I am involved and excited about YBCA‘s triennial exhibition, Bay Area Now 5, which opened this last weekend.

This year’s show involves a lot of installation works, and not so much drawing/painting/photography. It also includes special guest-curated projects, like:

• Ground Scores, a series of bus and walking tours,
• Theory of Survival, and
• Estacion Odesia, an exhibition in collaboration with the gallery Queens Nails Annex, which opens July 25th at QNA from 8-11 pm.
• Last but not least is Galleon Trade: Bay Area Now 5 Edition, the exhibition in which I’ll be presenting my own work, alongside 4 other Bay Area artists who traveled to to Manila last summer, and the work of 5 Manila-based artists.

Which all adds up to a show with far-ranging connections. It’s really nice to feel like part of a community, not just a scene. For example, next to the Syndicate installation (a project led by Jessica Tully, who I met during my early-20s Activist Years), is the Uberto Eco-inspired library/book project by Michael Swaine (who also recently collaborated on the garden at the Headlands, where I’m an Affiliate); next to Michael is the installation by Jonn Herschend (whose work I admired at Intersection) who was in the same MFA program with Jenifer Wofford (the Galleon Trade mastermind). Then there’s CCA folk like David Buuck (my writing instructor), Leslie Shows (a classmate from a theory class by) Brian Conley (faculty), and Erik Skollon (my OAK-SF bus buddy), among others.

The highlights on my list, if you’re wondering, (besides Galleon Trade, which opens Sept 4!) is Joshua Churchill’s potent psychic site-specific installation, Donald Fortescue’s and Lawrence Labianca’s audio sculpture, Misako Inaoka’s tilted moss ceiling with audio and kinetics nestled in domes about the size of salon hair dryers (see participants crawling around in the windows on Mission Street), and Ian McDonald‘s ceramic/mineral/enamel black-on-black amphoras and geode sculptures.