Engineer's Daughter

design by time

Through August 15 - Design by Time at the Museum of Craft and Design

The Museum of Craft and Design is a genuine city gem out in the Dogpatch, and their current group show Design by Time is a fascinating look at some cutting-edge work. Organized around the idea of time at a point in history when many people have lost a grip on temporal reality, the exhibition displays items from 8 countries and a 22 different artists and design collaboratives, with both established and emerging names represented. I was smitten with Swedish studio Front's reimagining of a Royal Delft vase that seemed to perform duration, pictured above, while nearby Sebastian Brajkovic's Lathe V Chair piece resembled classic French furniture that had been melted sideways in a sly visualization of history. Some objects also directly address how time acts on materials, as with the tiles from London studio Glithero gorgeously imprinted with cyanotypes of urban weeds. The museum also has a fantastic gift shop, and while you're in the neighborhood I further recommend brunching at Piccino, seeing Liam Everett's glorious show at Altman Siegel in which he gives me real Richter vibes, and picking up some treats from Biscuit Bender for the road.

Other things I liked this week:

• Sketches of the Criminal World: Further Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov. The second volume of Shamalov's fiction in which he processes his 15 years in the Gulag, this is grim but essential reading. Human nature doesn't come out looking all that great, and if you're a soft heart like me just skip any story involving an animal.
• 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything on Apple TV+. For a music obsessive this 8-part series is pure catnip, with the usual suspects present but also some nice deep dives into more unusual corners of sound. The vintage footage is incredible, and I appreciated the historical context throughout as well. 
• My YouTube rec for this week is the channel for the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, with virtual hikes and nature programs galore.
• black midi hosted a listening party for their new album Cavalcade on Wednesday and it was super rad. RIYL high energy post punk math rock.
• I also spent three days Zooming into as much as I could of the International Contemporary Ensemble's Afro-Diasporic Opera Forum, including screenings of and reflections on three operas that the Ensemble has produced: George Lewis’s Afterword, Tyshawn Sorey’s Perle Noire: Meditations For Joséphine Baker, and Pauline Oliveros & IONE’s The Nubian Word For Flowers: A Phantom Opera. The forum ended with a screening of Lisa E. Harris' recent digital opera Cry Of The Third Eye and the whole thing was just wall-to-wall inspiration.
• The virtual Legacy Film Festival on Aging offers a wealth of perspectives on the latter years of our lives, and I chose the Fun & Games program with Ruedi Gerber's Seniors Rocking to honor the passing of goddess Anna Halprin this week and Lance Oppenheim's Some Kind of Heaven about four residents of The Villages in Florida.
• And then yesterday I saw a film! In a theater! It was Christian Petzold's mesmerizing Undine as part of the 25th Berlin and Beyond Film Festival and oh it was wonderful.

matokie mix 05.23.21

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contact traces

Through June 6 - Contact Traces at The Wattis Institute

I always love to see what the graduates of CCA's Curatorial Practice program come up with for their culminating exhibition, and this year they have themed the show around care and directly address the traumas of the pandemic. Featuring works by Derya Akay, Lenka Clayton, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ilana Harris-Babou, and Jenny Kendler, Contact Traces questions how we take care of our selves, our community, our planet. Lenka Clayton's brilliant project 63 Objects Taken from My Son's Mouth, from which the above photograph is taken, highlights both a simple act of protection and also the constant observation (and quick reflexes) that motherhood requires. LaToya Ruby Frazier and Ilana Harris-Babou examine contemporary self-care practices in their pieces, and Jenny Kendler's work illustrates the helplessness one individual might feel against looming climate catastrophe. Meanwhile Derya Akay's joyful stand outside the gallery invites any and all passers-by to help themselves to tea and coffee, fresh fruit and flowers. The collected artworks point to systems that were already unsustainable before the pandemic, and invite us to imagine a more interconnected and just way forward. While you're in the Wattis neighborhood I also highly recommend a stop at Dumpling Time, and the current shows at Hosfelt Gallery featuring a small tribute to our beloved William T. Wiley as well as Isabella Kirkland's extraordinary paintings of Earth's biodiversity and Patricia Piccinini's sculptures and video depicting life considerably more unnatural.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams by David S. Brown. I enjoyed this less for the biography of Henry Adams himself, who was a little too racist, elitist, and cynical for my tastes, than for the keenly observed history of the times Adams lived through in American and world history. Brown is an excellent writer and really keeps things moving too.
• The House Is Black by Forough Farrokhzad. A revelatory 1963 short film shot documentary-style in a leper colony, Farrokhzad mixes in her own poetry as well as excerpts from world literature to paint an unflinching and deeply human portrait of people isolated from society due to their disease.
• The UC Botanical Garden's YouTube channel, where you can explore the garden from the comfort of your home, has been a balm during the last year. Hoping to visit in person soon too!
• I feasted on many vegan goodies from Sarap Shop and Mackbox and Ube Mami last Sunday at the Oh My Gulay festival and just enjoyed being out and about in the lovely environs of Kapwa Gardens.
• The virtual option for the current Smuin al Fresco season is an excellent alternative for those of us who can't attend the live events, and I very much enjoyed the Pod Peony program last Sunday.
• The Marsh continues to knock it out of the park with their online programming too, with the premiere last night of Candace Johnson's new musical series about the art songs of Black composers, Music to My Ears: Hearing Adolphus Hailstork. She's performing it again tonight if you happen to read this in time, otherwise I'm very much looking forward to future episodes.  

matokie mix 05.16.21

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regarding extinction

Through June 26 - Kara Maria: Regarding Extinction at Anglim/Trimble

Stepping into a gallery of Kara Maria's paintings is pure pop joy, with vibrant splashes of color and psychedelic shapes twisting this way and that. Once you get closer you realize each piece contains wildlife too, a threatened creature calmly situated in its unnatural environment. The message about our current climate catastrophe and our responsibility as humans is crystal clear, but Maria also calls attention to the beauty and diversity of the animals on our planet. We'd better do our best to get our act together, and quickly. Also don't miss the Jerome Caja show concurrently at Anglim/Trimble, featuring a fantastic array of Caja's work and Anna van der Meulen's moving photographs of this local soul who is still very much missed. And then grab a biscuit (or five) at Biscuit Bender before stepping over to Slash's beautiful new space to see the Arboreal tree-themed group exhibition curated by Juana Berrío.

Other things I liked this week:

• A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future by Perri Klass. Despite the grim discussions of childhood mortality, I thoroughly enjoyed this accessible look at how we've managed to subdue a host of deadly diseases over the past century. Klass also celebrates a number of women and people of color who were new names to me, and it was very cool to learn about them.
• Butter on the Latch, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, Flames, and shorts Squeezebox, Me the Terrible, First Day Out, The Mask Task, all by Josephine Decker. I love it when the Criterion Channel allows me to do a deep dive into a artist's body of work, in this case the director of Shirley and Madeline's Madeline. Decker's films are intense and not always easy to watch but entrancing all the same, especially in the way she incorporates music. 
• This talk Gardening for Water, Fire, and Habitat from the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, if you are already as freaked out about the drought as I am.
• And last night I spent some hugely therapeutic time on Zoom(!) laughing along with the Mental Health Comedy Hour and special guests Margaret Cho and Guy Branum.

matokie mix 05.09.21

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here we go

Through May 22 - Clare Rojas: Here We Go at Jessica Silverman

Friday I took the day off work and rode BART for the first time in over a year into the city to run a couple errands and to see this magnificent Clare Rojas show in Jessica Silverman's beautiful new Chinatown gallery space. I have been following Rojas's work for many many years (I also adore her musical alter ego Peggy Honeywell), and the pieces in this solo show were all created in 2020 and 2021. On one level it was just wonderful to see such a creative outpouring as Rojas continues to be influenced by both folk art and abstraction (and to see so many birds in these pieces!), and then I also found myself looking for traces of the pandemic in her work. One large painting called Goddess of the Void depicts a woman kneeling below a massive looming darkness, and it is ambiguous whether she and the field of flowers surrounding her are being sucked into the black hole, or if they are resisting it, or if she is summoning it.

Other things I liked this week:

• Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz. I had really enjoyed Maddow's podcast by the same name about Spiro Agnew, and this book expands on her already-awesome reporting with some added details and characters. A fascinating and timely read.
• Yellow Fever by Ng’endo Mukii. The Kenyan filmmaker packs a ton into this mesmerizing short, utilizing movement, animation, and creative editing to explore the impact of The West on African perceptions of beauty.
• During pandemic I've loved popping in on lectures by the various chapters of the California Native Plant Society, and this one From Trails to Gardens from the Santa Clara Valley chapter was particularly inspiring. More native plant gardening means more places for birds and pollinators to hang out!
• And then the Yerba Buena chapter hosted an amazing presentation about coyotes in the Presidio, which will hopefully be available soon on their YouTube channel. I grew up with coyotes literally in my backyard in Southern California and I think they're the absolute greatest, and I'm happy that locals up here are learning how to responsibly coexist with them.
• Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast just published her first book, Crying in H Mart, and watching Bowen Yang interview her virtually for City Arts & Lectures was pure delight. "I get to talk to the iceberg!"
• Then last night I went to the opera at the drive-in! SF Opera is staging Rossini's The Barber of Seville live under the stars at the Marin Center, and I bought a ticket to the simulcast lot and brought sweets from Miette and swayed along to my favorite parts and had a total blast.
• Local restaurant of the week: Guru Curry House. All the curries.

travel log

Through May 30 - Ed Ruscha: Travel Log at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art

Continuing to ease back into seeing art and into society in general, my bestie and I took a chill day trip to Sonoma yesterday to grab outdoor tacos at El Molino Central and see the Ed Ruscha show at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. It's a small exhibition but it's well-curated, featuring lithographs of his word paintings, small black-and-white photographs from his road trips (including the famous Standard gas station picture that spawned many subsequent works), and my fave artist book Every Building on the Sunset Strip. The show also includes an installation of prints from an edition of On the Road that Ruscha illustrated with a variety of photos, both found and original, and his images are way more interesting than Kerouac's words. Yeah I said it.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams. A charming fictional tale of two London lexicographers, one in Victorian times and one in the present day, one who invents fake words and one who is tasked with finding them. Recommended if you like the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
• Señorita and Apparition by Isabel Sandoval. Grateful to the Criterion Channel for showcasing two earlier films by this trans Filipina director of Lingua Franca. “I’m drawn to women with secrets,” says Sandoval.
• Part 1 of Countercoup: A Life, Redux at The Marsh. Performed live on Zoom by Mark McGoldrick, Countercoup tells McGoldrick's own compelling story of his journey from troubled youngster through traumatic injury and disability to his current position as public defender. So happy that The Marsh has kept programming going throughout the pandemic too.