Engineer's Daughter

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. Helen Thorpe spends a year in a Denver classroom with students learning English as a second language in her remarkable book The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in America, and she paints a vivid picture of the United States I still believe in, where we welcome and support the weary.
2. Rose B. Simpson's sculptures are already magical as individual pieces and only grow more powerful in the pairings and groupings in her current show at Jessica Silverman.
3. Speaking of pairings, Drew Heitzler finishes up his year curating two-person shows at slash with a fascinating juxtaposition of Kota Ezawa's Merzbau wallpaper with a capsule of irradiated seeds Sean Raspet will plant in Michigan. Forests of the past, forests to be.
4. Kimberley Acebo Arteche uses technology to beautiful effect to explore her Filipina heritage in the curved body of a pixel, currently on display at Incline Gallery.
5. Craving tea leaf salad or paratha whilst in Noe Valley? Inle Burmese will sort you out, deliciously.
6. Anything at the Recombinant Festival is always worth checking out, and this year they outdid themselves by bringing in Morton Subotnick for a live performance of "Silver Apples of the Moon" with accompanying visuals by Lillevan. I tuned in, I blissed out.
7. Julien Faraut's film John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection is more New Wave punk poem than strict documentary, but any movie that bookends its soundtrack with Sonic Youth and Black Flag is going to be all right by me.
8. I've also been enjoying a surreal journey through the animations of Suzan Pitt thanks to the Criterion Channel. See also this essay about her work by Haden Guest.
9. Stephanie Syjuco gave a great lecture at Mills Wednesday evening on the politics of imaging and representation, and how she's been addressing said topics in her work. Always always love hearing what she's up to.

matokie mix 11.18.19

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matokie mix 11.11.19

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matokie mix 11.04.19

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the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. While not as assured as Stoner (and featuring a truly unsympathetic protagonist) John Williams's first novel Nothing but the Night is an excellent example at how deftly Williams was able to write about the human psyche.
2. I spent four glorious nights at SFJAZZ last weekend reveling in music by a wide variety of artists there to celebrate ECM's 50th anniversary: Tigran Hamasyan, Wadada Leo Smith, Avishai Cohen, Vijay Iyer, and Egberto Gismonti. Here's to another 50 years of amazing music!
3. Trust me when I say The Mustang is infinitely less cheesy than the trailer would imply and is in fact an incredibly beautiful film by French director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre with important things to say about incarceration and restorative justice and the human-animal bond. I cried a lot and then immediately donated to an inmate wild horse program. Also: prison abolition now.
4. I can't believe it took me this long to see Julie Taymor's Frida but what a great film, especially considering the circumstances Taymor and Salma Hayek were faced with while making it. The Mexico City locations! The Brothers Quay animations! Tina Modotti! Baby Diego Luna! Frida's art!
5. Tove Jansson dancing with her cat.

matokie mix 10.28.19

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matokie mix 10.21.19

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matokie mix 10.14.19

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to do list

Free Oakland UP

Holiday malaise got you down? Have I got some ideas for you!

• Tucked into an unassuming strip mall in Oakland's Dimond district, Free Oakland UP is a wondrous little "shop" where every visitor is welcome to one free item. The project is the brainchild of Jocelyn Meggait, created as a social experiment, and when I visited on Friday it felt like the perfect antidote to the rampant shopping going on elsewhere in the country. Take your time selecting your free item, check out the work in the gallery area by the current artist-in-residence, and buy an artfully-potted plant to help Maggait pay the rent. Then bop across the parking lot to get a quart of lemon chiffon at local ice cream legend Loard's...and I hear that the framer and mechanic in that same lot are awesome too.
• Meanwhile, down in Uptown, Windy Chien has a beautiful show of knots and splices at Local Language called Mutations. Grab a seasonal cocktail from the in-house tasting room to enhance your viewing experience and marvel at Chien's sculptural, textural pieces, which are deceptive in their simplicity.
• Further afield but well worth the drive, the San José Museum of Art has two unique exhibitions up right now I highly recommend. The first is the group show Other Walks, Other Lines, which begins with a quote about walking from Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust and spirals outwards from there to explore the many ways traveling by foot can be a source of inspiration, a form of protest, or a way to inadvertently court danger. The second is an epic solo exhibition on the second floor by Dinh Q. Lê entitled True Journey Is Return, and you could easily spend a couple hours exploring the varied narratives Lê has assembled about the Vietnamese experience.
• Coming up this Thursday, author Jose Antonio Vargas stops by Yerba Buena to chat with artist Jerome Reyes about the art-billboard Reyes currently has installed at the center and probably some other things besides. Alley Cat Books will also be selling copies of Vargas's Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen if you'd like to get a copy signed.
• And last but definitely not least, all this week the Recombinant Festival will be bringing extraordinary sounds and visuals to the Mission. Pick any night to attend; you cannot go wrong.

matokie mix 11.25.18

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