Engineer's Daughter

teresa baker, jenny monick, a.k. burns

Teresa Baker

Jenny Monick

Through April 25 - Teresa Baker, Jenny Monick, A.K. Burns at Kiria Koula.  I first got hooked on Teresa Baker when she was the Tournesol resident at Headlands a couple years back, and I've been tracking her work ever since.  She describes her process on the Kiria Koula website for this excellent show:

“I don‘t work in a linear manner. Instead, I work by seeing connections between materials and responding to what each individual piece needs so that it can get to the point of non-identity. There is something in the process of unknowing that is of interest, and I believe helps to bring life to the painting. If I sketched it out and executed the plan, it would feel dry, a de-void of energy and life.”

Baker's sculptural paintings or painterly sculptures are interspersed thoughtfully amongst Jenny Monick's pieces, which are created according to specific tasks she sets for herself.  Both artists are unconcerned with traditional notions of beauty or even of what constitutes an art object, and the results are invigorating.  Equally fascinating are the books A.K. Burns has selected for the gallery bookshop, which are source material and inspiration for the video installation project she is currently working on that concerns itself with ideas about negative space.  With authors like Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Anna Halprin, Carl Sagan, Samuel R. Delaney, and many other favorites represented I am eager to experience Burns's piece when it is finished.

See also:

• Kiria Koula
• Teresa Baker
• Jenny Monick
• A.K. Burns

there is no away

Veronica De Jesus

Minnette Lehmann

Through August 14 - Veronica De Jesus and Minnette Lehmann: There Is No Away at [ 2nd floor projects ].  You will find two different kinds of wallpaper in Margaret Tedesco's magical Mission space right now, and both reward the viewer who lingers for a closer inspection.  Minnette Lehmann cleverly hides scenes of sadomasochism and gender play in plain sight amongst rows of blandly proper flowers in her two large pieces that are sexy and subversive at the same time.  Meanwhile the rest of the gallery walls are occupied with all 224 of Veronica De Jesus's amazing memorial drawings, a project many Missionites know from the windows of Dog Eared Books.  Whether paying tribute to strong women (Octavia Butler, Sally Ride) or troubled men (Hunter S. Thompson, Mike Kelley) or collective tragedy (Haiti, Japan) each drawing is movingly rendered in De Jesus's distinctive hyper-realistic style, and much beauty is also contained in the text (desriptive phrases, quotes) De Jesus chooses to integrate into her work.  As always with exhibitions in her space Tedesco has commissioned unique writing as part of the show, this time from Pam Martin and Alli Warren, and has published a gorgeously-designed edition.  Both authors have written pieces that ripple with poetic association and quotes from a multitude of sources as they grapple with memory and mortality itself.  I loved this snippet from Martin's work, Reopened Correspondence:

I am thinking about sunlight
sitting on the warm concrete fourteen years ago
and in the garden a month ago
same atoms different dance ashore and shared
where acceptance dissolves horror
an evolutionary brilliance
imaginary and psychoanalytic
lung and liver elegies
interleaving our revolt
your voice
first instrument
about the big ocean and how our mouths water
yes the game has been reopened

And this from Warren's When the Ruby Breaks:

Ideology marks bounds and sets time limits, does its best to inform us who or what we should mourn.  Where a body encounters the facts of the world, and where a body its insides.  The unbearable grief of all the dead, hundreds of thousands, millions.  Groping through this numbers trouble.  History is incomprehensible.  And so too the time after this one.  Meanwhile your cat, or whatever, dies.  And for this one also cries.

See also:

• [ 2nd floor projects ]
• Veronica De Jesus
• Minnette Lehmann
• Pam Martin
• Alli Warren

relax as it is

the week that was

uxorious

Alan Black, Edinburgh Castle Pub, San Francisco.  August 15,2009.

miscellany 02.04.13

Julia Goodman at Recology

Michael Damm at Recology

Jeff Hantman at Recology

Bill Berkson at Brian Gross Fine Art

Stephanie Young at Brian Gross Fine Art

David Kasprzak at Alter Space, part of Remembering Is Everything

Bill Direen at Aquarius Records

agenda 01.23.13

Thursday, January 24:

• David O'Brien, Andrew Benson + Tamara Albaitis in Pixilated Drift at Johansson Projects
• Grale Live: The Saddest Music in the World: Tenth Anniversary Celebration at the Pacific Film Archive
• How to Move a Mountain at Southern Exposure
• Troller, Thousand Foot Whale Claw, Chasms, Black Jeans, Believe at The Lab
• SIX: UC Berkeley First Year MFA Exhibition at Worth Ryder Art Gallery
• That's what I figure: Four Bay Area Image Makers at Kondos Gallery
• John-Mark Ikeda at Spare Change Artist Space
• 6 Women Poets at Meridian Gallery
• Strange Sinema 60 at Oddball Films
• The Walkmen, Father John Misty at The Fillmore
• Autumn Sky, Jonah Matranga, Sentinel at Red House Studios
• Ken Stringfellow (Posies, Big Star) plus The Maldives and Will Sprott at Brick & Mortar Music Hall

Friday, January 25:

• Paul Kos: Allegories and Metaphors at the San Francisco Art Institute
• Object Oriented: Janiszewska, Lorch-Miller, Pitt at Royal NoneSuch Gallery
• Stillsuit / Styrofoam Sanchez / Little Debbie / V.E X. Xanaxax at Life Changing Ministries
• Adam Friedman: Space and Time, and Other Mysterious Aggregations at Eleanor Harwood Gallery
• Friday Nights @ OMCA Launch
• San Francisco Dump Artist in Residence Exhibitions: Work by Michael Damm, Julia Goodman and Jeff Hantman
• Happiness Is... at Montalvo Arts Center Project Space Gallery
• Carnal Cartoons at Oddball Films
• The Walkmen, Father John Misty at The Fillmore
• Blackalicious at The New Parish

Saturday, January 26:

• Molly Springfield, The Marginalia Archive at Steven Wolf Fine Arts
• Stop/Motion at Interface Gallery
• Wovenhand at Bottom of the Hill

Monday, January 28:

• You Are Not A Loan: A Benefit for Strike Debt Bay Area at the Roxie Theatre

Tuesday, January 29:

• San Francisco Dump Artist in Residence Artist Talk: Michael Damm, Julia Goodman and Jeff Hantman
• Detective, Tall Sheep, JAJA at Hotel Utah

Wednesday, January 30:

• Silence and Rudolf de Crignis / MATRIX 245 at the Berkeley Art Museum
• Take Me Away at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
• Bill Berkson and Stephanie Young: Poetry Reading in the Gallery at Brian Gross Fine Art
• Local Natives at The Fox

agenda 01.02.13

Thursday, January 3:

• CONGRATULATIONS! with Tauba Auerbach at Will Brown
• Sentinel at The Starry Plough

Friday, January 4:

• SHE WORLD: Ursula Brookbank at Krowswork
• Backwash: New Work by Pete Hickok at Aggregate Space
• In The Box Beneath The City and Other Projects at Alter Space
• Speak Your Peace at SOMArts
• Art Murmur at Johansson Projects

Saturday, January 5:

• Excuses + Diesel Dudes + Believe + Horsebladder at Rock Paper Scissors
• Marissa Nadler at The Chapel

Sunday, January 6:

• Multiple Stimuli Overload at Subterranean Arthouse

Monday, January 7:

• The Projected Self: Performance-Based Videos from the Media Arts Collection at SFMOMA
• Ovens at The Knockout

Tuesday, January 8:

• Breaking News: A One-Night-Only Radical Collaboration at SOMArts
• A Benefit for The Riley Center: Tender Buttons/Bitter Fruit/No Bone at The Knockout
• Takin It Back Tuesday at Double Dutch

Wednesday, January 9:

• Bawdy Storytelling's "The 7 Dirty Sins" at Verdi Club
• Rosamunde Oakland Grand Opening Party

agenda 12.05.12

Thursday, December 6:

• Publication Studio Printing On-Demand at The Popular Workshop
• To Be Determined #2 at new nothing cinema
• Poolside, Blackbird Blackbird, DJ Kele of Bloc Party at the Rickshaw Stop

Friday, December 7:

• Dis/Order: Juried Annual 2013 at Pro Arts
• MFA in Event Planning at Rise Above Graphics
• Mission Holiday Block Party
• MacArthur B Arthur's Final Exhibition: The Home Show
• TALKIES Holiday Show at Lost Weekend Video
• Destroy// 11 dancers + Ava Mendoza, Dominic Cramp, Mike Guarino, Leyya Tawil at Joe Goode Performance Group
• Point of No Return at Southern Exposure
• Cathy Cunningham-Little and Amy M. Ho at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary
• RE@DS: Sam Sax at the Berkeley Art Museum
• Quartet San Francisco Plays the Music of Raymond Scott at the Berkeley Art Museum
• MadC at 1:AM Gallery
• Jack White, The Shins, Metric, Two Door Cinema Club, Of Monsters and Men, The Gaslight Anthem at the Oakland Arena
• White Lung, Turbo Fruits, CCR Headcleaner at Bottom of the Hill
• Low End Theory SF at 1015 Folsom

Saturday, December 8:

• PrettyBluePresents: ReligiousGirls, MTNS (Seattle), Laughters, Believe at Purple Haus
• Everything Is Terrible Holiday Special West at ABCO Art Space
• Misfit Toy Factory at Root Division
• M83, Passion Pit, Tegan and Sara, The Killers, Grouplove, Imagine Dragons at the Oakland Arena
• The Polyphonic Spree at Slim's
• John Prine, Justin Townes Earle at the Warfield
• Dispirit//Thrones//Bädr Vogu//Crypt Keeper at 1530 E. 12th St.

Sunday, December 9:

• Points of Departure: Trivial Pursuit at Royal Nonesuch Gallery
• Meshell Ndegeocello, Con Brio at the Great American Music Hall

Monday, December 10:

• Tom Grrrl / Bitter Fruit / Pig DNA / S.B.S.M. at Menage Twat
• White Cloud + Freak Heat Waves + Means Streets + Chief at The Hidden Temple
• David Bazan, Stagnant Pools at the Independent

Tuesday, December 11:

• Jaberi & Deutsch, the Spencer Owen Consortium, Makeunder at the Night Light

Wednesday, December 12:

• Take Off: Kota Ezawa, Kenneth Goldsmith at Kadist SF

miscellany 10.26.12

The Tony Cragg Ice Cream Cone at the SFMOMA Blue Bottle Cafe.  The Cragg sculpture after which it is modeled is being de-installed this week after a good run up there on the fifth floor.

Two rounds of illness, a magical overnight jaunt to Chicago (thank you again, Ms m!), and a couple creative-type extra-curricular gigs have kept blogging sparse in the preceding weeks.  I assure you I've been absorbing a lot in my spare time, however.  A brief snapshot of this last week that was:

• Made some money for my favorite radio station during our annual fundraiser.
• Visited [2nd floor projects] to ogle the colorful paintings and sculptural installations by Linda Geary and Danielle Lawrence and walked away with a beautiful print edition by Scott Hewicker besides.
• Blissed out to a brainy and minimalist performance by Bryan Eubanks and Cat Lamb as part of the Mills Songlines series.
• Rocked out to Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Crypts at the New Parish whilst avoiding all the emo bros reeking of Red Bull.
• Enjoyed me some Golden Retriever too.

This weekend's agenda:

• Lisa Carver/Suckdog of Rollerderby Zine fame reads from her new book about Yoko Ono in Oakland tonight.
• Record shopping at Aquarius.
• Fall Open House at Headlands.
• Soliciting more $$$ for KALX.  Sunday 9pm to midnight PST!