Engineer's Daughter

notes from the weekend

• The new Into the Brightness exhibit at OMCA is absolutely spectacular, featuring artists from Creative Growth, Creativity Explored, and NIAD. Beautifully curated and highlighting art in every possible medium, the show might be the first time a museum-goer has seen work by developmentally disabled artists and what a wonderful introduction it is. It's also just a burst of pure unadulterated joy, so appreciated after these last tough years.
• Meanwhile over at the de Young I somewhat reluctantly ponied up for Ansel Adams in Our Time but ended up being impressed with how well the exhibition was put together. It offers up the famous landscape photography for sure but also plenty of more intimate and lesser-known work, alongside pieces by contemporary artists that create interesting juxtapositions and conversations. And honestly more than a few of the Adams classics still stopped cynical old me in my tracks they were so beautiful.
• Otherwise I've just been watching Oakland Soul win a lot of games. Hooray for local women's soccer!

notes from the weekend

• Regina Morones is incandescent as the title character in Shotgun Players' Yerma, adapted from the Lorca play and directed by Katja Rivera. On the surface the story is about one woman's too-consuming desire for a baby, but the viewer can also extrapolate outward to conundrums women have faced through the ages and to Lorca's own struggles with his sexuality. Risky, powerful work.
• The new exhibition at Letterform Archive, Subscription to Mischief, is absolutely superb, viewing graffiti through the lens of the '90s zines that both documented it and helped to legitimize it as an art form. I'm always blown away by Letterform's meticulously researched wall texts, and though the East Coast is strongly represented there are many local legends in the show besides.
• Catharine Clark recently extended its gallery space into the rooms next door, and the Jen Bervin exhibition that is there right now is an excellent inaugural use of the space. The centerpiece of the show is the Mississippi River, visualized by the artist in hand-sewn sequins and positioned so that it spills down one entire wall and winds its way across the ceiling, but Bervin's other conceptual work (test tubes containing the ashes of burned journals, "poems" of silver thread) is also quite lovely.

whore's eye view

This is the first SF Sex Worker Films & Arts Festival since we lost Carol Leigh, but her legacy lives on and burns brightly in this year's fest. I was thrilled to attend Kaytlin Bailey's one-woman show Whore's Eye View at the New Parkway last night, and the room was packed with appreciative sex workers, sex educators, and adult film luminaries. Bailey's performance is a ribald and rambunctious romp through 10,000 years of sex worker history, interspersed with her own story. Even though the piece is still in development Bailey hit her main points about the damage patriarchy has done quite strongly indeed, and given the chance I would very happily sit through another hour or five of her hilarious takes on history and culture. Bailey closed the evening with a ritual to reclaim the power of the sacred whore, and I picked up a Carol Leigh/Scarlot Harlot votive on the way out to light at home and keep that energy going myself.

Masking? Sex workers mask because of course they do!

notes from the weekend

• I took myself on an SF art tour on Saturday that started at SFMOMA with Janet Cardiff's 2023 reworking of her immersive video walk The Telephone Call, which I first experienced at the museum in 2001 and remains one of my favorite artworks of all time. I was also there to see the Anna Sew Hoy exhibit after following her work for years, and it is maximalist in the best possible way.
• After my traditional downtown lunch of a veggie Reuben at Wise Sons, I plunged into the delightfully demented mind of Mika Rottenberg at the CJM, where the entire second floor is devoted to her installations and video work. Annie Albagli also has a beautiful installation on the main floor featuring Headlands footage used to great effect.
• While I was in the neighborhood I peeked in on Ramekon O'Arwisters's show at MoAD, in which recent sculptures are paired with some of his black-and-white photography. The work he's been doing since pandemic has really been exploding his own boundaries, and it's wonderful to see.
• Then I was off to Fort Mason for an exhibit about the SF Opera in honor of its 100th season at the Museo Italo Americano, which relates the opera company's history through the lens of the city's Italian immigrants and includes a wealth of fascinating details. Don't miss the QR codes that allow for a multimedia experience in the galleries too.
• Next door at Haines their current Elemental show features the work of four West Coast photographers who use a variety of unusual techniques to create their images and who actively engage with nature and landscape. Meghann Riepenhoff's dynamic cyanotypes really grabbed me in particular, swirling abstractions created by letting her materials directly interact with the environment.
• Last but definitely not least: I loved SF Camerawork's annual juried exhibition Forecast 2023 and especially the series of prints by Shao-Feng Hsu who somehow photographed his own breath underwater as it floated up to the surface, while swimming at night. I'm still thinking about those photos.

show 471

playlist

show 470

playlist

points of origin

New Century Chamber Orchestra is another one of our many local gems, a conductor-free ensemble that performs work that is not your stereotypical classical-for-strings fare. Last night's "Points of Origin" program at First Church in Berkeley included a reworking of the U.S. national anthem by contemporary American composer Jessie Montgomery, a John Williams soundtrack snippet from Lincoln, and two pieces by British composers Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams that paid tribute to their respective musical heritages. The final composition Stranger by Nico Muhly was the most phenomenal though, as it incorporated primary texts about immigration on a day when the topic was extremely top-of-mind. Masterfully sung by tenor Nicholas Phan, the libretto centers around a verse from Leviticus that most right-wing Christians seem to willfully forget: "The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Masking? The event email said it was still required but only about 30% of the audience were masked.

man with a movie camera

I'm back from a week soaking up the glories of Copenhagen (and I didn't get sick!) but still dreaming of faraway places. Luckily I got to do a little vicarious travel at the New Parkway last night thanks to their screening of Dziga Vertov's wondrous 1929 experimental documentary Man with a Movie Camera. Justin Sherburn of Montopolis is currently touring his live soundtrack for the film to indie theaters as a fundraiser for Ukraine war relief, and I got a little choked up as he played the Ukrainian national anthem over Vertov's explanatory opening credits. Man with a Movie Camera is one of my favorite silents for how modern it still looks today and for those shots of Vertov jauntily schlepping his camera all over Kyiv and Odesa, and Sherburn's synthy score was the perfect accompaniment to Vertov's images, emphasizing both the joy and the tenderness of this portrait of daily urban life almost a century ago.

Masking? Not required but about half-and-half, which after zero-masking Denmark was pretty nice to see.

notes from the weekend

• My weekend started a little early thanks to my friend Jill Miller and her badass Ariel Stinks project, which was a featured installation Thursday night at Art Market SF. I spun records while attendees brought in Ariel Pink album covers to swap with Jill's own creations, and then there was a very cathartic moment where everyone gathered around and she shredded the originals. Don't steal other people's art, yo.
• The Museum of Craft and Design is one of the Bay Area's real gems, and their new exhibition Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life is incredible. Featuring the work of two dozen local artists and their individual stories, the show is less about what defines a Bay Area artist than about highlighting how our vibrant community shaped the practice of these particular artists, even if they had to leave. As a related sidenote: Let's put "Crafts" back into CCA's name please.
• I was also impressed with the strength of the work at the new juried show at Bedford Gallery About Face. Themed around interpretations of contemporary portraiture, I was most interested in the pieces that played with the boundaries of the form or utilized unusual materials. It's always smart to include a few of Warhol's mesmerizing screen tests too.

notes from the weekend

• The Chron didn't like it but I thought Josh Costello's adaptation of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano at Aurora was a wonderful, with particularly affecting performances from local faves William Thomas Hodgson as Cyrano and Leontyne Mbele-Mbong as Roxane. Costume designer Maggie Whitaker outdid herself too, cleverly integrating African fabrics and period frippery into her designs.
• ICA San José is just bursting with awesome exhibitions right now, beautifully curated to lead a visitor from Masako Miki's neon outside the gallery, to Susan Blaustein's sensuous paintings in the room just inside the front doors, to Bridget-Riley-themed work in the main galleries by Sarah Hotchkiss, Lordy Rodriguez, and Susie Taylor, to Rudy Lemcke's installation about the transit of Venus in the projection room, to Rhonda Holberton's melding of the digital and the physical in the back room.
• And while I was in town I ambled on down to the San José Museum of Art because Sadie Barnette has a new exhibition there and I always love to see her glitter-spackled meditations on family and community. I was also excited to see the Kelly Akashi show again, which is so deliciously uncomfortable, and to marvel again at her use of materials.
• I leapt at the opportunity to see NEA Jazz Master saxophonist David Liebman live at the California Jazz Conservatory Saturday night, accompanied by Liberty Ellman on guitar, Jeff Denson on bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. He started with Cole Porter and ended with John Coltrane, and Mike Zilber jumped on stage to help out on his own sax for a couple numbers too.
• Two period plays in one weekend! Under Patrick Dooley's direction at Shotgun, Pierre de Marivaux's The Triumph of Love crackles with wit and humor, even if the audience is not quite sure how to feel about the duplicity of the main character at the end. She wins at the game of love, but at what cost to those around her? Very real.
• Last but definitely not least, Mick LaSalle wrote a tribute to my friend Steve Salmons that had me wiping away fresh tears. I've been trying to get my own words together about how much Steve meant to me but I'm not quite there yet, and I really appreciate what Mick was able to capture about what an amazing individual he was.