I think there comes a time in everyone’s life where we discover Salvador Dali and become The Biggest Fan of surrealist artwork.  At least, I remember when that happened to me. Seems I discovered Dali when all my friends discovered him. We loved him, bought posters of his work. I knew when I walked into a friend’s room and saw the “Persistence of Time” on the wall, we had something else in common.

Well, last week I wrote about a new exhibit in Walnut Creek of surrealist work. It features the work of Stanley “Mouse” Miller but also has the work of several other artists including El Gallo and, my favorite, Bill Sala of Castro Valley.

 Bill Sala’s work was the most Dali-esque of all the painters in the show. And they were so bright and crisp it was like you were looking at very disturbing photographs!

I suggest checking out this surrealism show if you happen to be in Walnut Creek. It is at Acanthus, 1661 Botelho, Ste. 100. Call 925-937-1151 for more info.

American artist Robert Rauschenberg died Monday according to an AP report and  New York’s Pace Wildenstein gallery.

Although known for his assemblage and mixed media works which brought together elements as disparate as bald eagles, mattresses and brooms, the Texas native was equally at home in the theater and dance worlds. He designed costumes and sets for Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor.

 I always found Rauschenberg’s funky “combines” - assemblage works he began producing in 1953 at the dawn of the Beat era -especially fascinating. His gift for marrying flotsam and jetsam with scribbles and patches of dripping paint has been hugely influential. He was also an excellent printmaker and his collaged, edgy prints are as vibrant and relevant today as they were in the 1960’s.

 I’m thinking of Rauschenberg’s Automobile tire print, his series of “White Paintings,” the erased De Kooning drawing. If you’ve never seen these works, check them out here, here and here.

Tomorrow, Saturday, March 29, has been designated SWAN Day (Support Women in the Arts Now Day) by The Fund for Women Artists, a San Francisco based non-profit arts organization which aims to help women artists acquire resources for creative work.

30 U.S. states and 10 countries will be hosting SWAN-related events ranging from a documentary film screening in San Francisco to a four-day SWAN Day festival in Berlin and a Celebration of Craftswomen bazaar in India.

You might be pleased to hear that the city of Martinez is joining in on the action with an arts event at the Martinez Opera which is located at 908 Ferry Street.

More than three dozen Contra Costa and Solano County artists will be displaying (and selling) their paintings, jewelry and crafts.

The free event will be held from noon-5 p.m. and all sale proceeds will go directly to the artists.

Visit www.womenarts.org for more information.

The Society of Single Professionals is hosting an Art & Wine Tasting Party this Saturday in San Rafael from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. For $20 in advance or $30 at the door you get all the wine you can taste from boutique wineries and you get to be in a room with other singles looking to have a fun time.

It is being held at Art Works Downtown, a gallery that is now showing work from artists at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

I wrote about the Society of Single Professionals months ago and got a great response. The non-profit organization hosts several parties all over the Bay Area for singles who just want to get out there and meet other singles. It’s mostly an older crowd, people in their 50s and 60s, and a friendly one.

This art event sounds fun! Buy tickets here. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find love!

 Downtown Oakland’s First Fridays Art Murmur is so hip it’s hardly a murmur anymore. It’s a full-on shout that downtown Oakland is the place to befor art lovers on the first Friday of the month.

You see, several studios open their doors for opening receptions of all sorts. Some artists gather near those doors and present their own pieces for the evening. People are walking and biking the neighborhood, going from gallery space to gallery space looky-looing at the art, the good and the bad. The Oakland Museum of California even stays open late on the first Friday of the month to participate in the event.

Michael Sacramento “1985 Air Jordans, 2007″ Acrylic on wood. 36 x 36″

This weekend, there’s something different on the line for the Art Murmur. Specifically, there’s a show being hung at the Uptown Body and Fender shop near all the other galleries that is simply a “you can’t miss this” show.

Rebecca Shortle “Bio\Logic 016″ Acrylic on panel, 36 x 36″

Basically, a group of nine artists are transforming the body and fender shop into a painting exhibition they are calling “Road Trip.” The event explores the creative paths taken by the individual artists and reflects the spirit of their group.

The story of the group is an interesting one. Many of the members first met in 2004 while participating in that Taking the Leap Art Business Program. They were all students of painter and mentor Jamie Brunson. When their program ended in early 2005, they decided to keep meeting regularly as a group.

Jane Norling, “Capp3/Urgup” Oil & graphite on rag paper, 36 x 36″

Since then, the group has exchanged ideas about the creative process monthly as well as shared resources, processes, and encouragement.

The artists are lawyers, designers, architects, gamers, therapists, currency traders and activists-turned artists. A portion of the exhibit proceeds will go to Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center. 

“Road Trip” opens at 6 p.m. Friday at Uptown Body and Fender, 401 26th St. between Broadway and Telegraph Avenue. The exhibit continues through the weekend of March 8 and 9, open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Here are some more tastes of what you will see at “Road Trip.”

Tracy Rocca, “Seedling Study,” Oil on polyester over panel, 24 x 24″

I personally love seeing a bunch of work from different artists being displayed in one place, especially if the work is of this quality. The pieces are diverse as are the themes and it seems fresh and vibrant expression.

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 Amanda Williams, “BLS #15: Code Blue Part I” Oil, mixed media on panel 4.5″

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  Suzanne Onodera, “The Path of Desire” Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 “

 Judy Levit, “Mirror,” Acrylic & collage on canvas, 36 x 36″

Lorrie Fink, “Thrill Seeker, study,” Oil on paper, 9.5 x 7.5″

 Sarah Gopher, “Eye of the Storm,” oil on canvas, 48 x 60″

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.

I had every intention of posting my take on Enrique Chagoya’s “Borderlandia” exhibit a week ago but alas, things didn’t go as planned. I still want to share my thoughts because it’s a great exhibit and not to be missed.

I can’t remember exactly where I first saw Enrique Chagoya’s work. More than likely it was in the book “Friendly Cannibals,” a collaboration between Chagoya and the Mexican-American performance poet Guillermo Gomez-Pena but the specifics aren’t really important. What I do know is that I immediately and viscerally responded to his work.

I was a visual arts student at the time making things like paintings, handmade artists books and silkscreened collages. Looking at Chagoya’s one-of-a kind and limited edition artists books which pay homage to Aztec and Mayan codexes, I found something I could relate to both culturally and visually. His imagery borrowed heavily from sources like comic books, religious iconography, historical woodcuts, vintage magazines and medical textbooks. The techniques lept from bookmaking and printmaking to drawing and painting, all mediums I was interested in.

I was also familiar with some of the subjects his work addressed (colonialism, culture clash, immigration issues, appropriating imagery.) But to me, the ways these issues were presented and explored was something entirely exciting and new.

Nearly a decade later, viewing the work at BAM only enhances the sense of amazement I felt when first looking at Chagoya’s work. There’s beautifully collaged artists books, satirical charcoal drawings and blistering prints. Yes, his subjects come from politics (war, the military, American foreign policy, immigration,) religion, and race relations but it’s the humor he injects into his work that distinguishes him from other artists working in similar genres. I also like his visual vocabulary…the images of Mickey Mouse, Superman, Aztec deities repeated over and over is part of Chagoya’s highly specific visual language. Their meanings are often mutable and change depending on the context. Chagoya’s technical prowess and his ability to move from intaglio printmaking to large oil painting to collage to book art with seeming ease is equally admirable.

And yes, Chagoya’s artwork might not be for everyone. In fact, some people will probably find his work offensive. Chagoya seems O.K. with that. “This is just a drawing,” is the way he responded at a recent artist’s lecture to a question about slack he might receive about his satirical artwork, especially in light of the recent death threats against a Danish artist for his political cartoons. And he’s right. At the end of the day, it is just a drawing, just a painting, just a collage and sure, it might not be something you’d want to place in your house. But it’s vitally important that it exists.

“Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia” runs Wednesdays-Sundays through May 18 at the UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley. $5-$8. Free for UC Berkeley students, faculty, staff and children ages 12 and under. 510-642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

 The image to the right is similar to a piece of artist Enrique Chagoya’s work I saw at the San Jose Museum of Art Superbowl Sunday.  When I saw the one piece at the museum, I was totally impressed by its visual strength and its message about capitalism and the like.

I was not so impressed by the Chagoya retrospective at the Berkeley Art Mueseum and Pacific Film Archive entitled “Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia” on now through May 18. Our other arts blogger, Jennifer Modenessi, has a completely different view of the work than I do. She’ll fill you in on her take Friday.

The show layout was just fine and seemed to make visual sense. Chagoya certainly proves that he is a masterful painter. But, to me, the work itself felt redundant and stale. Let’s just say I got Chagoya’s use of Mickey Mouse to symbolize capitalism. No, really, I got it. Painting after painting -the cannibalism, the blood the guts and the gore-I heard what he was trying to say.

Perhaps the setting was wrong. I love BAM/PFA and the work they present but perhaps it was too “museumey” for such a huge presentation of Chagoya’s work. Both my friend and I thought the retrospective would be better suited and more powerful (yet surreal) in a storefront of some sort.

And maybe, too, I was a little turned off by Chagoya’s modern copies of classic works of art. For example, one large section of the exhibit is dedicated to Chagoya’s modernization of Francisco Goya’s caprichos, some of the same ones that I saw in San Jose last week. While I spent a good amount of time thoughtfully taking in the caprichos in San Jose, I merely glanced at Goya’s take on them. Some were interesting but many simply served, for me, to be a repetition of his painting and I made a game of it trying to find what is different between the classic etchings and Chagoya’s newer pieces.

So instead of spending a lot of time within the Chagoya gallery, I, like many people, spent much more time munching yummy cheese and pate from Berkeley caterer Bistro Liaison.

I also had time, within the mere hour and a half that I was at the museum, to check out the work of  Joan Jonas. Quirky and weird, I felt more comfortable in the Jonas exhibition watching the videos than I did in the Chagoya exhbit. Maybe the work of Chagoya - strong, brazen, and political - is just too real for me. Or maybe it’s just not my thing.

Make sure you come back to the Seen blog Friday to hear what Jennifer has to say. She’s the one with the arts background, and I am dying to know how she felt about the Borderlandia exhibit.

A visit to the museum costs $8. BAM/PFA is at 2626 Bancroft Way in Berkeley. Chagoya will be lecturing on his work at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 17 and on selected Thursdays and Saturdays UC Berkeley students will be offing tours of Borderlandia. Find a schedule of tours here.

painting by Carrie Lederer

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.

While I enjoyed the film, there were other things to be entertained and amused by that evening, including Rhythmix Cultural Works’ gallery show.

 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.