First Person Magazine Best Coast Art

Exploratorium’s Art Opening Party

Last night was a synergy in the San Francisco art scene  that I haven’t felt for a while. It was a coming together of delicious characters and appetizers.

I sometimes get a little anxious, as a freelance curator, so you may find me just hanging out with the artists or the artworks. But, as I was noodling by the oyster bar eating ceviche, this unusually outgoing character introduced himself to me. As I asked what he was doing there in return, he said he was there for a… “heist.” Something about diamonds in the oysters. I replied, “Possibly amongst all that cracked ice?” He introduced me to his partner in crime, who later, was revealed as one of Keith Haring’s sisters. Richard Benefield joined our group and the mysterious gentleman insisted, “You should really know who you’re talking to right now,” about Richard, who explained to me his David Hockney show coming up in October at the De Young Museum. Richard is their new deputy director. “Here, here,” I said enthusiastically cheer leading for Hockney’s work. I once spotted his print in a thrift store here. I knew it was authentic because it was framed in the same silver frame as my Claes Oldenburg and they really don’t make them like that anymore.

We moved onward into the galleries, and there stood the lovely artist, Vincent Fecteau, whose works I adore and now I adore the man. It’s always a pleasure to find out the person is as interesting and polite as the work is deep and twisted. Sarah Rara (sitting next to the slide carousel) spotted me and I was happy to get a first person tour of her and Luke Fishbeck’s work. She wrote poems for a Douglas Fir tree to last the 333 years of its life. They were funny and poignant (kinda blurry but my iPhone can’t focus faraway). I could really hear Sarah’s voice in them. We sat in the tree and listened to Luke’s sound installation of bubbles being sucked through a tree’s roots upward in the tree’s time signature. Trees are nothing but the water and sun that move through them apparently. The trunks are dead minus the outer ring which carry the photosynthetic process upward.

Later, we sought out Meara O’Reiley’s pieces. She set up a Chladni plate and a microphone for you to sing and create the patterns of pink sand/salt. A performer played mindfully on the vibraphones to test our listening on how two different instruments may trick our sensibilities. David Wilson, another curator/artist, Hannah, and I got a kick out of this uber concave mirror (top picture). On our way out, we spotted Larry Rinder, Director of the Berkeley Museum /Pacific Film Archive and artist, Colter Jacobsen getting a kick out of the “Slow Motion Camera” (bottom pic). It was hilarious to later get a collector to participate after us by “blowing a raspberry” and watching that in slow-mo publicly.

All in all, a wonderful evening was had. My perspective for San Francisco’s art scene was rejuvenated after a fun ArtPad escapade over the weekend and then a very exploratory evening at the Exploratorium. Touching and playing with the art definitely let the air out of many tires. Congratulations to one of the many new museums in San Francisco that successfully expanded and moved. 

Go check out the Exploratorium soon! The views from Pier 15 are amazing. I’ll have to go back to listen to the Lucky Dragon’s “Daylay” piece outside on the pier which is accessible 24 hours and free and experience Nakaya’s “Fog Bridge”.

Going to the Art Market? Frieze Fair?

People say fashion is an expression or extension of our mood. Sometimes I consider it my armor. But now, more than ever, a sense of ease in fashion has arrived and how that reflects on our confidence and openness to conversation and collaboration can be quite telling.

Christophe Lemaire’s offerings are my go to nowadays. A dream for the contemporary woman who desires a bit of playfulness with a classic foundation for fine fabrics and construction.

Here are a few accessories and objects that make fashion closer to an art form considering how the things that surround us may affect us psychologically.

Our contemporary prophet, John Maus, normally speaks his sermons against a backdrop of music. Unbelievably psyched that he was given a platform to speak in conversation at Frieze Fair recently in New York about capitalism, language, tonality, power, and the thematic ilk.

For David Weiss

One half the artist duo who were Fischli and Weiss, creators of significant art works that embodied larger than life stuffed animals, films that took incredible patience and emanated poetic heat and light, photographs of airports, hippotamus, airbrushed graffitti, and high heel shoes. May you rest in peace.

The cause for documentary film may lie in seeing those and that which go unnoticed. Similiar causes for making art?