“The carport” by David Hector

It was a real treat for me to go to the Sun Gallery in Hayward yesterday to check out art done by local firefighters in a show called “The Hottest Show in Town,” which closes today. Ten firefighters from all over the Bay Area - Alameda, San Jose, Hayward, Oakland - have work in the show.

There’s photography, ceramics, drawings, poetry and well-worn firefighting gear. Not all of the items on display were perfect but there was some really nice photography of hard-working firefighters on duty. A drawing done by Eduardo Ramos called “Dreaming Big,” of a girl looking into the mirror and seeing herself as an adult firefighter, was worth the trip alone.

The gallery is open until 5 p.m. If you miss the show, catch up with the nice Sun Gallery folks Sept. 26 during their fundraising event at Hayward City Hall. There will be Ballet Folkorico dancing by Ballet Folkorico Tlapalli, food and drinks. Tickets are $40 at the door and $35 in advance. You can call Christine at the gallery for reservations (510) 581-4050.

Learn more about the Sun Gallery here, on the gallery’s blog.

Don’t tell my boss but I am totally going to be glued to my computer starting at 1 p.m. (Pacific Time) Tuesday, Sept. 16 for the pre-show of zoo animals doing art. It’s part of an Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) event that features live auction of art made my animals in zoos accredited by the AZA. Art from about 60 animals from zoos across the U.S. will be sold to benefit conservation programs and the like.

Our very own Oakland Zoo has a budding artist living in those golden hills. Benghazi the retriculated giraffee paints by holding a paintbrush in his mouth.

There is also work from elephants, polar bears, lions, meerkats and snakes.


 

The animals do art as part of an enrichment program, says Margaret Rousser of the Oakland Zoo. Because the animals are not in the wild, zoos often use other tools such as art to keep them stimulated. Rousser says making art is popular with some of the animals.

“Some animals use paint brushes, some use their noses, some use thier paws,” she says.

None of the animals are forced into a painting beret.

 ”When given the choice, most of the time that’s what they’ll choose to do,” she says.

Creating the art also is safe - the paints are non-toxic and washable.  And who doesn’t want to see what wonderful creations an otter can make?

You can watch a live-streaming high-definition pre-show starting at 1 p.m. on http://www.auctionnetwork.com. Register to bid on the work an hour later at http://www.auctionnetwork.com/aza.

By the way, if you’ve never seen an animal paint before and missed this viral video a few months back, I suggest you watch this Thai Asian elephant do a self-portrait.

If you happen to find yourself in San Francisco for the slew of workshops, lectures, panels and tastings that is the Slow Food Nation ‘08 festival, make sure to stop by the Museo ItaloAmericano for “SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town” featuring the photographs of Douglas Gayeton which is on exhibit through Sept. 10.

Until recently, filmmaker and photographer Douglas Gayeton had been living in a restored 16th century convent in Pistoia, Tuscany. Bathed in warm sepia tones, his photo montages (or “flat film” as he calls them) reflect the food, landscape and people which surrounded him. There’s Alice, who raises a nearly extinct chicken, ‘la livornese’; Daria who specializes in gathering wild salad and Domenico, an elderly pig butcher who’s been at his trade for more than half a century. Their stories, anecdotes and recipes accompany the photographs, handwritten directly on their surfaces in a round cursive script.

I spoke with Gayeton, who now lives on a farm in Petaluma, about his images:

How did you end up in Pistoia, Italy? My grandmother’s Italian. I was working and living in Paris and really not liking France. I bought a place in Italy, part of a convent from the 1700’s and spent two years restoring it. I ended up making a TV show about it called “Lost in Italy.” Then PBS contacted me about making a film about Slow Food.”

Were you aware of the Slow Food movement? Well, of course, but, as I explained to PBS, nobody in Italy knew what it was because the principles of Slow Food are principles that every Italian has. Food and wine are pretty integral aspects of what defines their culture. I could go and document people like Carlo Petrini but I think it’s much truer to document the lives of normal people and to show the way they interact with food or how food is fundamental to their lives. That’s really going to get to the principles of slow food much better than documenting the figureheads of the movement.
So I began filming and taking photographs. I also began writing on the photographs as I was talking to people to gather all their background information. One of the elderly people from a village said, “Oh I was very, very confused. I thought you were making a film! This is so much better that you’re doing it with photographs and writing!” I stopped and I looked at what I was doing and I realized she was right! So I just decided to focus on the photographs.

How did you approach your subjects and were they receptive to your idea to photograph them? Well, first of all, Italians are incredibly open people and I think the idea that an American was not only learning their language but also interested in these kind of cultural aspects of their lives intrigued them. All of the photographs have an Italian or Tuscan saying as the title. It got to the point where people who I began to profile started telling me what I was going to call the photographs even before I did it! So I really felt like in many ways it was collaborative.

What did you learn about food as a result of your photography and experience in Pistoia? I now live on a farm. My wife and I make goat milk ice cream entirely based on the principles of Slow Food. We originally did it as something that we thought we were going to just kind of sell at farmer’s markets….and we thought we were going to be these really cool, groovy guys that showed up in an ice cream truck. We’re now available in 2,000 stores across the country.

Finally, why do you refer to your photographs as “flat films”? These photographs are actually not made from a single image. Each photograph is made up of as many as a hundred photographs put together. Sometimes a single photograph will take me four hours to make! I want to explain the entire story in a photograph. I was actually able to take a photograph, which is a moment in time, and infuse it with a story by setting it in time that moves. It’s a photograph that takes on the aspects of a film.
What I see when there’s a show, and it’s really so powerful for me, is that people are in these groups that are going from photograph to photograph and as they go, they’re talking about the image. The narratives aren’t written starting in the upper left and go to the bottom right. The narratives are all over the image. You have to piece it together.
What I end up hearing is that people start comparing their own personal experiences or things in their own lives or in their grandparents lives to the stories that are being told in the photograph. So it becomes this really beautiful communal experience.
I think that’s what also attracted the people from Slow Food Nation. This is anything but elitist - the expression of these people’s lives and their experiences. I think so many things about food tend to be elitist because of the costs of buying things that are either organic or natural and I think this really shows normal everyday people who are no different from us except that they’re from a different culture.

Catch “Slow: Life in A Tuscan Town” noon-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays through Sept. 10 at the Museo ItaloAmericano, Fort Mason Center, Building C, S.F. Free. 415-673-2200, www.italoamericano.org. Meet the artist from noon-4 p.m. Sat. Aug. 30.

Oh BOY! I got the chance to tour the new Steinhart Aquarium “Water Planet” exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco today.
I need to preface this post by telling you that I love aquariums. I like to go to the Aquarium of the Bay on my birthday every year (to look at sharks) and I recently visited the zoo and aquarium in Tacoma (to look at sharks) when I visited Washington for vacation.

I like fish. I love sharks, if you hadn’t noticed. And I just fell in love with the fish at the press preview I went to this morning (the sharks are still in holding tanks and not out on display).

Photos by Ralf Burgert

Here I am looking around for piranhas in the tunnel aquarium section of the flooded Amazon display, not totally oblivious of the diver cleaning the glass near me. The Amazon tank has tons of vegetarian piranhas, giant catfish and tiny schooling tetras. And you can see the four-story rainforest at the top of the display.

This guy was in the new California Coast tank, a 100,000 gallon beauty with huge viewing windows. He liked posing for the camera I think.
The fish in this tank are all natives of our coast. I got to see a lot of the stuff we like to eat, too, like scallops and rockfish.

The fish in this tank are not as pretty as the ones you would see in, say, Hawaii, but I like looking at what I might see if I had some special glasses that let me look through the water off Ocean Beach.

When the California Coast exhibits are done they will show all sorts of habitats, from salt marshes to turbulent rocky inlets. There will not only be fish but also birds and invertebrates. You can smell the seawater and watch the filling and draining of tidepools.

After bumping my own nose into the California Coast exhibit, I moved on to the Coral Reef tank.

This tank is the second largest living coral reef display in the world. It holds a massive 212,000 gallons of water! It is also the deepest coral reef tank in the world at 25 feet.

It is full of tropical fish and live coral. Most of the aquatic life is from the Philippines, one of the most diverse reef systems in the world. The result of the Steinhart Aquarium’s workers’ efforts is really a rainbow of color that moves and glides in the clear blue water. In fact, there are more than 2,000 reef fish representing more than 100 species.

Evenutally the whole exhibit will include rays, sea turtle and sharks!

Ralf and I tried to sneak around the rest of the California Academy of Sciences. We got to see the white alligator before we were escorted out of the building. I wish I would have been able to see the penguins but I am sure I will, next time.

The California Academy of Sciences will open Sept. 27. Opening day is free (though I expect a mob scene). From Sept. 28 on, admission is $24.95 for adults, $19.95 for youth ages 12-17, students and seniors over 65, $14.95 for children ages 7-11 and free for children 6 and younger. Buy tickets in advance here.

Dovetailing nicely with SFMoMA’s Frida Kahlo exhibition which I wrote about here, are two photography exhibits, “Frida & Diego, A Personal Memoir: Photographs by Lucienne Bloch” and “Images of Mexico,” which are currently showing at San Francisco’s Scott Nichols Gallery.

“Frida and Diego” showcases intimate images taken by Bloch, a former assistant of Rivera’s, and Kahlo’s friend and confidante, during a three year period in the early 1930’s. Here’s a image from Bloch’s portfolio:

Frida and Diego Caught Kissing, New York City, 1933

“Images of Mexico” gathers together rare and vintage photographs by some of Rivera and Kahlo’s contemporaries as well as contemporary shots by San Francisco-based photographer Reid Yalom.

Included are images by photographers Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo, pioneering French street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Imogen Cunningham, Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, and father and son photographers Edward and Brett Weston.

Portrait of the Eternal, 1935 by Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Diego Rivera, Mexico, 1924 by Edward Weston

Frida Kahlo, Painter, 1931 by Imogen Cunningham

Scott Nichols Gallery is one of my favorites spaces among the cluster of galleries inhabiting 49 Geary Street. It’s stable of artists includes some of my favorite photographers and the space itself has a rustic, laid-back vibe.

Although SFMoMA’s Kahlo show runs through September you had better to get to Scott Nichols quickly. Both shows close Sat., Aug. 30.

The gallery is free and open to the public 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays at 49 Geary St., S.F. 415-788-4641, www.scottnicholsgallery.com.

The annual Burning Man festival in Nevada is quickly approaching and with it tons of fund-raising events to get artists and others to the desert Aug. 25 through Sept. 1.

I have been doing a little plasma cutting and grinding on Jon Sarriugarte and Kyrsten Mate’s Snail art car myself. While it’s going to be cool when it’s done and sneaking through the desert, what also is going to be cool is Peter Hudson’s new zoetrope piece “Tantalus.”

I have written about Peter before and I just love his work.For Burning Man this year, Peter is creating yet another of his mesmerizing zoetropes. This one is a spin on the myth of Tantulus which is a story about temptation without satisfaction. Standing in a pool of water under a fruit tree, the Greek son of Zeus reached for fruit from the tree only to have the branches raised. When he went to get a drink from the pool, the water receded.

According to Peter’s Burning Man proposal (he received a grant from the Burning Man organization to do the piece) it will be difficult, but rewarding, to get this thing moving.

I have it on good authority (Peter’s sister works with me!) that “Tantulus” will be unveiled for a pre-desert sneak preview Friday night at American Steel in Oakland. The party is from 8 p.m. until midnight.

If you are not going to Burning Man this year, this is a great opportunity for you to check out what will likely be one of the most talked-about sculptures at the event. (Peter’s “monkeys” zoetrope from last year was THE thing to see at the Burning Man).

American Steel is at 1960 Mandela Parkway, Bay 3. I am not sure what the price to get in is, but expect to pay $15-$20. Peter hopes to make up the $5,000-plus extra he has spend on this new work. There will also be live acts and DJs at the event.

Gail Ruvalcaba’s blue vase is just one of the works on display at the Pleasanton Art League’s latest exhibit “Imagination Expressed” which opened this past weekend.

29 artists are exhibiting their paintings, textiles, jewelry, photographs, ceramics and woodwork in the museum’s Phoebe Hearst Room. All of the work is for sale.

The museum is also offering a series of workshops, lectures and demonstrations meant to educate the public about some of the mediums, techniques and processes on display.

I’ve visited downtown Pleasanton’s cluster of art galleries a handful of times and have always thought their local art scene was exceptional. It’s time for a return visit.

For information about the workshops, contact the museum at 925-462-2766. Exhibit hours are 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 1-4 p.m. Sunday through Oct. 5. www.museumonmain.org.

“Mother-Load,” 2008, mixed media

“It’s made out of sugar!”

That’s the observation I heard most frequently on a recent visit to Australian sculptor Timothy Horn’s exhibit “Bitter Suite” which is currently on display at San Francisco’s M.H. de Young Memorial Museum through October 12 as part of their Collections Connections program.

Indeed it is. The Cinderella carriage and baroque chandelier, two of the pieces in the three piece suite, are covered in shiny chunks of amber-colored rock sugar. But there’s something dark lurking underneath all that candy. Horn is an artist known for blurring the lines between the beautiful and the grotesque.

I recently interviewed the Chimayo, New Mexico-based artist and asked him a few questions about “Bitter Suite” and its enigmatic subject, San Francisco philanthropist and socialite Alma de Bretteville Spreckels.

Read the rest of this entry »

I run into Oaklandish every time I go to the Grand Lake Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings in Oakland. I “ooo” and “ahhh” over their T-shirt and hoodie designs and swear that next time I am going to bring more money and buy myself at least one.

Well, I bet they’ll have T-shirts and other cool swag at the multiple events they are hosting this month:

THERE! New Art From Oakland
An exhibition exploring the creative talent exploding in Oakland today. Oakland, long-time host to a vital visual arts community, has recently begun to receive widespread regional and national recognition for the range and quality of its artists and a growing group of new galleries devoted in large part to contemporary art.  Organized by di Rosa Preserve curator Michael Schwager, There! will present a cross-section of contemporary artists who live and work in Oakland and contribute to the energy and vitality of Bay Area art. 
Opening Reception: August 9 from 6-8pm (members preview 5-6pm).
More info: http://dirosapreserve.org/

LAUREL STREET FESTIVAL
Saturday August 9th from 1-6pm along MacArthur Blvd. between 35th and 38th Avenues. Laurel Streetfest is a free family event in Oakland’s Laurel District. Live music, food, shopping, and a Kidsworld with petting farm, pony rides, bumper cars and rock climbing.

Oaklandish Presents: The 3rd ANNUAL RADIO REGATTA
BYO Radio for tunes while boating. 1/2 off of boat rentals + free pontoon rides and gondola service (space limited). Featuring micro FM broadcast by: Bobby Peru, Dj Mar Mar, DjInti, Black Heart, and DJ Basta spinning some summery tunes.  Linden Street Brewery will be serving their Common Lager. Plus a silent auction of unique furniture made by Youth Spirit Artworks- one of our 2008 Innovators Award winners. Sunday August 17th, 12-5pm @ Lake Merritt Sailboat House. 

Support Organic Products, Vicky Tesmer
The portraits splashed on Vicky’s globe display a flourishing sustainable farm and lush growth of nurtured fruits and vegetables.

Thirty-five sculpted globes, part of “Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet,” will be on display from Tuesday to Oct. 13 at Crissy Field Promenade in San Francisco. These globes are “designed by renowned local, national and international artists to represent potential solutions to global warming,” according to Cool Globes press.

The globes have already hit Chicago and Washington, DC. Here, they are supported by Toyota, which claims to be the “greenest” car company in the world.

The globes sort of remind me of those hearts all over San Francisco, which I really like. Its neat to see an artist work with a structured canvas and come up with a stand-out visual look for their pieces. And of course, being “green” is so cool now adays.
Here’s another one for your viewing pleasure, a globe that gives suggestions on how to be greener in small steps:

Take Simple Steps, Angela Erikson
The tiny plastic people covering the green globe represent the members of teeniegreenie.org who have committed their lives to making the world greener by simply changing the little things in life.