"Solo Flight"

Artist: Mike Davis
Gallery: White Walls Gallery
Opening Receptiion: Saturday - March 8, 2008
Exhibit Dates: March 8, 2008- April 5, 2008
Address: 835 Larkin St.

The art work that challenges my mind, plants new ways of thinking, and provides me greater insight, tends to be pieces that I would not want to purchase to have hanging in my home.

Maybe such pieces are best in grande galleries. A place everyone can view them and gain internal growth and new insights. Everything has a place and is destined for it.

From the email press release for the show:

Mike will be showcasing 25 new works and some drawings that will be featured in his upcoming book titled "Blind Man's Journey" due out this year. Mike D's new work is about our journey through life, stumbling around in the dark finding our way through life experience and learning from our own mistakes.

His work,surreal and random, is inspired by pre-WWII art, Mannerist art and most things Renaissance. Heavily inspired by early Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch and infamous Lowbrow painter Robert Williams, Mike's work is full of symbolism. Everything has a purpose, everything means something.

"Pictures of Me"

Artist: Autumn de Wilde
Gallery: Queen's Nails Annex
Dates: February 28th - March 2nd
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 28th, from 7 - 11 pm.

Queens Nails Annex, in conjunction with Noise Pop, is pleased to present Pictures of Me, an exhibition of photographs taken by Autumn de Wilde of the late American musician Elliott Smith.

Smith's intensely personal music has left a deep mark on a generation of fans and musicians. Autumn de Wilde worked closely with Smith as a friend and photographer for several years before the singer's untimely death. This showcase of startling and rare images captures an intimate and unseen side of his personality.

Well Done I Say!

Artist: Caleb Sheridan
Gallery: Big Umbrella Studios
Address: Divisadero @ McAllister

Caleb's work takes the cake in this show.





I like it when I can see a concept in a piece and sense that the artist just let themself go with it.





For these pieces, his use colors make the more serious images easier to approach.

Martha Sue Harris @ The Lab

Artist: Marth Sue Harris
Gallery: The Lab
Address: 2948 16th Street

Interior Landscapes


Words from her site:
"Her work brings her endearing and sometimes menacing characters to the plant kingdom. Imagining plant-life that has evolved monstrous traits,






Harris' strange chimerical trees, flowers, and fungi are displayed in their (un)natural habitat. Her deviant vision of botany illustrates relationships and issues within the plant kingdom,




but is equally imbued with insights into human emotion and interaction."

Going Robotic

These wacky little machines are the beginning of something!

Brown Bear Show by 3 Females

Artist: Clare
Gallery: Brown Bear
Address: 289 Divisadero St



Brown Bear had their March opening last Saturday! Great pieces that will make you smile.




These are pieces by Clare, photos taken by her as well.





Here's a bit she said about the show on her blog, "my contribution to the show (34 pieces, i think) is 99% brand new work. seriously. i've been working so hard, i haven't slept in the last three weeks. i see snowflakes in my peripheral vision and i've been having some awesome and mind-blowing conversations with my lamp."

Video Art by Teresa Brazen

Artist: Teresa Brazen
Website: brazenart.com

What Remains

Teresa has a variety of work ranging from painting to video to installation pieces. Her work is best described by her last name, which she defines in her artist's statement:

Brazen: Marked by flagrant and insolent audacity. Impudent; immodest; shameless. Clear and obvious, without any attempt to be hidden.

One Tiny Little Secret

Brunch for Eden Veaudry

Gallery: Million Fishes Arts Collective
Artist: Eden Veaudry
What: Closing brunch & open gallery hours
When: February 23, 2008 12 noon - 4 pm
Address: 2501 Bryant Street @ 23rd




Come eat delicious vegan french toast, orange ginger waffles, and mimosas!

Eden Veaudry is a Victoria, British Columbia based cross-disciplinary artist who creates optimistic art that addresses
her experiences in the daily dream landscape while inspiring the viewer with a greater curiosity and
appreciation of the strange, organic forms that make up the everyday world.

For this exhibition she is interested in carving the landscape down to its roots; whittling it down to a juxtaposition of dreamlike, organic forms and abstracted northern imagery. On her daily walks along the shoreline she collects an assortment of souvenirs, which she carries home to use as models for her crocheted 'drawings'. Driftwood, seashells, seaweed, and stones lose their original connotations as they are blown up, re-modelled out of wool, and imagined as armour to protect the human body.Link

Fecal Face Dot Gallery

Gallery: Fecal Face Dot Gallery
Address: 66 Gough @Market
When: Saturday February 23rd 5-8pm





Yes, they want to celebrate their opening later than 8pm!

After party: The Uptown
17th & Capp St.
9-2am

Big Umbrella Studios Opening Reception

Last Friday was the February opening for Big Umbrella Art Collective. My friend Carin Ward was able to get out and take some photos. Thanks Carin!

Carin in front of a painting for which she was the inspiration.

Two beautiful lady artists making sure everyone's beverage needs are met!

Newly joined artist, Jesse Kulp, chatting with folks.

Look for this awning when you are on Divisadero at Mcallister. There is art inside!

The Prison Project

Artist: Mabel Negrete
Gallery: Intersection for the Arts
Address:446 Valencia St.
Reception: Wednesday February 20, 6-9pm

"This group exhibition takes a broad and varied look at how the California Prison system affects us all on a social, environmental, economic, and human level."

The artist behind this project is Mabel Negrete, a founder of Plain Human. A group of artists who, "create art projects that seek to reconsider and re-imagine the Prison Industrial Complex. It is minimally situated in the domains of environmental installation, performance, graphic art and activism."

She also did "Hunting The Now" and Thinking Of You: MISSION AND VALENCIA.

Interview with Julie Chang

Earlier this month I was able to see Julie's work for the first time at the Headlands Center for the Arts' exhibit Close Calls. There she is exhibiting wallpaper pieces hung from the ceiling in long thin strips. It was great to be able to catch her later for some questions about where this work came from.

"In 1998 I began an aesthetic investigation around culture and feminist identity, which was fueled by personal and academic inquiry. The resulting works, which include large-scale multi-paneled paintings, installations, CAD drawings, and video projections, investigate the mass consumption and commodification of Asian culture in our country. They explore the nature of identity as an imposed character, and my conflict as an Asian American woman, an exoticized desired object."
Julie Chang

Can you tell us about your life growing up as a female Chinese-American in Orange County, California?

For the most part, it was pretty painful. I came of age in a predominantly upper middle class white community. This experience complicated my sense of self and created an often excruciating experience of simultaneously being inside and outside.





At what point did you decide to have your art centered around "issues of identity in relation to race, gender, class, and the commodification of culture?" What is the importance of this to you?

It was less a decision and more a response to my own need to reconcile my confusion, frustration, anger, even ambivalence about these issues. I continue to pay attention to these pieces because they affect who we are and how we relate to one another. I can't think of anything more interesting.





I like the way you hung the show at Bucheon Gallery in January 2006. The long thin pieces, hanging from the ceiling that curl at the ends, remind me of fabric stores I visited as a child with my mother. Is there a significance in displaying them and others this way?

The wallpaper samples operate as an imperfect commodities. The form implies a domestic function and application, while the intrusion of disparate and fractional meanings serve to create a new space for alternative interpretation. In displaying them this way, they start to become the very things about which I am attempting to create a dialogue.





What was your experience in studying at Parsons in France? How did it affect your art work? From there, you moved on to several other well established schools. Through all your education what/who do you do you value the most?

I took an illustration course while I was there, which turned out to be a horrible fit. This helped me get some clarity around why I was drawn to art making in the first place; not as means to an end, but rather to be part of an ongoing conversation. What I value most about my education in general is how it taught me to both question and seek truth - in the same instant.





I am interested in understanding more about your technique in creating each piece. The layers you create compliment each other and give way to textured meanings. Why do you mainly use the medium of acrylic paint?

Primarily for the non-toxic clean-up and quick drying time. I also incorporate commercial house paint and the use of silkscreens, both of which are much easier for me to handle in their water-based form and application.







What is the next goal you have for your art or life?

To integrate them more. Really.

Links:

JulieChangDotCom
hosfeltgallerydotcom

Launching "Your Walls"

It is time for project Your Walls.

I hear a lot of folks talking about art like it is something they feel removed from, something they go to openings to see but find a scene instead, something they pretend to understand but really don't, or something that means nothing to them.

Because I like art and its multiple layers I have started Your Walls.





So here it goes:

I am creating an online gallery of art that is in our houses! Keep in mind that I am referring to art as anything you deem worthy of being called art. Everyone who lives within walls is able to contribute to this project.

Each week, I will post submissions received that Friday.

To contribute to this gallery you can:

1. Take a photograph of a piece of art in your home that is on display. It can be on your wall, on a shelf, hanging from the ceiling....it just has to be on display in a place where someone visiting your home would be able to see it.

2. Send an email to libbynicholaou@gmail.com with subject "Your Walls." Include a digital version of the photograph and the following information:

a. Whether or not you know the artist.
b. The location in your home where the art piece is displayed.

A Party for The Thing

The Thing Quarterly
What: Wrapping party
Where: Chronicle Books, 680 Second St
When: Friday February 15, 2008
4:00-7:00pm

There will be pizza and beer while it lasts, and you can listen to music on an old portable record player - so bring some vinyl of your own to share.




"Described as an object-based quarterly publication by its creators, THE THING seems to have caught on. The affordable art by subscription, now in its third installment with a work by the German-born artist Koto Ezawa, is the brainchild of Bay Area artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan.

The two came up with the idea while they were grad students at UC Berkeley. Interested in the way text can transform an everyday object into something special, they wanted to find a way to explore this idea on a large yet intimate scale at a reasonable cost.

The first installment consisted of plain window shades screenprinted with sayings by performance artist/filmmaker Miranda July. One reads, "If this shade is down I am not who you think I am." THE THINGs roster of artists also includes Trisha Donnelly, Jennifer Allora, Guillermo Calzadilla and Anne Walsh.

Rogan and Herschend envisioned the project as a publication rather than as editioned art. They emphasize the pleasure and mystery of the mail ritual and the dispersed collectivity of their audience rather than the imagined scarcity and exclusivity of the produced objects. Annual subscriptions are $120 per year plus $40 shipping by U.S. Mail."

How Do You Make A Car?

I visited this amazing local store in Buenos Aires called "Objectos." An artist sold cars like the one above. They are made from half of a wooden clothes pin, a lighter top, and other random parts.

Most creations in the store used old hinges, rear view mirrors, and other connecting pieces of now disconnected objects. I declare...they were all beautiful with ingenuity.

Happy Valentine's Day

Artist: Jessica Martin
Location: Healdsburg, CA
Represented by: Hang Art


Jessica is another artist featured in the Headlands "Close Calls 2008" show.




Apart from her colorful biological and cosmic creations, Jessica has a couple of essays that challenge your brain.



She begins, "Layers of Place" with:

"No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it." Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, p 61.

There Is Something About Water

Artist: Juliana Beasley

Looking at these three photos here is my plan for the day.

1. Get all of yesterday's toxins out of my body with a good swimming pool workout.

2. Gather my chlorine-y self and head to the cool natural river.

3. After a sufficient amount of rope swings and rock searching, bike home to the hot tub!

Juliana has many portraits and documentary photos as well. She exhibits mainly in other countries and New York.

I Am So Excited for Gilbert & George!

Artists: Gilbert & George
Gallery: de Young Museum
Address: 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
Dates: February 16, 2008 — May 18, 2008


They are beginning their retrospective exhibit in the United States with San Francisco! Such a great duo of creative minds...opening night will be fun, but taking time when there is space to actually see the images will be even better!




"They began their career together with a tabletop vaudeville performance piece called The Singing Sculpture. Eventually, they began photographing their performance work to extend its reach and range. Over the years, their art has incorporated film and computer graphics.





Gilbert & George is the largest retrospective ever organized by the Tate Modern in London. The de Young Museum is the first venue in a tour that will visit San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Brooklyn."

Excerpts from The Journal

I received entry XXI of the Journal this week and am loving it! Here are some parts that I deem share-worthy.






Interview with Helmut Lang:

Neville Wakefield: "Do you get bored easily?"

Helmut Lang: "No, not really. I never analyze things to the end either. I prefer an intuitive flow. But sometimes I get bored by predictability. I do really enjoy that lot of things are more unknown to me with a different perspective , which is good because knowing too much can hinder you."

From Miranda July's site "Learning To Love You More"



Assignment #55
Photograph a significant outfit.
"What I was wearing when I first began to develop my own interests...and understand my serious vehicle-loving, goldfish-eating, slipper-wearing self."
Noah HD
Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA

Nina Lyons

Artist: Nina Lyons
Gallery: Sculpturesite
Address: 201 Third Street, Suite 102
Dates: January 31- April 5, 2008


Not only is Nina peaceful and comfortable to talk with but her sculptures have an inviting nature as well.





The human and animal in these two pieces have a connectedness that other pieces have with the ground where they are sitting.






The imperfect silhouettes of the bodies gives them their own body language that is not seen or looked for very often. This is my favorite part of Nina's sculptures.

Happy Monday

Hi Fructose is coming out with Volume 7. Bubbly fantastic images ensue!

Brian McCarty's photo

A Taste of An Opening

Artist: Dan Baker
Gallery: Big Umbrella Art Collective
Address: Divisadero at McAllister
Opening Date: Friday February 15, 2007

Dan experiments with time lapse photography, extracting varying intensities of light and movement.




His photographs have a magical element with their colors and at times oddly place objects.




The category "Nocturne" on his site reminds me of recognizable landscapes in Sonoma County.