else was doing.

Josephine Taylor, Catherine Clark Gallery

(January 7 through February 11)

As I mentioned, I am a big fan of Josephine Taylor's work, and have been following her beautiful large-scale ink drawings since I saw her at both the 2005 SECA show at the SF MoMA and the Bay Area Now show at the YBCA the same year. Not many people, at least whom I have come across, make large, airy, realistic, psychological work on big expanses of white paper. What can I say, she had me at "white paper". In juxtaposition with her detailed and soft technique is the heavy imagery of very disturbing things. It's amazing to have met her and know she's a very well-adjusted and lovely person, who must get a lot of things out through her art. One more thing to like about art- it makes for great therapy.

Her pieces were mostly very large images with figures battling each other.

I really liked her choices of filling in some colors and not all. It gave those areas more importance, and gave visual punctuations to the grotesque stories- like the balls and toenail.

The fight scene really made scary by the body language of the feet.

Art from Forever Ago

2012-02-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

Anything goes...
I went to some San Francisco art shows before Christmas and never posted them. Hopefully you might be curious about some great local art anyways, especially if you're like me and want to go see a bunch of shows and but never make it to most of them. At least we can always live vicariously through the internet. Looking back, this round of art offerings seemed especially diverse, pointing to the general truth about art in today's scene: anything goes, and it's all good...or kind of good...most of the time. I personally find it so refreshing that I could be making so many different kinds of paintings, and no one would bat an eye. We have come to accept anything from glitter art to gestural abstraction on a fairly level playing field, and I love it.

Joel Dean and Jason Benson, "La Folie", and Bryson Gill, "The Optimist Gene", Triple Base Gallery

Dec. 2- Jan. 1

Well, like I said, anything is art these days. These pieces nailed onto other pieces and sculptural paintings as paintings/as sculpture(?) by the collaborative team of Joel and Jason in the Triple Base back room seemed almost too smart to care about what they were made of.

I like that they are different, yet I feel I've seen them before. And like I said above, it's as if there wasn't any love put into them.

Socks as painting.

Not really into the marks made.

Bryson Gill's solo show in the front room, full of rich oil paintings and sunlight, seemed the remedy to the anti-paintings in in the back. It was obvious that Bryson painstakingly crafted each painting lovingly, as he considered the composition and color of these paintings that were part still life and part abstraction.

That red just glows.

Paul Mullins, "For Here or To Go", Marx and Zavattero

Oct. 29- Dec. 17

Paul Mullins' large scale paintings of collaged dude imagery were nice to see in person- some art just doesn't photograph the same. His combination of light pastel colors and KISS and dogs and tattoos was well-executed but not completely my cup of tea. They left me wanting something more, though I'm not sure I can put my finger on it. I just wondered through the exhibition, why these particular images? What is he trying to say?

A close-up of the tiny painted un-collage parts.

Darren Waterston, "Forest Eater", and Leslie Shows, "Split Array" Haines Gallery

Nov. 3- Dec. 24

Well, I don't know what it is, but I kind of like this Waterston sculpture. Maybe because it's black and matte. I would probably like anything with black and matte.

I kind of like these Waterston paintings but he had a tough crowd because....Leslie Shows' show in the next room was so AMAZING!

Leslie Shows has been culling her experimental techniques in water media and collage for years and made an unexpected but impressive shift to paint on aluminum. It surely left the audience wondering, how the hell did she do that? (Notice the yellow sculptures on the floor- those are molds of objects created with sulfur. I didn't think they went well with the rest of the show).

What was most impressive to me besides their obvious beauty and my obvious obsession with beauty, was their seeming photorealism in their depictions of glaciers and rocks.

A close-up of many many combined mediums to create exquisite and mysterious techniques.

I was a fan before, and I'm still a fan.

December Group Show, Guerrero Gallery

Dec. 17- Jan. 7

Guerrero Gallery hosted a group show full of a random assortment of known and unknown talent, but most notably featured a new sculpture by Libby Black. Her piece, a paper sculpture of a Goyard violin on top of a milk crate with coins inside, brought a sharper political edge to her normally playful pieces.

A quilt by Ben Venom, made out of metal band T shirts. Venom was recently featured in the last Bay Area Now show at the YBCA. I have yet to decide whether I am sold on these quilts as much more than a cute craft.

A piece by Richard Colman, which I didn't realize until now is grip tape on something called 'bonite'. I kind of like it more for this, but it makes it something much more high/low than a boy making a glitter painting. I don't know what that means, really, but it's interesting.

Paul Wackers makes nice paintings.

Dude art of alien sex. Typical. (By David Jien)

A gold flag by Andrew Schoultz, who recently had a very good December in Miami at the fairs with similar gold prints. Even Diddy, or whatever he's called now, wanted one.

Nice job, San Francisco.

Artists I Love: Ingres

2012-02-02T13:29:00.000-08:00

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, I love you.

The french painter, Ingres, is mostly known for this AMAZING image of Napoleon on his imperial throne, as well as the odalisques like the one below. While perhaps not an unsung hero, but I wonder if he gets the due he deserves in the history of art. Perhaps he does, but until recently, I don't think I paid enough attention to his exquisite paintings with their subtle plastification of the figure and their intense homage and servitude to beauty with a capital B. *Don't forget you can click on the images to enlarge them.

Around the time of the French Revolution, he studied under another absolute favorite, Jacques-Louis David, who I found out through wikipedia said Ingres had a tendency to exaggerate in his work. That in itself is probably what makes me love him so much. As a sort of new Mannerist, exaggerating proportions slightly is what makes the real uncanny, and draws us in and slightly confuses us at the same time. I will let you read the rest about him here.

His tendency to apply rich and ornate patterns, fabrics, and jewels only heightens the sense of sumptuousness to each portrait and take it a little over-the-top, and in Napoleon's portrait, a lot over-the-top. Of course, in the tradition of portraiture, the wealthy were the ones commissioning portraits of themselves to create an opulent and fantastical, beautified avatar of themselves, if you will. However, I read in a book about him that he reminded the women in his portraits to bring all of their jewels, as if he knew that would bring them beyond a basic portrait.

What I really found illuminating and inspiring in my recent study of Ingres simply for research for my own work was a book in the CCA library, Portraits of Ingres: image of an epoch, which included all these lovely paintings we have seen before, but also his understated portrait drawings. It's the small things in these drawings that inspire me so much- his use of light rendering and strong lines, as well as small details that call attention to the frame of the image, and his placement of the horizon line that play with the idea of a standard portrait. I took some photos from the book just for my own reference.

I love the way he has drawn an image of an image, with a decorative symbol on the outside of the frame.

The simplicity of line in her arms and dress combined with her rendered hair and eyes is really refreshingly light.

I love her sassy attitude and all the crap she is holding.

Another simple line drawing of the outline of the body. I also love the column-like placement of standing figures straight down the middle of the frame.

The way the horizon line is placed so low brings the figure into a setting but removes him from its proximity. It also makes the figure seem larger and grander than if he were placed in the middle of a scene.

I love portraits, I love Beauty with a capital B, and I love line. There, you got me. I'm an old-fashioned romantic in a high-tech, soul-stripping art world of fast and easy projects. Here's to the real dudes: Ingres, David, and Bronzino.

PS I found all the images of his paintings from google and have no rights to them.

See You in Charleston?

2012-02-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

Quite randomly, a while ago I stumbled upon a little busy beehive of wedding activity with my lovely friends, Seth and Julie of the world-class art blog, Daily Serving. I found them inside the CCA letterpress studio on a Saturday, harnessing the print shop skills of our buddy, Rachel, like you would harness the electricity from solar panels to light up your house. Your house of love.
A mutual friend and fellow CCA Alum, Rachel is our go-to lady for all printing needs, with a pretty amazing emerging art career you can check out for yourself: http://rachelefoster.com. You might also remember when I used her know-how for my own art project in the screen printing room that I put on the blog.
Seth and Julie, two terribly adorable Southern kids from South Carolina, are getting married this summer in Charleston, and I found them making their save-the-date announcements the really old fashioned way: one at a time, on the letterpress, with a little Rachel Foster flash. I had never seen the letterpress technique in action, nor been in the letterpress studio, so I took the opportunity to check things out while all three of them cut, inked, and sorted things. As Nirvana's Bleach played in the background, I took some pictures and sipped my coffee and made absolutely no attempt to help. What a jerk.

Some inked cards, still waiting for a special Rachel imprint.

Julie, hard at work feeding cards into the roller- Is that what it's called?

True love means slaving away together.

I loved all the little letter stamps all over the studio. And this creative print in red ink.

Rachel as Vanna White.

I got one in the mail a few weeks ago, and here it is on the fridge. It says, "true love, like ghosts, often spoken of, rarely seen". See you in Charleston?

Congratulations Seth and Julie!

FAIL

2012-02-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

Alright, I failed at keeping up with my blog. I haven't posted anything in over a month. I'm not sure many people noticed anyway... but I swear this time, baby. This time it will be different.

Studio Visit: Libby Black

2011-12-27T12:39:00.000-08:00

Studio Visit with Libby Black

Berkeley, CA

Libby Black, an artist from Toledo, Ohio and a CCA MFA 2001 graduate, is a good friend of mine and a great artist, and plus, you might have even heard of her! Her resume boasts some pretty impressive exhibitions, including solo shows at Marx and Zavattero in SF, Charlie James in LA, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. She was also included in the Bay Area Now 4 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SF, the 2004 California Biennial in Orange County, and exhibitions at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio,TX, the Oakland Museum of California, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, and Peres Projects in LA, to name a few!

Libby and I met while she was working as the Studio Manager at CCA and I was a student. Now she is a professor there and I have her old job! (Congrats to both of us!) We are friends because we like to draw, scour fashion magazines, talk about nothing, and drink wine.

We have also shown together twice in 2011, at Marx and Zavattero in SF and at Underline Gallery in NY, partly because the themes in our work are similar (fashion and fantasy), and partly because we are both women making drawings and paintings which are decidedly more feminine than the traditional man art of that bygone but still popular age of Modern Art. You would think this work would be fairly normal in contemporary art, but as the trend pendulum swings constantly, "female" art like drawing comes in and out of fashion, and leaves those of us doing it as the last of the old guard or the pioneers of a new age, depending on how you look at it.

In addition to drawing and painting, Libby makes paper sculptures, which she is most well known for. I posted my visit to her San Jose ICA show here, where she made an entire weight room out of luxury work out gear. Her sculptures make a strong statement, easily recognized; a painted, handcrafted version of a coveted item questions the fetishized associations with these high end items, like a stack of Louis Vuitton luggage or even a Chanel canoe. Seeing a paper version brings a bit of humor to the concepts of classism and greed, but also leaves ambiguity for the artist. Is she for or against these things? Maybe it's both. In fact, I know it's both, because we talk about it all the time!

Recently Libby has become much more invested in her paintings, so we spent most of the studio visit checking out her new work on canvas and paper. The images she chooses to paint are more complicated for the viewer, which makes them all the more interesting for her to make and to discuss. It makes one wonder, too, how much the economy plays a part in how we perceive tropes of wealth, and perhaps like the fashion of art, the pendulum swings away from sore subjects like money for now. Libby will be showing at Charlie James and Marx and Zavattero in the coming year.

Libby shares studio space in a brightly-lit building with a number of other Berkeley artists.

Peering inside

A real bike and a paper bike, and above a painting of Warhol's paintbrush.

Working on a new drawing

Her Marc Jacobs animals, a little painting, and an encouraging postcard from her friend, Anne.

Some paper sculptures in the works, and some from the "Work Out" show.

Some new Manet-inspired flower paintings, and a Westwood penis shoe.

Work in progress- an awkward lesbian kiss from the movie "Desert Hearts".

A sculture Libby made as a kid and here she is in clown face paint!

I love this skeleton drawing.

Just some flowers, a flamingo, and a lady crotch.

Success! Checking out her finished piece.

Thanks Libby!

(image of vanity case from her website)

CCA Wattis: Fall 2011

2011-12-26T14:40:00.000-08:00

Oh, blog, time and time again I fail you like an infidelitous (yes, it's a word- I had to look it up) mistress. My cheap promises of regular posts betray us both, as well as any reader who has come along for the ride. With that admission out in the open, let's pretend I do write on a weekly basis at the very least.

Wattis Institute for the Arts

"Painting Between the Lines"

With my Christmas lazy pants on I will make up for some lost time, starting with the show at the CCA Wattis Institute for the Arts, "Painting Between the Lines". Unfortunately, since I have taken so very long to post anything, the show is over and a new one will crop up in time for the Spring semester. For reference, here is another post about the Wattis from last year, but to save you time let me explain that the Wattis is a world-renowned two-level gallery on the CCA San Francisco campus, curated by art world darling (and snappy dresser/German-accented) Jens Hoffman, who recently curated the Istanbul Biennial and formerly the London Institute for Contemporary Art. What I have heard about the Wattis is that it is an ideal situation for a curator, which would explain why fancy-pants Jens would take the job; by being both an independently funded, private institute as well as a non-profit, a curator can use a decent amount of funds at their disposal to curate any number of untraditional exhibitions without worrying about box-office income. Throw in some big names, and the school will get behind it, by giving the participating artists exclusive commissions, as well as residencies and guest teaching spots.

The premise of "Painting Between the Lines", was a fairly good one, and easy to understand in ways that other consecutive shows like Tino Sehgal's retrospective are more complicated, and a little annoying. (Tino's current piece runs con-currently with the exhibition, made up of a recurring performance by the Wattis guards who turn off the lights and sing for two minute intervals while people wait for the lights to come back on to view the painting show. If I sound like I am not really a fan despite his major museum star power, I am not).

What Painting Between the Lines takes on are several commissioned paintings by some of the art world's loveliest contemporary painters interpreting paintings described in written form through literature, both old and new. The results were varied and I tried to make notes of which book went with which piece, but often the painting stood on its own. Jens, not a fan of painting, threw me and the rest of us beauty-inspired people a bone with this simple idea, executed well.

The signage for the exhibition.

A Fred Tomaselli collage with resin, of Samuel Beckett's Watt

Detail of eye collage by Tomaselli

Raqib Shaw's beautiful enamel painting

Detail of Shaw's enamel and rhinestone-encrusted decoration

All the original books and interpreted quotes were displayed. I'm pretty sure Shaw worked with a paragraph from this book by Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

A nice one by Norbert Schwontkowski, (I have never heard of him) , and I'm pretty sure the passage was from Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

A weird one by Laura Owens, of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Captain of root beer paintings (I don't know if he does them anymore), Marcel Dzama, of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore

Detail of Dzama's piece with little holes punched throughout- maybe on those old time piano-players paper?

Quite a graphic one from Mission School darling, Clare Rojas, of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way

Oh, Jordan Kantor. What a difficult guy. (He is a very brilliant professor at CCA). It just says, "Solitare" in the middle; depicting Camus's Exile in the Kingdom

Laylah Ali's much softer tone with her version of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain

Here is the passage printed on the wall for Ali's interpretation. (Click for larger image)

One thing I really loved about the exhibition was the way the artists honored another form of artistry, writing, and how the two people featured with each presentation seemed to call attention to each other. And it made me want to read all of those books, because if it is referenced so lovingly, it must be a great read.

Downstairs was another show I didn't document as much, titled "More American Photographs", which used the famous photographs from the Depression Era's Farm Security Administration commissions featuring pieces by photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to start a dialog between those pieces and commissions by ten contemporary photographers who traveled the US to bring back images of our current economic crisis.
The only pieces which really impacted me were Katy Grannan's beautiful large scale color photos of transients in Fresno and Bakersfield. I LOVVVE her, and one night during the length of the exhibition, was able to hear her speak about her work.

Katy Grannan's watercolor-like photos draped in gorgeous color and light.

The show was hung mostly from these weird, half walls which really changed the way the show looked and gave it a strange amateurish feel, despite the high caliber of work shown. Another easy idea, (borrowing from art history to create a new show), but not as easily or beautifully arranged and executed as the "Painting Between the Lines" exhibition.

One nice thing about working at the school is being able to take my time in these exhibitions right on campus, and to see blue chip artists communicating with ideas created right here with their commissions. While institutions have numerous problems that the art world love to try to complicate, there is something to be said for simply bringing in the work and making it happen for us to see.

CCA in the Hallway

2011-12-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

One of the things I do at work at an art school is hang a weekly show of student artwork from different painting classes in the nave of the building. It's just a hallway, but it gets a lot of traffic so it can be exciting to open up what's going on in the Painting Department to the rest of the school. What has been surprising to a lot of people is the quality of the student work. I happened to take some pictures of the mostly graduate work from an interdisciplinary summer studio class in New York led by Jovi Schnell and I thought they were great pieces to post. The hallway doesn't do them the justice a gallery wall would, but you get the idea.

Paitning by Rebekah Goldstein

Some awesome figures by Bruna Massadas

An embroidered and beaded sculpture by Max Esplin and a small painting by Jake Ziemann

Little black paper box/paintings by undergrad Meg Kenny and a smart abstract "painting" by Melissa Dickenson which is made up of wrapped clear plastic over stretcher bars to create the illusion of an a painted surface.

Courtney Johnson at Park Life and Zughaus by Sarah Hotchkiss

2011-12-03T20:53:00.000-08:00

Park Life, San Francisco

The other day I visited my good friend, Courtney Johnson, as she gave me a tour of her first solo show, "See You Next Tuesday", (slang for C.U.N.T. if you didn't know- it took me a while!), at Park Life in the Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco. You might remember from my studio visit with Courtney in 2010, her acrylic paintings of wild and feral women. She has taken the work she was doing in school during our thesis exhibition and taken the crazy to another level. We also used the photo session as an excuse to get some coffee and chat together after a summer apart since graduating from CCA's MFA program. I was so happy for her and so excited to see the new work!

The neighborhood is quiet and homey. The handle-shaped thing sticking out of the building is a piece by Andrew Schoultz.

Here's Courtney outside of Park Life, which doubles as an store full of art books and paraphernalia, including the infamous Jeff Koons balloon sculpture knock-off bookends, (which made the news when Koons sued Park Life for selling them, even though they are made by a company in Canada).

The store full of goodies

In the back room is a wide open gallery space where Courtney's show was hung. Unfortunately, I brought a super-fancy camera from school and I didn't notice that the only picture I took of her was with her eyes closed.

Love the reflection mirroring!

Zughaus, Berkeley

Later that evening Courtney and I met up again in Berkeley to see the opening of a show curated by our friend, Sarah Hotchkiss, and featuring work by our buddy Maysha Mohamedi at Zughaus Gallery. What they didn't tell us was that Zughaus, a gallery-in-the-house dealie, was located on a tiny strip of street located directly next to the train tracks. It was lovely inside once we found our way, and one more adventure to add to the art quest list.

Courtney and I walking in the dark on a gravel path next to the train tracks trying to find our way to the destination with our phones.

We found it!

Inside, it was a lovely, architect-designed gallery within a home, where they dedicate the space next to the kitchen to an art space.

A Masha Mohamedi painting. You might remember her from the CCA thesis exhibition, too.

Masha and Sarah in the cute little kitchen.

Unfortunately, I didn't take enough photos of either show. Courtney's show ends tomorrow, Dec. 4, and I'm not quite sure when the show Sarah curated ends (it's not on their website).

What may or may not come across in the photos I did post is the warm fuzzy feeling of continuing to see my MFA friends and their work now that we have been out in the world outside of school for about six months. It's ever the more sweet to continue an art dialog as we were so used to having on a daily basis last year. Here's to the community we created, even if it takes a little more work getting out the calendar instead of walking down the hall through the studios.

Headlands Fall Open Studios 2011

2011-11-26T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here I am with another belated post. I took pictures of my trip up to Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito during their Fall Open Studios day a couple months ago. Given that the studios are only open to the public two or three times a year, maybe my post is still worth perusing. Headlands is one of the only big ticket attractions the Bay Area has to boast about to international artists. As a residency center, some of their studios are devoted to local artists and some by invitation and competition to artists from around the world.
As a semi-local (I spent a lot of my childhood in and around the Bay Area), as well as having studied art in San Francisco for the past eight years or so, I have come to think of Headlands, if not as part of my backyard, but maybe as a dream for the future. Oh, if I had a residency at Headlands, I surely would spend hours walking around the beach and eucalyptus lined trails nearby, getting inspired to make art in a supportive community of like-minded artists. I have posted about Headlands Open Studios in the past here so you could compare notes if you wanted to.

Headlands is made up of a few buildings along the waterfront of the bay within walking distance of each other.

Pretty nice views, eh?

I think this is Andy Vogt's studio. Look at the size of it, with all that light and hardwood floors!

Sometimes I like this stuff better than the art- the actual stuff in the works which gives a better sense of the artist at work.

Another Andy Vogt- this piece really reminds me of Jonathan Runcio's work. In art there is always the question, who did it first? Maybe it doesn't matter.

Maybe Ho-Tzu Ni from Taiwan? I am constructing this from a small amount of notes. Anyway, I like drawings.

I went to Headlands with my good friend, Libby. I don't know who made this, but it is a pretty good sign, don't you think?

We caught up with Neil LeDoux, (far right), who graduated with me from CCA this spring. Neil was the big winner of the annual grad prize, the Tournesol Award, which includes a free studio, free meals, and a large cash prize. Neil makes drawings of cats and weird vaginal paintings, but in his studio he seemed to be moving in a new Eastern culture direction.

A paper boat and a female part-ish mandala. I'm not really a fan of the paintings.

We also said Hi to Bean Gilsdorf, the winner of the CCA fellowship at Headlands. Bean was making a large wagon with a video element in the back inside her small studio.

I liked this guy, Evan Despelder, the SFAI fellow next door to Bean. Here he has taken a well-known Gerhard Richter painting, stretched it out through the computer, and re-painted it. It's a simple concept, but he was the only one I saw making beautiful paintings, which is what I want to see when I go out.

I think this is Angie Wilson, from SF State, who was making textile pieces out of men's shirts.

I'm pretty sure this is Marya Krogstad. Playing with shiny things is always seductive, but I don't know, it was a weird cross between too hippy (the sand underneath is like meditation sand) and too simple.

We chatted with SF local, Tucker Nichols, for a while, who has kept a studio here for some time (you can rent some of them out instead of being awarded a residency). I like his simple gouache drawings. I know I just used that word above, but it just goes to show how hard it is to pin down what is good art and what isn't.

Tucker's storage system is almost more visually interesting than his art.

Eww! I hate it! Get it away! Get it away! It was so awful I had to include it. Weird puddle-pustule boobs hovering over a bad, painted shaped cloth. I don't know who did it, but it's probably better that way.

As I have been including lately, I kind of like the natural beauty of the area better than any of the art inside. Love these purple thistles.

I like this rusty orange-colored moss.

A pretty nice place to spend your days.

The conclusion of attending these Open Studios at the Headlands is always pretty anti-climactic. One assumes that since most of the studios awarded are based on a rigorous selection process, that it would say something new about the contemporary world of art. Like, this is what's happening and isn't it amazing? Congrats to the people I graduated with who received studios. I'm sure it's an amazing experience, and Bean and Neil deserve their awards. But it's always difficult to be an artist who goes to these events in the subjective climate of a juried application process. Really, the boob girl?

California the Beautiful

2011-11-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

I am a third generation California native, which means that this incredibly luscious and diverse state has always been somewhat taken for granted by me, and the family I was raised with. Camping, who wants to go camping? Yuck. Let's watch a movie instead. But, as I have been paying more and more attention to the beauty of color arrangements, shapes, and form in nature to inform my own paintings, I have come to love my amazing state more and more. I can change scenery drastically from hour to hour in the car, giving me amazing variety. Also, now that I live in a city, there is only so much nature I can appreciate in people's yards, and it takes a field trip to really open my eyes to all the sublime stuff that surrounded me for my entire childhood in the foothills. Not that I'm going to go all Back-to-the-Land on you, as I was forced to do from ages 9-14 by living off the grid, but when I go on vacation, I tend to take more reference material from the backyards I am in. Here are some pics which might not be the greatest photographs in and of themselves, but I can use them for the color, form, and the perfect imperfections of nature for my artwork.

South Lake Tahoe

My family has a condo on the lake in Tahoe, which I spent many a family vacation visiting. It wasn't until my dad took over the schedule from my grandparents that I was able to rent it out with my friends and really have fun exploring instead of playing cards with my cousins or something equally banal.

The first time I have ever been in a canoe!

We did a lot of lounging, too, (Julie, Mark, and Michelle).

Checking out tree textures

I love the color of this moss

We got some pedal boats and rode around on a breezy day

Julie, the forrest queen

Hamming it up on my rock pedestal

Nevada City

On another mini-adventure, I went to visit my mom up in Nevada City, CA, where I spent my late teens and early 20's. Here especially, I lived for years without ever exploring the lake up the road, and rarely visiting the magnificent Yuba River because I hated hiking up and down to the water and back. I always thought all rivers looked like that, with giant boulders that look like the remnants of an alien planet. I also thought that all air was that sweet, and the noise of crickets at night and the sights of millions of stars in the sky were, well, everywhere in the world. Boy was I wrong. Living in Oakland can make a girl crazy for winding trails, lost highways, and looking up into the night.

My mom's all-wood craftsman house. I stayed in the room with the circular window and made my zines and dreamed of a city life.

I took one of the dogs on a trail. It was the same trail we used to go down from the park to drink beer when we were all underage. It sure looks different in the daytime!

More cool moss on big granite rocks

I love the texture of this fuzzy caterpillar with the shiny river rocks

Sundown at the lake by my mom's house

A man-made lake. It looks like it's from another world.

A trail above the Yuba River, shot by my mom

I like this weird fungus on the trees

Look at the beautiful color of this acorn! A dark blue-purple and a warm earthy yellow. It's exactly this kind of natural dynamic color relationships I keep trying to drill into my watercolor classes.

The South Fork of the Yuba

My little bro, Greg, and his moppet dog, Willis walked on the trail with us

Some giant mushrooms and lush foliage

Lots of wooden bridges and the beginning of Fall colors

Down at the aqua-colored river

The beautiful shapes of the boulders, carved by glaciers so many years and years ago

I'll be back for Thanksgiving!

Smile For the Camera

2011-11-19T21:59:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's because I grew up with a mom who was always taking pictures, but I have gotten used to the requisite smile-and-pose in front of my artwork for friends or family. What's interesting when I look through old images of me and my work is the evolution of both myself and my artwork. And maybe I am a glutton for punishment, or I like embarrassing myself on the worldwide internet, but I thought it might be fun to put them all in a post.

Recently I have given a few artist lectures and I always include these silly images of my fashion designs from my childhood. They really do seem relevant to my current work, and it's nice to look back and think that my childhood self probably would like the art I make as an adult.

Here I am, working away at my desk, probably 1987.

I don't know what I was making, but I think it's cute that I always, always made art. This is in 1993, I think.

Oh my god, this pastel self portrait is so bad but I was so proud of it at the time! Sacramento City College, 2002.

I'm a CCA newbie, in my class where we painted self portraits for an entire semester, 2004.

A weird collage of me as an art saint by Reece Baxter. Here, in my senior studio, drawing the pice of Natasha Lyonne below! 2005

My first big show, where I dragged my family to downtown Oakland for the juried show, Bay Area Currents, at the Oakland Art Gallery, 2006.

There's my proud dad again, at my college graduation, 2006.

My first two-person show shot by Jannine from the Coveted, at Bucheon Gallery in 2007.

A group show at a regrettable gallery in San Francisco, but the first time I put my work in fancy frames! 2007

Tracy Timmins and I at Southern Exposure's Monster Drawing Rally in 2008.

Tracy and I next to each other one year later at the Monster Drawing Rally in 2009.

My two-person show with Tahiti Pehrson at 111 Minna, shot by Art Business. It was my Molly Ringwald moment where all my old friends were there, I felt good about my work, and everything coalesced into a perfect evening, 2008.

My solo exhibition, "I Wanna Be Adored", at Triple Base Gallery. It was during my first semester of grad school, and I practically lost my shit and had a nervous breakdown. 2009

Giving my Artist Talk of the Triple Base Dinner Lecture Series. The meal was designed to go with my work by Abner Nolan, so it included individually wrapped fish like special gifts and the "Kate Moss course", which was just a shot of vodka. 2009

Headdress project, messing around in the grad courtyard, 2010.

Another headdress, shot by Emanuel Hapsis as part of my KQED interview, 2011.

There's my proud dad again in a ridiculous beret he called the "Drive-By-Shooting", at my CCA Grad Open Studios, 2011.

Here's the cap on all the rest: my graduate thesis exhibition at CCA., 2011. Sort of feels like that's the end of an era, but maybe it's the beginning of a new art life.

Maybe this reads as really self-absorbed to put so many images of myself up here, but like I said, I had a mom who took photos of me constantly so it doesn't seem weird to me. It's just a record of the time spent and lessons learned.

In the Make: An Art Blog to Love

2011-11-12T18:37:00.000-08:00

OMG, the new Bay Area studio visit art blog, "In the Make", by Klea McKenna and Nikki Grattan is like if the lifestyle blog, "The Selby", and the PBS arts video site, "Art:21", had a blog baby. The pictures by Klea, a CCA MFA Alum, are amazingly crisp and juicy, and Nikki's questions are smart and considered. Finding great blogs is hard for me because I don't like spending the whole day going from link to link in search for something worth reading. When I do find one I am shamed into the reality that a good blog makes mine look like the fat kid at the gym: a little desperate and lazy. Here's a link to my favorite post, an interview with a great CCA professor and a super inspiring and talented painter, Linda Geary: http://inthemake.net/1867058/Linda-Geary

Be sure to check out the real interview on their blog, as my template crops the shared page.

Contact

About In The Make

Linda Geary

When we arrived at Linda’s studio in Oakland, she met us out in the parking lot and led us into a building and up some stairs, and then into her studio where she paints. A few things struck me instantly: the space is expansive and bright with sunlight and color, the air seems to hang about easily, almost buoyantly, and nothing but the essentials occupy the room. This last fact was the most interesting to me. Usually when we visit artists’ studios there are often odds and ends about that in some way or another hint at their affinities, inspirations and intentions, and collectively these items create a portrait of sorts of who the artist might be. With Linda’s studio there is none of that; her space is bare bones, there is just the work itself and the necessary tools to make it. There are three chairs in the room, all paint splattered, that function as vantage points— Linda habitually takes time out to just sit and look at her work, paying attention to the light around it. Though her space is unadorned and practical, it is still very much alive with ingenuity, wonder, and exploration. This is true of Linda, too; she is incredibly engaged and open, beaming with curiosity and enthusiasm. She was so keen to discuss whatever question I put to her, and she allowed herself time and space to answer— often talking about peripheral ideas first, before getting to the heart of the matter. I really appreciated her way of being in a conversation; it’s unrestricted, charmingly wayward, and full of inquiry and observation. I left Linda’s studio with so many of her insights echoing in my thoughts, and still my memory continues to reverberate with bits and pieces of our conversation.

When people ask you what you "do", how do you answer?
I’m an artist.

Do you have a day job? What is it? What does it mean to you?
Associate Professor of Painting/Grad Fine Arts at CCA. I love my job. We have a vibrant painting program at CCA, and the President of the school, Steve Beal, is a painter. I like the difference between undergraduate and graduate students. The undergrads are excited and experimenting like crazy and their work explodes. They’re so fired up about new ideas and they want everyone to like what they’re doing. The grads experience a certain sense of resistance, which has to do with a completely different pursuit, a deeper inquiry which is more internal and difficult. They’re at a different stage. Sometimes it’s about a shift in their artistic identity or just dealing with a relentless set of questions. I like the difficulty of that too.
I also teach a New York Studio class at CCA where I take a group of students to New York and they have studios there- so they work on their own projects- and then we also do several studio visits with artists.

What mediums do you work with?
Painting mediums: oil, canvas, panel. Gouache, watercolor, and acrylic on paper. Collage.

How would you describe your subject matter?
Body, space, and time.

What themes seem to occur/reoccur in your work?
The idea of proprioception, how one senses one’s own body in space and how that relates to physical space and the translation of that into painting. The absence of it is vertigo.

What are you currently reading, listening to or looking at to fuel your work?
Devotional Cinema, Nathaniel Dorsky.
Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations (Clark Coolidge).
Chromophobia, David Batchelor.
Scott Hewicker’s Streaming Radio Show on KUSF-In-Exile: every first and third Wednesday night from 9pm-Midnight.
Suzanne Stein’s SFMOMA Open Space Blog.

What are your biggest challenges to creating art and how do you deal with them?
The doubt that can sabotage an idea before it has been pushed far enough. I talk to a few different friends to get perspective. Philip Guston talks about having that one friend who can come into the studio and look at the work and assure you that you’re not insane.

How do you navigate the art world?
A long time ago I sent Larry Rinder a letter asking him to come to my studio and he responded right away and came over to the studio. I was surprised at how easy that was. We had a nice conversation. I showed him a group of large paintings and then at the end he said, “if your work changes let me know and I’ll come back.” And I remember thinking ok, I get it, this is about a conversation, this isn’t about getting a show, and I have a choice in how I look at this. I can be offended that he didn’t really respond that positively to the work, or I can look at it as an opportunity to start a conversation with a new person. This is my approach to the art world. The art world is basically you and me. There is no “us” and “them.” My interest has always been to have conversations with people in the studio. Also, I try not to compare myself to others because that doesn’t work.

What does having a physical space to make art in mean for your process, and how do you make your space work for you?
I’m pretty private about my studio. The artists Sally Elesby and Amanda Curerri have studios downstairs. It’s nice knowing they’re there working but sometimes days go by where we don’t talk. At the end of the day when I’m leaving the studio I don’t talk for a while. I love working on a sunny day because the light is so good. The first thing I do when I get there in the morning is sit and look at the light.

Has there been a shift or change in your life or work that has led to what you’re making now?
I was on sabbatical this past year and at the beginning of that time I had a show at Rena Bransten Gallery where I showed three bodies of work. I showed a body of smaller works that contained more experimental ideas and then more finished larger oil paintings. We did a catalog and Leigh Markopoulos wrote a beautiful essay. It was a great opportunity to see the working out of these three divergent ideas. I have a completely different view of that show now than I did in November and my current interest is to see how those works can fall apart and spill into each other.
In June, I spent some time at the Bau Institute in Puglia, Italy, which is far down on the heel of the boot of Italy, almost to Greece. I had a studio there and did works on paper that are now informing my larger paintings. In Italy I was able to work looser and with more improvisation. There is a clarity of visual information there— the architectural shapes and forms, the clear turquoise of the water, the brightness of the light. It just seeps in through osmosis. I have these works on paper in the studio now and am in the process of translating them into my larger paintings. It’s all trial and error.

Do you see your work as autobiographical at all?
It’s not narrative. If there was a word that describes a physical autobiography having to do with documenting a life through the physical material world and the bodily response to time and space through the varying materials of paint, then maybe.

Is there something you are currently working on, or are excited about starting that you can tell us about?
I’m excited about my new paintings but I don’t have a lot to say about them right now. I’m also working on a book with Colter Jacobsen called Studio Visit. It’s a condensed version of conversations with 100 artists, writers, curators, and gallerists. I’ve done 73 so far. I’ve put the book project on hold for the last few months in order to get back to the paintings. These visits have changed the way I look at my own work. I’ve been experimenting with taking my paintings apart and putting them back together with an altered timing, a different sequence, and as a result everything in the studio has changed.

What are you most proud of?
The balance I maintain between teaching and studio. I keep them extremely separate for practical reasons. At the same time, what I’m doing in the studio is intrinsically connected to what I bring to class. If nothing is going on in the studio, I have nothing to teach. If I’m teaching too much I have nothing to bring to the studio.

What do you want your work to do?
To be able to exist without an artist’s statement.

What advice has influenced you?
Don’t make decisions based solely on money.

How will you know when you have arrived?
I can’t relate to this question but it makes me think of the earlier question about how to navigate the art world and that the focus for me is always on the work, and conversations about the work. There is no “arriving” when the focus is entirely on the work. It’s just whatever the present problems in the studio are, and they never go away.

Are you involved in any upcoming shows or events? Where and when?
In the next few months, the culmination of my Studio Visit book project with Colter Jacobsen.

To see more of Linda’s work:
lindageary.com
renabranstengallery.com
roseburlinghamfineart.com
pulliamgallery.com

Adventures in Art Six Weeks of Openings and Shows (Part II)

2011-10-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

Even more shows...
As I mentioned in Part I of this post, as part of my 'job' as an artist, I have been looking at a lot of art in San Francisco over the past six or seven weeks. Regretfully, I haven't posted about any of it. Here is a view of some Bay Area Art taken with my very amateur photography skills. I am starting to feel like my blog is too positive- geez, what a curmudgeon I am- so here's to being more honest with you. Because what we desperately need is another mouthy, cynical blogger in the world. So very desperately we do. What can I say- I'm just calling 'em like I see 'em. If you get offended, you can take pot shots at me on your own blog.

Seriously, there's something weird about Root Division. Maybe it's the fact that they have art hanging opposite all the bathrooms. Anyway, another round of their annual juried exhibition was under way, "Introductions 2011", and several of my CCA peeps were on the roster so I sort of had to go show my support. Really, the people there seem nice but the implied donation to get in just to the reception is off-putting. And while it's great that they serve a portion of the community with classes and another with studio spaces, there's something I can't put my finger on. I just get the creeps there. Maybe it's the SFAI connections of the staff. Like I have said before, these MFA school loyalties run deep. BTW, this is a chalk piece by Jillian Clark, from my CCA graduate class.

Sarah Thibault, another grad from my CCA class, was upping her game with this very classy drawing/installation. Word on the street is that fancy-but-wild-bearded art gallerist, Jack Hanley, has been in conversation with her about her work and recently took her pieces to the Frieze Art Fair in London. Go Sarah!

I went to see my old art professor, David Huffman's, show "Shift" at the San Francisco Arts Commission, which is situated downtown by all the fancy buildings like City Hall and the Opera House. This view across the street is a nice change from the seediness of the Mission or the Tenderloin or wherever else in the city I end up schlepping around to see art. The show is still up until December 10th.

Fancy marble digs inside and a jam-packed turnout.

David Huffman's installation of a pyramid of basketballs, (I couldn't get back enough with the crush of people to get a whole shot), which was basically a part of his signature sarcastic narrative of black cultural tropes come to life in 3-D. There were paintings and videos, too, but too close to get photos. It was a good show but the space was too small for the grand pyramid even without the people inside.

Art in the Mission: You know it's a bad sign when there's a sandwich board.

On the same night as my Arts Commission jaunt, I did a small tour and drove over to Triple Base to see Todd Bura's new show, but I seriously could not find a parking space around the decidedly car-unfriendly Mission neighborhood and said "Fuck It" and drove over to another part of the Mission to Southern Exposure as the third leg of my gallery crawl. So-Ex was also having its annual juried exhibition with a theme, this time called "Proof". So-Ex, just in comparison to Root Division, was equally crowded with onlookers hung with art I liked or didn't like just as much. A juried show is always a mixed bag. However, it felt much more welcoming as a space, and that does really stand for something. Above is a textile triptych piece by current CCA MFA student, Johanna Friedman.

Rachel Foster's prints hung in constellations and an old lady deciphering Rachel's print depicting the average suicide age for literary greats.

Here's Rachel Foster, herself, who forced me to accompany her to Lafayette, a weird outpost of rural suburbs outside of Walnut Creek, to deliver some of her artwork for a show. It just happened to be the Lafayette Annual Art and Wine Festival, so we seized the opportunity to people-watch big-boobed blond women and gawk at the terrible art in the lovely weather.

Yeesh. The worst kind of art might possibly be faux-naive "Outsider" art of Tom Waits and mohawked nerds with guitars.

The best space I saw this year so far was the Chapel of the Chimes, an actual chapel and columbarium (a place which houses ashes), down the street from my house in Oakland. The fact that they had an art show with a call for proposals within the space was sort of dwarfed by the sheer beauty of the architecture, designed by the renowned architect, Julia Morgan. There were rooms within rooms featuring tons of indoor gardens and many of the ashes were encased in vessels shaped like books and held within walls shaped like bookcases, totally changing your expectations of what a columbarium would look like.

There was some art, but it was so small and put into nooks and crannies of the walls so that we could barely detect it in the first place. This is tiny funereal diorama by Maggie Simpson, which apparently was the controversy of the night because the original display held a real tiny dead kitten inside the miniature coffin. Not cool in the house of the Lord, I suppose.

The problem with an art school is that we learn so much about art that we are over-educated and constantly confused. "Is it art?", Rachel and I discussed many times throughout our wanderings inside the infinite walls of the Chapel of the Chimes. Are the flags art? Are the cones art? The draped coffin-shaped thing? No, was the real answer, but the sad thing (maybe it's not?) about our observations was that sometimes we preferred the random findings to the real art.

Here's a ceramic piece by our friend, Rachel Dawson, ( bad image), which was completely hidden within the many cubby holes of the shelves of the columbarium. It was kind of like a treasure hunt to find the art, but we had to cheat our way through most of it because we simply couldn't tell where the work was.

Another night, another art show. Here I am dragged to the Tenderloin again to Jonathan Runcio's solo exhibition, "Wide Wide Ruin" at a new space, The Popular Workshop. Much to my delight, the space was lovely, (look at those ceilings!), and his art was great, as always. Don't tell him I said that. I don't want him to get a big ego.

Some how-does-he-make-it? screen-printing on canvas with beautiful colors.

The scene: prints, sculptures, etc

A metal sculpture. I like it. I mean, geometry is not my number one love, and neither is minimal sculpture, but I think the whole show worked very well together and it's worth checking out just for Jonathan's color combinations. It's still up but the site doesn't say until when. I would guess at least til November 1.

I went on another art adventure with Rachel the other day and had a positively delightful day checking out art, indulging in food, and going shopping. I'm sad to say I can only afford to do such things once every couple months because now I am broke as a joke again. But, the SF MoMA is free for me as CCA staff, at least, and that's where we found not only CCA Painting Faculty, John Zurier's, luscious abstract painting in the Contemporary Collections section, but also his own dessert in the cafe! "The John Zurier Popsicle"- that's how you know you have arrived.

Outside in the sculpture garden I indulged in a Blue Bottle coffee served in an artisan-crafted Heath Ceramics mug, and the "Wayne Thibaud Layer Cake" frosted to look as delicious as his cake paintings. Awesome.

Down the block we stopped into Eli Ridgway Gallery to see recent CCA Curatorial Grad, David Kasprzak's, curatorial venture, "Better a Live Ass Than a Dead Lion". The show, as far as I could tell without reading the press release, was about place and environments. I thought it was a successful show, and not too over-hung. Elisheva Biernoff's hand-painted double-sided postcards and other works were featured predominantly in the downstairs space, and her slide show screening with mist was great, though her heavy-handed environmental message is better off unread.

Rachel put on the white gloves to check out Biernoff's art book, featuring an idyllic landscape and the various disasters that could befall it painted into the image. I would have liked it better if all of the disasters happened one after another to create a total anarchic apocalypse, instead of flood, back to normal, fire, back to normal...

A photo negative piece by Richard Misrach, who I can tell from the price list is a big deal. Check out the show- it will be up til November 5.

That's pretty much how I can wrap up the last two months of art in the Bay Area. I don't get to everything, and I should be making art and talking about it less, anyway. See you at the next round of openings.

Adventures in Art: Six Weeks of Openings and Shows (Part I)

2011-10-16T18:56:00.000-07:00

I admit it: I failed at keeping up my blog for the last few months. It was partly due to my recent introduction to the full-time working week, and also due to my second job teaching art. It's been exhausting just to get up, let alone make a blog. Does anyone read it? I dunno. I make it because I like pretending I have an audience as enthusiastic about art, travel, and beauty as I am, yet just as caustic and been-there, done-that as I feel most of the time. That's just the way it goes living in the Bay Area's art-filled city. Even if you wanted to be optimistic and appreciative of the sheer amount of art that is out there, it's overwhelming in scope and mostly underwhelming in quality. Maybe that's the school mid-semester blues talking, though... ugh, I digress.

Anyway, I have been taking a lot of pictures out in the world while I am looking at art and forming my opinions of it. I figured I might as well share all of it here after I have been out in the field taking it in. I do also have to mention that I have been rather lazy about holding the iphone straight or waiting for the focus to kick in, so my quality of images leaves much to be desired. I promise if you stick with me, I'll make a better effort towards better documentation.

Here's what I have seen, whirlwind style, over the past six or seven weeks.

My good friend, Courtney Johnson, bless her heart, volunteered this summer at Southern Exposure for their Mission Voices kids' art program. They had a culminating art reception featuring work like this cardboard geodesic dome, and the night was capped with a flash mob dance scene that I wanted to hate but totally loved.

CCA had a number of summer art classes for middle school kids including a class on building dioramas. Their classroom was a disaster zone that I was glad to not be responsible for, but their reception for the work had amazing little pieces of art I ended up preferring to a lot of the adult work I've seen in these past weeks.

I didn't get a shot of the actual show in the adjoining room, but here's the scene at Andrew Schoultz's private reception for his new exhibition at the SF MoMA featuring his work in conversation with the MoMA's collection of Paul Klee prints and paintings. The show will be up til January. It's the biggest thing I've seen from someone I know!

"Jesus, take the wheel!" is all I can say in response to this show I saw at The Lab last month centered around performance. I hate performance, and when you throw in Bay Area concepts, it almost always turns into a personal/political mess of exhibitionists and an uncomfortable audience who just holds their breath out of politeness until the thing is over. This piece involves a bunch of dancers and a bunch of chairs, and some super creepy porno music with a voice-over recording telling the dancers what to do next.

I went to Unspeakable Projects for a show about pop culture which featured a ton of people from CCA so the reception doubled as a reunion of sorts for all of us recent grads. I had never been to this space, which is the bottom floor of a home which is located in an alley. While it feels strange trying to get there, once inside I thought it was curated and hung nicely and I generally was pretty impressed.

I took this picture with the intention of writing a quip about how the world of art is so "arty" that even this is a piece to be considered, and sold. Then I found out it was by my friend, Mark Benson, who also arranged the stantion installation above. Well, what can I say? I get it. Objects can be reappropriated to mean something else, and I value that. But still, Duchamp-ian art can look pretty funny and/or indicative of the pretentiousness of the art world.

Later that same crazy opening night I was driven over to the tenderloin to check out Jonathan Wallraven's solo show at Kokoro. While an art space can do very little about the conditions of the neighborhood outside, the simple choice of a space's location can have a big impact on the view inside the gallery. It took so long to find parking on the streets shared by sleazy clubs and sidewalks crowded with crackheads, that by the time we entered the calm respite of the gallery, my agitation was irreversible. Jonathan's strange semi-3D cubes of stretched out drawings were interesting but not quite enough for me.

I went to what is now called "Eli Ridgway Gallery" instead of Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, to see their first big opening of the season, a solo show by Brion Nuda Rosch. The large, two-level space was filled with really similar pieces. Photocopies of nature with plops of paint on them seemed to say very little, and the same brown, black, and white palette repeated throughout was boring. There were two-sided pieces on pedestals, but I was distracted by the little white brackets holding them in place, which appeared unconsidered.

Outside of Eli Ridgway and Catherine Clark

This is a terrible image, but you get the idea. Julie Heffernan's solo exhibition at Catherine Clark was full of saccharine, pastel palettes and rendered figures which offered nothing other than her love for beauty and the old masters. The whole show was sort of eh, despite the craftsmanship which went into the pieces.

Matt Borruso at Steven Wolf Fine Arts was thoughtful, consistent, and detailed. The show was made up of three parts; a nicely hung group of weird, tripped-out dude collages, his signature, well-executed pencil drawings made up of collaged creepy heads, and a venture into film, (a split screen showing a sci-fi movie on the left and the movie about Helen Keller on the right, where cosmically the two meet up and show the same scenario of a person "seeing" for the first time). I loved the hilarity of the movies side by side, but if I did not already like Matt as a person and an artist, I probably wouldn't have invested enough time in the film to get to the punch line. Of course, since I make detailed pencil drawings too, I favor his drawings over the collages, but all in all, I was impressed by his carefully considered show.

The inside of Steven Wolf

Stoner gore drawing by Matt Borruso

Across the street from Steven Wolf is Guerrero Gallery, where Alex Lucas was exhibiting a large solo exhibition in Guerrero's beautiful space. The show was full of related works which at first are photo realistic watercolors, but up close are screen prints of cityscapes which have been worked into with paint. Does that matter? No, I guess not- I would assume the artist still spends a long time with each one, adding layers of detail, which in itself doesn't matter either, but labor is almost always impressive. What left me with more eh feeling was the simplicity of the message in the work. The cityscapes, which have been left to rot or drown in water say to me, "Man has done bad things to the earth. Let's all imagine an apocalypse that man deserves". Yawn. That skater mentality of FTW isn't anything other than played out this far into the post punk years. I hope we find new messages to be edgy these days.

Part II coming soon!

The Fall Art Season Is Here! (Grab your calendars and protein bars)

2011-09-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

Art's Baaacck! As it always goes, fall school terms starting up again means the Bay Area art world, (along with all your favorite cheesy shows like Gossip Girl, and the wonderful thing called the "Back-to-School" sale), is awakened from it's not-so-warm San Francisco summer nap. In August I longed for something to see once I was back from vacation, while everyone important, (i.e. collectors), were still off in whatever rich land they frolic during the summer months. Well, we're all here now, and my job at art school will start getting mighty full and messy and loud with the students back in it, but thankfully, art is back, too.

I don't even know how I would possibly go to all the events coming up, but here is a list of things I would/could/should do, just like I did last year, so we can compare score cards at the end.

Starting Thursday, September 8, the scene comes alive with a ton of stuff to see and do within a 3 hour time frame. It's First Thursday, which means something sometimes, like when there are shows worth going to in 49 Geary. (Every First Thursday there is an agreed-upon smattering of openings within the walls of 49 and 77 Geary. Lately, though, it seems galleries are changing up the opening dates, and the ones who stick to the First Thursday tend to be stuck on old-fashioned art, as well).

Jonathan Wallraven: "Smile to Your Life"

Kokoro Studio, 682 Geary Street, San Francisco

Opening 7-10 pm through September 29

Jonathan Wallraven, a current CCA MFA grad student, is sure to take sneering, hilarious digs at almost everyone with his large scale line drawings and text. Ala Raymond Pettibon, Wallraven seems to find the perfect thing you never expected his figures to say. His drawings always remind me of the high school drones who were doomed to peak at age eighteen, while the rest of us just kept dreaming of life beyond those four years of hell. It takes a lot to drag me down Geary into the seedy Tenderloin, but this might be one reason to do it.

"Some Paintings, Sculpture, & Drawings"

Patricia Sweetow Gallery, 77 Geary Street

Mezzanine level, San Francisco

Opening 5:30-7:30 pm through October 15

Patricia Sweetow often shows some great artists from her roster, and here is a chance to see, well, some paintings, sculpture, and drawings from them. I'm looking forward to work by glitter queen, Jamie Vasta, haunting (usually photo) work from Suné Woods, and abstract "Afro-Futurism" from CCA Professor, David Huffman.

Yoon Lee: "Minor Inconveniences"

Marx and Zavattero, 77 Geary Street
2nd floor, San Francisco

Opening 5:30-7:30 pm through October 22

I have grown quite fond of Marx and Zavattero, as a gallery and as a couple, so I would probably go to most of their openings in any case. If you add in a pack of talented artists who bridge craft with a pop aesthetic, you have a pretty solid case to visit their gallery, celebrating its tenth year in business. Yoon Lee, a Korean-born, SFAI MFA graduate, won the Tournesol Prize at Headlands Center for the Arts, making her resume pretty impressive. I am unsure whether I am into her work, however. It brings to mind Chris Finley's swooping, exquisite, digitally manipulated images reproduced in paint so much that I am left wondering whether these works say anything new. However, the fact that I am unsure about them is the greatest reason to go see them in person.

"Idyll", Wirtz Gallery, 49 Geary Street
3rd floor, San Francisco

Opening 5:30-7:30 pm through September 30

This group photography show at Wirtz Gallery brings together the best of their well-known photographers, including the late Larry Sultan, as well as Todd Hido and Jim Goldberg, among other talented artists.

"Media Love: A Group Exhibition", Unspeakable Projects

735 Tehama Street, San Francisco

Opening 6-9 pm through September 29

I don't know much about Unspeakable Projects, other than that I have posted about a few shows in the past I wanted to see there, but never quite made it. Word has it that the space is one of those gallery-in-the-apartment thingees, but they seem to show work by artists that grab me somehow, including buddies Matt Momchilov and Justin Limoges. Here's a chance to see those artists plus my good friend, Mark Benson, featured above, as well as Mik Gaspay and AMTK. The show's press release says, " From obscure sit-com moments to cults of immortality, MEDIA LOVE assembles the artifacts and detritus of a media culture that won’t let go." That sounds like a recipe for love or hate.

"Residency Projects II", Kala Art Institute

2990 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley,

Opening 6-8 pm through October 15

Whew! Are you tired yet? Wait, there's one more opening that would certainly be worth attending! Kala's print-based institution offers competitive residencies and "Residency Projects II" is a culmination of work from the most recent crop of artists to use their facilities and resources. Elisheva Biernoff's super flat work, like the image above, sculptor Renee Gertler and photographer Jessica Ingram are all a strong lure to make the trek across the bridge into the East Bay.

THIS WAS JUST DAY ONE, PEOPLE! Stay tuned for show recommendations for the rest of the week. And as always, remember to bring comfy shoes, breath mints, and your coolest leather jacket.

BOSNIA (Part II)

2011-09-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Bosnia (again)!
As my post below explains, I took a much-needed relaxing vacation to Bosnia this summer. Here are some things I found striking in their cultural richness and unexpected variety, through the lens of an American artist on vacation.

A 500-year-old mosque

I love the details on these buildings

Reminder of the war- have you seen a shell-blast before? These buildings were everywhere, but quickly being re-developed.

A shiny, state-of-the-art mall in Sarajevo

Those stone walls are the original, centuries-old mall

Graffiti is huge

My boyfriend's great-grandmother!

His great-grandfather was a kind of aristocrat and here is his adjutant

Gorgeous mountain scenery everywhere

Village life- my boyfriend's cousin's second home

He bought this "village house" for $25,000!

I was totally obsessed with these gnome hut-like haystacks everywhere

A village

Back in Sarajevo- some art nouveau

We found this great art cafe called the Goldfish

It's bohemian insides

Where else can you get 40 homemade cookies for $10?

A fair came to town- here is my boyfriend's cousin and his baby Mirza, who at age one had a better Bosnian vocabulary.

There was really dramatic weather a lot of the time. Here the heavens are opening up.

In our Sarajevo apartment, remnants of a grenade blast

I said goodbye to my sweet boyfriend.

When I came home I gave my dad a fez.

BOSNIA (Part I)

2011-09-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Bosnia

This blog has been neglected like a brace-faced, sunburned, and uncombed red-headed step child. I intend to post a ton about art in the near future. However, as it goes in the summer, the art world takes a vacation and as it so happens, so did I. I journeyed long and far to distant Eastern Europe, where my boyfriend, a native, has been staying for a while. Having been there once before, I knew the language barrier would be my biggest obstacle, so I brought along books in English by some authors I came to think of as friends: Willa Cather, Gustave Flaubert, Ernest Hemmingway, Vladimir Nabokov, and Dave Hickey. I also brought a travel case of art supplies, and a suitcase of clothes I imagined epitomizing chic European travel. While I ended up taking a break from art completely, I did take in my travels like an artist would, focusing on beauty and details. Here are some moments of beauty and culture I found myself inspired or surprised by.

In case you don't know, (and it's OK if you don't- I spend a lot of time explaining this to my family), Bosnia and Herzegovina is a very, very old country on the Western end of Eastern Europe, situated close to Italy and Germany. It became part of communist Yugoslavia after WWII, but like Germany, eventually went back to the way it was, (for the most part), after forty or so years of Communist ways.

There it is- that little green country across the water from Italy's boot.

Unlike Germany, however, Yugoslavia had to endure a very bitter and bloody breakup with Serbia and Croatia first, leaving scars of genocide and fucked up reminders of human cruelty scattered across the Muslim towns and villages of Bosnia. It's been 15 years since the war, and there has been a ton of development and revitalization. It's still a terrible world economy, however, and countries like Bosnia bear the brunt of a lot of the world's financial instability. I was reminded many times of my privileged American expectations in a still-developing country, like, where are the art galleries? That said, it also has so many amazing things that we don't have, like a wealth of history, amazing, normally-free range and organic food, relaxing night life, and cheap beer.

Tuzla

I did a lot of this

And a lot of this- I ate amazing meals like oven-roasted trout for about $5

Tuzla's main square

Sarajevo's old town back streets

Old town tourist route

Beautiful, Austro-Hungarian details

I love these reliefs

There's no way I could find something like these mysterious doors in Oakland

Gypsy wedding!

Punk is not dead- it's just in Bosnia

Fakes, fakes, fakes- I could have dressed in knock-offs head-to-toe

I got stiffed with fake money, too

Look at the size of this beer! 2 Liters!

There are homeless dogs and kitties everywhere that the townspeople collectively feed. I made little friends all over town.

A wild cat

This swan almost bit me, though

What a cute little buddy!

My favorite one

Stay tuned for Part II !

Life on a Budget: Art shows, berry foraging, and taking in the view

2011-08-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Long-lost Blog,
I'm back from Eastern Europe and I have plenty to show and tell you! While I have many pics to post of my Bosnian adventure, sandwiching my travels were weeks of stagnant unemployment that I would like to post, too. The good news is that I secured a job at CCA starting last week, but the months of zero income over the summer have made for lazy but creative attempts at a culture-filled existence.

Recently I made several discoveries about what truly makes me American. Some of the most obvious of my inherited philosophies were my prescribed entitlement and my constant, unnecessary purchasing. Hitting the brakes on my student loans, I truly had never thought much about my spending habits. Money is the last thing you want to be worried about while you are trying to gain ultimate mastery of your art practice. However, that way of thinking, I discovered, (or, rather, came to terms with), is problematic in itself, and quite pretentious. Graduate school is two years of being selfishly unaware of the problems lying just outside in the real world. I was purposely ignorant of how my artist's lifestyle had to change in order to eat.

To trim the fat, I discovered that there are several things to do with one's time that require little-to-no money. First up: gallery openings! Free admission and the added bonus of refreshments make this a no-brainer, and also an important part of my artist's "job". How else to quell boredom? Exploring my habitat on foot for free or taking drives for a little gas money are pretty good options, too. Thirdly, socializing often comes with spending money, but "just looking" shopping is one sad option, and kind friends' pity coffees, beers, and hamburgers are another.

Here are a bunch of ways I managed to overcome my insatiable American habits and still entertain myself.

Before I left for Bosnia, I spent a completely lovely and totally free day looking at galleries. I saw Stephanie Syjuco's solo show, "Raiders", at Catherine Clark, which consisted of digitally downloaded and printed facades of priceless Asian art from the entire collection of an unnamed Asian art museum. The result was beautiful, jarring, and hilarious.

Also at Catherine Clark were some industrially fabricated street signs with antagonistic slogans by Anthony Discenza.

Next door I checked out the show by Castaneda/Reiman at Baer Ridgway, whose installations were part construction, part landscape, and possibly too conceptual for me to willingly understand.

I also discovered a sweet bonus of my recent graduation: my student ID card still granted me free access to the SF MoMA, where I perused the roof-top sculpture garden and paid for my Blue Bottle coffee with coins in my pocket from my change jar.

On another day I took a trip up to Oakland's Tilden Park, where I enjoyed another perk of recent graduation: everyone else was still at work or school while I explored Lake Anza and some trails I had never been on.

One day my friend, Natasha, and I took our restless legs up to Stinson Beach, where the sun was promising but the wind was like being inside some sort of sand tunnel. We had fun anyway, but our snacks were pretty gritty. Later we stopped in Sausalito where local artisan ceramics are beautifully crafted and sold at Heath Ceramics.

On another art adventure, some friends and I went to Ratio 3 to catch Mission School artist, Margaret Kilgallen's, posthumous exhibition, "Summer/Selections." It should have been titled, "They Raided My Sketchbooks and Remnants." While her linework is superior and I love to see any female artist in a predominantly male circle like the SF Mission School, the work was hung badly with visible screws and cheap frames, and altogether not flattering to the artist's memory.

Work by Margaret Kilgallen

I stopped by the vintage store, La Rosa, on Haight Street with a friend who is a regular there. The store was quite entertaining to peruse, but the prices are insanely expensive. While I found some great treasures like a woven karate robe and several Nudie-esque western jackets, the triple digit price tags coupled with the pain of walking down super-gross Haight Street made it a once-a-year sort of place for me.

Lucky for me, many of my friends are also neighbors, and we had a relaxing summer BBQ potluck, providing a long-needed CCA reunion as well as good food for cheap $. Imagine the luck of me bringing a peach and apple crisp and Julie bringing homemade brown sugar ice cream!

My friend, Rachel, and I explored our Oakland neighborhood as two poor ladies on the prowl for blackberry bushes in the nearby rose garden.

I tried one more trip to Stinson Beach solo, where the weather said 75 and it was more like 60. Still, the sound of waves crashing and the soft sand beneath your feet are a necessity for the occasional regrouping.

I made it to the opening of Marx and Zavattero's current 10th anniversary show, "Sea Change Part II", the day after I came back from Europe. Several favorite artists were on view from their roster, including Libby Black and Taravat Talepasand.

A little painting by Libby Black in the back room

A Taravat Talepasand drawing with some unexpected color

A very clean Patrick Wilson painting

In the back room- Libby Black, her partner Jen, and their son, Jasper, who took me out for burgers afterwards. Yes!

What else is free? Oh yeah, making art, as long as I have supplies already. Duh!

Coming Up: Bay Area Shows This Summer

2011-06-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in previous posts, I will be skipping town in a few days to lounge around Eastern Europe, eating phyllo dough-wrapped things and sipping coffee while listening to some haunting gypsy jazz in outdoor cafes for six weeks. This means I will be missing a few art shows which are worth a stop if you are in the area. San Francisco, like most second-tier art cities, has a quiet art season in the summertime while everyone (the collectors) go to their vacation get-aways. That being said, I think these shows will be great and I hope to be able to stop by before the end of their runs.

"Sea Change: The 10th Anniversary Exhibition Part I", Marx and Zavattero, 77 Geary, San Francisco, Opening June 11 5:30- 7:30 though July 16

David Hevel

Marx and Zavattero are celebrating an impressive feat in providing high quality emerging and mid-career art to San Francisco for the last ten years in the form of a two part group exhibition showcasing all represented artists. I am particularly excited about Libby Black's new piece, an eight-foot painting of Brooke Shields kneeling in dirt, which I had to help her strap to the top of her car from the East Oakland canvas maker and drive at 15 miles an hour all the way to her Berkeley studio. The show will also feature work by two more favorites, felt-loving James Gobel and celebrity-obsessed David Hevel.

"Desirée Holman: Heterotopias", Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, Opening June 26 through September 18

Holman film still

Desiree Holman, represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery and a CCA Graduate professor, combines pop culture, fantasy, and identity in a variety of artworks from film to drawing. In this show she shows both real people and avatars to "[construct] a Möbius-like relation between real and virtual", according to the museum press release. Looks like a great reason to stop by the BAMPFA, since I still have never been! And if you ever needed more of a reason to go, there's the frozen yogurt place across the street that prices your goodies by the pound.

"Travis Collinson: Paintings and Drawings", Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, 172 Minna Street, San Francisco, Opening July 23 through August 20

Sofa, King, Cool, Travis Collinson

I seriously can't tell if I like these paintings or not from looking at Baer Ridgway's website, which is in itself a good reason to go see a show. I like how weird the features of his subjects are, reminding me both of Lucien Freud's early work and the drawings of Josephine Taylor. It looks like Collinson is still pretty unknown, with only one small solo show under his belt. Baer Ridgway is taking a chance on a kid. The thing with figurative work for me is that I get excited when people show it, but I can't help but compare it to every other figurative artist I can think of, including myself. If they are good, I will gladly say, "Well done" to Collinson, and if not, I'll say, "What about me?"

CCA MFA Class of 2011 Exhibtion!!! (Part II)

2011-06-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in the previous post below, here are some of the images I took of our CCA MFA Class of 2011 Exhibition, both from the night of the opening on May 12 and from the much quieter days to follow. My humble apologies to the artists I missed. (Please double-click on images for larger views).

Angus Haller created a silkscreened printscape of visual noise coupled with a soundscape of musical noise to make an immersive installation for the audience.

Close-up of Haller's screen prints

Julie Henson's super-hard-to-photograph installation room with theater props, mirrors, and lights to reflect her sparkly trees.

Marissa Botelho's equally hard-to-photograph immersive head-goes-in-the-box installation, where she created mini lanscapes.

Inside the box

Marissa also created a video game come to life with her reenactment of Red Dead Redemption's lasso move, and the feeling of disappointment of reality.

Elizabeth Dorbad's epic theater prop/carnival disaster installation

Victoria DeBlassie's intensely laborious sewn orange peel hut

Courtney Johnson's wild child women paintings

Johnson painting

Miss Courtney Johnson herself

Mark Taylor's screen prints of wear patterns on records, along with a box set of prints and a clever projected image on record player.

The box set, with liner notes and song titles he makes up

Rachel Dawson's classy display of all her various projects in one room- psychic analysis video, lit clay sculptures, and photo realist vessel painting.

Mark Benson's "It's art/it's not art" ready-made sculptures of over-stacked dish rack and towel-strewn drums

Benson's special one-night display of inflatable blue dancing guys

C. Wright Daniel's photograms of crumpled paper

Nancy Nowacek's "Get in this room and walk in fake snow" construction

Sarah Hotchkiss's space data center

Katie Dorame's paintings of Westward expansion

Rachel Foster's lovely screen-prints of mysterious imagery

Rachel in front of her Ouija wall

Natasha Wheat's purposely opaque "situational construction" of symbols of labor and consumerism with unreadable neon letters and painted palettes

Wheat's digital prints on silk of laborers in Panama

Allison Rowe poses in front of her RV-turned-mobile-environmental-educational tool

Once more, and with feeling: Congrats to my Class of 2011! I'll miss you!

Here are some more shots of both our MFA show at CCA, as well as SFAI's MFA show from Art Business, some shots by Meighan at My Love For You is a Stampede of Horses, as well as the JD Beltran article in the SF Gate I previously posted.

CCA MFA Class of 2011 Exhibtion!!! (Part I)

2011-06-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

I may be a little behind, but I have a giant post of coverage from my MFA exhibition which took place from May 12-21. Walking around a few days later, it was ideal to take shots after the chaos of the opening. On the evening of the reception, I was stuck at my post next to my paintings, so it wasn't until I walked around to get some photos that I got to spend some quality time with everyone's artwork. I did not get to each artist in this post- some photos were bad and some I missed, so my apologies to anyone left out. We had a stellar class and I'm super proud of all of us!

CCA main building

Here we are! (Double-click for larger image)

Opening night in the main walkway

Sarah Thibault's painting and sculpture

Thibault close-up of texture

Maysha Mohamedi's wall of paintings

Maysha and I: Our art was right across from each other in the main hallway

Here's one of my walls

Here's the other one

I wore a sweet suit!

Dave Sandoval's "Holiday Dinner Karaoke" was a crowd pleaser

Inside, you sat at one of four seats around a table with a microphone and a scrolling prompter of banal family dinner conversation. Like, "Last year we went to Vegas", and the other seat: "Oh, I didn't know that. I like Blackjack".

A video projection on the table of a time-lapsed view of the dinner plates

Emily Eifler's super-ambitious interactive video game

Radka Pulliam's "constellations" of her charted walks around her Tenderloin neighborhood. Some recorded items: prostitutes and pee smells.

Neil LeDoux's Headlands Tournesol Prize-winning cat mural

Carlos Ramirez's ceramic Mario Brothers blocks and blobs in the background

More Ramirez ceramic blobs

Jonathan Runcio's paintings and concrete sculptures on mini-plinths

Runcio painting

Amber Stucke's drawings and mushroom spore paper hand-outs

Carol Koffel's melting ice and porcelain sculpture

Ida Roden's detailed installation of an imaginary character's bedroom

She even made the book cover

Bean Gilsdorf's enormous digitally printed textile piece

Gilsdorf close-up: She's got Reagan and some civil war images mingling on the fabric

Stay tuned for more Part II coming soon!
Class photo by Jim Norrena. Can't get enough CCA photos? See the rest of his images here.

The CCA class of 2011 is:

(Click on names for links)

Frederick Alvarado

Natalia Anciso
Simone Bailey
Mark Benson
Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik
Marissa Botelho
Marylene Camacho
Jillian Clark
Serena Cole
Daniel Dallabrida
C. Wright Daniel
Rachel Dawson
Crystal De la Torre
Victoria Deblassie
Katherine Dorame
Elizabeth Dorbad
Emily Eifler
Rachel Foster
Mik Gaspay
Bean Gilsdorf
Angus Haller
Julie Henson
Sarah Hotchkiss
Courtney Johnson
Waheguru Khalsa
Brian King
Carol Koffel
Noah Krell
Neil Ledoux
Maysha Mohamedi
Vanessa Nava
Nancy Nowacek
Radka Pulliam
Carlos Ramirez
Ida Roden
Allison Rowe
Jonathan Runcio
David Sandoval
Amber Stucke
Mark Taylor
Sarah Thibault
Natasha Wheat

Places to Go, Art to See

2011-06-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

Blog Readers (if you are out there): I'm taking off for Bosnia for six weeks! My internet life will be on hiatus, along with my gallery-going/blogging life. I don't know how much art-viewing I will get done in the next seven days, so I thought I would arrange a semi-virtual local gallery tour. Here are some things I should, would, and may check out before I go, and some that I will miss but would be worth the effort if you are around the Bay. It's so easy to take for granted the amount of art we have in the city, but if you decide to go looking, it really is everywhere. (Whether it's any good, however, remains up for debate).

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS:

"New Paintings" with work by Sarah Thibault, Rebekah Goldstein, Rema Ghuloum, Maysha Mohamedi, and Alice Warneke, Truesilver Gallery, 4391 24th Street, San Francisco

Through June 24, Hours and Info: (415) 359-5692

Painting by Sarah Thibault

This all-female, all-CCA painter squad is a good reason to try visiting one of the many pop-up galleries around the city. It looks like Truesilver is a gallery-in-the-house kind of deal, with no set hours or up-to-date website info, but it would be worth perusing if you are feeling adventurous. My CCA buddies know how to use a paint brush in a playful, messy kind of way.

"Treasure Tones" by Victor Landweber and "Reject, Reject" by Daniel Tierney, Steven Wolf Fine Arts,
2747 A 19th Street, San Francisco

Through July 2, Open Wed-Sat 10:30- 5:30

Four City Blocks laminated cardboard painting by Daniel Tierney

Steven Wolf's two concurrent exhibitions look like an exciting example of artists considering what a painting is. Victor Landweber arranges paint samples to create taxonomies and narratives according to paint names, and Daniel Tierney creates stacked paintings which incorporate the "painting" and the "plinth/stand" in barely three-dimensional form. Wolf's gallery space is a beautiful remodeled 100-year-old building in the sprawling new art locale on 19th street and totally worth checking out.

"being-with" Solo exhibition by Liam Everett, Romer Young Gallery, 1240 22nd Street, San Francisco

Through June 25, Open Tue, Thu, Fri, Sat, hours variable

Installation shot, Liam Everett paintings

Another CCA painter, (we like to support each other), Liam Everett, is still in grad school but already has a strong beginning of a career, with an established resume in NY before coming to San Francisco. I went to the opening of this show, but it was full of people and babies and I was with a painter-hater, so we left before I really checked out Liam's paintings. From what I can tell, he uses a variety of methods to fold, spray-paint, dye, and otherwise manipulate the fabric of the piece before stretching it, or not in the case of the yellow one above. I think they are worth a visit to Romer Young (formerly Ping Pong) in their quiet Dog Patch neighborhood space.

"God Only Knows Who the Audience Is", curated by the graduating CCA Curatorial Practice Class of 2011, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco

Through July 2, Open Tue-Sat, 11-6 or 7

To Move a Body video still by Noah Krell

OK, I'll admit this blog is CCA-centric, but I can't help it! The Wattis is CCA's museum-worthy arts institution within the school walls which has amazing exhibtions with world-renowned artists, and this show put on by the Curatorial Practice students is no exception. The exhibition centers around performance-based works from artists such as Eleanor Antin and Chris Burden, (people I learned about in Contemporary Art History), but also includes one CCA grad student, Noah Krell. Krell's video pieces continue the work proposed by his 60s-70s predecessors with just as much beauty and heart. I would like to spend some more time with this show and highly recommend it.

"New Work" by Tucker Nichols, Gallery 16,
501 Third Street, San Francisco

Through June 30, Open Mon-Sat 10 or 11-5

Painting by Tucker Nichols

Gallery 16 is a print shop/gallery which affords the artists it shows the benefit of creating large scale expensive prints to work with in a variety of ways. I am no expert of Nichols, but he's an established local, and the show looks like it could be good.

"Dad and Mom, Don't Worry About Us, We are All Well" by Song Dong, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,
701 Mission Street, San Francisco

Through June 12, Open Thu-Sun 11-8 or 6

Song Dong installation at the YBCA

I saw this amazing installation by Chinese artist Song Dong at the Yerba Buena, but with a student ID priced ticket, I would go see it again. In the main exhibition, Song Dong essentially artistically arranges his mother's belongings, who became a hoarder after the death of her husband. Through the mourning process, the artist and his mother use the concept of the installation to reflect on life and death. The exhibition leaves the viewer feeling a sense of voyeurism, along with guilt over consumerism and reflections on politics, family, and space. I went with someone who asked me if this was art. The answer is, Yes, of course, but the conversation is a long and complicated one. A piece which makes one feel anything is halfway to being art, and I feel the aesthetics of it also contribute to a powerful installation. It's coming down soon- go see!

"Solo Exhibition of New Works: AMTK", Unspeakable Projects, 735 Tehama Street, San Francisco

Through June 30, Open Thu 3-6, Sat 1-4

Painting by AMTK

Unspeakable Projects is another one of those gallery-in-the-house dealies, but in today's economy, who can really blame them? I am not that familiar with either the gallery nor the artist (is is a duo? man or woman?) but I have seen their paintings online and at the recent SF Artpad fair at Unspeakable Project's booth. I like the weirdo style of the paintings, and I think Unspeakable has a good thing going so far.

"Raiders" Solo Exhibition by Stephanie Syjuco, Catherine Clark Gallery, 150 Minna Street, San Francisco

Through July 16, Open Tue-Sat 11-6

Installation of objects by Stephanie Syjuco

Man, I was supposed to go to the opening of this show last night, but I was too tired and sick and otherwise opening-ed out. Stephanie Syjuco is a really interesting artist and also a former professor of mine at CCA. Her work focuses around ideas of appropriation and value- sometimes even "piracy" as she would call it. This show is a full scale installation of an entire Asian art collection from a museum, in which she has taken free images of the collection online and reproduced them as 2-D versions printed on paper and mounted on wood. I really like the idea of re-selling such things- what is a commodity worth and who decides? What's the difference between the model and the original? Surely they are crappy versions of the crafted things, but they are crafted by an artist and sold in a gallery... it gets nice and complicated.

"Castaneda/Reiman: Still Life Landscape",
Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, 172 Minna Street, San Francisco

Through July 16, Open Tue-Sat 11-6

Castaneda/Reiman

I am not sure if I think this show looks interesting or not, but Baer Ridgway generally has good taste which borders on high conceptualism without alienating its audience. And, it's right next door to Catherine Clark, so why not go?

"Inarguably Uncertain: The 41st Annual University of California, Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition", Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley Through June 26, Open Wed-Sun 11-5

(or Fri til 9 with cheaper tickets)

Rivals! Rivals! Well, with only seven students they are hardly eclipsing my alma mater, CCA, and maybe it's worth seeing what the grads over in Berkeley are doing? I saw the SFAI "Vernissage" show, by the way, and let's just say I'm glad I went to CCA. These silly art wars run deep.

All photos from gallery websites, except Noah Krell noahkrell.com and Sarah Thibault artsfarts.tumbler.com