I just wanted to pop in here and remind you that the White Elephant Sale is happening this weekend. I went to the preview sale last month and bought a painting for $10 that has been alternately described as creepy and ugly. I, however, love it. I’ll show you a picture once I get one.

The White Elephant Sale is the largest rummage sale in California and the money goes to the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, which buys art and helps bring exhibitions to the museum.

And it’s a lot of fun.

It’s at the White Elephant Sale Warehouse at 333 Lancaster St., off the Interstate- 880 Freeway/Fruitvale exit near the Oakland Estuary. The sale is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day and they usually discount the remaining stuff on Sunday.

The sale will be offering a shuttle from the Fruitvale BART station. I suggest taking it. It was a real drag last month trying to get my purchases to the car 20 blocks away in the rain.

When Wanxin Zhang was a teenager, he stood in front of China’s famed terracotta warriors at the museum in Xian. He was stunned by the scope of the scene.

There were thousands of figures, in hundreds of poses, all created more than 2,000 years ago to guard the tomb of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, and protect his journey into eternity.

Zhang came to the United States in the early 1990s and now lives in San Francisco, where he earned an art degree and teaches at the Academy of Art University. But he never forgot the impact of the terracotta warriors. They inspired his own ceramic figures — with new identities and occupations.

His glazed and fired ceramic may look ancient, but the figures sport modern touches. One is titled “Mom,” another is “Made in California,” and one wars a Mohawk haircut.

A selection of Zhang’s works, several of them more than 6 feet tall, will go on display Sunday, Jan. 13 at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek. The exhibit, “Contemporary Warrior: Modern Day Tomb Soldiers” will continue through March 9.

In all, there will be 28 ceramic figures on display, nine of them at least 6 feet tall and the rest, though similar in style, 2-3 feet tall.

How well they bridge the gap between ancient and modern, and how different Zhang can make these figures, remains for gallery visitors to discover and decide.

The Bedford Gallery curator, Carrie Lederer, believes the figures speak to contemporary issues.

“Zhang’s noble figures are direct descendants from traditional ideals,” Lederer says. “They provide us with a modern-day platform to consider larger community principles. How do we define a hero? How do we teach concepts of honor? What does courage mean to us today in our contemporary world.”

The artist himself declares, “I am rebuilding these figures with the artistic language of soulfulness, spirituality and personality, and allowing them to stand in for modern man.”

The Bedford Gallery is located in the Lesher Center for the Arts, Civic Drive at Locust Street, Walnut Creek. It is open non-5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and 6-8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. It is also open during performances at the Lesher Center.

Admission is $3 general, $2 for persons 17 and younger, free for children 12 and younger. Information, 925-295-1417, www.bedfordgallery.org.

A reception with the artist, featuring Chinese musicians and dancing dragons, will take place 3-5 p.m. on the opening day, Jan. 13. Admission is $3.

A touring exhibit of the original terracotta warriors can be seen May 18-Oct. 12, 2008, at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif.

“You need a Joseph Cornell box over your fireplace,” my friend Jerry said after we’d drifted through the artist’s exhibit, “Navigating the Imagination,” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Why, yes. Of course. And they look so easy, the shadow boxes framing arrangements of everything from clay pipes to photos of birds to watch faces to restaurant menus.

But Cornell, who practically invented an art form from the basement of his house in Queens, New York, was a genius. (The street he lived on, by the way, was Utopia Parkway.)

Cornell was born in 1903 and scoured New York City for his material and inspiration, which he collected in boxes with such labels as “Glasses” and “Durer” and “Tinfoil” and “Sea Shells.”

He reflected a number of trends from the early part of the 20th century, but he was 64 years old before he finally received major recognition in the art world.

There’s nothing precious about Cornell’s collages and boxes — they’re not cute craft projects from a magazine. He hasn’t simply cleared off a workroom table, as we might, and arranged the items in a frame.

Everything means something to him, even if it’s a mystery to us. Inspecting the 170 works in the galleries at the Museum of Modern Art is like searching for clues to American life.

A quote from one of Cornell’s favorite literary works, Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” introduces the exhibit and marks the route: “Now, Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.”

Buying a Joseph Cornell box to put over my fireplace would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Reproducing one would miss the point — that every detail of his work is deeply personal.

Maybe I’ve already got a good start, even if it’s spread out, not in a box.

There’s a 19th century clock decorated with a frieze of some classical battle to which I’ve added, on a ledge, a tiny figure of a middle-aged shopper from an architectural model. There are drawings of temples in Kyoto by San Francisco architect Ira Kurlander, and Arts and Crafts bowls discovered on trips to Massachusetts and Vermont. There’s a postcard photo of the original “butterfly chair” designed in 1938.

There are also three small collages made from 19th century newspaper clippings and illustrations and vintage wallpaper borders made by my friend Robert Warner, a former Oakland resident who’s now an artist in New York. Maybe I’ll leave things as they are — after all, it was Warner who introduced me to the magic and mystery of Joseph Cornell in the first place.

Detail of a ‘Wahoo’ by John Colle Rogers / photo by Ralf Burgert

I think it happened with me just recently when I started to sing “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Instead of frolicking in the ‘Autumn mist,’ Puff was frolicking in ‘awesomeness’ in a land called Honah Lee.

I am talking about the misinterpretation of songs, which is what inspired Oakland artist John Colle Rogers’ most recent work, “Wahoos” now at Oakland’s 21 Grand through Dec. 16.

According to an email from Rogers, Wahoos is a misinterpretation of a line from the song “There Won’t Be No Country Music (There Won’t Be No Rock and Roll)” by 70s country music phenomenon C.W. McCall. The song is a very dark, banjo-heavy environmental warning song and for years Rogers had a vivid image in his mind about this misinterpreted line: “…and you’ll see all the Wahoos flying through the great polluted sky.”

Well, the song was actually “wild goose,” Rogers says, though Wahoos stuck with him. So he made a trio of Wahoos.

Rogers’ work, the most recent of which opened during Oakland’s First Fridays Art Murmer,  is usually dark.   The California College of  the Arts (when it was CCAC) grad, who is now teaching at the college, works in dioramas and conceptual pieces that usually tell stories about war or conflict of some sort. An accomplished blacksmith and metalworker, Rogers hasn’t an all-steel show in years. ‘Wahoos’ details Rogers’ talent in the craft.

Detail of a ‘Wahoo’ by John Colle Rogers / photo by Ralf Burgert

So, to me, Rogers’ Wahoos look like rockets. Well, rocketbirds. Ok, rocketbirds with the body of a banjo. He tells me the wingspan of his Wahoos are 19-feet and the banjo body was modeled after a banjo owned by a distant family member.

Me with jumping kid under a Wahoo / photo by Ralf Burgert

Anyway, they’re neat to look at. I think of some strange future where these things would be flying around and I grow a little concerned. Luckily, they are just part of Rogers’ very active imagination.

So, where can you see a flaming Santa, seven-foot elves and a pair of “flamedeer”?

Where else but Oakland’s The Crucible’s annual Holiday Gifty event!

If you’ve never been to The Crucible before, shame on you. It is a wonderfully welcoming place where people from all over come and learn the fine arts of blacksmithing, glass-blowing, neon and other crafts. They host classes for kids, too.

If you’re not into learnin’ stuff, you can always visit The Crucible during their twice-annual fund-raising events and see magnificent performances such as their last one, the Fire Odyssey or flaming fire ballets and fire operas. If you missed those, you can check out the upcoming flaming fund-raising event, the Hot Couture: A Fusion of Fire & Fashion   show happening in January.

Whoops! Here I was, talking about the holiday sale and I got all excited about everything else The Crucible does. Can you blame me?

Anyway, the Holiday Gifty Art Sale and Show is a family event, like most events at The Crucible, and will feature not only nice wares for sale but demonstrations of glass blowing, metal casting, and blacksmithing from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day,  a visit from Santa at 1 p.m. each day and hands-on activities for adults and kids from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day. And admission is free (you know how I like that word)!  A portion of proceeds from sales are donated by the artists to help fund The Crucible’s arts education programs.

The show and sale will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 15 and 16 at The Crucible’s warehouse, 1260 Seventh Street, Oakland. The Crucible is also two blocks from the West Oakland BART station, where weekend parking is free.

Jingletown is this interesting warehousey neighborhood in East Oakland between the Interstate 880 freeway and Alameda that is chock full of skilled and fun artists. Plus it has a cool name.

According to the business association, Jingletown got its name from Portugese cannery workers who would walk home from canning fruits from Fruitvale when they got paid and they’d “jingle” their pockets to express their pride in their earnings.

Regardless, if you go to this second-annual event, you’re sure to be impressed by the work of Simone Adair, the mosaics of Kim Larsen and the super mind-bending paintings of Darwin Price.

OH AND LOOKY HERE! I found the woman whose work I bought at the Pro Arts Art Walk. Jill Gibson is participating in the Jingletown Holiday Art Walk and this is the piece I bought from her a couple of years ago that hangs on my mantle!

The Heavens by Jill Gibson

You know that some of this work is affordable if I purchased some!

The Jingletown Holiday Art Walk is from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dec. 1 and 2. There’s a map on the link to show you how to get there.

See you there!

Yes, we’re here. We’re at the holidays. Gah! 

Dress by Pauline Rose Designs

So I grew up in Pleasanton and I figured nothing cool ever came out of the Tri-Valley (except for me of course!) but then I hear about the Pacific Coast Mestieri, formerly known as the Pleasanton Craft Mafia.

I think mafia and I think coolness. I think of people gathering together and plotting and planning something. But this time, instead of whacking old Johnny for the bum dope he gave Rosene, it’s conspiring over crafts!

Anyway, the Mestieri sent us a press release about their upcoming crafts sale and I thought “ho-hum” because this was a Pleasanton thing. Was I wrong! I looked through the Mestieri’s Holidaze Craft Craze Web site and saw work that I actually really liked, like the dress above by Pauline Rose (you should see her handbags!) and this mysterious goddess figure by Barbe Saint John.

The Protector - Lost Goddess Doll, Lost Goddess Doll Series

The Mestieri’s Holidaze Craft Sale will feature 20 artists Dec. 15 and 16 at 1152 Crellin Road in Pleasanton. AND admission to the event is free! (That’s my favorite word when I am craft shopping!)

I have made it a relatively new tradition to go to the Celebration of Craftswomen Fair at San Francisco’s Fort Mason each year. There is so much beautiful art, made by women, at this show and sale.

However it is all a bit, well, expensive. But there are a few artists that do make work within my price range. One of those artists is Tikva Dehry, an L.A. -based artist who works with wood, paint, mirrors and prints to make religious and spiritual altars for the wall.

Last year, I fell in love with one of her works but I was there shopping for others. How could I reconcile buying this piece for myself? I skipped it.

This year at the crafts festival, I saw Tikva’s booth within the first half-hour of getting there. I was excited. It was one of the first booths with work I could afford and, to top that, I actually already liked the work. Within seconds, I picked out the piece I wanted to buy for myself.

It is the hand of Buddah holding a Lotus flower. I thought it would go nicely near a painting of Buddah I got when I was in Thailand in 2003, but I quickly found it looked great right in the entryway of my home.

But, again, I was here to shop for friends and family. Tivka’s work was also affordable for Christmas presents for a couple of my closest friends. One of my girlfriends is Christian and she loves altars so she and Tikva’s work are a perfect match!

 Pretty, no? It even says something neat on the back.

The Celebration of Craftswomen Fair continues this coming weekend, Dec. 1 and 2. Tickets are $8.50 and event proceeds benefit San Francisco’s Women’s Building.