Engineer's Daughter

show 198

playlist

public service announcement

I'm DJing tomorrow:
9am - noon PST, Sunday, May 29
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

markers of time

I think it was the year I lived in England that I first really noticed how my energy level is intimately linked to how much sunlight I get.  When the sun barely made an arc above the horizon in winter all I wanted to do was huddle under my duvet and not come out until spring.  I thought of this as I was filling out a survey artist Christina Seely handed out before her talk at Headlands Sunday in which she asked questions that probed how we measure days, seasons, time itself.  During her presentation she spoke of how we use light to extend our days and the subsequent impact of both light pollution and energy consumption on the natural world and on our own rhythms.  While at Headlands she has been working on a project using material she has collected in the Arctic, a place where the immediate effects of climate change can be seen in the coat of a fox that has turned white well before the first snow falls.  Raised in Berkeley, Seely knows the dangers of being too preachy in her work, and she exchanged ideas with local Park Ranger Will Elder about how he similarly tries to couch any heavy message in ways that are more palatable to his audience.  Seely and Elder were then joined by park restoration ecologist Maria Alvarez as they led us on a windblown hike down to Rodeo Beach, stopping along the way to talk about species that might disappear if their habitat is compromised and the trade-offs necessary to any conservancy effort.  As Seely reminded us about connecting the macro to the micro, I was newly inspired to pay more attention to my own natural cycles, to spend ever more time under moonlight and starlight, and to not get so down on myself when my energy flags in winter.  What are the cold months for after all if not for hibernation.  And spring always comes again.

See also:

• Headlands Center for the Arts
• Christina Seely

agenda 05.25.2011

Friday, May 27:

• Moira Scar+Big Black Cloud+Sister Fucker+Bitter Fruit at Harm Church
• International Freakout A Gogo W/ Very Be Careful at First Church of the Buzzard

Saturday, May 28:

• Crisis Support Services Healing Hearts 5k Walk/Run for Suicide Prevention at the Lake Merritt Bandstand
• Wave Int'l: Issue 02 at Important Projects
• Ceremony, Iron Lung, Extortion, Punch, Negative Standards at 924 Gilman
• Very Be Careful at Sub-Mission
• Dark Room celebrates Faux KING's big queer birthday at the Hot Spot

Monday, May 30:

• Mount Eerie, NK, Key Losers, Sunny Reaper at Lobot

Tuesday, May 31:

• An Unforeseen Conversation with Tucker Nichols and Daniel Handler at Gallery 16
• Twin Steps / Starskate / Fa Fa Fa / Pregnant / Long Long Long at the East Bay Rats Clubhouse
• New Groove Tuesday with DJs Spaced Ghost and Psychic Hands at Laszlo Bar

Wednesday, June 1:

• "The Paper Conservatory: Plumage and Petals", a Vegan Taxidermy Art Show at Castle in the Air
• Headlands 2011 Benefit Art Auction at Herbst International Exhibition Hall

reactionary

Dress formal: psychotic artist Adolf Wölfli at the New Clinic, Waldau, Germany, 1925

See also:

• Adolf Wölfli Foundation
• Selection of audio files from Wölfli's Gelesen und vertont LP

darkness & light

Do yourself a favor and make an excuse to get out to Headlands Center for the Arts to see the Graduate Fellow group show currently on display.  Every year Headlands selects one graduate each from seven local MFA programs and grants them a year of studio space on-site, and this show gives the Fellows a chance to show how they've been spending their time before they go on to the rest of their art careers.  It's a particularly strong group this year, and I liked how the show is strikingly divided between a dark room and a light room.  My notes:

• Miguel Arzabe - I've been very interested in Arzabe's work since I first saw it in the Berkeley MFA show last year, and he continues to exhibit a genuine depth of range.  His paintings, one of which is pictured here, are extraordinary in their use of landscape and color, and the videos he has in the show in which he plays a ball game against the wind in an old tunnel or repeatedly kicks a soccer ball high in the air as the moon sets behind it are downright hypnotic.  He also holds degrees in mechanical engineering and fluid dynamics, which is just rad.
• Johanna Barron - Another artist who works masterfully in a variety of media, Barron creates work that is full of wit and verve, like her sculpture of a grassy mound with an eternally-rotating section on its top or her night-vision videos of coyotes and foxes and raccoons feasting at an elaborately-laid table in the middle of the Headlands.  She cleverly subverts traditional expectations about space and makes the viewer look twice.
• Luke Damiani - Damiani's handcrafted wooden boats blew me away when I saw them at the 2010 SFSU MFA show, and during his time at Headlands he not only built new benches for the park but used the wood from the old benches to "cast" the shape of a large crack he found in the floor of one of the site's abandoned military bunkers.  The resulting sculpture stands in the "light" gallery, a beautiful thing to behold.
• Chris Fraser - I've been tracking Fraser too after first admiring his explorations of light at Pro Arts earlier this year.  At Headlands he is showing some of his evocative videos of light filmed through trees, etc, as well as a deceptively simple installation that uses one of the building's windows to great effect.
• Jamil Hellu - Hellu pushes the bounds of portrait photography, capturing his subjects in unusual contexts.  His pictures are incredibly vibrant, and he deliberately leaves the viewer to their own devices if they want to fill in their own narrative details.
• Josef Jacques - Another accomplished photographer, Jacques has been taking pictures at Headlands but has also been working on an epic long-term project about his hometown of Merced.  He has several mocked-up books on display as well as some larger prints, and my favorite is the one in which he contrasts vintage photography with his own images.
• Scott Polach - Last alphabetically but definitely not least, Polach has contributed a sculpture to the exhibition that incorporates arrows shot into a nearby tree, cord, and eucalyptus bark (as well as some videos that illuminate his process).  His work often concerns our interactions with nature, and I get the feeling he had plenty to work with in the Headlands.

casual diamond

Sleep Over

Currently native to: Austin, TX

Next local gig: ???

RIYL: Tearist, Modern Witch, Dream Boat

Notes: Current project of Stefanie Franciotti (also of Silver Pines), Sleep Over was originally an all-female trio but is now down to just one woman.  Franciotti is still releasing experimental electronic lo-fi dream pop with a witch house edge to it all on her own now, however, and what she is doing is absolutely gorgeous.  She just played the Independent last week and who knows when she'll be back, but try to catch her live if you can.

Buy: Casual Diamond 7" (Hippos In Tanks) and the Pure Ecstasy / Sleep Over split 7" (Light Lodge)

See also:

show 197

playlist

public service announcement

I'm DJing tomorrow:
9am - noon PST, Sunday, May 22
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

I'll actually be ending around 11:30 so I can get out to Headlands in time for brunch, so tune in early and often.

haute

One of the things Silverman Gallery does best is showcase artists from Europe that would otherwise go unseen in the Bay Area, and the current show of work by Volker Eichelmann and Florian Schmidt is an excellent example.  Both are young artists based out of London for Eichelmann and then Berlin and Vienna for Schmidt, and juxtaposed in the gallery their work stimulates thoughts about collage and construction.  Eichelmann's larger mixed media pieces (one pictured here) are the initial eye-catchers, messy swirls of paint with ragged text and phrases pasted on top.  A series of his smaller collages are also on display, Proposals for Sculptures and Buildings, and they are more precise but with plenty of surreal touches.  A mask fountain spouts water out of its mouth, and a lakeside shopping mall seems to be rocketing out of the landscape.  Those carefully-placed details connect to Schmidt's work, whose "canvases" consist of geometries of color that have not only been painted but literally nailed and stapled together with his processes left exposed to the viewer.  Some of his pieces burst off of the wall and into another dimension, wood and paint forming loose assemblages that seem to be only barely hanging together.  Schmidt's architectural interests are emphasized by two simple structures that have been constructed out of wood just to either side of the front door, through which you have to lean to see more of his art.  There is a nice contrast between fantasy and formalism in the two artists' work, and I was drawn to the undercurrent of idealism in Eichelmann's collages as well as to Schmidt's transparency.

See also:

• Silverman Gallery
• Volker Eichelmann
• Florian Schmidt