Visiting Crab Orchard Cemetary

Yesterday I went to the opening reception of Crab Orchard Cemetary Revisited at the Peninsula Art Museum. This exhibition of the late Jo Hanson's installation was curated by NCWCA artist Eleanor Dickinson, a good friend of Jo's. As soon as one enters the gallery, one steps into a different world. Recorded birdsong and other ambient sounds plus the black and white photographs of cemetary vegetation printed on clear plastic sheets form the backdrop for these tombstones carved out of styrofoam. Jo returned to the actual cemetary in Illinois several times to capture the feeling of this solitary and creepy place.

Sweet July 4

Each year our neighborhood has a July 4 celebration. There's a small parade, the declaration of independence is read, then all make a mad dash for free hotdogs, chips, cupcakes and lemonade.

Some New England Vignettes

Selecting tomatoes at Boston's Copley Square farmer's market


Portuguese parade in Provincetown

Children's games at Hartwell Tavern

Men line up and wait for George Washington at Hartwell Tavern

The desk where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women

Shalinee Kumari: Mithila Painter

Shalinee Kumari is having her first solo show in the US at the Frey Norris Gallery. She is from Bihar, India and paints in the Mithila style. Her interpretations of Krishna and world events are fresh and beautifully conceived.

Sketch Tuesday at 111 Minna

Looked in on Sketch Tuesday at 111 Minna last night. Featured artists were elbow to elbow at the center table. Their works were up for sale later. Loitering on the side tables and sofas were lots of young artists sketching too. Next time I'm going to bring my baseball photos to sketch. Fun!

Audrey's 60th Birthday Bash

We celebrated Audrey's 60th birthday by dancing the salsa at the Cheryl Burke dance studio. It was a lot of fun learning the salsa and marenge. Afterwards we feted at the Axis cafe.

Polyglot: Expressive Media in Bookarts

I went to the Polyglot reception last night at the Gualala Arts Center. The Arts Center was in a wonderful setting, nestle among redwoods. Lots of beautiful and unusual books in this show, made with all kinds of materials. I'll add a slideshow a little later.

Shadowplay #3

I've been participating in a round-robin art project with members of NCWCA with the theme, "Shadowplay." This is my third piece, inspired by Judy Shintani's second piece and South African artist, William Kentridge. It's an altered book incorporating dictionary pages, old postcards from the Uffizi and a Rolling Stones song. What a pleasure to make this piece and to play back all those sexy Stones songs.

ArtSpan Tour des Artistes #1

ArtSpan conducted its first Tour des Artistes for 18 art-loving viewers. They visited six studios in the Mission District and got to learn first-hand how artists work and create. The artists visited were Cynthia Tom, Jennifer Ewing, Clare Kuo, Katja Leibenath, Silvia Poloto and Liz Mamorsky. The viewers were exposed to different artists' media and styles, saw completed works as well as works in progress, listened to artists' presentatons, asked questions and enjoyed a variety of refreshments and drinks.

Southern Exposure Fundraiser at Electric Works

Last night we went to a crowded fundraiser for SoEx at Electric Works. Lots of young, hipster art collectors and interesting pieces up for silent and live auctions. The bidding was spirited and art pieces went quickly.

Hearts of San Francisco: Rebecca Fox

Finally viewed Rebecca Fox's "heart" at Mission Creek Park. I loved her meticulous metal work and the gorgeous patina on this bound and open heart. It's perfectly positioned across the water from San Francisco houseboats.

Third Street Bridge - Memorial Day

The view from AT&T Park: the Third Street bridge being raised for a sailboat

Bergamot Station

Most of the art galleries were closed when I arrived at Bergamot Station on Friday afternoon. I did manage to take in a wonderful photographic exhibition of works by Asako Narahashi. And I took a pic of sidewalk art posted on the outside of the buildings.

Experimental Artists: Photo Alteration Techniques

texturized photo




distressed, hand-tinted photo




bleached photo

I was invited to a workshop with the Experimental Artists' group while I was visiting Pasadena. Avinger N. showed us several techniques to alter photos. Last week I picked up an old movie still from the "free pile" at the recycling center's artists' reception. The old black and white photo was perfect for hand-tinting. I soaked the photograph in water for about 30 seconds to loosen the emulsion, then sanded it lightly. My watercolors took to the photograph easily and I was impressed with how well they blended into the image after drying. Avinger also showed us the effect of liquid Draino and bleach on color photographs. We used photographs printed on photo paper (versus inkjet photopaper) to separate the cyan/red/yellow colors. I used a bleach pen (which is like a gel pen) to draw "steam" on the photograph and left it on for about 30 seconds before washing it off. Left too long, the bleach strips the colors off entirely. It was more difficult to control the color stripping with a pan of liquid bleach - you had to paint areas you wanted to keep by painting gel medium on the photo first. The liquid Draino was very tricky - you dipped the photo in it for a split second, then put it face-down on paper. If done properly, you got a mirror image of the photo without the cyan colors. More often, we managed to smear color onto paper - the images were lost entirely. Another neat technique was using textured surfaces (you can buy textured plates in the scrapbooking section of Target) to create interesting effects on photos. You simply wet the photo, then rub over the texture with a fine-grain sandpaper. I had an old black and white photo I took of a train barn, and it came out fabu.

Pasadena

Avinger N lit in pink light at Don Cuco's


Retro movie theater closed for renovation


A funky bar in an alley in downtown Pasadena

I drove down to LA to participate in an experimental artists' workshop and to speak at a Collage Artists of America meeting. Arrived around 4:30 and Avinger took me to old town to walk around and discover alleys. Very cool architecture (Moorish influences) and narrow alleys. It was a perfect Southern California afternoon with bright skies and balmy air.

MACLA Fundraiser - San Jose

We went to the annual MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americano) fundraiser last night. It was quite an exuberant affair with lots of beautiful artwork donated by latino artists up for auction.

SF Recycling & Disposal Artists-in-Residence

View from the dump of train tracks and fog drifting over the hills



Gallery space - actually the artists' studio cleared away for this show



Outside the studio - a place to hang out


Some works made by previous artists

We went to a reception at the dump on Friday. They have a wonderful artists-in-Residence program there, started by Women's Caucus artist Jo Hanson in 1990. Artists work 40 hours/week for 4 months at the dump to create artwork from recycled materials. At the end of their residency, they get a show and leave their creations there for 12 months. This was my first reception and I was inspired by the materials available. Perhaps I will apply for a residency one of these days.

Water, Water Everywhere

I came home to a river of muddy water flowing down our street. A broken water main has shut down our street and brought the city water department crew to deal with the flow. Lots of drilling of street and shouting of orders outside our window. Not good to lose so much water in a drought year. A water main broke on our street several years ago and flooded our ground floor rooms. A connection to the replacement pipe may have come loose and caused this problem.

SOMA Open Studios

We made our rounds of spring open studios today in the South of Market area. Bryant Street studios had works by Erika Meriaux, who used to work out of Art Explosion. Her new space is spacious and I really like her new works, which are her interpretations of Greek mythology.

We also visited with Mike Kimball, who was mostly showing his prints. Other studios we visited included the Garage Gallery, Second Street Studios and 8th Street Studios. The Second Street Studios are brand new and located near the Bay Bridge freeway entrance. Rather precariously perched but the studio spaces were nice & big.

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.