Many cultural events actually coincide with the season of open studios in San Francisco. ARTober Fest encompasses more than visual Art.  It also surpasses the month of October and fills in the beginning of  November. If you plan to visit the Bay Area, you’ll get your money’ worth if you come here between October and November.  At the start of the month, the free, gigantic blue grass festival known as Strictly Hardly takes over the first weekend.  A few studio groups begin showing work the second week.  Then comes Litquake, the 15-year-old literary festival that swoops into the Bay Area for a busy week.  It’s an amazing representation of the Bay Area.

During both weekdays and the weekend, people vie for seats (or space to stand) at readings, panel discussions, and writing workshops. The infamous “Lit Crawl” celebrates the end of the festival. This year the crawl included 101 events taking place in three hours. Over 900 authors brought their work to the public in just a week. Many writers come from the West Coast while others are international. While the festival takes place mostly in San Francisco, events stretch out in every direction: the North Bay, Berkeley, Oakland, and the South Bay all become bustling grounds for Litquake authors to share their work.

Encounters with the visual world definitely happen during this literary occasion. A few examples from 2014 included a roundtable discussion of contemporary book design; an exhibit of cover art from Bay Area publishers; artists and illustrators from the The New Yorker in conversation with the West Coast; and a talk on the art of Italian children’s books.

At the panel discussion, “Being with Death: The Art of Dying in the Modern Age,” Fouladi Projects Gallery, 13-Oct-2014

My start of Litquake involved a somber but simultaneously uplifting panel discussion called “Being with Death: The Art of Dying in the Modern Age.” Four Bay Area writers, who have published memoirs and non-fiction surrounding death within today’s medical practices, spoke to an audience that quickly grew heavy-hearted.

Though we became a sniffling, weepy audience, it felt very good to talk about death. I feel that the people sitting with me felt the same way. Though the scenarios described caused many of us to tear up (Panelist Monica Wesolowska spoke about the one month lifespan of an infant she lost after childbirth; Elizabeth Scarboro talked about the passing of her first young husband from Cystic Fibrosis in his mere mid-twenties) the speakers created such strong models of understanding and acceptance that you just couldn’t walk away from the talk in pain. Panelist Katy Butler framed it this way, “You can’t have a good death without talking about it.”

Butler and Sheila Himmel lead the talk towards a wider perspective on how people die today (i.e. regarding the number of us who experience ICU before dying, the involvement of medical professionals, and the definition of a natural death). Skillfully, all four writers spoke on the pain from a prolonged deathbed, which affected each of them in the past. Though the audience cried, the panelists did not.

Photo of the audience and panelist, Elizabeth Scarboro, Litquake 2014

This public talk surfaced just 2 weeks before Brittany Maynard’s public and controversial decision to seek Oregon’s Death with Dignity Law. With stage 4 brain cancer, Maynard chose to end her life with the help of doctors on November 1, 2014. The wide publicity of Maynard’s difficult situation likely attracted some audience members to this talk.

One of the most heartening moments came, when Butler asked where the med students sat in the audience. A few men and women raised their hands, and we all gave applause. These were nurses, hospice workers, therapists, and doctors taking an extra step to better understand patients’ dying with dignity.

Litquake 2014, “The Art of Poetry” panel, photo courtesy of Rachel Dwan.

The above photo came from “The Art of Poetry” panel discussion (one of the recurring talks for every Litquake). This year, panelists included published authors Robin Ekiss, Elizabeth Block, Roxanne Beth Johnson, Zack Rogow, and Judy Halebsky.

Phase I of Lit Crawl 2014, Outside of “Science Fiction in the 21st Century,” October 18th, 2014

6: 20 PM, twenty minutes late for the first phase of Lit Crawl and I find myself at the back of the audience, which pushed all the way out the front door, sadly out of hearing range. This is the closest I got to hearing about contemporary science fiction at a store in the Mission District called the Time Frame. It’s a slightly unusual place to hold such a public gathering (among glass cases full of eyewear and a space fit for a handful of customers rather than this lit crowd), but that’s the charm of Litquake.  It’s a festival that creatively calls in all parts of the community to share culture. Speakers included Michael Blumlein, Ellen Klages, Tim Pratt, Jacob Weismam, and Tad Williams.

Another view of the crowd from outside of “Science Fiction in the 21st Century,”2014 Lit Crawl.

Phase II of Lit Crawl 2014, in the store of an independent designer called Five and Diamond in the Mission, “Funcheap Presents San Francisco on $0 a Day”

7:15 PM: A fun discussion between five San Francisco savvy writers on the most creative ways to live cheaply in this expensive city.  Featuring Eve Batey, Johnny Funcheap, Brandon R. Reynolds, Stuart Schuffman, and Beth Spotswood. Note the far-left panelist who joined in digitally. Readers, please be reminded that while this Phase II event took place between 7:15 and 8:15 PM, about thirty other Phase II events also happened.

Phase III of the Lit Crawl, “Librarian Authors in the Stacks,” at Press: Works on Paper. 

Around 8:40 PM, I and a partner walked into a rare book bookstore called Press: Works on Paper. A poetry reading made the perfect end to the evening. This one featured librarian authors from all over the Bay and beyond: Andrew Demcak, Tayrn Edwards, Moazzam Sheikh, Erin Wilson, and Michelle Zaffino.

Near the end of Phase III, Photo of Press: Works on Paper

A view inside ofPress: Works on Paper and some crowd members standing all around the store, Photo courtesy of Michelle Kicherer.

Lit-quake, a suitable name for a festival in the Bay Area. Though we’re never sure when we’ll suffer the next big earthquake, we can be sure that this literary giant comes back to town each Fall. I have a feeling that upcoming years will continue to feel endlessly loaded with pointed ideas, great people, images, poetry, and too much to talk about.

 Written by: Audrey Tran

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San Francisco, Tuesday – November 4, 2014

Two weekends ago, Artiholics visited the Headlands Center for the Arts, an establishment  carrying international renown for contemporary artists dating back nearly 3 decades (Read: Part 1). In 1982, this former military property transferred to the National Park Service and fell under the direction of a board primarily made up of local artists.

Today, the arena operates much like a campus for resident artists coming from several programs:

1. Graduates of the major MFA programs in the region (Graduate Fellows) such as SFAI, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State University among others.
2. Other national and foreign national artists participating in the Artists in Residence Program (AIR). This includes both art professionals and writers.
3. The Affiliate Artists (https://www.headlands.org/program/affiliate/), a program specific to the local Bay Area art professionals.

The Center is comparable to the unique rooms in my favorite NY art museum, PS1. I’ve always felt that exhibition rooms that are not like white cubes, can  add possibilities for new elements or ideas to work in to projects or concepts.  The Center also maintains a constant relationship with the public. Not only does the Headlands Center for the Arts exhibit during the Fall open studios season, the Center participates in year-round talks, screenings, shows, readings, and performances. See their page for upcoming events. Here are a few views of the Center.

Below, I’ve left a trail of pictures and information about a few of the things that were open to the public at the Headlands Center two weekends ago.

Work by Janelle Iglesias

Here, we see a tree branch attached to the wall, but notice how the artist has edited the twigs and leaves stemming from the top half of the main bough. Janelle Iglesias is working with and against nature. She seems to be forming shapes based on those natural structures. Within this image, I see the air view of a city map described. How that arena contrasts with the hanging, clumped stems below. So many ways to wonder about a tree rod, using little more than its natural materials and structures.

A sculpture from Janelle Iglesias’ studio.

Combined with the wall piece (this room felt very large), visitors also glimpsed some of Iglesias’ wood and mixed media sculptures.

Below, are two partial views of Iglesias’ conceptual piece called, The Space Between Earth & Sky. 

 Janelle Iglesias’ The Space Between Earth & Sky. 

When you try to grab as many angles and visual references as possible for a blog article, you might like me, forget to actually look at the work—instead of taking pictures of it. Regretfully, I cannot tell you exactly how it felt to come across The Space Between Earth & Sky, for I fell into that auto-photo snapping zone when I approached it. The tidbits of the piece from my references make me wish I had stayed with it longer.

A piece from Blessing Ngobeni’s studio

While reading his images, I sense complicated emotions being described. Tangled figures embrace or reach out to one another. In other moments, their gestures appear hostile. Everyone in the bunch drips some sort of fluid, which also serves as a visual connection that moves your eye around the composition. In all of his works, Ngobeni shows an innate ability to interweave his disparate shapes, colors, and regions of the paper/canvas. Parts of the figures hold images of smaller figures, similar to a comic strip embedded in a larger one. These different characteristics create many-layered narratives that do not have to be read in any specific order.

Close-up view of Ngobeni’s artwork, depicted above.

Past writers have focused on how Ngobeni’s biographical history in South Africa influences his work.  At the Headkands, Ngobeni’s studies include “observing human behaviour, by examining the non-verbal communication, gestures and cues made by the people.”   See the gallery below for additional images of this artist’s work.

View of Ying Zhu’s exhibition space

Ying Zhu created an exhibition space that urges her audience to look closely. The large room I entered (likely comfortable for over 25+ people to walk through at one time) might be 98% bare, but if you look down, you’ll find her flourishing artwork, threads that are in full bloom.

I thought of a very minimal coral reef. Using man made materials, Zhu mimics nature. Her pieces come from reflecting on the surrounding landscape of Marin County (just north of San Francisco). Zhu is based in Nebraska. Having someone from a different part of the country pondering the Bay Area seems like a worthwhile interaction for those of us who are so used to the area. Sometimes, a viewer from afar can see more in the things that lay so near to us.

View of Ying Zhu’s installation work at the Headlands Center for the Arts

In the picture below, the square hung on a wall in the same space. It clues us into some of Zhu’s thoughts and explorations. I read it as a sketch, constructed from grey threads, similar to the larger installation on the floor. Those frail structures draw me in, especially when they counterintuitively create strong borders like the walls of this square.

Item in Ying Zhu’s Project Space

Even though I love sculpture (that was my concentration during college), paintings in the flesh have become a favorite recently. I experience over 7 hours of work in front of a computer most days. Perhaps that is why painted surfaces have become such a treat. The bumps, layers, smears, and all the indefinite facets that come with paint on canvas are now my eye candy. I feel that way about the surface of actual book pages too. Some of this came to mind while visiting Allison Miller’s painting studio.

The artist treats her paintings as arenas for action. In her work, we see spaces that can be changed many times and the end result does not entirely represent the full ark of Miller’s work. For the body of works on display at the Headlands, it is very important to think about how the artist constantly edits. While viewers see only one static state of Miller’s paintings, the artist gets to experience all the changes—the twists on all the endless possibilities and constraints of paint.

A close view of a painting in Miller’s studio.

This review carries a particularly delicious description of Miller’s painting technique.  Other’s have written of the artist’s work like sculpture, an apt connection. See the gallery at the end of this post for more pictures from Allison Miller at the Headlands.

Terrance Nance’s work offered a respite from hanging out with the very physical paintings, drawings, and sculptures in the floors below his studio. The space did not require much light as the artist screened different works on a large studio wall for passing visitors.   The video below shows Frenel in its entirety, accessible through Vimeo.  The piece feels like a documentary that sweetly includes a distinct dreamscape created by two dancers–you’ll never take your eyes off them.   Their imaginative dance changes with the mood flowing from the reflective dialogue of the main subject, Frenel Morris.  He is a milliner.

Frenel from Terence Nance • Terence Etc. on Vimeo.

Past pieces of writing on Nance’s work include descriptions of elegance, intuition, and the ever-flattering way to compliment visual art—the comparison to poetry. After seeing just a handful of his works at the Headlands, I can imagine why others have felt this. Just thinking about Nance’s use of words, I’m taken by the title of his feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty.

Other collaborators include filmmaker Hank Willis Thomas, Chanelle Pearson, and musician Melissa Laveaux Postman.

We did not get to capture every artist, project, or event happening during the Open House. What we saw was enough of a hook.  Artiholics will definitely return to the Headlands for future events.

Written by: Audrey Tran

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Artists Robert Minervini and Adam Friedman have given this city a many-layered sky/landscape, unique for its multiple twists on perspective.  The installation opened on May 10^th to a huge crowd at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. For the show, curator Sven Davis asked the artists to create an installation to accompany his large curatorial project called Space//Squared.

The group show includes over 100 artists. Each participant was asked to interpret and visualize space and form under the constraint of a 10″ x 10” canvas board.  Minervini and Friedman’s site-specific installation is meant to augment the theme of the Space//Squared by using elements of architecture and nature on a larger scale.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhZQE52exW4&w=560&h=315]

See the artists at work in this time-lapsed video, created by Adam Friedman.

The collaborative installation is set in a narrow space and spans three walls. Even on opening night last weekend when large crowds traveled through the installation, sometimes parking for long periods in the space, I felt refreshed by the spacious grid and its constant, well-measured pattern. It was sort of like looking at art in a bright white room verses a room with dark blue walls.

Minervini and Friedman give us an indistinct landscape, highlighted towards the middle by a pink and purple glow.  A shadowy, distant cityscape runs across the horizon, while a diamond grid made of thick white lines that are bluish around the border, covers the landscape. That grid creates the illusion of a layer, much like a glass plane.  We might be looking out from the inside of a geodesic dome.

At the furthest wall, the artists capture a triangular window (up-side-down; the bottom angle is cut off by a mountain peak from the pink landscape) that reveals a starry nighttime sky neatly sliced from the middle of the pink and purple scene.   To complete the installation, and to connect with the other parameters of Space//Squared, both artists installed five 10 x 10” paintings within the space. The small pieces reflect some of the same colors and shapes from the installation. Friedman’s paintings appear like Wunderkammers windows (also known as Cabinets of Curiosities) concerned with neat incisions into landscape elements or the psychedelic layers of mineral rocks.  These windows might look out into a starry sky or a wavy seascape.  Together, Friedman’s images feel like puzzles.

In Minervini’s set of paintings, the focus lies on sensitive layers created by both man-made and natural elements.  I.E. a peach-colored sunset is depicted behind a rotting chain-linked fence; or in another piece, Minervini paints a mammoth highway bridge separated from the viewer because of another wiry fence in decay.  The weedy vegetation climbing the fence, which also takes on the same color of the fence, creates a sense of combined disintegration:  Man and Nature rot away together, as a team.

In comparison to his cohort, Friedman’s work feels more celebratory.  Minervini’s images reveal something more mournful. Both feel exploratory, and together, they present curious and mesmerizing twists on Sven Davis’ concepts.  For a lively show, catch their installation and the dozens of other participating artists in Space//Squared at White Walls. The show runs until July 5^th.  Simultaneously, White Walls is showing 4 other exhibits:

Alphabet Show: Ever Letter Counts   •   John Felix Arnold III – Pilgrimage  •  Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada  •  Helen Bayly – Give Me What I Can’t Have

Robert Minervini lives and works in San Francisco.  Currently, he is working on a residency with the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory, where he will construct a large mural.  Adam Friedman’s practice is based in Portland, Oregon.  He is working on a large commission for the Capital One Collection. One of Friedman’s paintings will be featured on the GNU 2014-2015 Snowboard line.  Sven Davis is an arts collector based in the U.K. , where he manages an architectural practice. He writes for Arrested Motion, an online publication on contemporary art. Photo credit goes to Brock Brake for his smashing work.

White Walls Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12 PM to 7 PM. Look for the gallery at 886 Geary Street, between Hyde and Larkin in San Francisco. Their current shows opened on May 10th and will close on July 5th.

Written by Audrey Tran.

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San Francisco, California – Thursday, February 6, 2014

Heidi Kirkpatrick’s work is chilling in an alluring way. In this new art exhibit titled LOST & FOUND currently on display at the RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco, she pitches photos with objects to create new monsters almost like an elaborate game of exquisite corpse.  A group of such works called the Cyanohoops are made from cyanotype photography. The artist printed her images on fabric and stretched her pictures onto embroidery hoops.  She does all her own work, she shoots on film, prints on film, and develops in her own darkroom.

Some of her images include the bluish white silhouette of a fork, a simple dress, a frail feather, and then a dainty hand.

There is also a windy outline of a snake, other plants, and other dresses too.  A few portraits of ladies and one man hang among the objects.  These round frames and blue prints place the images all on the same visual level, connecting them and leading us to wonder, in a Surrealist fashion, why a fork might be linked to a dress; or a clover to a man; or a ring to a feather. The hoops all act like different parts of a delicate poem, one that harkens back to an old craft and an old method of printing.

Kirkpatrick’s hoops are scattered in an unspecific, eye-pleasing arrangement across one of the larger walls in the space.  I’ve decided that pictures displayed without edges feel less routine, but natural. Isn’t that how we look at the world, through roundish eye sockets and not boxes? Perhaps our penchant for straight edges and boxes is really some need to bring order to life. The round hoops conjure more of a  dream-like mood, and could be reminiscent of thought bubbles.

Speaking of eyes, the sculptural piece called Watch Tower caught me. It is made up of six wooden baby blocks, each carrying a lovely female eye, underneath a smart brow.

Human and non-human eyes can be so alluring and frightening at the same time. Because so many animals fear eyes, biologists use the term cyclophobism to talk about that specific fear.  In this small piece, the eyes in this triangular tower don’t feel threatening. They appear alert in a spirited way.

Kirkpatrick began exploring alternative film processes in the Nineties, and at that time felt a strong attraction to film positives. Today, many of her works (not including the Cyanohoops) are made with film positives. Kirkpatrick admires the pioneering work of Anna Atkins, the English Botanist who published the first book of photographs, and is credited as the first female photographer. In terms of the actual images, Kirkpatrick employs old family photos that carry narratives and emotions held deeply important to the artist. Of the one picture involving a man, she notes that this is her great grandfather, now passed away. The mention of him prompted the artist to recall a few storylines about his life:

“We called him big grandpa,
he had a filling station in Waterloo,
he let the kids steal penny candy from his store,
he grew tobacco and taught me how to fish,
he lived into his nineties.”

Her image-objects are an outcome of familial loss and preservation of memory. Though a sense of warmth emerges from those story-lines, Kirkpatrick’s images haunt her as well. She continues using some of the same photos over and over

Also included in the show is a piece called She’s An Open Book, which displays two images of thin arms and clawing hands reaching upward. Whatever body these appendages are connected to seems to lay upside down. In between the hands and arms are the pages of a book curled and folded together. The body here, is a book, and from the look of the desperate arms, this book does not want to be unfurled.

Kirkpatrick also continues to explore different ways of photographing the female body.  While doing so, her object-photos recall some of the dream-like image pairings in Joseph Cornell’s boxes, or the imagery that captivated Surrealists painters. All throughout, the show delivers a sense of her unique minimal touch.
“I spend a lot of time by myself building the work.  I am happiest at my work table working on my puzzle, although I do enjoy the thrill of the chase finding the objects.  I like working with pieces that have had a previous life. I like old things. I like the smell of history.” – Heidi Kirkpatrick

Lost and Found is actually the name of a larger body of work containing more image-objects. In the past, Kirkpatrick has also combined photos with objects like dishes, well-worn tin boxes, serving trays, and cedar Mah Jongg game pieces. On view at the Ray Ko Photo Center are Kirkpatrick’s Cyanohoops, She’s an Open Book, and the two sculptures Watch Tower, and You and Me, both involving wood blocks (Over 60 pieces total).

Heidi Kirkpatrick’s LOST & FOUND is on view from 1/1/714 to 2/23/2014. RayKo Photo Center is located at 428 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 and  is open Tuesday to Thursday from 10 AM to 10 PM, and from Friday to Sunday 10 AM to 8 PM. The artist is based in Portland, Oregon where she works as an educator and as an artist. On Saturday, February 8, 2014 at 1 PM, the RayKo Photo Center will host an artist talk with Heidi Kirkpatrick.

 Written by Audrey Tran

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