notes from the weekend

• Anyone who knows me knows that I have long been a huge cheerleader for Headlands Center for the Arts, and mercifully their Graduate Fellowship program made it through the pandemic intact. The 2022-23 awardees have a wonderful show up at The Lab right now as the culmination of their year-long residency at Headlands, and it's a great cheat sheet for which artists to keep your eye on as they embark on their careers post-grad-school. Rumor has it that Headlands will be doing more programming in S.F. in future, and it's so wonderful to see art back at The Lab again too!
• While I was in the neighborhood I took a stroll down a car-free Valencia to City Art Cooperative Gallery, which is still going strong after 25 years. I remember when they opened just after I'd moved to the Bay Area myself, and I always recommend popping in to find an affordable piece of art or to chat with the artists behind the counter.
• My final stop for the day was the Haight Street Art Center, where in the current exhibition Dawn State collaborative artists Monica Canilao and Xara Thustra have used Reuben Kadish's trippy on-site WPA mural as a jumping-off point for their own exuberant installations. The show also includes life-size queer icons by Silky Shoemaker and artwork by Samedi Djeimguero and Adam Ansell, and the joyful, defiant chaos will leave you feeling uplifted indeed.