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Some Good News: Ruth Asawa Stamps are Coming
Ruth Asawa will be commemorated in a run of official postage stamps in 2020, the USPS announced on Friday. The stamps honor the work of the late, beloved San Francisco-based Asawa, a Japanese American...
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How a 23-Year-Old Tattoo Artist, Sidelined by Shutdown, Is Getting By
Emma Pierce was driving home from the airport when she got the call from her tattoo shop. Since she’d been on vacation in Japan for three weeks, the shop owner explained, and since this new thing...
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Take-Home Kits, Virtual Studio Time a Lifeline for Artists With Disabilities
On a regular weekday, Bay Area arts organizations NIAD (Nurturing Independence Through Artistic Development), Creative Growth and Creativity Explored are bustling hives of production. Artists with...
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‘Everything She Touched,’ Emotionally Textured Biography of Ruth Asawa
In a 1955 review of Ruth Asawa’s gossamer hanging wire sculptures at Peridot Gallery in New York, Time magazine identified the San Francisco artist as a “housewife and mother,” and reduced a...
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Artist DJ Agana Sprays Meaningful Symbols Across a Changing Oakland
The north-south median-divided street now known as Mandela Parkway is a microcosm of the changes at play throughout Oakland. Once, it was the site of the Cypress Structure, a 1.6-mile-long two-deck...
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The Wattis Institute’s New Digital Library is an Antidote to Online Exhibitions
Two weeks into the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place ordinance, I alternated between the web page hosting Hauser & Wirth’s first-ever online exhibition and Chanel’s online store. The similarities between...
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A Shipping Container Painting and a Pandemic
To Berkeley artist Dewey Crumpler, shipping containers are symbols of authority, monuments to economic and geopolitical power wrought from steel and stacked like ramparts. They’re metaphors for...
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At a Digital Distance, Débora Delmar’s Show Emphasizes Invisible Systems
We can’t visit art the way we used to. Unless an artwork is out in the world, unhindered by walls or doors, it’s cooped up just like the rest of us, waiting patiently to be seen. So we turn to our...
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Was Your Exhibition Canceled? There’s a New Grant for That
San Francisco gallery Ever Gold [Projects] and the Internet Archive, who usually partner on an annual residency program, have instead diverted this year’s residency funds into grants for Bay Area...
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Video Games Are Our New Venues
There’s one place where it’s still safe to mosh to music or wander through a crowded exhibition: your favorite video game. With arts spaces closed, concerts postponed and no one to dress up for, arts...
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It’s Still Raining Game in Northern California
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past two months, it’s that a worldwide pandemic can’t stifle the artists of Northern California. Which makes sense—it’s one of the most innovative places on the...
View ArticleOakland Venues Stork Club, Spirithaus Shutter Due to Pandemic
Oakland rock club and dive bar the Stork Club, a venue that’s been open in different forms for over 100 years, is temporarily closing due to the pandemic. Tom Chittock, manager and son of owner Juanita...
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How Yuri Kochiyama Inspired this Young Oakland Artist
This month Kathy Liang will graduate from Oakland Tech as a part of the class of 2020. She and her fellow seniors will walk out of their classrooms and into a world of uncertainty. Fortunately, at 18,...
View ArticleSFMOMA Commissions Local Artists, Expands Digital Programs During...
Part of the allure of the artist residency rests in the opportunity to claim space — an increasingly tenuous resource in art creation. With museums shuttered and physical gatherings halted, programs...
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‘Curbside Exhibition’ at Catharine Clark Eases Back into Art Viewing
Visiting art shows used to be a regular part of my job. I’d see at least one show a week, sometimes more if I was feeling ambitious or visiting an area dense with galleries. But 70-some days into...
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SFMOMA Faces Censorship, Racism Accusations Over George Floyd Response
Updated June 4, 3:15pm On Saturday, Taylor Brandon was at home in Oakland, resting after protests against the police killing of George Floyd roiled her hometown. She decided to check in on the social...
View ArticleSFMOMA Announces Layoffs and Reduced Schedules for 55 Employees
In a public statement issued Tuesday evening, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced the layoff or reduced schedules of 55 staff members, to take effect, an employee confirmed, on June 8....
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Doc of Sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard Goes ‘Into Her Own’
The word monumental recurs throughout the new documentary Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own. Art critics, friends of the artist and casual observers reflexively use the adjective to describe the...
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PHOTOS: Oakland’s Black Lives Matter Murals Call for Justice
Over the last week, Oaklanders have risen up in solidarity with protestors in Minneapolis, Louisville and cities across the country to denounce police violence and systemic, anti-black racism. Tens of...
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Isabelle Frances McGuire’s Time Capsule of Pandemic Islation
Isabelle Frances McGuire’s P**** B**** ARENA (asterisks the artist’s own), which opened in Et al.’s Chinatown location on May 30, is shrouded in sickness. The work itself was made under Chicago’s...
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