First Thursday: May 2009

Elisabeth Sunday at Gallery 291, her solo show is titled Africa VI: The Tuareg


Enrique Chagoya opened at Electric Works with a show called "Super-Bato Saves the World"

We went to two openings last night - first to Elisabeth Sunday's solo exhibit of her recent photographs of African women. Her women are always beautifully elongated and their long, black robes transform them into human sculptures.

At Electric Works, Enrique Chagoya's paintings and artist's books focused on immigration issues. He also painted several slot machines and visitors were encouraged to try their luck.

Paris Book

Finally finished making the Paris travel book, which I started weeks ago. It documents my trip last September to attend the UN NGO conference at UNESCO. I created a number of signatures using postcards distributed at the conference as covers. I also incorporated packing tape transfer, gel lift and matte photo paper transfer techniques I recently learned from Dolores G. The time-consuming part was incorporating the many separate elements into some sort of cohesive whole, especially the photographs I took on the trip. I learned this book's form from Gail R. who taught a traveler book class at SF Center for Books last year. It's cool because the spine is flexible and can be as large as the number of items I want to put into the book. And the signatures help the book stand on its own when all are incorporated. Not the kind of book I would make for all my trips but it works well when one comes home with an inordinate amount of paper and ephemera.

Friday NIght Openings

Opening Reception at Hunters Point Spring Open Studios


At San Jose's North First ArtSpace

ICA

I visited the Institute of Contemporary Art for the first time. They make wonderful use of windows looking out into the waters of Boston harbor. They had a great exhibition of Shepard Fairey's graphic works.

Boston: Graffiti, Action, Color

A boarded up building in Chinatown sports cool graphics and graffiti


Hiphop street artist flips over six limp tourists


Balloons of all colors are twisted into hats and toys for children in front of Fanueil Hall

At the UN

We spent a day at the UN attending a briefing on malaria, eating in the cafeteria and participating in a tour.

Art and Exuberance

A lovely detail from an Assyrian wall panel at the New York Metropolitan Museum


Exuberant Rangers fans ride by on a double-decker bus

New York Chinatown

I don't remember seeing so many barbershops and hairdresser salons in Chinatown when I was living in NYC!


Early evening - a lovely time to be walking the alleys of Chinatown

A Day in Boston

85-year old park ranger who guided us through the black heritage trail



Hymnals and prayer books in private pew inside Old North Church where Paul Revere and others used signal lanterns to announce the arrival of British troops


Colonial types after Patriots Day Parade

Paz at 31 Rausch

Paz showing her 99 cent beauty collection at 31 Rausch, an alternative gallery that is located in someone's flat. The corridor is the gallery space. I've been going to more and more of these alternative gallery spaces popping up all over San Francisco.

First Thursday

Lyndi Sayles


sono osato

Two of my favorites from last night's First Thursday openings downtown. Lyndi does some serious cutting and this huge collage of kits was amazing and beautiful. Sono glued together a lot of metal pieces, then painted over them in red. Quite an interesting selection of debris.

Motown

I've been playing with packing tape transfers. For these postcards I layered tape-lifted images onto old 7-Eleven waxed paper that I got from god knows where. The images add a cool transparency and go well with the dot tape I got from Target.

Friday Openings

Fernando Reyes at the Reaves Gallery


Richard Perri at the Market Street Gallery


Oleg Osipoff at SF Arc

Went to 3 openings on Friday night. Our first stop was at SF Arc in Glen Park. This was formerly Sweet Sue's, that used to make great pies. Osipoff had the visitors participate in making offset prints from running rollers over inked textured surfaces. His abstract works are called Life Underground.

Then to Market Street Gallery to view Richard Perri's paintings called Iconsthatlast, the Java Huts. He likes these old, tacky eateries.

Finally we went to the Reaves Gallery to see Fernandy Reyes' works. He uses a combination of oils, collage and printmaking. The collection is called Sweet Dreams.

Benefit Art Auction: Part II

Left to right: Laurie Wyman-Herson, "Ode to Morandi (watercolor), Julie Nelson, "Untitled" (mixed media on panel), Kay Marshall, "Unstill" (monotype with oil crayon and graphite)


Richard Bolingbroke, "Studio Still Life #1" (limited edition 1/25 giclee print)


Zabrina Tipton, "Bay Bridge and Hills" (fuji archive photograph, limited & signed edition 2/25)

We picked up these five pieces at the Artspan Benefit Art Auction on Saturday night. What a pleasure to collect original works of art!

Benefit Art Auction

Somarts Gallery filled to capacity with art aficionados and artists


Guests discuss artwork with Executive Director


Beautiful pieces up for bid

This yearly Artspan event is the best kept secret in town for buying great art by San Francisco artists. The silent auction starts at 1/3 of the value of the work. Many pieces are priced modestly, which means that you'll find original art that fit your budget. Despite the recession, artists gave generously and the public who attended reaped the benefits. Purchases helped ArtSpan continue its youth arts program that brings art education to public schools. As a contributing artist, I'm proud to be part of Benefit Art Auction.

Market Street Comics

Today was the perfect day to photograph Briana Miller and Thien Pham's comic book posters on Market Street. San Francisco Arts Commission has a program of showing art on these triangular kiosks that stand near bus stops along downtown Market Street. Two sides of the kiosks have advertisements that probably pay for this project and one side has artwork that rotates several times a year. In a Chronicle article, Briana is quoted as saying that this is a palindromic comic - it can be read forward or backward. These two artists are friends who teach at the same high school and have a graphic design business on the side. It was brilliant and cool downtown - a great day to be walking and taking photographs.

Berkeley Botanical Gardens - Winter 09

For Susan's birthday we walked around Berkeley Botanical Gardens. It was sunny, not too cold, with only a few visitors on the paths. I hadn't been here in years and enjoyed seeing the winter vegetation. Withered leaves mixed with rhododendron blooms made for a uniquely Northern California spring scene. We had lunch at Vik's, a favorite South Indian snack shop, then walked around 4th street to shop the paper stores.

Views of LA #1

Watts Towers


Downtown Rush Hour

A wonderful week in Los Angeles. We got to see the Watts towers just before sunset on a day when the clouds were patterned and swirley. On the way to an awards dinner we stopped over the freeway and photographed cars speeding away into the sunset.

Aubrey Rhodes Opening - February 20

After the Russian festival we went to an opening at the Space Gallery on Polk Street. I had never seen Aubrey Rhodes' works before; her boyfriend works at UBS. Lots of paintings in different styles. I liked her circus series best.

Russian Festival - Feb. 20, 2009

I look forward to the Russian Festival at the Russian Center every year. It's a wonderful event that includes an art exhibition, Russian food prepared by volunteers and a 3-day variety show. I love the balalaika, the dancers, the singers and clowns. This year we could only stay for a little while but we got to see Olga Prokoshina dance.

Rex Ray at Gallery 16

Rex Ray demonstrated his collage techniques at Gallery 16 tonight. First he applied a watered-down Elmer's glue with a brush onto a large canvas. Then he adhered hand-painted paper on top. He used a brayer and sponge to flatten the paper onto the canvas. I noticed there was quite a bit of water used. Then with an X-acto knife, he defly cut shapes on the paper, then removed the cutouts. It was interesting to see that instead of cutting shapes and messing with glueing them on the canvas, he applied sheets of paper and cut them out from the canvas. As long as the glue stayed wet, the paper came off easily. I wondered how he would adhere the next layer of paper without accidentally cutting the paper beneath. We didn't stay long enough to find out.

San Mateo Japanese Tea Garden

weeping ume in bloom

We had a break in the weather today to enjoy a walk around the Japanese tea garden in San Mateo. It was more understated than the one in San Francisco and felt more authentic. After a leisurely turn around the garden, we went for dim sum at nearby Joy Luck Place.

Last Friday Evening

De Young A Place of Her Own Reception
Fog Outside the De Young
Tower Lights Glazed with Fog

Went to the closing reception of AAWAA's "Place of Her Own" exhibition. The gallery was buzzing and most of the artists were on hand to talk to the visitors. Afterwards, the evening was shrouded in a thick fog, which put a lovely glaze on street lights.

To Serve and Protect

I'm working on image transfer techniques. Here's what I did for this piece:

• Used matte gel to coat a square of wet muslin and black and white inkjet image
• Placed the image face-down on the muslin and rubbed the paper until a faint outline of the image appeared.
• Let the muslin dry, then sprayed the adhered paper with water and rubbed it off using a sponge. The transferred image is completely married to the muslin at this stage.
• Turned the muslin over (image face-down) and applied fabric ink. The ink bled through faintly to the image.
• Let the muslin dry, then applied a light wash of fabric paint on the front of the image and let that dry.
• Applied matte medium to seal the paint.
• Tore the edges of the muslin to create a slight fringed effect.
• Applied muslin image to an old money bag with double-sided interfacing.