Category Archives: Community

Art & Development, Community

ArtArtArt

I may be holed up in front of a computer most days, but Thursday night I joined the buzzing/buzzed crowds for First Thursday openings. It was hot, crowded, and impossible to spend quality time with any art, but still, I had a blast and peeped some great work.

Enrique Chagoya, Paule Anglim Gallery
Enrique Chagoya at Gallery Paule Anglim. Chagoya showed lots of nice prints and codexes, as usual, but a new series of tsunami/flood/infinite space paintings on canvas were pretty spectacular. I really liked this one, with the text, in gothic script: “illegal alien’s guide to everything,” in which two dark-skinned men sit atop an old-school-landboat-turned-ship, in a desolate flooded area. I’ve always been a fan of the Bay Area Abstract Figurative movement, so it’s appealing and funny to see David-Park-esque paint handling in service of new topical paintings.

Hung-Chih Peng
Hung-Chih Peng, also at Gallery Paule Anglim: Excerpts From The Holy Bible in Arabic Translations, 2006
A dog “writes” text on a wall (of course it’s licking up text written in food, and the video is played backwards). A great example (of the many) Chinese artists who use text. Brilliant!

Takenaga at Lind
Optical paintings usually make me think “Stoner Art,” but Barbara Takenaga at Gregory Lind Gallery commands the paint, as well as effects of luminescence that her finely crafted paintings deliver. Another large painting in a circular format made me realize that what I do — at least, the use of the mandala form in Dark into Light — may not be so different after all.

Megan Wilson’s installation, ceiling view
Finally I went to a delightful dinner hosted by Megan Wilson, where I was in awe of Megan’s four-year-(a)long installation, employing everything in her house and then some (lamps from her travels in Indonesia, the dainty paper quilling that appears in her works on paper, and even an air freshener she picked up in Manila during the Galleon Trade art exchange—it’s the orb below, atop the stacks of colorful substances, some of which I think is hair gel). Megan’s decorative installation was like dessert for my eyes.
Megan Wilson’s installation, detail with air freshener

Standard
Community

One woman. One show.

Just saw Lydia’s Funeral Video, Sam Chanse’s (debut?) one-woman show playing at the Dark Room Theater in San Francisco. I knew Sam from her prodigious efforts in keeping Kearny Street Workshop forging ahead through challenging staff changes with grace. I believe director Wilma Bonet is a respected colleague of a theater-friend of mine. But I had only seen Sam do stand-up, not acting, and I guess I assumed this first go-round might be rough around the edges. I was delightfully surprised.

The show started off with Sam bursting out into the small theater in character, delivering a monologue at full throttle. She kept up a remarkable pace, changing characters with precision, using the range of stage area and lights to great effect, never breaking character and always putting well-rehearsed skill into each scene. The set was bare, the costuming was economical and efficient. And it worked great. Most importantly, the writing (Sam wrote the play as well) was really good. Sometimes one-person shows can feel patchworked, or too much like a series of vignettes, but Sam was sure to include a narrative arc with a surprise at the end that brought everything together nicely. I expected the show to be like Sam in real life: funny and dark. Lydia’s Funeral Video was also moving and smart.

The show runs through next weekend (see manja.org for tickets). Enjoy good karma and a good time if you support this young artist who has done so much to support emerging artists through her ceaseless work at KSW. Even if you can’t make it to the run of the show, I’m sure Sam would appreciate contributions, as she really pours herself into these exuberant performances.

Standard
Community

Get out

You say January, I think cold and credit card debt. These kind souls are giving me reasons to step away from the space heater…

Friday, January 11, 2008
Four projects at SoEx
Jenifer Wofford, Chris Bell, Elaine Buckholtz, Bruce Tomb
6:30 pm: Artist talks
7-9 pm: Opening reception
Southern Exposure, 417 14th St (at Valencia), San Francisco

Saturday, January 26, 2008
MFA Selections | A Salute to Bay Area Emerging Artists
Includes the aforementioned Jenifer Wofford and Chris Bell, plus Kamau Patton, Ali Dadgar, Joshua Eggleton, Dan Lydersen, Renee Gertler and Elizabeth Mooney.
Reception: 6 – 8 PM
Exhbition: January 26 through March 15, 2008
di Rosa Preserve, 5200 Carneros Highway 121, Napa, CA

February 3, 2008
Close Calls
Includes April Banks, Val Britton, Julie Chang, Renee Gertler, Liz Hickok, Casey Jex Smith, Weston Teruya, Richard T. Walker
Reception: 2-5 pm
Exhibition: January 13 – February 25, 2008, Tuesday-Friday, and Sunday, 12 – 5 pm
Headlands Center for the Arts, 944 Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA

Standard
Art & Development, Community

Grounded?

Fighting off a sore throat, I ran through the Grounded and Grounded? exhibitions at Southern Exposure and Intersection for the Arts a few weeks ago. Though I would have liked to have seen more of the interactive works, which painted the town pink as well as other things, here’s what “took.”

Jessica Miller at Grounded?
Jessica Miller‘s time-lapse videos / stop motion animations. I liked this lego-glacial-pattern piece, and a mesmerizing video of pink tape filling up the negative shapes in the shadow of an iron gate. As the sun went down the florescent tape filled the frame. I liked Jessica’s earlier baroque-pop photo-installations, too — those were funny and pretty — but these new videos are rough around the edges, and it’s exciting to see what she’ll do next.

scholz.jpg
Zachary Royer Scholz‘ b/w print of a site-specific/found sculpture. I remember seeing this piece in 2006, and was happy to see it again. I think I like Zach’s work because it seems to involve so much chance and discovery, like Daniel Spoerri filtered through a more formal language.

grounded_photo.jpg
This photo by Moshe Quinn (Thanks Kevin Chen!) of light rippling on a mundane stuccoed building with street-level newspaper boxes and a passerby = Genius.

nold.jpg
While there were other interesting works, Christain Nold‘s Emotional Mapping poster, which was the result of a previous project at Southern Exposure, really caught my attention. First, the poster’s beautiful, in a micro-macro, Tufte/information-graphics-fan way. The content, consisting of mapping daily minutia, is personal, revealing and engaging. The map is a successful poster and also works as a book with multiple readings. But the project is interesting because the map is just a sliver — albeit a beautiful one — of a larger work that resides in the outside world.

Work about minutia is not new. I’ve made some, I’ve seen a lot. But Nold’s seems exceptional because it acts like a book, but you don’t have have to be bookish to find yourself immersed in the details.

If you’re like me, and are impressed by scary-smart programmer-artist-designers who make technology elegant for art applications, you’ll want to check out Nold’s site.

Standard
Citizenship, Community

Shop here

Hope you’re excited as I about these organizations/businesses.

Cacao Anasa and artist April Banks’ Organic Fair Trade Chocolate Bars

Dagoba Chocolates. I’ve tried the dark chocolate bar — bliss slowly unraveling.

Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Online Store

Oxfam America’s Unwrapped. Gifts that make a difference for those in need around the world.

Or, instead of a gift card, try Kiva micro-lending gift certificates. Recipients lend to entrepreneurs around the world and can withdraw the funds upon repayment.

Of course shopping at eco-friendly or social justice oriented businesses is no substitute for activism, but it beats supporting corporate pet-projects (that donate only a small amount of proceeds to a good cause) or just increasing corporate profit margins.

Standard
Community

Down with Sofa-Beds

At a panel on Access & Activism with Favianna, Keba, Marcel Diallo and others at the Oakland Museum of California today, Jaime Cortez quoted Arundhati Roy about why he doesn’t sit well with the term “artist-activists”: it remindes her of the word sofa-bed, uncomfortable as both a couch and a “piss-poor” mattress, and with the implication of lowered expectations in the realms of art and activism.

I love the analogy!

I once called myself an artist-activist, several years ago when I was working as a youth educator, and was more of an idealist than an optimist. But Jaime’s comment resonated with me — my art really suffered while I worked at unsustainable jobs at non-profits. Cortez’ comments was especially meaningful in relationship to museums, where community engagement departments diversify the museum’s attendance while the exhibitions departments try to correct the imbalance of representation in the collections.

I had a lot of history with some of the panel members. And though at first I felt oddly disconnected, today’s discussion made me excited about OMCA returning to its more radical roots. After Art Murmur yesterday, it’s nice to feel hopeful about art in Oakland.

Standard
Community

One more art school critique

Sat in on Keith Boadwee‘s class at CCA yesterday. It was a great experience, and I really enjoyed being a guest at art school again.

I was a guest for four 40-minute critiques at the end of the first semester of the MFA program. I remember the first semester of grad school as intense and crazy, a time of getting unhinged and cramming to produce work for the review. The MFA program is designed with an inherent paradox: students are to experiment under intense scrutiny. I sensed that many of the students felt the pressure and uncertainty. But I think while the critiques can be severe, the criteria for this evaluation are modest and fair: I think students are expected to demonstrate vigorous work habits, experimentation, and self-examination.

It took almost the whole 40 minutes, but I ended up liking the work of the ironically-named Justin Hurty, whose project encompasses walking around while carrying super-heavy assemblages of fired clay, cardboard, wire and packing tape. He literalized the burden on artists and on straight white men — he punished his body as a project. In fact, for the following two hours, he carried the objects to the other critiques. His hands got red and veiny, and you could see how much it strained his back. It inspired both schadenfreude and sympathy. While I think the class gave Hurty the hardest time (three cheers for his exemplary grace under fire), I think his earnestness, persistence and willingness — to run with the project and the critical input — are characteristics that will pay off.

An artist named Crow, whose last name I missed, presented photographic and cinematic documentation that formed the research and proposal for a series of objects. It was about Toulouse Lautrec, dwarfism, bodies, and involved a lot of theory about difference, gender and identity. It sounded like a good idea. But this kind of work, so heavily grounded in theory, is maddeningly complicated. I think it parallels OCD art, only the wow factor here is how theoretically sound a project can be. You can’t really critique a project that’s still in its planning stages, but Crow also strikes me as competent and much more informed about theory than I, so I’m sure he can accomplish whatever he decides on.

Josh Ferris showed photographs of a miniature landscape, with the intention of commenting on both global climate change and the sublime. The good news is that he exhibited beautifully-executed prints. The bad news is that I have seen work like this before. Thankfully, Ferris recognized that the work was problematic in how it created a conversation that focused too much on representation. Ferris, like Crow, seems to be biting off a huge can of worms, and it will take a lot of persistence and creativity to come up with an interesting artistic statement. I hope that the work of Richard T. Walker, whose work is about literally conversing with Romanticized landscapes, will be a good reference point for Ferris.

David Gillespie (corrections welcomed) showed diagrams and photographs representing his research for projects investigating subjects as varied as airports to brain implants. The display formed a wall of information that was difficult to scale. If I felt combative in Gillespie’s critique, it’s probably because I see similarities in our practices: a disinterest in visual interest, and an exploration of “meta” art methods or expectations. One project is an attempt to quantify metaphor as a requisite aesthetic unit in art. The terrain and method is valid, but as a viewer I needed more ways to engage with his process-product spectrum.

I’m sure all these projects will mature by the MFA show in 2009. Looking forward to being delighted and impressed. Good luck guys!

Standard
Community

Wofford’s studio sale!

Check out the artwork available by Jenifer Wofford, a friend, fellow artist, and the grassroots initiator of Galleon Trade, which enabled me to visit Manila last summer.

I think Jenifer’s work is accessible, finely crafted, and deeply personal.

We acquired one of her drawings from her Nurse series a year ago. I first saw the series at an auction to benefit an APA AIDS organization. The drawings of Filipina nurses resonated. Her statement — which describes a childhood memory of worrying about her mother handing syringes during the AIDS epidemic — made them even more powerful.

We still love the drawing. It’s really nice to support a friend who’s believed in me so much. Plus, as an artist, I believe the only thing differentiating collectors from non-collectors is the willingness to purchase art — you don’t have to know anything special, just know what you like and make it part of your home.

I know for a fact Jenifer believes in pricing her work affordably. Works on paper are great for beginning collectors because they’re affordable, modest in scale and easy to frame and display.

So, if you know of anyone who might be interested in supporting an artist by owning a work of art, please pass this on. If you’re interested (I don’t give advice about investments often, but…) I’d recommend acting now!

Standard