Engineer's Daughter

matokie mix 06.27.21

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matokie mix 06.20.21

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remembrance of things paper

Through July 5 - Remembrance of Things Paper at Round Weather

Round Weather has been open since December in a beautiful space in an old Oakland bottle factory, and this week I swung by for a visit to the current group show and just loved everything I saw. Gallery director Chris Kerr not only has a thoughtful eye for art that addresses sustainability and the current climate catastrophe, but he and the gallery's Advisory Council are running the space as a nonprofit and are sending money from sales to environmental organizations. The current exhibition is themed around a specific material, paper, with its associations with recycling and just the sheer pleasure of its many textures and forms. Daniela Naomi Molnar, pictured above, uses collected rainwater, dew, and earth pigments to create her striking watercolors which in turn depict mankind's effects on landscape, while Michelle Yi Martin's mesmerizing woven pieces similarly take on added meaning when you learn she works with exclusively found materials. The motif of transforming one person's trash into new treasure continues in Ajit Chauhan's practice, where he erases the edges of discarded postcards into forms of his choosing. And in one of those wonderful moments of Oakland serendipity, while I was at Round Weather I glimpsed a piece by Miguel Arzabe resting under the stairs from a previous show, which reminded me I needed to see his current solo exhibition at Johansson Projects so I went yesterday and it is super fantastic.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Bad Side of Books: Selected Essays by D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence can certainly be a frustrating and problematic writer, but I admire his endless curiosity and his inquisitive way of working out the world around him. He'll find a particular turn of phrase that just lights up your brain, whether he's describing the New Mexico landscape, or birdsong, or metaphysics, or a scammer acquaintance. Geoff Dyer edited this collection and his introduction is top-notch too.
• Mädchen in Uniform directed by Leontine Sagan. I love watching queer film during Pride month and this is a classic, depicting forbidden love between a student and teacher at a boarding school in Germany between the world wars. Also worth watching just for the Expressionist close-ups.
• This past week was Kronos Festival week, and I spent a good part of the day last Sunday wandering around Golden Gate Park with Ellen Reid's wondrous Soundwalk in my ears, which had premiered as part of the festival. The rest of the programming is available on YouTube through August 31, and the Soundwalk is sticking around for a few years.
• Another fun way to celebrate Pride is Canela's to-go rainbow picnic bag filled with Spanish chips and candy and the most delicious sangria. Highly recommended.
• I also sampled this year's Frameline festival at home this week in the form of Chen Hung-i & Muni Wei’s As We Like It, a giddy gender-bent reimagining of Shakespeare that had me grinning ear-to-ear throughout. The whole Focus on Taiwan program is very cool too.
• Megablack SF threw one heck of a Juneteenth party at the Ferry Building farmers market yesterday, and I walked away with bundt cakes from Minnie Bell's Soul Movement, various puddings from Yes Pudding, and sprinkle cookies from A Girl Named Pinky. All the sweets, in other words.
• MoAD also had great Juneteenth programming all day, including a panel discussion in conjunction with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History that featured Annette Gordon-Reed, Jelani Cobb, Imani Perry, and Kevin Young.
• And to celebrate Summer Solstice, I recommend this virtual saunter on Mount Diablo courtesy of Greenbelt Alliance.

Programming note: I'm taking some time off this week to go run around Los Angeles and see art and friends in SoCal, my first getaway out of town since pandemic. I'll be back in two Sundays.

matokie mix 06.13.21

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the violets in the mountains have broken the rocks, part two

Edited to add: The show has been extended through the end of June! Go see it!

Through June 12 - The Violets in the Mountains Have Broken the Rocks, Part Two at Gallery 16

I'm so glad I got to see this group show before it closed, especially because it's looking like Gallery 16 won't be much longer in the SOMA space where I've attended so many exhibitions and performances. But while they're still there, they're going to keep putting on great shows. With a loose theme of resilience some of the artworks speak directly to the pandemic, as with Tucker Nichols's incredible free-associative wall installation, while in other cases it's just interesting to see what artists were able to create in the last year. Cliff Hengst's series of intimate watercolors are real beauties, and they seemed to be having a conversation with Wayne Smith's ink-on-hardwood sculptures from across the room. Basically this exhibition felt like a wonderful conversational gathering with old friends and new. While I was in the city I also had a lovely bayside bento from Delica in the Ferry Building and took in the gorgeous Diane Arbus show at Fraenkel Gallery curated by Carrie Mae Weems. Just a fantastic day all around.

Other things I liked this week:

• Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization by Joe Scarborough. With a title (and an author) like that I was of course reading this book with a fairly critical eye, but though Scarborough is no historian this is an absorbing account of a part of American history I knew little about. I just could have done without the partisan potshots, and the alarming amount of typos.
• I thought Marin Theatre Company did an excellent job with Denmo Ibrahim's online play Brilliant Mind, a mix of live Zoom and pre-taped scenes and with the added fun of receiving texts during the action from one of the characters. I just really miss seeing Ibrahim onstage in front of me.
• SF DocFest is doing a few screenings at the Roxie this year but the whole thing is also virtual, so I chose to watch Keeper of the Fire about local poet and activist Alejandro Murguia from the comfort of my kitchen table. This is one of those festivals where every film is a gem.
• In one of the more brilliant pandemic adaptations, Robert Moses' KIN are currently rehearsing and performing a new piece called The Vital Heart of S.F. behind the windows of the old Gap store on Market for passers-by to observe at their leisure. I caught just a snippet of the dancers at work and it was divine.
• The Wattis just launched a new book called Why are they so afraid of the lotus? and to celebrate the occasion Astria Suparak gave a Zoom talk called Asian Futures, without Asians that was absolute fire.
• I caught another incredible performance from the ODC Theater Festival, this time Unheard: Deaf Refugees in America by Antoine Hunter (Purple Fire Crow).
• Until I can see them again in person, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater program from Cal Performances At Home was completely transcendent.
• And Tanya Diamond and Ahiga Snyder of Pathways for Wildlife taught me a ton about wildlife tracking in the first part of a virtual program presented by Peninsula Open Space Trust. Watch their presentation on YouTube and get ready for part two on July 9.

matokie mix 06.06.21

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made lands

Through June 26 - Minoosh Zomorodinia: Made Lands at Local Language

I'm very happy that Oakland creative studio and fabrication shop Local Language was able to restart their artist-in-residence program earlier this spring, and the current show by Minoosh Zomorodinia is a real beauty. Zomorodinia began mapping her walks in 2016 when the xenophobic new administration unsettled her visa status. She started transforming the data points on her phone into physical objects both to lay claim to her adopted land and to reference the legacy of colonization in the United States in general and in California in particular. In this exhibition Zomorodinia continues to use those paths to investigate how the process of capturing memories on our digital devices affects our recall of past events, as in the My Ziggurat series in which she builds up layers like the ancient architecture from her Persian heritage and paints the resulting structures with gold leaf as if a monument to memory itself. And while you're in the neighborhood I recommend grabbing a bite at Forage Kitchen across the street and then heading down to West Grand to see Sheila Ghidini's deconstructed/reconstructed furniture at Gearbox Galley, another smart take on the concept of reassembly.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past by Meave Leakey and Samira Leakey. Meave Leakey is foremost a brilliant paleontologist, and she also has a remarkable grasp of sociology, zoology, chemistry, genetics, climate science...the list goes on and on. I loved hearing the stories about her important discoveries in Africa, and she also begins and ends with some strong words about the survival of our species if we don't change our current self-destructive ways.
• Hooligan Sparrow by Nanfu Wang. This documentary about Chinese human rights activist Ye Haiyan is a portrait in courage both of the feminists in China defying their government to demand change, and of the filmmaker herself, who had to stay one step ahead of the police and smuggle her footage out of China.
• For Memorial Day Sunday I took public transit over to the city, picked up cheese-on-a-stick and boba tea from Stix, and had a picnic lunch by a pond in Stern Grove. Highly recommended.
• Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America by Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner. I attended a virtual talk with Meehan and Turner and their University of Chicago Press editor Joseph Calamia on Wednesday and was inspired to immediately buy their book. The talk should be up on the Press's YouTube channel soon.
• To celebrate Pride Month Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society hosted a wonderful talk Wednesday evening with Jennifer Rycenga, one of the founders of Queer Birders of North America. Queer Birds: Community Inclusion, Community Building, and Community Science is available here.
• This year's ODC Theater Festival is all-virtual and features an impressive line-up of artists who showcase how good dance can look on film. I caught the opening night program on Thursday and especially loved the short pieces by the ODC Theater Opportunity Fund Artists.
• In honor of Black Birders Week this last week I recommend seeking out Annie Kaempfer's documentary The Falconer about Rodney Scotts's mission to provide access to nature for his community.
• Yesterday I kidnapped my friend Zach and headed off to McLaren Park for Psychopomp, the new outdoor theater walk from We Players specifically formulated for pandemic times. It was a magical and transcendent experience and then we went and outdoor dined at Red Window and that was most excellent too.