…People of color, children of immigrants, members of nontraditional families.

…Those 125,000 black, brown, white, yellow, old and young faces in Chicago last night watching President Elect Obama’s victory speech, and for the rest of the country that looks like that, who feel in our hearts, too, that we are REAL Americans just as much as anybody else!

…Who are proud of America for doing the right thing in a time of crisis; that our fellow citizens are not apathetic, and do make up their own minds, and can change for the better!

…Whose cynicism is cracking like a frozen lake in springtime; that for all the corruption and unethical tactics we’ve witnessed in the past eight years, they can’t take this win away! And in the next four years, we will start undoing the damage and disenchantment of the last eight.

…Who are proud of our President Elect: a self-made man, a community organizer, an intellectual, and even after a long, hard-fought campaign, a person big enough to still reach out to all Americans, especially those who didn’t vote for him.

…Who are just as thrilled by First Lady Michelle Obama.

…Americans whose hopes are further buoyed by the news that the world celebrates with us today (see “For Many Abroad, an Ideal Renewed” on NYTimes for relief and enthusiasm from around the globe)…

—–

However, in California, a majority of voters have voted Yes on Prop. 8, and it’s a sad day for people who want to end discrimination, for all our friends whose marriages have been banned by vote of the People. Why anyone would go out of their way to stop others from enjoying a right that they already have? It’s contrary to the core American value: equality under the law.

(BTW, has anyone wondered why the Church of Latter Day Saints — a huge pro-8 donor — should be telling Californians what a “normal” marriage is, when there’s 60,000 polygamists in their own state? Come on! I’m all for religious freedom, but it doesn’t give some the moral imperative to dictate to others who can marry whom in the eyes of the law. Some straights really honor marriages, some don’t: some cheat, serial marry, drunk marry, joke marry. Straights aren’t inherently better at marriage. Get over it!)

—–

We have come so far, and still have so far to go…

Mary Temple contributes a subtle, effective trompe l’oeil installation miming cast window light, complete with silhouettes. She used latex paint on the walls, and stain on hardwood floors. However, the telltale additional layer of hardwood flooring over the museum’s floors gave away some of the almost-invisible process. It is what it is.

Alyson Shotz’s installation of clear beads on giant abstract wire forms was tightly constructed. It was a cool, massive installation that can only exist in behemoth galleries and museums. Still, it was not as dramatic as I had expected it might be. I don’t think all art has to be beautiful, but any abstract form playing with light seems to me to be clearly about beauty and perception, and this one fell a little short for me. I can’t figure out if it was the lighting, or if my expectations to be dazzled (or beadazzled? harhar.) were too high. Maybe I’ve been blinded by one too many beaded installations by Liza Lou?

Room for Thought: Alexander Hahn and Yves Netzhammer
Through Oct. 5 (Fourth floor)

A strange and wonderful installation of multiple video projections, sculptural objects and wall painting. In the center of the darkened space, a table sits on the ground with its legs hooved in oversized glasses; the rectangular center of the tabletop is pulled out by two ropes, forming a swing-like appendage to another twin table that hoovers, hardware hidden, in the air. Oversized ventilation pipes house a series of projectors, whose videos feature Virtual Reality-style animations of mannequin-like figures in unsettling abstract environs. I understood immediately that the doll-like bodies facilitated the telling of a deeply psychological and disturbing story. But the multiple elements were highly choreographed, and I wasn’t able to experience it all in my short visit, though I’ve got lingering spookiness to mull over.

Things have changed. First, I’m more receptive. I’ve expanded tastes in art beyond painting and drawing. I put aside preconceptions (as well as feelings of intimidation at fancy galleries). Second, I’ve built up my art endurance. Since I know more about art, it’s easier to look at art for longer durations — to contextualize it, file it away, and recall it — before feeling overwhelmed. It’s like eating: don’t fill up on the bread. Be selective. Cleanse the palette. Save room for dessert.

Most importantly, I’ve become a believer in reciprocity — that the more I look at art, the more I’ll be able to find what excites me. Sooner or later, I’m always delightfully surprised.

—
I hadn’t explored art in the South Bay much — until today.

The San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art‘s large windows let natural light into the meticulous, winding exhibition space. This Show Needs You is a friendly show of interactive social practice projects, including works by the veteran Linda Montano, and the esteemed professor Ted Purves and his partner Suzanne Cockrell. I appreciated SJICA’s reading room, chock full of printed matter and sited in a welcoming foyer just inside the front doors. The Print Center looks modest but immaculate. A show by San Jose State University MFA grads opens this weekend — don’t miss the impressive ceramic tableaus of Amanda Smith.

Making our way back up So. First Street, we popped in to the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles‘s shop and foyer: cat earrings and donut-shaped coasters in the former, a cool minidress knit of VHS tape in the latter. Did I mention the tape is wound through a video camera, purported to be taped or played back in a later performance? Badass. (Knitter’s Tapestry by Daniela K. Rosner and Kimiko Ryokai). In conjunction with the ZeroOne festival, the Museum is exhibiting textiles using digital technology.

Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americano (MACLA) is exhibiting works for auction. A fair amount of figurative painting, some fine relief prints by Juan Fuentes, and Jaime Guerrero‘s uncanny luchador mask in dripping hand-blown glass. I also really liked a mysterious photo of a falafel “totem,” perhaps a double-exposure of signage and a drive-in.

I was feeling all of my 30 years in Gallery Anno Domini (I’m just too damn old to appreciate the youth/skate curating / pop culture consumerism), so I found myself admiring the minimally-renovated theater the gallery and store are now housed in. With a huge central space, and a massive screen, I wondered why AD doesn’t present more media work. Maybe showing art that privileges evidence of the hand, i.e., drawing/painting and modestly-sized sculptures, is a form of rebellion in Silicon Valley.

Unfamiliar with San Jose (and with lunch calling), I totally forgot to stop by Space 47, around the corner from AD. I’m excited by the idea of an artist’s run outpost among San Jose’s chain stores, and hope to visit it soon.

The deSaisset Museum at Santa Clara University is nice campus museum, and the Woff and I had our socks knocked off by their current show, Eye on the Sixties: Vision, Body, and Soul: Selections from the Collection of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson. Like Woff said, it was like seeing old friends: a choice Nauman print, a Ruscha gunpowder drawing, a Nathan Oliviera work on paper, a David Park’s impassive faces in full color. I also loved several hilarious Oldenbergs, like screenprints of 2-D Mickey Mouse structures, and a semi-transparent plastic relief of a car obstructing a lithograph behind it. I even found a deliciously tactile lithograph with silver ink on gridded paper by Frank Stella, whose God-is-in-the-details geometric abstractions don’t often appeal to me. The show also reflected the burgeoning use of new materials: I found Sam Richardson’s cast plastic landscape cross-sections to wonderfully ambiguous, and somehow contemporary. There was also a kinetic “painting” with stripes of translucent color gently waving across a screen reminiscent of a television. James Grant’s #14, Bright Circle (1970), a rainbow-colored oculus of cast resin, takes the cake.

James Grant, #14, Bright Circle, 1970, cast polyester resin, 29 1/8 x 29 1/4 x 5 1/4 in., Collection of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, © The Estate of James Grant

Go see the show, and be sure to ask the attendants to turn on the kinetic works (they’re usually off, to minimize wear-and-tear, but it’s quite ecologically sensitive, isn’t it? Thanks, P, for lending the hybrid. Happy earth day.)

Again, the funds will go towards helping the artists go to Manila for the exhibition at artist-run spaces, and of course for exchanges (such as salons, artist’s talks, etc.)

This is my first time going on an international exchange exhibition and my first visit to the Philippines! Hope you can share the excitement at Galleon Trade : Ship Launch on June 30th! Click here for details.

Untitled (Drawing for Stacked Orange Present), 2007, 13×17”, graphite on paper

Aqua Present, 9” x 9” x 6”, paper, balsa wood

Print ‘em out on cardstock, or print to make a template for cardboard.