Engineer's Daughter

notes from the weekend

• I was thrilled to hear the Cantor was getting the Morris Hirshfield exhibition that received such rave reviews at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, and it does not disappoint. Hirshfield was a self-taught artist who came to painting late in life for a brief but prolific career, and his animals and nude ladies are utterly bewitching.
• Meanwhile Hansol Jung's Wolf Play at Shotgun is also well worth your time as it tells the story of a young Korean adoptee who processes his feelings by imagining he is more lupine than human. As always Shotgun does some really stunning tricks with the staging, and the cast also features some of our local best.

matokie mix 09.11.23

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notes from the weekend

• I swung by Minnesota Street on Saturday for the final day of their beautiful group exhibition The Deeper We Sunk in Dreams, curated by Lexygius Sanchez Calip and featuring recent work from 2020 SF Art Institute artists whose term was interrupted by pandemic and who stayed local after the school unceremoniously closed. The show is a tribute to the artists' persistence and an elegy to an institution that nurtured so many important ideas. And while I was in the building I had to pop into Hashimoto Contemporary to visit Lorien Stern's ceramic dinosaurs in her Old Friends show, because who doesn't love cheerful ceramic dinosaurs?
• I also leapt at the chance to support Maui and hear some amazing Hawaiian musicians besides at the Freight & Salvage Sunday evening, at a benefit concert that featured Mahealani Uchiyama, Patrick Landeza (who also emceed), Faith Ako, and Steven Espaniola. There was a lot of laughter and a few tears and some truly gorgeous hula alongside the music, and in the end the audience raised over $25,000 to send to Lahaina.

matokie mix 09.04.23

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night sky

Blue moons like the one we had yesterday don't come around that often, and similarly the chance to see Majel Connery perform with Matt Walsh as their duo Sky Creature is a rare occurrence on the West Coast. In fact it was their Bay Area premiere at the Berkeley Art Museum last night, and while Connery and Walsh are in town I highly recommend catching them at the Exploratorium tonight and/or the Piano Palace in Half Moon Bay on Saturday. Programmed by local musician Sarah Cahill, last night's performance was part of BAMPFA's ongoing series of events timed to coincide with the full moon, in this case offering music that was rich with connection to our natural world and celestial phenomena. Connery started off solo with her gorgeous song cycle Rivers Are Our Brothers, inspired by Chief Seattle and our kinship to nature (and which is about to be toured by Chanticleer!). For the second half of the show Walsh joined Connery for their Sky Creature tunes, melding his math rock guitar from his background with The Forms to her quasi-operatic vocals and soaring electronics. The result is utterly mesmerizing and often quite danceable, and I'm already salivating about their upcoming full-length record. Connery used to teach at Cal before she moved to New York, and it's so brilliant to have her back in the area this weekend.

Masking? A smattering. My N95 was helping filter yesterday's wildfire smoke too, added bonus.

 

notes from the weekend

• If you haven't been to the San José Museum of Art recently now is a fabulous time to visit, with wonderful solo exhibitions by certified legend Yolanda López and the Bay Area's own Sadie Barnette that I've highlighted before and now a brand new group show called Nuts and Who's: A Candy Store Sampler. The latter features work from artists allied with Adeliza McHugh’s Candy Store Gallery in Folsom, and the 1960s-era California ceramics alone are worth the journey down the peninsula.
• Then after my surprise KALX DJ shift yesterday morning I grabbed a veggie weenie from Top Dog and headed back to Walnut Creek for the second Sunday afternoon in a row, this time to see the delightful Lamplighters production of Il Ducato, which is basically The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan transplanted to Milan and reworked to remove the racism. They made a few other fun tweaks along the way, such as the inclusion of modern-day villains in "I've Got a Little List" that had the audience literally cheering with glee.

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playlist

notes from the weekend

• Only one gallery visit this weekend but it was a fantastic one: The compelling group exhibition Rabbit Hole at the Berkeley Art Center, curated by Adrianne Ramsey. Thematically linked by perceptions of space, the work in the show from a diverse array of artists was all created within the last few years and deals head-on with the cultural issues that have been swirling in our collective ether.
• The other highlight of my weekend was Festival Opera's refreshing version of Bizet's Carmen, in a production that successfully blended 2023 Oakland with 1820 Seville complete with turf dancing instead of flamenco. All of leads were stupendous and non-binary mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz blew the roof off as Carmen, playing the character less as a femme fatale than simply as a woman who knows her own mind and heart and refuses to waver.

matokie mix 08.21.23

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between worlds

I was completely unaware of the life and work of Jewish lesbian author, academic, and activist Irena Klepfisz before seeing 90-something actor Naomi Newman embody her onstage at Live Oak Theatre last night, and I am so grateful to her and to the Yiddish Theatre Ensemble for their new play about Klepfisz, Between Worlds. Born in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust, her father a martyr for his resistance to the Nazis, Klepfisz emigrated with her mother to the Bronx and eventually integrated her experiences into her poetry, which merges English and Yiddish. Newman, who also wrote the play, is absolutely mesmerizing as an older Klepfisz looking back, and she doesn't shy away from either the bluntness or the sexiness of Klepfisz's writing. A small but mighty ensemble backs Newman up too, with Diana Bukowska, Aviya Hernstadt, and Ariel Luckey playing other characters in Klepfisz's life, and with musicians Barbara Borden on percussion and Susanne DiVincenzo on cello and bass providing a live soundtrack onstage. The blessing that Newman writes in the program absolutely came true for me during the performance: "May everyone who sees Between Worlds be as moved and healed by Irena Klepfisz's life and poetry as I am."

Masking? Required, and the audience complied! The dude behind me in line had to grumble about it though: "I haven't worn a mask in months!" And that, sir, is why we still have Covid.