Sometimes the artful objects we find to be collectible are offensive. Oakland Tribune writer Angela Hill wrote a very interesting story about works of art, such as the one seen on the left, that are undoubtedly offensive to people of color.
According to the story, retired sociology professor Jan Faulkner has collected more than 2,000 pieces of racist art over the years, a collection that she now wants to sell. That collection, which began as a sort of secret obsession, has been dubbed “Ethnic Notions” and has been the subject of an award-winning documentary.
I assume such things, as ugly and offensive as they are, hold a special history to those who want to keep them. For Faulkner, they became a way to teach others about history and sociology.
Faulkner now lives in a small apartment and can no longer house her collection. So she is selling pieces like the item above. The sale will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10 at the Four Points Sheraton in Emeryville at 1603 Powell St. There is a $5 admission fee and parents are encouraged to leave their small children at home.
This afternoon I visited Diablo Valley College’s Art Gallery’s new show “Places Between: Artists Working with Photography and Sculpture” and I was disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed with the work, quite the opposite. I was sad because the space was too small for such an awesome display of talent recruited for the show.
You see, I have heard of several of the artists in the show namely Liz Hickok, Therese Lahaie and Ehren Tool. You probably have, too, even if you don’t know their names.
Liz Hickok once built a model of San Francisco using Jell-O . She has some landscape photographs of this amazing fete on display at the gallery now.
Therese Lahaie’s kenetic sculptures were a bright spot at a show at CSU Sacramento.
Lahaie’s signature kenitic work is on display at the DVC gallery as is some of her photographic work.
And Ehren Tool’s work at the 2003 Burning Man event was one of the largest installations folks who regularly attend the event have ever seen.
Combine these three artists with five more in a 1,000-square-foot gallery space and you get just a little, bitty taste of what they have to offer. It is simply not enough.
Vanitas, 2007 by Rian Kerrane
According to the gallery, Rian Kerrane creates personal landscapes using sculpture and imagery and the artist hopes the viewer will have a multi-sensory experience when they see the work. One wall of the gallery was completely taken over by Kerrane’s “Vanitas” made of pinhole photographs, florist wire, lace, Velcro and motorized fans. I could have spent hours looking at all the tiny photographs. 1 CBU 87 over DVC, 2007 by Ehren Tool
Tool’s piece “1 CBU 87 over DVC” could perhaps be described as war porn. It is made of more than 200 ceramic cups with pictures of weapons, naked ladies, George W. Bush and famous quotes on them. Tool is a Gulf War veteran and he does his work to get you to think about war. I did do just that and greedy little me also thought about the gallery’s press release, which says Tool will be giving away his cups after the show. I want one. A Sea of Troubles Meets the Trees Themselves by Melissa Borman
Just around the corner from Tool’s piece was Melissa Borman’s installation, which, compared to the war-theme Tool, was rather reflective and simple. Small branches of a tree were hanging from the ceiling and resting inside manilla envelopes. The envelopes had thoughtful phrases on them and I read each one. I felt happy and calm within her installation.
“Places Between: Artists Working with Photography and Sculpture” will be up until Feb. 23. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Check the gallery Web site to figure out how to find it on campus (it’s easy!). Bring $2 in quarters to get a parking permit for the day.
Friday night I went to Chabot Space and Science Center’s Lunar Lounge, an at-one-time monthly event that has now changed to be a quarterly event.
I took my friend Ralf with me, who is a self-professed space nerd, and we enjoyed walking through the exhibits, listening to the Eyewitness News Band rock out in the center’s cafeteria and checking out the center’s updated SonicVision presentation. Let’s not forget there were $3 beers from Buffalo Bill’s Brewery in Hayward and yummy food from Askew Grill, one of my favorite local food-on-the-go places (yet not quite “fast food”).
Lunar Lounge is supposed to be a way to enjoy the center as hip adults and teenagers would — with music, food, and funky planetarium shows. I was thrilled to see what could only be called a gaggle of teenage girls enjoying Chabot on a Friday night when they could have been doing other nefarious things their parents don’t want to think about.
But aside from Lunar Lounge revelers, there were other people at the center enjoying themselves. Every Friday night a group of families gather in one of the center’s workshops and polish glass at the Telescope Maker’s Workshop. Ralf and I poked our nosey noses into the workshop and the people there were thrilled to just talk about their weekly hobby, which eventually leads to telescope viewing from their own, hand-made, hard-won telescope.
I started talking to Ralf about the center’s fun Challenger Learning Center experience, which I got to do as part of a press promotional thing. At that very moment, Chabot’s marketing director Sharon Fletcher sat by me and told me about the center’s “Love Mission to Mars,” a Valentine’s Day event where couples can take a simulated space mission to the Red Planet. She says it’s super fun and always sold out, with pairs of lovebirds waiting in the wings hoping another couple drops out. The $80 per-couple price tag includes fizzy beverages, chocolates and a souvenir of the day.
Just when I think I’ve had enough (ENOUGH!) of Chabot, my roommate e-mails me with an event even she couldn’t pass up, a Total Lunar Eclipse Hike at Chabot Feb. 20. I can’t skip that either, so I guess I will be heading to Chabot next month for another stellar event.
I rode my bike through this weekend’s showers to Rhythmix Cultural Works to attend the Doggie Diner road trip documentary “Head Trip” that I wrote about earlier in the paper and on the blog.
From about 3:30 p.m. and on, the place was packed with people. I decided to catch the sold-out 4 p.m. show, thinking that the later shows (including an extra one added to the bill at 5:30 p.m.) would be sold-out too. I was right.
I am no fortune teller but I foresee Rhythmix Cultural Works being a magnet for cultural events in the Bay Area, not just in its hometown of Alameda. In fact, I had been hearing about its opening for years before it actually opened its doors last year. It is a beautiful space with a gallery, a book arts department and a performance center with these gorgeous high ceilings and prominent stage.
Shortly after it opened, I attended the Virago Theatre Company comedies ”The Death of Ayn Rand” and “A Bed of My Own.” I was impressed with the quality of the performance and the space itself. I was in love, really.
Saturday night I talked briefly with Rythmix’s Janet Koike about the center, its classes and its gallery. She told me that I should drop in on the Wednesday night belly dancing class, since I am looking for something to do on weeknights.
I then headed into the K Gallery space where “Nature, Patterns & Portraits” is being shown and I was greeted by paintings and sculpture done by Joy Broom, Jerry Leisure and Carrie Lederer. I particularly liked Lederer’s green tone paintings made up of what looked like real and fantasy creatures. Lederer is currently the executive curator of Bedford Arts Gallery in Walnut Creek.
If you find yourself near Alameda, Rhythmix is worth a stop. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Directions to Rhythmix are here.
I always go the the White Elephant Sale, a benefit for the Oakland Museum of California. The preview sale, happening Sunday, is a hoot if you like battling rabid crowds for second-hand goods and collectibles.
My friend Polly of the Sometime Gallery just has this knack for sorting through the detritus of artists and art lovers, picking just the right painting or photograph for her hip home collection in the sale’s art corner. I don’t know how she does it. She can find, say, a rudimentary painting of a horse done on wood then bring it home and it looks like something out of a real gallery.
This annual sale is perhaps the biggest rummage sale in the country. It is organized Oakland Museum Women’s Board, a nice group of older women who work hours upon hours in a cold Fruitvale warehouse sorting other people’s junk and turning it into treasured goods.
There are millions of things to buy at the sale, from old linens to old suitcases. And if you are into collecting kitschy art or faded photos of people from the 70s that you have no relation to, this is the place for you. Who knows, perhaps you will find a Picasso under that black velvet painting of Mickey Mouse you got for three bucks.
The preview sale begins at 11 a.m., but I’d get there earlier than that if I wanted to get my hands on the best pieces at the sale. Tickets to the sale are $12.50 in advance if you buy them at the museum or $15 at the door.
The “regular sale,” which is free, is held March 1 and 2. There are still some great buys during free days.
Sale organizers are asking everyone to be “green” this year and ride BART to Fruitvale BART station for the sale, or park in the Fruitvale BART parking lot. Shuttles will take shoppers to the White Elephant Sale warehouse at 333 Lancaster St. throughout the day. The shuttle will also be available March 1 and 2.
Chuck Todd’s new exhibition, “Windows to Wildlife,” at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek just fits perfectly with its setting.
Todd has been working as an illustrator with the Contra Costa Times since 1999 and has illustrated two books with author Gary Bogue: “There’s an Opossum in My Backyard” and “The Raccoon Next Door.”
I am familiar with some of his work at the paper but I haven’t seen these two books before.
The Lindsay Wildlife Museum focuses on native California wildlife and natural history and Todd’s pieces show the wildlife that is in our Bay Area backyards – birds, snakes, hawks and mountain lions — in a simple and beautiful way. Eagle by Chuck Todd
I was particularly struck by a terribly cute piece about the opossum, featured in the book about opossums. I have seenthese creatures rumbling around in my backyard and I have been frightened and disgusted by them. His cheerful drawing of an opossum doing his rounds in a Bay Area backyard made me think differently of the animals. Perhaps they are just curious, hungry creatures who are just trying to survive like me.
After looking at the show, I had an opportunity to check out just the birds at the museum, which is also home to many other animals. Wow! I have never stared into the eyes of an owl before. Definitely a treat for the kids, should you have some.
The opening reception for “Windows to Wildlife” will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26 at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum, 1931 First Ave, Walnut Creek. The show will be up until April 1. See it during regular museum hours with regular museum admission, $7 for adults, $6 for seniors 65+, $5 for children ages 2 -17, 2 and under free.
My recent articleabout John Law and Flecher Fleudujon’s new movie “Head Trip,” was considered “delightful” by a friend of mine. I, however, was frustrated a bit by it.
You see, the life of a newspaper writer means you have to write to length. I was given 15 to 20 inches for this piece, a fair amount of space for a little story about a small-time documentary playing in one theater in one small town in the Bay Area this Saturday.
Initially, I wanted to focus on Law himself. It is my humble opinion that Law is one of the great San Francisco prankster artists. He has been part of the arts scene in the city since the 1970s and has been a member of San Francisco’ Suicide Club, and the Cacophony Society. He brought Burning Man to the desert and worked with Survival Research Labs. As a neon contractor, he fixed the Oakland Tribune Tower’s neon and continues to make it look pretty.
Law spent more than two hours with me as I pelted him with questions about these groups and what role he had in them. What was the idea behind the Suicide Club? How did the Cacophony Society form? Why did you leave Burning Man in 1996 and how did you come to work with SRL?
Getting back to the office and trying to write this all out was like trying to stuff a sleeping bag into a sock. One could certainly write a book about his experiences and travels and, in fact, Law and a friend have been in the process of writing a book about the Suicide Club for years. I focused instead on the film and wrote a bit about Law.
I just want to share a couple of interesting things I learned about him in my interview. First, I got to see John Law’s wild mustache turn sideways when I asked him what the difference was between his bus trip and Ken Kesey’s acid-filled road-trip in the 60s.
“We weren’t a bunch of kids on drugs,” Law said. More like eccentric, middle-aged artists riding on a bus with rules against drugs use and the like.
Second, Law refuses to take credit for anything cool. I have about 100 names in my notebook that he spelled for me while talking about the people he has worked with over the years.
Third–and this is the most important– Law never made me feel like I came to the party too late even if I didn’t go to Burning Man from day one and I didn’t know about the joys of underground sewer excursions until I read about them in the paper. His hipster coolness vibe is a big zero. He wants people to come and have fun the way he has had it — carefree, goofy and big.
Anyway, I saw a rough cut of is movie a couple of years ago and I know I enjoyed it, specially the ending. Here’s a YouTube preview, if you are still unsure.
We walk on it, spit on it, and sometimes fall on it. There really is nothing glamorous that I can think of about cement.
I am struck, however, by a new show at the Esteban Sabar Gallery in Oakland’s downtown. The Little House at Big Bend by Martin Webb
Albany-based artist Martin Webb uses cement as his canvas to create beautiful, intricate works of art with literal substance. They are heavy chunks of concrete, mind you.
I talked with Webb and he says that what he finds interesting about using concrete as a medium is that it gives his work a “very substantial physical quality.”
“They feel kind of heavy and almost monumental,” he says. “At the same time you can get very delicate things going on in the surface too.”
Look closely at Martin’s work and you can see flowers and figures, waves and patterns inside the gray material canvas.
Gifthorse by Martin Webb
His works at the gallery are intended to give the experience of being on a road trip. Webb does this expertly.
Webb is not the first artist to show work made from cement at Sabar’s popular gallery. Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue darling Rocky Riche-Baird, who painted two murals on the avenue, showed in May last year a lifesize human sculpture made of cement and motor oil called “The Age of Cement.” I didn’t attend the show but from what I hear, the piece was interesting.
I bet we’ll all see more work from young artists using cement as a medium in the future.
Rosin Coven, the band who created the Annual Edwardian Ball
The 8th Annual Edwardian Ball, a celebration of Edward Gorey and all things dark and delightful, is sold out Saturday night. But you can still enjoy the event both Friday and Sunday with other fun offerings during the Edwardian Ball Weekend.
While at last weekend’s fashion show at The Crucible, I ran into artist and arts promoter Will B. Chase, who is curating Friday night’s Edwardian World’s Faire. I was telling him how bummed I was that I didn’t get tickets to the ball and, sigh, I don’t have a costume anyway. He told me that I should not miss Friday’s event and, he said, he thinks there are still tickets left.
Curious, I looked into a bit more. I am no expert at this stuff but it seems to me all the wonderful, circus-y acts in the San Francisco Bay Area that couldn’t fit on the bill during Saturday’s ball are performing or at least showing their work sometime Friday or Sunday. On Friday, that includes the fun City Circus and the San Francisco quartet Rube Waddell. Paxton Gate, a beautifully odd store on San Francisco’s Valencia Street, will also be there as will the city’s prime corset-maker Dark Garden.
I saw one of Sunday’s featured acts, Eric McFadden, at the “Dark Cabaret” a couple of years ago. I think that’s the moment I realized I really enjoy McFadden’s style of creepy, brooding carnival music.
Anyway, if you missed getting tickets to the main ball, I am sure you will not be disappointed by Friday or Sunday’s not-yet-sold-out shows at the Great American Music Hall. Tickets are $20 Friday night and $18 Sunday. Buy ‘em here.
Sometimes the artful objects we find to be collectible are offensive. Oakland Tribune writer Angela Hill wrote a very interesting story about works of art, such as the one seen on the left, that are undoubtedly offensive to people of color.
