Engineer's Daughter

agenda 08.31.2011

Go forth and conquer this long weekend

Thursday, September 1:

• High Castle US Tour
• Dangerzone vs Echo A Go-Go Dub Dancehall Destruction at The Knockout

Friday, September 2:

• Mutiny Radio Record Swap at Art Murmur
• Bay Area Currents 2011 Artists' Talk and Screening at Pro Arts
• Stellar Corpses, The Sea Wolves, Limnus, Plasma Cannon, & Savage Machine at 924 Gilman
• •Papach/Hsu/Hagan/Trapp•Thomas Carnacki•Jesse Burson•Jim Kaiser•Residue35 at Fingerling's Grotto

Saturday, September 3:

• Reagan Youth, No Thanks, ZBS, Gutwrench, Zero Progress, Guantanamo Dogpile at 924 Gilman
• American Splits, Bitter Fruit, Fat Transfer (a Glampfest benefit) at Revolution Cafe
• Saturdays at the Ruby Room

Sunday, September 4:

• Leyna M. Papach / Jerry Smith / Jim Haynes / Thomas Carnacki at ATA
• Obliteratti at Gamma Space

cicatrize

"It was in London.  A bench stood in a beautiful park.  There was a broad path with plenty of passers-by between this bench and the houses on the other side of the path.  The houses were empty, partly bombed, and the bandstand on the grass behind the bench was empty, too.  Hundreds of chairs stood around the bandstand, and twenty in it.

I took a seat on the bench and looked all round me.  I was not hungry, because I had been given three pieces of bread in the shop of an art dealer I know.  Three pieces of bread, with white cheese.  It was raining, a thunderstorm.  So I interrupted my business of visiting one shop after another and trying to get commissions for portrait painting.  There must be people who would like to have a good portrait of their nice head done by me, but I cannot find them.  There was a thunderstorm, so I sat down on this bench, protected by an immense plane tree.  Behind me there was lots of barbed wire, because there was a war on.  I felt sad about the hopelessness of my situation, and this bench looked quite as hopeless as I was.

Life is sad.  Why did the director of the National Gallery not even want to see me?  He does not know that I belong to the avant-garde in art.  That is my tragedy.  Why did Mr A. tell me that not even the really famous painter, Lieutenant F., could get portrait commissions, and so I should be quite satisfied?  Why did people tell me I should wait till after the war?  I have already been waiting seven months for work, and cannot wait without eating."

--Kurt Schwitters: from a notebook, in Kurt Schwitters in England (1940-1948)

show 210

playlist

residency projects i

Youngsuk Suh

Maude Léonard-Contant

Genevieve Quick

Frances Young

Not only is Kala Art Institute walking distance from my house, they also have a killer residency program and are currently exhibiting work by four of the nine artists selected as their 2010-11 Fellows.  I fell hard for Davis photographer Youngsuk Suh's wildfire images when I first saw them out at Headlands earlier this year, and his latest images in that same serious are absolute revelations, the barest flickers of fire visible through vast obfuscating screens of smoke.  The other artwork in the show is equally mesmerizing, from Maude Léonard-Contant's palm tree shrines to Genevieve Quick's stop-motion Mars lander to Frances Young's collage of local imagery recorded on film and video.  Try to make it to Kala before this half of the show comes down this weekend, but also visit again in September for part two with work by remaining residency artists Elisheva Biernoff, Jennie Ottinger, Renee Gertler, Jessica Ingram, and Zachary Royer Scholz.

See also:

• Kala Art Institute
• Youngsuk Suh
• Maude Léonard-Contant
• Genevieve Quick
• Frances Young

agenda 08.24.2011

My picks for your next week in the Bay Area (and beyond)

Friday, August 26:

• No Babies / Whitman - US Tour
• Sounds Of The Underground: Punk N' Ska Fest- 3 Days at 924 Gilman
• The Men (ny), Milk Music (olympia), Mothercountry Motherfuckers at Revolution Cafe
• The Usuals present Park Bench Collective
• High Castle record release / tour kick off show at Jam City
• International Freakout A Gogo at First Church Of The Buzzard

Saturday, August 27:

• OPENeducation by OPENrestaurant at the Berkeley Art Museum

Sunday, August 28:

• Godwaffle Noise Pancakes at The Lab
• aWay station: An Afternoon with Headlands' Artist Donald Fortescue at Headlands Center for the Arts
• Zoo, Spencer Owen, the Comfort Creatures (...and more?) at Merchant's Saloon

Tuesday, August 30:

• DJ Jesse Luscious- Power Pop, Punk, and so much more at the Mel-O-Dee
• New Groove Tuesday with DJs Spaced Ghost and Psychic Hands at Laszlo Bar SF

Wednesday, August 31:

• Key West @ Mama Buzz Cafe

the unreal world

Mission Voices Summer Students

Mission Voices Summer Students

Mission Voices Summer Students

Every summer Southern Exposure offers a rigorous multi-week art program to local youth, and their culminating exhibition is in the gallery right now.  This year the Mission Voices Summer teens explored the theme of dreams, creating collage, sculpture, and personalized flags.  No slapdash half-assed art here, just some really strong pieces incorporating influences from the likes of Bucky Fuller and Archigram.  Spend some time with your own subconscious in the Dome Home, each panel painted by a different artist, or write a dream on a scrap of paper and clip it to a clothesline at the front of the gallery.  If you guess which one is mine you win a prize.

See also:

• Southern Exposure
• Mission Voices Summer

nubile

Wheatfields at Auvers-sur-Oise, where van Gogh spent the last weeks of his life (photographer unknown)

visitor center

Mary Anne Kluth

Mary Anne Kluth

Mary Anne Kluth

I first spotted Mary Anne Kluth's work at Frey Norris's old space up on Geary a couple years back, so perhaps appropriate that the first show I see in their airy new Yerba Buena Arts District gallery be a solo show by Ms Kluth.  Really more a carefully-plotted installation than a mere show, the exhibition showcases Kluth's sculpture, exquisite watercolors, and large-scale photographs of her own dioramas, all of them relating to her geologist father and his descriptions to her of some of the rocks in his collection.  Equal parts hilarious and inquisitive, this is absolutely not one to miss.

See also:

• Frey Norris Gallery
• Mary Anne Kluth

show 209

playlist

over my dead body

Johanna Barron / Christy Chan / Helen Lee / Cybele Lyle

Amanda Curreri / Llewelynn Fletcher / Hannah Ireland / George Pfau

John-Mark Ikeda / Nicholas Price

Currently at Root Division: the group show Over My Dead Body.  Thirteen groups of artists made individual artworks around the theme of artistic survival, installed them in Root Division, and then are spending this week in the gallery connecting their pieces together in a giant version of the game of Exquisite Corpse.  I was at the opening Saturday night when all of the pieces were unveiled to the general public, and you can go back this coming Saturday evening to see how the artists link everything together.  Of course the artworks are each awesome in their own right, and some of my favorites are pictured above: a De-Programming Chamber designed to undo "years of negative messages surrounding one's choice to pursue art professionally", a cozy corner nook meant to facilitate "personal exchange and intimate communication", and a take-off on Tom Marioni's famous free beer sessions that in this instance includes the artists' homemade brews.

See also:

• Root Division
• Over My Dead Body blog