Engineer's Daughter

matokie mix 07.25.21

mix

dance desert

Through August 21 - Cybele Lyle: Dance Desert at Et al. etc.

I continue to be in awe of artists who were able to create work during pandemic, and to see how Cybele Lyle synthesized the experience and extended her ongoing practice in the work currently on view at Et al. is hugely inspiring. Painted fabric is thumbtacked to wood panels to create portals that suggest a view to the outside (most pieces are alternately titled Desert Windows or Desert Walls), while wood poles propped precariously against the work on the walls imply a delicate architectural/mental stability. I loved the interaction between the inner and outer world in the detail above, and how the colors taken from nature are punctuated by pops of contrasting hues and patterns. In her artist statement Lyle speaks of how "this idea of breaking apart walls and windows and indoors from outdoors changed in meaning for me this past year," and for all of us who were experiencing similar shifts in perception this work resonates most strongly. Meanwhile, on this same art expedition, next door at Ratio 3 I stood rapt before the "aggregate" weavings Ruth Laskey created earlier this year, and then dropped in at Jessica Silverman to take in a multi-decade overview of Catherine Wagner's brilliant, subversive photographs.

Other things I liked this week:

• Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation by Reid Mitenbuler. A highly entertaining and well-written overview of the early days of cartoons, chock full of oversize personalities and fascinating details. I only wish there had been more women and POC in the book, but I also wish that of the industry.
• Clockwatchers by Jill Sprecher. This film came and went so quickly in the '90s that I never caught it at the time, but it absolutely deserves wider recognition for its ruthless and artful skewering of office contractor drudgery from the perspective of a quartet of women.
• Saved By Nature along with the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority hosted a wonderful talk this week about how awesome bats are and how we can help local bats thrive. Not currently posted on their video page but hopefully soon!
• Last Sunday I had a lovely day out in the city with lunch at the SSP Beer Hall and then a return to my beloved Roxie to see Linda and the Mockingbirds in person, with many of the local families featured in the documentary in attendance.
• That said, with the current virus surge I'm probably going to stick to streaming at home again now, and enjoyed checking out the twisty-turny doc Misha and the Wolves for the SF Jewish Film Festival's virtual opening night.
• The SF Mime Troupe is also committed to keeping everyone safe this summer and have produced a series of weekly radio plays that I highly recommend if you appreciate agitprop that makes you laugh out loud. I'll be eagerly awaiting each new installment.

matokie mix 07.18.21

mix

the black index

Through August 14 - The Black Index at Palo Alto Art Center

After outdoor lunch with my folks in Redwood Shores yesterday I schlepped a little further down the Peninsula to the always-lovely Palo Alto Art Center to see this small but powerful exhibition curated by Bridget R. Cooks and organized around the theme of Black self-representation. Lava Thomas's renderings of mugshots from the Montgomery Bus Boycott (pictured above: Alberta J. James) take my breath away every time I see them, and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle's 2020 project The Evanesced: The Untouchables is equally moving, composed of 100 gorgeous ink and watercolor drawings of Black women meant to bring attention to those who have been abused, murdered, and disappeared. Hinkle wants viewers "to think about how we are all agents in erasure, and we all have a role that we play," and the exhibition at large presents a strong statement about anti-colonialism even as it maintains attentive to nuance and complexity. Also currently in Palo Alto: the excellent Resonance show at Qualia gallery, featuring artists who merge the visual and the aural in their work.

Other things I liked this week:

• Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy by Adam Jentleson. A very readable history of the filibuster and an extremely strong case for why it needs to be abolished that just added to the pile of rage that's going to sustain me all the way through next year's midterms. Stay angry, my friends.
• The Witches of the Orient by Julien Faraut. I loved Faraut's John McEnroe documentary and he uses similar experimental techniques here to tell the compelling story of the Japanese women's volleyball team that won the gold in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Highly recommended if you're ambivalent about this year's competition but are in the mood to watch some amazing women kick ass.
• Headlands held an "Open House Lite" last Sunday, their first in-person event since lockdown, and while I'm still feeling tentative about the future (and downright gutted about the loss of the Affiliate program) it was wonderful to be back and to see and hear inspiring work and to eat Chef Damon's mac and cheese.
• SF's Opera Parallèle has teamed up with the Dallas Opera to produce Everest, an inventive online graphic novel opera that I thoroughly enjoyed despite its intense subject matter. Very clever use of comic book conventions and you just have to abandon any disbelief (similar to any musical theater experience to be honest) that the characters are singing without oxygen on the top of Everest.

matokie mix 07.11.21

mix

out of site

Through August 14 - Brett Goodroad at Cushion Works

It was pure delight to visit the gallery that Jordan Stein oversees at Cushion Works for the first time yesterday, and yes it is directly above the city's best cushion company, and yes I really have to get my couch cushions restuffed after a year+ of pandemic. I first saw Brett Goodroad's work when he was the Tournesol recipient at Headlands and was happy to see his paintings are as dreamy as they ever were, loosely abstract with suggestions of figuration and landscape that shift with the viewer's proximity. Some of his canvases are quite large now too, and one of my favorite pieces was a deconstructed still life that took up almost an entire wall. Goodroad utilizes impressive technique, building up the paint here and allowing the canvas show through there, and though his work is reminiscent of Romantic era paintings it is at the same time completely contemporary. And spending some time with a gallery full of his work almost feels like a meditation.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington. While I was familiar with excerpts from this marvelously surreal novel thanks to the interpretations Anne Walsh and Moira Roth (RIP) performed several years back, I'd never sat down and read the whole thing and I am so glad I did and in fact I am now planning to reread it at least once a decade as I continue to age into my own eccentric womanhood.
• Freak Orlando by Ulrike Ottinger. An assault on the senses in the best possible way, Ottinger's take on the Virginia Woolf classic has almost no correlation to the later Sally Potter version but instead you get Magdalena Montezuma and Delphine Seyrig cavorting through a succession of bizarre scenarios both historical and mythological. My jaw was hanging open the entire length of the film and I loved it.
• I spent a lovely Independence Day roaming the newly reopened galleries and the newly relandscaped gardens of the Oakland Museum, and almost the most exciting part was my "NorCal NOLA" picnic box from Tanya Holland's new museum café Town Fare.
• Lake Merritt's Rotary Nature Center has been doing wonderful virtual "lakeside chats" throughout the pandemic about the lake's flora and fauna, viewable on their website here.
• Outdoor walking plays are one of my favorite things right now while I work up to being ready to sit in a theater regularly again, and Eye Zen's Out of Site: Haight-Ashbury is particularly special. Actor Tina D'Elia fully embodies two SF icons, entrepreneur Peggy Caserta and Hibiscus of the Cockettes, in and around their old haunts in the Haight, and the show/tour includes a heap of other queer history besides.

seeing sound

Through July 24 - Seeing Sound at Kadist

Slowly but surely I'm making it back to all my fave Bay Area spaces, and it was wonderful to spend some quality audio/visual time yesterday with the three artists curated by Barbara London for this show. I was mesmerized by Samson Young's video, pictured above, showing lion dancers in a traditional performance without the musical accompaniment, the better to hear the sounds of footsteps and breath that are usually buried under drums and cymbals. In a nearby room Marina Rosenfeld's installation of audio equipment accoutrements rewards the patient listener with brief, evocative sounds that seem to boomerang around the small gallery. And you might mistake Aura Satz's piece as a waiting area as you enter Kadist, but instead the comfy chairs are an invitation to sit and dial in to an incredible conversation between Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Spiegel as they riff on the concept of drone. This is an exhibition you experience with your whole body, and it engages in a way I desperately missed during pandemic. While I was out and about I also swung by the excellent Uplift / Heavy Lift juried group show at Berkeley Art Center, curated by Thea Quiray Tagle and speaking to both lockdown and this moment of emergence, and then the rescheduled 2020 Mills College MFA exhibition, which filled me with excitement about the graduated artists even as I'm filled with worry about the future of Mills.

Other things I liked this week:

• Little Snow Landscape by Robert Walser. In a week where my brain felt completely battered by the news it was sheer respite to open this book and read one of Walser's short (sometimes very short) stories. In many cases they are more meditations on landscape or human nature than what you might think of as a traditional story, and arranged chronologically they also show his progression as a writer.
• Aya of Yop City by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie. Abouet transforms her comics about three women in Côte d' Ivoire into an animated film (interspersed with actual vintage ads!) full of color and laughter and amazing music.
• I love bobcats and if you also love bobcats you will love this Bay Nature talk by conservation photographer Sarah Killingsworth about Bay Area bobcats.
• In the closest thing to a live music show I've experienced yet, the Panorama Paranormal program for Gray Area's Recombinant Rebound featured 360-degree sound and spatial cinema works by the likes of Ryoichi Kurokawa, Burial, Fennesz, and Paul Clipson with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. I'm still a little wary of indoor events but this was glorious.