Engineer's Daughter: April 2021

Through May 8 - Origin Stories: Expanded Ceramics in the Bay Area at Berkeley Art Center

After over a year of not setting foot inside a gallery or museum this was the perfect show to reinaugurate my art-looking habit. Curated by Tanya Zimbardo and featuring predominantly local artists, many of them interconnected through friendship and collaboration, the exhibition considers the stories that ceramic objects can tell about where they are situated in geography and history. For example Nicki Green uses the literal dismantling of Peter Voulkos's kiln in the Cal Ceramics Studio to look back on Voulkos's legacy from Green's perspective as a contemporary trans woman artist. I also always love seeing excerpts from Stephanie Syjuco's Empire/Other project, in which she investigates the brutal effects of colonialism by digitally merging indigenous objects stolen from Belgium's Congolese colonies with Art Nouveau objects made in Belgium into glitchy, impossible shapes. Meanwhile Erratum from Futurefarmers playfully subverts Marcel Duchamp's concept of the readymade as Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine smash a porcelain toilet and then transform it into bricks, objects that in turn accompany a print edition published at San Francisco Center for the Book that comments on the environmental impact of our waste processing practices. There's a whole lot more in the show and really you should go see it for yourself, and make sure you click the Berkeley Art Center link above for information on the Bay Area Cup Swap that will close out the exhibition. On my way out of the gallery I purchased a beautiful wee cup by María Inés Leal García, made by hand from local clay, and then walked over to Saul's for a mushroom reuben and did some shopping at Books Inc while I waited for my order. It almost felt like one of my pre-pandemic Saturdays.

Other things I liked this week:

Himalaya: A Human History by Ed Douglas. A fascinating and wide-ranging overview of the history of the Himalaya, from ancient times forward, and its many notable figures, natives and visitors alike.
Murder Among the Mormons on Netflix. I often don't need more than three episodes of any true crime series so this was right up my alley. It covers the 1985 bombings in Salt Lake City that involved the Mormon Church and forged documents and a white salamander.
The Nature Conservancy's Earth Day Virtual Summit was just a wealth of inspiration, including a closing talk with Jane Goodall.
I attended a virtual talk by Roots of Peace founder Heidi Kühn this week to celebrate the release of her new memoir Breaking Ground and now I'm very excited to read it.
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Adly Guirgis, as read and performed on Zoom by the Actors' Reading Collective. Incredible local talent making the absolute best of what theater can be on Zoom. I was riveted.
Nomadland by Chloé Zhao. This should win everything tonight. Just saying.
Another Round by Thomas Vinterberg. I'll watch Mads Mikkelsen in anything, like when I stuck with Hannibal long past the point where I should have stopped. I thought Another Round was sad and sweet, but if you're going to watch Mikkelsen in Danish maybe start with Susanne Bier's After the Wedding.
And my first post-vaxx outdoor dining experience was an Impossible burger with fries and a Ghost Town Geisterfaust beer on the patio at Portal. It was divine.