March 31, 2005 (Thursday) - Thanks, but I'm OK...
 Actually, I'm heading out to paint in Golden Gate Park today. But this was good advice from a regular reader (thanks, Ramona):
Anna,
I understand your existential ennui! But I was glad to hear that, despite that, you were heading back into the studio rather than going down to Great Highway and hurling your paints and brushes over the sand dunes and into the waves.
The artworks we produce may not be significant by themselves, but (thinking existentially again) don't forget their effect on the larger web of existence. Our little efforts touch others, who touch others, and.... you just never know. Remember, our paintings travel out of our lives and into others', even out of our geographical areas and into others. Maybe we can provide a little insight or inspiration somewhere along the way, in a manner we couldn't have predicted.
In addition, we all build on (and steal from) each other, and what is now couldn't have been without what came before. Whether that's good or bad is another story... But even if we think we're failing miserably, who was it that said, "It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others"?
Keep on painting!
--Ramona
(Watercolor of bean, in darkness, describes my view of the positive potential of existential ennui.)
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 March 30, 2005 (Wednesday) - Interview with Charles Ware
I brought my friend Dale along on my last interview, with Stevan Shapona, and that was such a success, that I jumped at Dale's suggestion that I interview his 84 year old friend, Charlie. We stopped at the J&E Cafe to pick up some Chinese takeout and then headed over to Charlie's place on one of those killer hills in the Bernal Heights section of San Francisco. When we got there, we each filled a plate with food and then sat around Charlie's kitchen table to talk while we ate.
From his chair at kitchen table, Charlie has almost everything he needs within reach. A box of pencils and papers is under the table, and a small bookcase holding his journals and notebooks is sitting on the right side of the table. Portfolio cases are stacked on the floor around his chair. Cans of spray paint, tubes of oil, jars of glue, stencils, scissors, papers and other art making materials are covering every available surface.
He works on writing and artmaking every day and every room of his house is filled with his work. I started out asking him about his early life...
The complete interview is on its own page - click HERE to read the rest of it.
March 29,2005 (Tuesday) -Another building, another time
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I recently came across the March '64 issue of "SHOW" magazine. The cover story was, "New Museum in Manhattan - A Sneak Preview." It was about the brand new Gallery of Modern Art at 2 Columbus Circle, designed by Edward Durell Stone. At the time, it seemed very modern - too modern for a lot of people. Now, it's slated to be torn down or radically altered, depending on the Landmarks Preservation Commission hearings.
Besides a sense of dejavu, my biggest impression on flipping through the magazine was, "What was/is all the fuss about?" Time revolves so quickly, and 90% of our big concerns are meaningless, or soon will be. I'm heading back into the studio to paint and think about time, space, and cycles, knowing that whatever I paint, it probably won't make a damn bit of difference to anyone, now or later.
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March 28,2005 (Monday) -SOTA FAculty Show at Atrium
 
I went by the Atrium Gallery for the opening reception of the SOTA (SF public School of the Arts) faculty show. It's a great space, in the center of the Lurie building at 5th & Market. Lots of natural light, no ceilings. The only artist I was familiar with was Dale Erickson (images above), so I asked the curator for a list of the other artists (images below). She turned to the guy next to her and said, "Frank, do we have any information for this lady?" He said, "You mean like bios? That's a good idea. We'll have to do that. But not tonight." So I gave her my card and asked her to email me the info. That was four days ago. So here are a few photos from the show. I have no information about the work or the artists. If you're interested, go to 901 Market Street, second floor... maybe they'll know something by the time you get there.
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March 25,2005 (Friday) -My favorite brushes ...
... are like old shoes. They're familiar, comfortable, "worn out" in just the right ways, and pretty ugly. I got my money's worth from these guys a long time ago. The pattern of broken hairs and fibers has resulted in brushes that have a thick paint reservoir at the base, with thinner, yet fuzzy tips. These brushes are perfect for blending at the boundary of two colors, as well as scumbling and spot glazing. It takes a long time to get a brush to this state, so they're actually the most valuable brushes in the tea-tin by my easel.
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March 24,2005 (Thursday) -An Earlier "Never Again"
 The last couple of days, as I've been painting, I've been listening to an unabridged audio book version of "Picasso's War"- a book about Guernica, by Russell Martin. A whole book about one painting! And it's fascinating. He goes into the geopolitical history as well as the art history of the era, and Picasso's biography, as it relates to the imagery in this work. The author interviewed people who were there and got first-person impressions of the bombing, and of the first exhibition of the painting. In the first chapter there's an interview with a Spanish art teacher who talks about the importance of visual art in Spain. She contrasts it with the role of music in Germany and makes a pretty good case for climate and topography as reasons for the differences. (Made me want to pull out my copy of Lucy Lippard's "The Lure of the Local" and look through it again.) Anyway, before "reading" this book, I thought I knew the basics about Picasso's Guernica, but now I realize I didn't know diddly. The author has a lot of photos and chapter excerpts on his web site. Check it out.
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March 23,2005 (Wednesday) -Never Again
 Wendy Testu grew up near Mt. Shasta, in Northern California. The head waters of the Sacramento River are up that way, and in 1991 a railroad tanker car carrying a toxic chemical plunged into the Sacramento, destroying all life along 38 miles of river. It also devastated the economies of the small towns along the river. The weight of this event is still felt in the artist's work.
I was walking down Judah when I happened to see a truck spray-painted, graffiti-style, with flying sea gulls and a show announcement for the SoulArch Gallery. I figured it must be an artist's truck and thought there was good chance the artist was here installing the show, so I crossed the street to look in the gallery windows. Sure enough, I saw a couple of young people with a step ladder, hanging bird sculptures from the ceiling with fishing line. I stuck my head in the door and started asking questions...
The sculptures are constructed of wire, Raku ceramics, and feathers. I found them to be both beautiful and disturbing... and oddly mesmerizing.
A video installation of birds flying over crashing waves will also part of the show, which is titled "Nunca Mais" (Never Again.) The video wasn't set up when I was there, but you can see a sample on the web. This art opening begins this Saturday at sundown on the beach, with a procession to the gallery, followed by sushi! Details at the artist's website.
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March 22,2005 (Tuesday) -Lotsa art to see this week
 An artists' co-op gallery just opened a few blocks from here, at 3848 Judah., between 43rd and 44th. It's called Artwaves Gallery, and if I understand the set-up correctly, there are 3 or 4 principal artist co-owners and about 15 artists with limited partnerships. I stopped in a couple of days ago and talked with principals Kate and Steve (at left), who showed me around. I had seen the space prior to its gallery conversion (it has been a dance studio, a beauty salon, an insurance office, and a children's educational center) and I was amazed at how much brighter and bigger it looked stuffed with art. There's a wide selection of painting, photography, sculpture, constructions, fiber arts and crafts, with each artist having a display area. Most of the artists are from the  Sunset district, and there's a nifty rack by the door with take-away bios on each of them. While I was there, a steady stream of people dropped in to look around and welcome them to the neighborhood. The Grand Opening reception is April 3rd.
Artwaves Gallery is just a couple of blocks from Soularch Gallery (4033 Judah) which has a terrific one-person show of new work by Wendy Testu opening this weekend - I'll write more about that tomorrow,
And on Thursday of this week, SF School of the Arts (SOTA) faculty show opens at the Atrium Gallery, which is on the second floor of the Lurie building, 901 Market Street, at 5th. It's a big space and I've heard that Dale Erickson will be showing a lot of his work there. I'll write more about that show after I see it. The opening reception is 5pm to 7pm on Thursday, March 24th. 50% of the proceeds will be donated to SOTA's Visual Arts Department.
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March 21,2005 (Monday, again) Amusing time-wasters for the busy (a meme)
I received this meme from Marja-Leena and, in keeping with its viral nature, I couldn't resist:
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
To be a book in a time when books are being simultaneously revered and obliterated is pretty much like being a human on the planet today (and most likely, at any point in history.) But I assume this refers to the intellectual outlaws in Bradbury's book who have memorized literary works so that someday, when it is safe to do so, they can print them again. So, with that in mind, I'd like to memorize "Mindfulness and Meaningful Work - Explorations in Right Livelihood", essays edited by Claude Whitmyer. It would be a good text to have at the renewal of culture.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
The wisteria vine in Clyde Edgerton's "Floatplane Notebooks."
The last book you bought is:
Well, I didn't purchase it, but yesterday I was staring out the window of the N-Judah as it headed down to the ocean, when a guy approached me and asked me if I liked to read. I answered in the affirmative, expecting him to offer me some kind of bible tract, but he handed me a copy of "Wicked, the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" by Gregory Maguire. He said, "This was a great book. I usually just leave these on the train when I'm done reading them, but you can have it if you'd like." So I accepted - I almost never read fiction, but this looks fun.
What are you currently reading?
"Visual Intelligence - How We Create What We See" by Donald D. Hoffman. It's a philosophy of seeing, with heavy emphasis on scientific experiments exploring the mechanics and physiology of sight. It was recommended by OldPro at Franklin Einspruch's Artblog.net.
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Only five? Well, if you insist... these are my most thumbed, marked, tabbed, read and re-read books:
1. "Trickster Makes This World" by Lewis Hyde
2. "Conversations before the end of time - Dialogs on Art, Life & Spiritual Renewal" by Suzi Gablik
3. "Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend" (the unabridged original edition) by Maria Leach and Jerome Fried
4. "A Brief History of Everything" by Ken Wilber
5."Truth and Truthfulness" by Bernard Williams
Who are you going to pass this along to (3 persons) and why?
Pam Heyda, Harry Pariser, and Janet Rosen - because they're intelligent, creative people, I value their opinions, and they're good enough friends that they won't give me too hard a time about getting them into this.
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March 21,2005 (Monday) -
What I really meant
This morning, as I was putting a glaze of Quinacridone Gold over the canvas, I thought about what I wrote last Friday about being tempted to stop at the underpainting. I realized that one reason I felt the urge to quit then, is because most of the creative work has been done by that point. I've chosen an image from my archive of photos (taken by me, for this purpose); I've cropped and manipulated the image to suit my vision; I've sketched it onto the canvas; and decided on a basic set of tones and values. So the fun part (the most creative part) is done. Now the the hard work begins. I have to render the image, over many hours and with many glazes and brush strokes, to get that balance of realism and painterly look that I like. Not that this stage is completely devoid of imaginative decisions, but it's mostly a matter of executing the craft of painting.
I can see the temptation to farm out the second part ( the hard work part) to hired hands. That makes sense if you're looking at the painting as a commercial product. Doesn't work for me, though. I see the painting as a part of the gift economy (as defined by Lewis Hyde in "The Gift, Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property" - see quote below)
All that said, thinking this much about what is and isn't "art" gives me a pain behind the eyeballs. I just want to go paint. I like what Rachael says about it:
Everyday I am more convinced ... of messing with expectations, of avoiding getting any chips on my shoulder as an artist or as a human being. With all the stresses (economic, social, artistic, otherwise) artists have, I do understand the need some of us have to assume the work we do is crucial to the survival of the species...but...um. It is not. Art is incredibly important but there's room for more than one watercolorist in any one place, there's no reason to believe that there is only one way to depict a landscape, and I firmly believe that art ought not be a specialized subject of erudite learning but a living, breathing, messy and magical endeavor.
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"PG&E On Dolores", in progress.
Top: source photo, taken by artist, Feb. 2005
Middle: Graphite line drawing transferred to 16" x 20" canvas from 7" x 9" photo, using grid method. Thin red acrylic value sketch over graphite.
Bottom: Quin Gold acrylic glaze, covered with beginning of toned underpainting |
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"All cultures and all artists have felt the tension between gift exchange and the market, between the self-forgetfulness of art and the self-aggrandizement of the merchant, and how that tension is to be resolved has been the subject of debate since before Aristotle.
And yet some aspects of the problem are modern. Eros and logos have a distinctly new relationship in a mass society. The remarkable analysis of commodities with which Marx opens Das Kapital appears in the nineteenth century, not any earlier. and the exploitation of the arts which we find in the twentieth century is without precedent. The particular manner in which radio, television, the movies, and the recording industry have commercialized song and drama is wholly new, for example, and their "high finance" produces an atmosphere that all the sister arts must breathe. (Your favorite show) may be the best show that ever came to television, but it belongs to a class of creations which will not live unless they are constantly fed large sums of money. The more we allow such commodity art to define and control our gifts, the less gifted we will become, as individuals and as a society. The true commerce of art is a gift exchange, and where that commerce can proceed on its own terms we shall be heirs to the fruits of gift exchange: in this case, to a creative spirit whose fertility is not exhausted in use, to the sense of plenitude which is the mark of all erotic exchange, to a storehouse of works that can serve as agents of transformation, and to a sense of an inhabitable world - an awareness, that is, of our solidarity with whatever we take to be the source of our gifts, be it the community, or the race, nature, or the gods. But none of these fruits will come to us where we have converted our arts to pure commercial enterprises. The Nielsen ratings will not lead us toward a civilization in which the realized gifts of the gifted stand surety for the life of the citizenry. Sprinkles of gold flake will not free the genius of our race."
from Lewis Hyde's book, The Gift - Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, chapter 8 - "The Commerce of the Creative Spirit"
March 18,2005 (Friday) -Underpainting
I started a couple of new paintings today. Sometimes when I reach the first stage of underpainting, it's tempting to stop right there. At this point, I've got the composition, line, basic values, and symbolism. But I'd miss the play with colors if I didn't go forward.
An artist from the Central Valley, Ramona, commented on recent posts about landscape painting, drips and realism:
I really enjoyed your entry today about landscapes, as I am just about to start a series of landscapes. I especially appreciated the variety of artists referenced, as they weren't all realists or impressionists-- which is what I'm surrounded with in the communal studio where I work.
In my work I concentrate more on texture and division of space, which can still translate into (or be translated from) landscape (e.g., Mondrian's trees). It's so good to see examples of non- or semi-representational artwork inspired by landscapes!
The main reason I have gotten away from more realistic painting is because I too was driving myself crazy with the details, hour after hour with ever smaller brushes (I like your analogy of the groundskeeper on the million-acre estate). As the stresses in my life grew, the less I needed that! So, painting en plein aire is wonderful, as are BIG BRUSHES!!
About the "drip" question... I have grown to love drips, glops, scratches, and other evidence of the painter's hand. I was forcefully reminded of this just yesterday at the "Bay Area Figuration Show" at California State University, Sacramento (March 7 - May 22). In work after work by David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, Nathan Oliveira, Joan Brown, and others, the "process" (as Roger Parodi mentioned in his entry) is the vehicle for expressing -- and is usually more important than -- the image. That a recognizable, evocative image appears at all from the massacre of paint on the canvas is truly remarkable. These paintings are endlessly interesting to look at!
Have a good weekend... see you on Monday.
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March 17,2005 (Thursday) -Memorial Painting
 I finally finished this painting. I think. I might work on the shadows and highlights a little more tomorrow, but it'll be stuff that's not apparent in a 72 dpi web image.
The image is a still life that I set up at my fireplace. The back brace in the fireplace belonged to my friend, Sachiko, and her newspaper obituaries sit under the brace. The scarf around the clock was used as a covering for her neck roll. The Buddha figurine in front of the abalone shell is holding a tiny Hawaiian dancer magnet.
I've been spending quite a bit of time painting lately, which means I turned off the phone and hunkered down in the studio, losing track of time. Now I have about 20 messages blinking at me... maybe I'll tackle them this weekend.
But for now, I'm in that altered state, caused by intense visual focus, that makes any written or verbal communication seem like a foreign language.
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March 16,2005 (Wednesday) -Why Paint A Landscape?
 Last week I tagged along with my friend David Neri, as he started his project to paint all of the lakes in Golden Gate Park (one lake per week.) He's mainly a studio painter, but thought this project would help get him out of a rut. I'm mainly a studio painter too, but I came along because I like the practice of painting and drawing from life. I'm not always so fond of the paintings that result from these sessions, but I think the practice is invaluable.
For me, the main benefits of working plein air are improved eye-hand coordination and a loosening of the strokes. I have a tendency to get too tight and fiddly when I'm working in the studio, lost in a painting, with no deadline, spiraling deeper and deeper into the piece, with smaller and smaller brushes, until I feel like the groundskeeper on a million-acre estate.
Working from life forces you to focus on the essentials, to make each mark your best shot, and move on. When I get back to the studio after a session outdoors, my painting has always improved.
Kathan Brown wrote a book that asks eleven artists the question, "Why Draw a Landscape?" Their answers (one per chapter) were:
Investigation - Sylvia Plimack Mangold
Appreciation - Jane Freilicher
Meditation - Pat Steir
Stylization - Ed Ruscha
Imitation - Robert Bechtle
Demonstration - Tom Marioni
Illustration - David Nash
Exploration - Bryan Hunt
Spiritualization - April Gornik
Evocation - Joan Nelson
Abstraction - Anne Appleby
From the Book, "Why Draw a Landscape?", by Kathan Brown, ISBN 1-891300-11-3
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March 15,2005 (Tuesday) -What is Beauty?
A discussion of beauty...
"Are there objective standards of beauty? Or is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Must art be beautiful to be great art? What is the role of the experience of beauty in a good life?"
... by the Philosophy Talk guys, John Perry and Ken Taylor, will be broadcast on live on KALW 91.7 in San Francisco, today at noon (Pacific time) or you can listen on the web HERE. It's a partly a call-in show, for those of you with something to ask or to say about beauty.
their guest today is Alexander Nehamas who says:
"Beauty, generally considered, is a product of love and not, in general, its antecent cause. That's what locates it in the eye of the beholder. BUT BEAUTY THAT IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER IS NO LONGER ONLY SKIN-DEEP. It is this beauty that I find philosophically interesting and important. It applies equally to people and things, particularly works of art. It certainly is valuable, although I am not sure its value is intrinsic, as Ken suggests (it may be -- I really am not sure). But its value, along with the value of all the "aesthetic" features that are associated with it, is very different from the moral values that seem to have acquired a monopoly over human life in philosophy and public discourse. Moral values, broadly speaking, depend on the similarities and connections that require us to treat each other impartially, fairly and equally. The values associated with beauty, by contrast, depend on the differences between various human beings and give preference to individuality, autonomy and personal style."
-- rest of his essay HERE.
They also just started a blog, in case you'd like to throw in your two cents that way.
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March 14,2005 (Monday) -Follow-ups
A letter from a reader, referring to my entry last Thursday, about drippers:
Just a comment. Perhaps you could see the drip in the paintings of McGee and Liu as a reference to the process in painting. That is, the natural drip of the spray can when the paint is saturated on the surface or the drip of paint when you use it a certain way.
While this can reference the natural world (as in Steir with the waterfall illusion), it can also reference artistic production in a more abstract way. Much of the thrust of modernism was about the medium and how the art was produced. These drips make perfect sense in that context.
Roger Parodi
San Francisco
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Last week, in downtown SF, I heard Christian de Cambiaire explain that he used computers to eliminate the hand of the artist, while across the bay David Byrne is using computers as an artist's tool:
Byrne is most interesting when he goes off on flights of fancy that illustrate why he is called the Renaissance man of rock. "PowerPoint is a symptom of a long train of thought that started picking up steam during the Enlightenment," he says. "The idea was that we could name everything and draw lines that connect them."
from Jane Ganahl's story -rest of it HERE
also mentioned by Modern Kicks
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On Friday, Steve Rubenstein wrote a piece for the SF Chronicle about a sculpture installation at the de Young:
For five years, since the old de Young museum was shut down and demolished, Saul has lived humbly in a secret warehouse in South San Francisco. On Thursday morning, he was loaded into an unmarked, nondescript white truck -- not the sort of carriage that royalty is used to but necessary to throw potential art thieves off the scent. The truck was equipped with air conditioning and extra shock absorbers, to keep Saul comfortable.
The marble man, carved by William Story in 1882 and a beloved icon of the old museum, is worth about $1 million. With all that going for the king, the curators still found it necessary to tie a white tag to the royal finger with "Saul, the Israelite King" printed on it -- presumably to keep all 3 tons of him from being misplaced -- along with a supermarket-style bar code that gave Saul the regal air of a can of corn.
"We tag everything,'' explained museum conservator Elisabeth Cornu, the woman in charge of tagging.
Rest of the story HERE
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Old Pro at artblog.net suggested I read "Visual Intelligence, How We Create what We See" by (cognitive scientist) Donald D. Hoffman, and it sounded interesting, so I ordered it. The book arrived on Friday and I've been reading it over the weekend ... so far, I'm loving it. It covers some of the same territory as (neurobiologist) Margaret Livingstone's book, "Vision and Art, The Biology of Seeing." Livingstone's book has better illustrations, but Hoffman's book has more cogent explanations. Also, Livingstone is more interested in the fine art issues and Hoffman seems more concerned with the philosophical issues of vision. They make good companion books, actually.
Visual Intelligence, How We Create what We See, by Donald D. Hoffman, ISBN0-393-31967-9
Vision and Art, The Biology of Seeing, by Margaret Livingstone, ISBN 0-8109-0406-3
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March 11,2005 (Friday) -Art-generating software
 Last night I attended the opening for Christian de Cambiaire's show, “Le cycle d'un nom et d'une forme” at the Newmark Gallery. I was intrigued when I heard about his work last month, although I had only the vaguest idea of what he was doing. I'm not sure if you'd call him a conceptual artist, or... something else.
The artist speaks mostly French, and I speak mostly English, but we managed to communicate a little bit. If I understand him correctly, he uses computer technology to create things, aiming to remove any trace of the "hand of the artist." The opening was well attended and I noticed a few computer programmers in the crowd, who seemed to be very happy with the exhibit.
There were three parts to this show. One wall displayed 58 panels, listing over 90 thousand distinctive anagrams of the artist's name. Mr. de Cambiaire wrote the software program that calculates the permutations of his name. On the opposite wall, a digital video projection of the anagrams continuously played. Each anagram is accompanied by a unique sound, which plays as the word scrolls down the screen. In the next room were the 3-D wall sculptures, which were built by another software program authored by the artist. These structures are "visual accidents" according to Mr. de Cambiaire, and their number is infinite, although there are only 11 examples here. Again, I presume the point is to produce an object without any influence of the artist's prejudices.
There's something about this work that reminds me of an old Dover book I've had for years, called "Art Forms In Nature" by Ernst Haeckel (originally published in Vienna in 1904; republished by Dover in 1974.) Haeckle's illustrations of slime molds, jelly fish, insects, algae and diatoms are a stunning demonstration of the pure creative force of the universe.
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The artist in front of 58 panels, listing over 90 thousand distinctive anagrams of the artist's name.
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Digital video projection of the anagrams and unique sounds.
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March 10,2005 (Thursday) -Drips, Dripping, Drippers
 I was at SFMOMA recently, and I stopped in front of a wall installation by Barry McGee (image right.) It was a collection of small framed works on paper and some images painted directly on the wall. His work is mostly comix-style figurative, with controlled line work and a minimal amount of shading, mostly monochrome. Here's what I don't get, though: what's with the drips? Since he works in an obviously controlled manner, these drips must be intentional. Maybe they're a reference to his beginnings as a street artist (using spray cans.)
 But that wouldn't account for any of the other dripping I see in contemporary painting. For instance, Hung Liu covers her canvas with drips (image left). Her style is a little looser, and more representational than McGee, but she's also got great control of her medium. Occasionally, like in this image of leaping boys, the dripping adds to the sense of movement. The rest of the time, it's a mystery to me.
Are these drippers trying to refer to the king of the drips, Jackson Pollock? According to John Haber, Pollock was influenced by "the Grandmother of Drip Painting," Janet Sobel, whose work Pollock saw in 1946, "when he needed it most." With this kind of drip painting, the drip IS the painting. (Pollack below left, Sobel below right.)
 
Last week at the Asian Art Museum, I saw a drip painting that really made sense to me. It was a huge (I'm guessing 4 feet by 10 feet) waterfall image on paper by Hiroshi Senju (below left.) The drips and splatters of the medium perfectly conveyed the motion of the waterfall. I'm not sure how many other subjects would work this well with the drip method. Senju does a lot of waterfalls. His work reminded me of Pat Steir - she drips a lot of waterfalls, too (below right.)
 
Just a trend I noticed... thought I'd point it out.
Images:
Barry McGee, detail from painting on Deitch web site
Janet Sobel, detail from painting on John Haber's web site
Hiroshi Senju, detail, Waterfall, 1995, Colored Pigments on Specially Prepared Rice Paper
Jackson Pollock, detail from Enchanted Forest, 1947, Oil on canvas
Hung Liu, detail from Great Leap, 78 x 114", Oil on canvas
Pat Steir, After The Fall I, 1991
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March 9,2005 (Wednesday) -Wayne Quinn
"Daniel Poole as a Platter Design", ©1966, oil on canvas 34" x 28", by San Francisco artist Wayne Quinn. I wonder if Kiki smith saw this before she did her 1995 self portrait titled, "My Blue Lake"?
The image is from Quinn's monograph, "The Art of Wayne Quinn," published in 1977 by New Glide Publications, ISBN 0-912078-57-X
Most of the work in this book is straight-ahead realism. If Wayne Quinn is still alive, he'd be about 64 now. I haven't been able to find anything more about him.
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March 8,2005 (Tuesday) -Graffiti
Steve Winn of the SF Chronicle has written an interesting four-part series on graffiti. Yesterday's article covered the "is it art?" question. He talks about the ancient origins of graffiti (Italian for "little scratching") and its constant presence, just like the constant presence of corporate street advertising:
"Besieged, resilient and curiously resistant to stylistic changes, graffiti is an urban fixture, as solid and integral to the street scene, in some ways, as the utility poles, retaining walls and street signs it adorns. The battle to wipe it out is built on the vision of a city sublimely free of the snaky scrawl and pieces flung up on improbably high walls, a web that spans the city from border to border. That's hard to imagine, in San Francisco. Without graffiti, we might not recognize the place. "
rest of story here
I've been annoyed when graffiti showed up on my house, even when I agreed with the sentiments ("Bush Sucks".) But I've missed it when I've been to cities or suburbs without it. The best kind of graffiti, in my book, is by the Billboard Liberation Front. But I always get a laugh from the wry and subversive commentary written in little black letters on bus shelter posters (on an ad for the drug of the month: "Better Living Through Chemistry.") It leaps out at me as a reminder that I'm not the only one who sees most advertising as inscrutable messages from an alien world.
Today, in the second part of the series, Steve Winn writes about how graffiti shapes the public space. What about graffiti that appears on murals? What about sanctioned graffit murals? Winn quotes Laurie Lazer, co-director of the Luggage Store Gallery on Market Street, who recalls "two different occasions when outdoor graffiti art projects commissioned by one city agency were removed by another without advance notice."
Image above is from the dungeon on Alcatraz, which was occupied from 1969 until June 11, 1971 by Indians of All Tribes, Inc. (Example of graffiti protected and preserved by the Park Service.)
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March 7,2005 (Monday) -Busy Weekend: cranes, spirals, bumblebees & artists
 On Saturday morning I watched the Sheedy Crane guys move the Kirkham earthquake shacks from the outer Sunset to a temporary work site at the SF Zoo. It was spectacularly entertaining to watch as they wrapped each shack in a wood-and-chain girdle and then lifted it into the sky and swung it (in a very tight arc, avoiding other houses and power lines) onto the back of a very big truck. These guys worked with exceptional poise, good cheer, and efficiency, in spite of all the clueless spectators, who were standing all over the place. After I got home, I checked the Sheedy web site and noticed that they're the guys who lifted the Emporium Dome, over at San Francisco Center. It occurred to me that this kind of work would require not only physical strength and an impressive amount of technical knowlege, but a real knack for creative problem-solving.
I wonder if any of them are also artists?
 Saturday evening was the opening for the "Delicious" show at Studio Gallery on Polk street. It's a small gallery and the place was packed - good thing the weather has been gorgeous all weekend, so the crowd could spill out onto the sidewalk. The show was hung salon-style and it worked well for these smaller pieces.
Sunday morning I wanted to go to the beach to see Jim Denevan create one of his large-scale beach drawings, but I had to head to the opposite end of the park, Kezar Stadium to be exact, to meet with Team Bumblebee (to start getting in shape for the Bay to Breakers.) It was actually hot in the city, with barely a hint of a breeze, and flat blue skies overhead... but the fog horns and ship horns were blowing most of the day, and I heard that the bridges and the East Bay were socked in. Late Sunday evening I googled "Denevan, spiral, Ocean Beach" to find news or blogger reports about how the beach drawing went, but couldn't find anything - it may be online by the time you read this.
 Here's a photo (at right) from Denevan's site, of a previous Ocean Beach spiral. This beach drawing is in conjunction with the "Big Deal & Blow Up" show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Sunday afternoon I hosted an artists meeting at my house... six of us are going to show here during the annual October Open Studios event, so we had to hash out who gets how much wall space, how to divide up the publicity chores, and so on. (More about this at a later date.)
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March 4, 2005 (Friday) - Sui Jianguo: Sleep of Reason
 Yesterday I went to the Asian Art Museum to see "Sui Jianguo: Sleep of Reason." It's been there for awhile, although I just got to it. The show is up through April 24th. Sui Jianguo's work was new to me, but he's apparently one of the best-known sculptors in China today. The work is funny, colorful, well-crafted, and thought-provoking. The title is by guest curator Jeff Kelley, and refers to Goya's famous etching "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.''
 Out in front of the museum is a giant, cherry red dinosaur, shaped like one of those little plastic toys you see in dime store bins. "Made In China" is stamped on the dino's belly. Dinosaurs and Mao suits are recurring themes in Sui Jianguo's work. In the main court of the museum (before entering the room where most of Sui Jianguo's work is installed) are a couple of vaguely familiar sculptures... classical Greco-Roman and Renaissance figures, writhing around in ... Mao suits!
 Once you enter the main gallery, the first thing you notice is COLOR. Thousands of little brightly colored plastic dinosaurs cover a low platform in the center of the room. They swirl about in discrete herds, forming an abstract storm, and all marching toward the center, where the sleeping figure of Mao lies under a flowery blue blanket. More, larger dinosaurs line the walls of the room, along with multicolored, hollowed Mao suits. These multiple empty suits are all titled, "Legacy Mantle.''
The press release for this show says, "Sui Jianguo was born in 1956 in Shan Dong province, and currently lives in Beijing where he holds a position as a Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Art, and is Chair of the Sculpture Department. He has held solo exhibitions in Australia, India, Paris, and throughout China. He has also participated in group exhibitions in Osaka, Hiroshima, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, Lyon Biennale, and Korea."
Link to SFGate story about the show, and interview with the artist by Jesse Hamlin. .
Traveling Exhibition of Sui Jianguo's Sculpture Works, "Marx in China" and "Jesus in China"
Some of Jianguo's older work at absolute Arts
Photo of Jainguo's version of the Discus thrower
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March 3, 2005 (Thursday) - Geography and Culture by David Byrne
 From David Byrne's blog entry about a recent stint in San Francisco. He visited the shows at Yerba Buena Center (wrote an interesting review), played a gig at the Fillmore, and described some after-hours events as like, "entering a chaotic and somewhat sexy utopia." He then went on to muse about the connections between geography and culture:
"Why do scenes like this develop here? Maybe there's something in the weather, in the water, the light, the unstable land?
What is it about certain cities and places that fosters specific attitudes? Am I imagining this? Do people who move to LA from elsewhere lose a lot of that elsewhere and eventually end up making LA type work? Does creative attitude seep in through peer pressure and causal conversations? Or is it in the water, the light, the weather? Is there a Detroit sensibility? Memphis? New Orleans? (no doubt) Austin? (certainly) Nashville? London? Berlin? Dusseldorf? Vienna? (yes) Paris? Osaka? Melbourne? Bahia? (absolutely)
Does New York foster a hard as nails no nonsense attitude? Not exclusively, but maybe a little bit. Here creativity is a career, a serious business, something that can be achieved only by absolute focus- and sometimes by what seems like paradoxical means- silliness, sloppiness and studied anti-seriousness can all be serious pursuits.
Is it in the layers of historical happenstance that make up a city? The politics and local laws? The socio-ethnic mix? The evanescent weight of fame and glamour that weighs upon all of LA mixed with the influence of the Latin and Asian populations that are fenced off from that zone – that and the hazy light on skin might make certain kinds of work more appropriate. Yes? No? Maybe?
Maybe in some cases, but not all, this is a bit of a myth, a willful desire to give each place its own aura. But I think every myth at least stems from a kernel of truth...which might be as slight as the need for that myth to exist. The myth of urban character and sensibility exists because we want it to exist- in order to lend meaning and order to a sometimes senseless world."
Rest of the story HERE
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March 2, 2005 (Wednesday) - "Delicious" group show at Studio Gallery
 Proof that a good website works for an artist: a few weeks ago a gallery owner called me to ask if they could include some of my work in an upcoming show. Jennifer at Studio Gallery said she'd found my work on the web. Better yet, the work she was interested in showing was my "Sideshow" stuff. The opening is this weekend:
Delicious
A show of culinary art
March 2nd - April 3rd, 2005
reception: Saturday, March 5th, 4 - 8 pm
Studio Gallery, 1718-A Polk Street (near Clay), San Francisco
(415) 931-3130
It's a body of work that I never expected to have any commercial success, so I only work on it now and then, when I'm not painting commissions or my regular cityscapes and narrative series. With this work I feel free to indulge in experimentation (mainly with materials) and quirky subject matter. This work tends to be both darker and funnier. A lot of it is watercolor on paper and most of it has never been posted on my web site. But about two years ago I started collaborating with another artist, L. Maude Kirk on these "bean paintings" so I felt some responsibility to promote them.
  I had started doing a series of Sunset Kitsch Icons (Doggie Diner, Laughing Sal) in acrylic on panel and I wanted something that would push them over the top. Maude does amazing work with beads on ostrich eggs so I asked her if she would consider doing some beadwork on my panels. At first she said no - she said it would cost too much, in time and materials. But I kept after her and eventually convinced her to try it with beans instead of beads. Considering the subject matter, beans are more appropriate anyway. The first several bean paintings have been portraits of Laughing Sal and the other animated figures at the Musee Mechanique (which used to be out at the Cliff House, but is now making yuks at Fisherman's Wharf.)
 We keep making field trips to the Musee for inspiration and to take photos. We take turns coming up with the idea and sketch for the image, and then we trade the panel back and forth several times, each of us painting and gluing things to the surface. Maude glues dried beans, lentils, corn, seeds and rice. I glue ink jet prints on watercolor paper. The images are from digital photos I've taken at the Musee. I completely cover the paper with acrylic paint and UV varnish, sometimes obliterating the photo, sometimes letting it show through. Occasionally one of us will paint over what the other has done, but we agreed at the beginning that we would allow each other complete freedom when it was our turn with the panel. The panel is done when neither of us can think of anything else to do to it. We've been talking about branching out into circus side show territory next.
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March 1, 2005 (Tuesday) - Lunchtime Browsing
 When I first started stumbling around the internet, there was no web. Computer screens were black and white (or green and greener.) There were bulletin boards - remember those? You had to literally dial a separate phone number to reach each bulletin board server out there. This was pre-AOL. No graphics - everything was text-based. There were almost no women, and no artists. (There were a decent number of writers and book people.) It doesn't seem like that long ago. I know this observation is a cliche, but the pace of change is astonishing.
I think the change has been mostly good. The wealth of art news and information has increased to the point where I no longer cruise the internet looking for any scrap of art news. Now I need to be selective, or I'll never have time for painting. I often read blogs and other web sites during my lunch break. A lot of other people must do the same thing, because my site stats show a big increase in traffic between 9am and 2pm, Pacific (covers the lunch period as it rolls across the continent.)
If you're looking for 15 minutes of interesting browsing during your lunch break, check these out:
- Tyler Green at Arts Journal - still the best. Has a long list of intriguing bits in his just updated "Around the Blogosphere" feature.
- Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof's artblog never fails to deliver a view of the world as seen in and from Philadelphia.
- ionarts - a blog about "Music, Art, Literature—the good stuff", but they rarely let their hair down.
- Modern Kicks, where, "it is the firm policy of this website that no one can have too much Dutch painting in their lives."
- And last but not least, there's a new artist on the sidebar: Carol Es - a hardworking, curious visual/installation artist (and poet) from Los Angeles
(Image above is "Monday Face", 10" x 10", ©2002, Anna L. Conti)
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