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.

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.

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.

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.

notes from the weekend

• My art wanderings found me close to home in Oakland this weekend, starting with the Open Source show at Gearbox Gallery that features work by Maria Porges and Harry Clewans in a fascinating juxtaposition between Porges's ceramic vase-shaped sculptures and pieces by Clewans composed of wood-block prints that have been combined into imagined landscapes and interiors. As the title of the exhibition suggests, both artists pull from cultural artifacts and reconfigure them into something personal and new.
• Meanwhile over at Slate Contemporary a trio of artists seem to bend photons themselves in their work in a show entitled Catching Light. I was utterly smitten by the gradations of color in Jenn Shifflet's abstract oil paintings and glass pieces, and I also loved Kana Tanaka's chunky glass installations alongside large-scale sunset photography by Thea Schrack. The whole mood created in the gallery is decidedly meditative.
• Saturday night I returned to the theater at BAMPFA for the first time since pandemic for one of my fave Preston Sturges films, The Lady Eve, complete with a special introduction by Sturges scholar Stuart Klawans. What a treat to laugh along to the onscreen antics with a sold-out audience too.
• And then yesterday afternoon I took advantage of the fact that the 2023 West Edge Opera Festival is being held walking distance from my apartment at the Oakland Scottish Rite Center and went to go see their glorious production of The Coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi. This former classics major delighted in all of the ancient Roman intrigue onstage...and tried not to think too hard about the real-life Poppea's fate as she and Nero sang their ever-so-gorgeous duet at the end.

notes from the weekend

• I'd never attended a SPARC Theater production before but the chance to see Lauren Gunderson's Silent Sky, about the women at Harvard who made important contributions to the field of astronomy, under the canopy of the actual night sky in Livermore was just too good to pass up. And both the idyllic outdoor location at Darcie Kent Vineyards and the production itself, focusing on the brilliant Henrietta Leavitt as played by Elena Wright and full of Gunderson's trademark firecracker dialogue, was well worth the schlep.
• As I'd hoped, I was able to visit many galleries on Saturday and started with McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, where their What Are Words Worth? group show is their last exhibition before the space closes for good (sigh). The curators chose work from the McEvoy collection that utilizes text in sculpture, photography, collage, neon, you name it, and with one whole gallery dedicated to the work of German conceptual photographer Natalie Czech of whom I am now a new fan. Thank you for all the great exhibitions, McEvoy!
• Meanwhile over at Creativity Explored, one of my fave writers Hilton Als curated a beautiful show called Figuratively Speaking: Art in Advertising, Writing in Art. Primarily featuring the work of Douglas Sheran and his transformations of magazine print ads into subtle pieces of abstract art, the exhibition also includes a single artwork each by Bertha Otoya and Roland Record to create some thought-provoking juxtapositions.
• And Jessica Silverman has not one but two fabulous shows up right now, the first being Jeffrey Gibson's Once More With Feeling featuring a series of his mesmerizing mixed-media collages. Gibson freely incorporates elements of his Native heritage including beadwork and pattern and then throws in song lyrics besides, creating a riot of color and reference, and I could stare at any one of these pieces for an hour.
• The other exhibition, Isaac Julien's Once Again...(Statues Never Die), is a complete showstopper as it conjures scenes out of Black history and culture filtered through Julien's sharp eye. Julien is referencing specific figures from the past but you don't have to know that to appreciate how he reframes the narrative and shifts our collective gaze.
• Last but definitely not least I took myself out to the Concord Pavilion last night for the Hot Summer Nights tour and specifically to see my girls En Vogue and TLC. I can't remember the last time I'd been at a show that large and certain aspects of the experience were absolutely ridiculous but also I danced like I was 16 again.

a room with a view

Like many women of my generation I've seen the Merchant-Ivory A Room with a View approximately a million times (yes I own the DVD), and I was also the type of teen that took the novel along with me as my sole cultural distraction when my pre-college "wilderness orientation" stranded me by myself in the Sierras for 24 hours. So normally I might have been a little nervous about the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley adaptation currently playing at John Hinkel Park, directed by Andrew Calabrese, except I knew local theater hero Stuart Bousel was the writer doing the adapting and I trusted his passion for the material implicitly. Sure enough, this is an entirely charming and faithful Room, with a wonderful ensemble cast sending their English accents to the back of the rustic outdoor amphitheater. Tyler Scott Null and Sophie Ruf (pictured) are perfect as George and Lucy, fumbling toward each other across barriers of class and social convention, and I loved how they made use of the park's environs leading up to their famous first kiss. The production contains many other clever touches too, such as the use of "marble" benches to denote the Italian setting at the beginning of the story or the way Bousel uses multiple characters to deal with moments of exposition. When answering the question "Something you want the audience to walk away with?" in the program, Bousel says, "That life is short and precious, and all of us play a role in one another's lives, often in ways we can't foresee, but what we can do is choose to be kind, generous, honest and above all else: engaged."

Masking? Only a smattering, but it was outdoors so my concern was low even as I continue to mask.

notes from the weekend

• You never think a scam will happen to you, but Lauren Smerkanich's excellent new play The Dignity Circle at Central Works is an incisive look at how smart modern women might fall for the culty appeal of a doomed MLM. Ringleader Angela, played by an incredibly persuasive Sierra Marcks, cloaks her scheme in the language of female empowerment and perhaps actually thinks she's doing good...while raking in cash from her marks, of course. It's always worth seeing the productions Central Works has on offer and this one is particularly compelling.
• Otherwise I've had some bad luck with the timing of my art and gallery visits recently, but hopefully next week I'll have a nice rundown. In the meantime stay safe tomorrow and keep raging against the dying of the light in this godforsaken country.

notes from the weekend

• A show at Berkeley Playhouse is always a low-key way to see a good musical and to enjoy some top-notch local talent besides, and I thoroughly enjoyed the world premiere of Laura Marlin and Phil Gorman's Becoming Robin Hood there Friday night. An alternate take on the origin of my fave hooded outlaw, the musical allows several other characters to be heroes as well. And DC Scarpelli as the Sheriff of Nottingham is worth the price of admission alone.
• The new Caitlin Cherry exhibition at the Wattis is a stone-cold stunner, a floor-to-ceiling mural composed of both paintings and digital prints all rendered in gorgeously lurid color. Cherry's depictions of Black female celebrities seem to swirl together and shimmer before your eyes, a comment on how contemporary culture subsumes personality, yet up close the women still retain their power.

notes from the weekend

• Regina Morones is incandescent as the title character in Shotgun Players' Yerma, adapted from the Lorca play and directed by Katja Rivera. On the surface the story is about one woman's too-consuming desire for a baby, but the viewer can also extrapolate outward to conundrums women have faced through the ages and to Lorca's own struggles with his sexuality. Risky, powerful work.
• The new exhibition at Letterform Archive, Subscription to Mischief, is absolutely superb, viewing graffiti through the lens of the '90s zines that both documented it and helped to legitimize it as an art form. I'm always blown away by Letterform's meticulously researched wall texts, and though the East Coast is strongly represented there are many local legends in the show besides.
• Catharine Clark recently extended its gallery space into the rooms next door, and the Jen Bervin exhibition that is there right now is an excellent inaugural use of the space. The centerpiece of the show is the Mississippi River, visualized by the artist in hand-sewn sequins and positioned so that it spills down one entire wall and winds its way across the ceiling, but Bervin's other conceptual work (test tubes containing the ashes of burned journals, "poems" of silver thread) is also quite lovely.