Must See Art Show

Some of my favorite artists. I would not miss this one. Jules de Balincourt, Jason Jagel, Ben Peterson, Todd Hido, Kota Ezawa, David Huffman, not to mention the greats from the previous generation...Diebenkorn, Becthle, Oliveira, the list is long.

A CENTURY OF CCA at the OAKLAND MUSEUM of CALIFORNIA

OAKLAND, CA - California College of the Arts (CCA) culminates its centennial celebration with ARTISTS OF INVENTION: A CENTURY OF CCA, a survey of work by 100 faculty and alumni, many among California’s most influential artists. The show continues through March 16, 2008, at the Oakland Museum of California.

The exhibition features more than 120 works—paintings, ceramics, photography, video, sculpture, mixed media, installations, textiles, wood, and works on paper—and includes a large contemporary section from the past 20 years.

ARTISTS OF INVENTION: A CENTURY OF CCA was organized by Oakland Museum of California Chief Curator of Art Philip Linhares, exhibition designer Ted Cohen, and consultant Lee Plested, all CCA alumni. The contemporary section was organized by CCA alumni Liz Mulholland, Abner Nolan, Chris Perez, Jessica Silverman, and Bay Area curator Tara McDowell.

“A balance of technical skill and independent vision has always marked the art associated with CCA,” Lee Plested said. “The result has been some of the most idiosyncratic and expressive art in America.”

The exhibition, arranged by era, includes:

The Society of Six, a band of renegade plein-air painters from the 1920s; California production ceramists, such as Edith Heath and Jacomena Maybeck, who taught at the college in the 1950s and 1970s, respectively; Weaver Trude Guermonprez, who chaired the crafts department in the 1960s and 1970s, and textile artists Kay Sekimachi and Lia Cook;Richard Diebenkorn, whose mode was further developed in the work of alumni Nathan Oliveira and Manuel Neri; The modern studio ceramics movement, pioneered by Peter Voulkos and continued by Robert Arneson and Viola Frey; John McCracken, who began his explorations in Minimalism while a CCA student; West Coast Conceptualism, which broke ground with the work of David Ireland and Dennis Oppenheim; Photorealism pioneer Robert Bechtle and his peers Richard McLean, Ralph Goings, and Jack Mendenhall, a current faculty member; Painters Squeak Carnwath and Raymond Saunders; and A new generation: videographers Kota Ezawa, Désirée Holman, and Sergio de la Torre; photographers Larry Sultan, Todd Hido, and Liz Cohen; painter David Huffman; and mixed-media artists Lynn Marie Kirby and Amy Franceschini, among many others. Bay Area Figurative painter and CCA instructor

CCA was founded in 1907 by Frederick Meyer, a German cabinetmaker, as the School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts. It was known for decades as CCAC (California College of Arts & Crafts). In 2003 the college was renamed California College of the Arts, in recognition of the breadth of the curriculum. For a summary of centennial events see http://www.cca.edu/about/centennial/events.php. A full-color companion book to the exhibition is available.

Visit the Oakland Museum of California. The museum is open Wednesday to Saturday, 10 to 5; Sunday, noon to 5; first Friday of the month until 9. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 seniors and students with ID, and free for museum members, kids five and under, and Oakland City employees. The museum is at 1000 Oak @ 10th Street, one block from the Lake Merritt BART. For more information, visit www.museumca.org

On the Town

With Jason Jagel

Aidin Vaziri, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, October 7, 2007

On The Town

Archive

Jason Jagel is a San Francisco visual artist whose work has appeared on releases by underground musicians such as Our Lady of the Highway and MF Doom, as well as in galleries nationwide. He didn't have to look far for inspiration: His father, John, was a celebrated artist who, in the in the '60s, designed a handful of iconic covers for jazz greats John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Jagel holds degrees from Stanford University and California College of the Arts, where he teaches painting and narrative drawing. He will be one of the featured artists at Park Life's November anniversary group benefit show. In the meantime, we asked him for a list of his favorite spots around his Mission neighborhood. "My studio is in my backyard, so sometimes I need to invent reasons to get out of the house," he said.

24th and York Street Mini Park. "I've two young daughters, 1 and 4 years old, so my outings often tend toward family-centric destinations like the park and the grocery store. Right around the corner from my house is a newly redone kid's park. There are some of my favorite idiosyncratic Mission murals on its three walls, all pre-existing. As for the new parts, a giant, beautiful mosaic serpent spirals out, halfway submerged in the ground, around a fountain with orchestrated water spouts that can be activated by two color-coded 'panic' buttons."

La Taqueria, 2889 Mission St. "It's some of the best-tasting steak I've had in the city. Eight or 9 dollars for two tacos? Worth every penny, if you've got it."

Mission Pie, 2901 Mission St. "Full as can be, it's still hard for me to resist Mission Pie, whose yummy seasonal pies let my belly experience apricot, peach or strawberry season firsthand. The rich, spicy and not-too-sweet sweet potato and caramelized peach pies have been my tops. The shop is a wing of Pie Ranch, a 14-acre farm on the San Mateo coast that grows the ingredients for the pies and has an educational program that invites urban youth to experience our relationship to food production.

Queens Nails Annex, 3189 Mission St. "One place I enjoy visiting into the late night is Queens Nails Annex, an art gallery started in 2004 by Bob Linder and Julio Cesar Morales. Whether championing international art projects and performances or hosting music and audio projects, they throw mighty friendly parties. The events, where I can count on running into first-class genuine people, often migrate next door into the cozy, neighborhood bar the Argus, whose super bartenders, old-wood bar top and low-key space make it humble magnificent. Some good DJs there too, including Brolin Winning, Urban Yetti, Juan Luna-Alvin and, on the rare occasion, myself."

Mission Pool, 19th and Linda Streets. "A beautiful, outdoor municipal pool that feels not too chlorinated. Thanks to the local lobbying of district supervisors, it's open until January instead of just the summertime. And there's nothing like how hungry I get after swimming and nothing better for it than the shwarma experience of Truly Mediterranean on 16th at Valencia. Yum."

Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia St. "One of the oldest and stalwart nonprofit arts spaces in the city. Seeing vibraphonist Stefon Harris in that intimate, formal and, most importantly, unamplified space won me over completely. Besides which, their theater programming, including the Hybrid Project and resident artists, is always enticing."

Electric Works, 130 Eighth St. "A print shop, art gallery, publisher and book/sundry store. The brick building was built for the Buzell Electric Works in 1925 and now features a 'general store' of select items, including books and prints by a host of fine artists published there and elsewhere. Together, we're publishing a book called "73 Funshine" comprised of my paintings and a 12-inch record with songs by Monk Hughes and the Outer Realm, Young Jazz Rebels and the Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble."

Park Life, 220 Clement St. "Situated in one of my favorite, and often below-the-radar, San Francisco neighborhoods, and besides their great selection of things for sale, they formed Paper Museum Press and published 'Ulysses: Departures, Journeys & Returns: The Artwork of Andrew Schoultz,' a beautiful tome from a beautiful artist. When I opened the book, having not seen his work in a while, I was blown away by his horse and ship paintings and his 2-D/3-D installations. Boom."

E-mail Aidin Vaziri at avaziri@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page G - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Our friend Brendan is having a huge show in LA. Below are the details.
If you are in the area, you should check it out.

Brendan Monroe INSIDES

Opening reception on Saturday October 13th, 2007, 5-7pm
Exhibition Dates: October 13 – November 10, 2007

Richard Heller Gallery
2525 Michigan Avenue, B-5A,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
phone : 310.453.9191
www.richardhellergallery.com

Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, presents INSIDES, a solo exhibition of works by Berkeley based artist Brendan Monroe. The show will consist of a body of paintings on paper and a large interactive sculpture. The title, INSIDES, refers not only to the physical insides of us, such as a blood cell, but also in an emotional sense as in how one feels inside one’s thoughts. The sculpture, titled Borborygmi, represents a giant walk through plush stomach. Borborygmi is a term for the gurgling sounds your intestines and stomach make when you are hungry. The inside of the sculpture will be a very soft and comfortable space, though a little dark and claustrophobic. The sculpture can be about many things. Are people who go inside comfortable with themselves? How many of us listen to what our gut instincts are trying to tell us? How many of our feelings come from this place? How much of what makes us do things is out of hunger; physical hunger and also need?

Real good group show at SF State Gallery

This one is not likely to be widely seen, but is well worth the trip.
Details:

Pacific Light

California Watercolor Refracted
1907-2007

September 22 to October 20, 2007
Department of Art
Fine Arts Gallery
SF State University

http://gallery.sfsu.edu/

The show title is not a real good indication of the great work you'll see in the show..and their website is pretty worthless.

SOme of the artists
Robert Bechtle, Martin Ramirez, Alicia McCarthy, Barry Mcgee, Ruth Asawa, Chang Dai-chien, David Hockney, Julio Cesar Morales, Leslie Price, Wayne Thiebaud, Tucker Nichols, many more..

I tried to take pics but got reprimended.

Go See

Andrew Schoultz Show in L.A. getting great reviews. Reviewed by L.A. Times

Andrew Schoultz and Peter Rogiers at Roberts & Tilton
Los Angeles Times

By Holly Myers, September 14, 2007

If last weekend's pageant of 80-plus openings -- the kickoff to the fall season -- had been a contest, the prize for most thrill per square foot would almost surely have gone to Andrew Schoultz's Power Structures and Chaos at Roberts & Tilton, a giddy maelstrom of an exhibition packed in the closet-sized vault of the gallery's project space.

Horses charge, flags wave, clouds of arrows darken the sky -- it's hard to say just who's fighting whom, but the momentum is exhilarating. The show's five paintings -- on canvas and panel, ranging from 18 inches to 6 feet tall -- suggest medieval battle scenes awash in swirling currents of pictorial shrapnel: arrows, leaves, ribbons, raindrops and waves, all rendered with pinpoint precision.

Interspersed with the paintings are murals. Waves churn along the floor on one wall, a red brick pyramid in the corner erupts like a volcano and, high above, a band of arrows whirls round the perimeter of the space.

The floor is painted to look like red brick and scattered with several pyramid-shaped sculptures, also faux brick, with additional battle scenes on certain panels. The largest pyramid, in the center of the room, supports a scale that balances the weight of two small calla lilies -- the show's only point of peace and stillness.

Schoultz hails from a loose school of San Francisco artists -- Barry McGee, the late Margaret Kilgallen, Clare Rojas and Aaron Noble (now an Angeleno) are others -- whose work integrates fine art, mural, graffiti and street art traditions with unselfconscious ease.

One result of this fusion has been a refreshingly dynamic approach to exhibition design. This is installation driven less by rarefied concepts of space, light or the presumed experience of the viewer than by the sheer joy of covering a wall.

Schoultz's imagery, however, is distinctive and increasingly so: more mystical than folkish, characterized by frenetic, often fractured compositions and overlapping currents of intricate linear patterns. He's been impressively prolific in recent years, with solo (or two-person) shows at several L.A. venues -- Taylor de Cordoba, the BLK/MRKT Gallery, Giant Robot and Track 16 -- as well as quite a few on the East Coast, and the imagery appears to be constantly shifting, developing and adapting. Certain motifs pop up again and again -- the horses, pyramids, volcanoes, ships -- but an underlying restlessness keeps it all in constant motion, which makes Schoultz one to watch: He's clearly hitting his stride.

It's never sunny in San Francisco

Wow, its been a month since our last post. Honestly I still haven't gotten into this whole blogging thing. I guess it more laziness than anything. Things have been hectic, we have a lot of projects going and it's a struggle to keep them all going at the same time. I also had to move last month which is in my opinion on the single most stressful thing ever. I've stopped keeping count but this might have been the 50th time I've had to move.

Anyways, last night i saw the promo for the new season of "Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia". It was a parody of the mac and pc ads but initially i thought it was real. The punchline floored me. Thank god I wasn't drinking anything cause it would have came out of my nose. That show is brilliant.

GO NINERS!

Another good show

Ala Ebtekar at Paule Anglim. This guy is going to be around for a while. Reasonably priced too, considering it's a "fine" art gallery.

http://www.gallerypauleanglim.com/

Go see this

I recently saw a really good painting show by young SF artist Matthew Pallidino.
It's at a great new Gallery/store called Brown Bear in SF on Divisidero. Best show I've seen a while. Prices were not cheap. I think it's up for another week or two.



Here are some pics..scroll down the page:

http://www.artbusiness.com/1open/072907.html

I had recently read about artist Martin Ramirez and his work in a book about outsider art. Of all the artists featured in that book, Ramirez's work really stood out for me.

A couple a days later, in the style section of the Chronicle there was a feature story about Ramirez. Here is the link. Fate I tell you. Read the story its pretty crazy, plus its topical with all the immigration issues in the news.

There is a exhibition of his work currently on view at the San Jose Museum of Art through early September. Jamie recently went and said it was amazing. I cant wait to go.

-derek

Our website has been up for a bit but we are constantly trying to make it better. The design is for lack of a better word basic but thats how we like it. No flash for us, that shit is annoying. Recently we made a couple of changes to the "Store" section of the site. The changes should make navigation a bit better. Plus we added a "New Items" category. For those that have short attention spans like myself.

In the next couple of days we will be launching our new Gallery page. Gone is the flash interface, now its all lovely html. Please send us any feedback. I want to make our site as headache free as possible.

More changes to come.

-derek

and Henry Fool rules. still no sign of our sign. (lament)

Someone borrowed our sandwich board sign last night. It doesn't like being away from home for too long so please bring it back soon.

Also, I did not like Henry Fool. Drivel.

jamie

Do you have a top 10 or top 5 list of favorite movies? Mine has changed over the years but one constant has been "Henry Fool". In my early twenties I went through my Parker Posey stage. I thought she was hot shit, and the good thing was my local video place had everything she was in. (i guess they thought she was hot shit too)

Henry Fool was directed by Hal Hartley, which almost made me not want to watch it. I've seen a couple of his other films and they were pretty mehhhh. Henry Fool was totally different, there was an actual plot and despite the intentional stage style over acting I loved it. It was funny, weird, quirky, peppered with snappy dialogue and the ending was great. In my opinion it was a great example of 90's independent cinema.

A week ago a friend mentioned there was a sequel to Henry Fool titled Faye Grim. Faye Grim was the name of the character Ms. Posey played. My friend also mentioned that the film has an espionage/spy angle. What? I was hoping she was misinformed but alas she wasn't.



The film is indeed a spy flick, but it does a good job of keeping the same strange mood set in Henry Fool. Im wont play spoiler so I'll leave the plot out. But here are some thoughts.

They cast the same actor that played Faye & Henry's child in the first movie. I thought this was a nice touch. In fact many of the same characters were in the sequel.

Parker Posey has aged but it still pretty hot. Elizabeth Huppert plays her signature, sex crazed bohemian chick role.

Im not a fan of Jeff Goldblum. Im not sure why.

They spent a ton more money on this film than the first. I noticed in the credits that Mark Cuban was an executive producer. That dude is a douche.

There is a noir-ish thing going on. I also realized this was in the first movie as well.

If you haven't seen the first movie, you will have no idea what it going on.

All in all it was nice to go back into that very strange world of Henry Fool. For the sequel the plot is pretty much a complete farce but maybe that was the point. If you watch this let me know what you think.

new hamburger eyes

issue 11 in the "continuing story of life on earth" aka hamburger eyes photo magazine has hit the shop. this issue took a bit longer to publish but it was worth the wait. issue 11 is the music issue. i think this is the first time they have done a theme issue. i could be wrong as ive only been reading since issue 4.

a little plug for the park life. the first "ad dollars" we have spent went into a full page add. thanks hamburgers eyes for the great placement. rad

if you havent already, pick up a copy.

this made me laugh and cry at the same time. i've had too many bikes stolen. not sure what the numbers are but San Francisco has to be up there in bicycle theft.

Street Level

I was in NC for a few days recently and stumbled on this really good group show called Street Level at the Nasher Museum of Art. It includes Mark Bradford, William Cordova, and Robin Rhode. It kinda reminded me of the infamous Street Market show from back when..in it's relevance. They published a catalog that is pretty nice too...I'm trying to get it for the shop..

Their website is a little wonky...

Street Level

I wanted to take a second and thank the many people that have gone out of there way to help spread the word about Park Life and PMP. Someone asked me who we hired to get the press we have been getting and I said, "hired, huhh"??? I wouldn't even know who to contact regarding press. Anyways, it means a lot to us when we hear people saying nice things about what we are trying to do here on Clement St.

Here is a short list of our supporters. Please forgive us if we omit anyone and thanks again.

Paulson Press
Electric Works
Matt, Sarah, Adian, and Reyhan at the Chronicle
The Headlands
Darryl & Laurie
Alison Bing
Kim of Paper Mag
Design Crack
Andrew Schoultz
Ian Johnson
Shooting Gallery and White Walls
Andrew Painter
Art Business.com
Daily Candy
Yelp
Gregory Lind Gallery
Brendan Monroe
Evah Fan
Deth and Marci
Kelly Lynn Jones
Art Blog SF
Fecal Face
Juxtapoz Magazine
Art Fever
Yong Ki Chang of 3131 Clement and Equal Dist
Mesh Magazine
Noise Pop
Lucky Mag
San Francisco Magazine

Our friends Trillium Press now Electric Works is having an opening this week to celebrate their new space in San Francisco. Come out and support.

Opening Friday April 5th. 5:30 - 7:30pm


Electric Works
130 8th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
vox 415.626.5496
fax 415.626.2396
info@sfelectricworks.com