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Activists’ Messages Line Market Street, Route of Historic Marches
The latest crop of San Francisco Arts Commission Art on Market Street posters may at first glance look like a series of inspirational quotes. “Consciousness is power,” reads one bus stop kiosk....
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Rightnowish: In Maria Paz’s Pottery, Layers of Immigration and Ancestry
Inside of Maria Paz’s studio, there’s all sorts of artwork, partially used paint tubes, unopened bags of clay and handwritten notes on her wooden working table. But the first thing I noticed on my...
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At BAMPFA, ‘The San Quentin Project’ Rewrites the History of Prison Imagery
It started with a box of negatives. In 2012, Bay Area photographer, educator and podcast host Nigel Poor was one year into teaching the course “Visual Concerns in Photography” at San Quentin State...
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At SJMA, Rina Banerjee’s Retrospective Embraces a Fluid Complexity
When I stepped inside New York-based artist Rina Banerjee’s flamingo-pink, floating Taj Mahal, it felt like the artist had wrapped me in a valentine the size of a small house. The sculpture Take me,...
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Sealed for 10 Years, an Excelsior Butcher Shop Becomes a Vibrant Teen Art Space
On an overcast August afternoon, X Space is bustling with dozens of teenagers, parents and neighbors eager to see summertime work by Youth Art Exchange students. A group of girls hawk screen-printed,...
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With Cotton and Reclaimed Symbols, Christopher Martin Tells a Story of Race...
Even in a crowded group show, it’s impossible to miss Christopher Martin’s work. His large-scale banners, usually sewn out of black and white cotton, depict graphic images—graphic in both senses of the...
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Colter Jacobsen Gathers an Expansive Sense of ‘Now’ at Anglim Gilbert
There are so many delicate details in Colter Jacobsen’s work—a collection of recent graphite drawings, watercolor paintings, collages and assemblages—it feels almost sacrilegious to view them during a...
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Remembering Influential Documentary Photographer Robert Frank
Influential photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank has died at the age of 94. He died of natural causes on Monday night in Nova Scotia, Canada. His death was confirmed by his longtime friend and...
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Nicole Miller’s ‘To the Stars’ Lights the Path to Greatness (With Lasers!)
On the ground floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, tucked away in the Phyllis Wattis Theater, middle and high school groups are watching laser light shows. No, the museum is not hosting...
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Artists Excavate the Events of 1989 in CCC’s ‘Task of Remembrance’
1989 was a year of social and physical upheavals. That year, under persistent pressure from the African National Congress and other resistance groups, South Africa began to dismantle apartheid. In East...
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At Interface, Quay Quinn Wolf’s Art Imitates ‘Imitation of Life’
“Art imitates life,” goes the old adage; and Quay Quinn Wolf’s art in his solo show, Pink Velvet Dress with the Fur Collar, is a rejoinder to the film Imitation of Life. Douglas Sirk’s 1959 adaptation...
View Article‘Not Ur Baby’ Returns in Oakland
Not Ur Baby was founded by Antioch native Vanessa “Vavi” Vigil in 2015 to address the lack of spaces for women of color in the Bay. “I was getting into the art scene in the Bay Area, and had to deal...
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50 Years Later, the Enigmatic ‘Slant Step’ Continues to Pose as a Muse
An unlikely muse anchors the varied artworks in Slant Step Forward at Sacramento’s Verge Center for the Arts: a slanted step stool-like object, a clearly intentional design without an obvious purpose....
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Arleene Correa Valencia Makes Immigrant Labor Visible in Portraits of Napa...
Mexican artist Arleene Correa Valencia thinks a lot about where she can go and where she can’t go, and about whose bodies are welcome in which spaces—especially in the realm of fine art. Growing up in...
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At Cloaca Projects, ‘The Pleasure Ground’ Turns ‘Round Right
The night of Matt Savitsky’s opening at Cloaca Projects, the crowd divided itself into two factions: those who knew the song and those who didn’t know the song. “Do you know this song?” someone asked...
View ArticleAn Artist and an Astronaut Talk Space Travel at SFMOMA
In conjunction with SFMOMA’s current architecture and design exhibition, Far Out: Suits, Habs, and Labs for Outer Space (a mixture of actual space-related paraphernalia and artistically imagined...
View ArticleThe Do List: Listen to Our Event Picks for Sept. 26–Oct. 2
The weekend is almost here. Hooray! Looking for things to do? Listen to KQED Arts’ Gabe Meline and Nastia Voynovskaya discuss their event picks at the audio link above, or read about each event below....
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Rightnowish: Refa One, Spraypaint in Hand, Honors West Oakland’s History
Note: This episode originally aired February 24, 2019 I stand on the corner of 14th and Peralta in West Oakland, marveling over a mural painted on the broad side of the Sav-Mor liquor store. With a...
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A Cartoonist Balancing Freelance Work and a Day Job on a Shoestring Budget
I should take off my Spider-Man hoodie, shouldn’t I? Tom Beland was walking up to the front door, and he was still second-guessing his wardrobe. He’d been desperately trying to find a place to live in...
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Isamu Noguchi and Saburo Hasegawa: A Friendship Nearly Lost to Art History
Even decades after Saburo Hasegawa’s death, the artist and designer Isamu Noguchi would describe his friendship with Hasegawa as an “everlasting conversation.” The two first met in 1950, when Noguchi...
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