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.