Tag Archives: San Francisco

Slaughter

Slaughter

For an art form so daring, defiant, and overwhelmingly public as graffiti, it is too often dismissed, ignored, and (in some cases) made invisible, disappearing into the barrage of visual information around it. Encompassing everything from large-than-life paintings to train tags or the scratching of one’s moniker into an air-conditioner grill, graffiti both animates and disrupts our landscape. This way of working was at the heart of Margaret Kilgallen’s practice.

Dushko Petrovich’s The Daily Gentrifier

Dushko Petrovich’s The Daily Gentrifier

Jacquelyn Gleisner introduces “The Daily Gentrifier,” a forthcoming broadsheet publication by Chicago-based artist and writer Dushko Petrovich.

An Imposing Figure: Thoughts on Activism and Commodification

An Imposing Figure: Thoughts on Activism and Commodification

In this personal essay, artist Tanya Wischerath reflects on the complexities of bringing activist art to a culturally objective viewership.

Entropy and Growth: a Museum Reborn

Entropy and Growth: a Museum Reborn

SFMOMA’s Senior Content Strategist Tim Svenonius shares an inside look at San Francisco’s ever-changing landscape.

By Invitation Only

By Invitation Only

In 2009, Theaster Gates purchased the first of several vacant properties that would become the site for Dorchester Projects, on the South Side of Chicago. It was both an act …

The Chosen Ones

The Chosen Ones

We are born with family, and we find our chosen family. Often whom we select overshadows our biology. Not always, but sometimes. It’s a balance. Peregrine Honig and Arrington de Dionyso …

Booked

Books to Read Now About the Future

Booked

Books to Read Now About the Future

A future-focused reading list, courtesy of AdobeBooks and Arts Cooperative, a multidisciplinary hub for arts and culture in San Francisco.

Mapping San Francisco

Mapping San Francisco

With its Google bus wars, start-up fever, and rapid gentrification, San Francisco has become a touchstone in conversations about money. Where do art and creativity fit into the shaping of the city?

Invisible Relationships

Invisible Relationships

Guest blogger Jeffrey Augustine Songco looks at the “invisible” relationships that are formed between artists, and between artists and audiences.

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | The Magic Window

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | The Magic Window

Victoria Gannon on the drawings of Desirée Holman and the alienations of nuclear family life.

A Conversation with Barry Jones: How To Generate PR for Ephemeral Works of Internet Art

A Conversation with Barry Jones: How To Generate PR for Ephemeral Works of Internet Art

Guest blogger DC Spensley talks to Barry Jones, associate professor of art at Austin Peay University, about the difficulties of publicizing internet art projects.

On View Now

On View Now | The New Normal: Photographs from the Traina Collection

On View Now

On View Now | The New Normal: Photographs from the Traina Collection

Max Weintraub reviews “Real to Real: Photographs from the Traina Collection” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Seeking Refuge

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Seeking Refuge

Victoria Gannon considers a bird sanctuary in Oakland’s Lake Merritt in terms of landscape and the meaning of refuge.

Inspired Reading

Inspired Reading | Devon Bella of Kadist SF

Inspired Reading

Inspired Reading | Devon Bella of Kadist SF

Huang talks to the program manager of Kadist SF, a contemporary art space with a Reading Shop and a residency program for art magazine publishers.

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Random! Jason Fulford and His Many Coincidences

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Random! Jason Fulford and His Many Coincidences

Victoria Gannon considers the role that randomness plays in the photographs of Jason Fulford, and in her own life.

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | A Place to Call Home

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | A Place to Call Home

What are some of the factors artists consider when deciding what city to live in?

“Ten Years Later,” a 9/11 Memorial-Projection in San Francisco

“Ten Years Later,” a 9/11 Memorial-Projection in San Francisco

Curator Tamara Loewenstein and artist Ben Wood discuss the 9/11 memorial at San Francisco’s St. Ignatius Church.

Gastro-Vision | It Was a Sweet Year

Gastro-Vision | It Was a Sweet Year

Think sweets are just for kids? Think again: Caruth surveys ten memorable food art projects from 2011 that take a cutting-edge approach to the dessert genre.

The Coincident Dance of Image and Word: An Interview with Jessica Serran

The Coincident Dance of Image and Word: An Interview with Jessica Serran

How can artists turn self-criticism into sources of inspiration? Prague-based Jessica Serran makes creative use of her own inner monologues.

What the Talisman Tells: Meditations on David King’s Latest Collages

What the Talisman Tells: Meditations on David King’s Latest Collages

The forms suggested by David King’s abstract collages evoke human conceptions of self and other.

Effulgence of the Effigy: The Medicine Bodies of Daniel Joshua Goldstein

Effulgence of the Effigy: The Medicine Bodies of Daniel Joshua Goldstein

Artist Daniel Goldstein constructs immaterial sculptural bodies that address the AIDS epidemic’s past and present.

Constructing the Sacred Dramas: David Maxim’s Revealing Bible Stories

Constructing the Sacred Dramas: David Maxim’s Revealing Bible Stories

Do Biblical narratives still have relevance to contemporary practices? A look at the paintings of David Maxim, which restage Biblical tales in abstract, emotional terms.

William Harsh on Tradition, Anonymity, Picasso and the Barbaric Yawp

William Harsh on Tradition, Anonymity, Picasso and the Barbaric Yawp

This past summer, San Franciscans were treated to an art smorgasbord from Paris’s Banquet Years, before the Great War. A Picasso exhibition came to the de Young Museum, and an …

Andy Vogt’s Everyday Science

Andy Vogt’s Everyday Science

Certain contemporary artists find so much to explore in one material that artist and medium become almost fused in the art-collective consciousness: think of Richard Serra and rolled steel, for …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Suburban Seriality

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Suburban Seriality

We were not the same, though when we came together, we acted as one. Growing up together, seven girls in the suburbs of Northern California, we told each other’s stories and …

The Curious Creations of Cyrus Tilton

The Curious Creations of Cyrus Tilton

  If you saw the science fiction movie Starship Troopers a few years ago, you have already seen Oakland sculptor Cyrus Tilton’s handiwork—both literally and figuratively: the hands mangled in that alien-bug …

New Guest Blogger: DeWitt Cheng

New Guest Blogger: DeWitt Cheng

Thanks to last week’s guest blogger Tricia Van Eck for her inspiring series of posts on the Occupy movement and the political and aesthetics implications of happiness, which suggested that …

Praxis Makes Perfect

Praxis Makes Perfect | Introduction Part 1: Just Another Night in The Art World

Praxis Makes Perfect

Praxis Makes Perfect | Introduction Part 1: Just Another Night in The Art World

It’s 9 o’clock on a surprisingly warm September evening in San Francisco, and I’m already at my third art opening of the night.  I should be in New York.  Two …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Both a Science and an Art, Part 2

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Both a Science and an Art, Part 2

    Alison Kendall creates drawings and paintings in which viewers’ expectations are breached by dreamlike intruders. The San Francisco–based artist went to school for scientific illustration, learning to draw animals …

Inspired Reading

Inspired Reading | Geof Oppenheimer

Inspired Reading

Inspired Reading | Geof Oppenheimer

This month, I had the pleasure of speaking to Geof Oppenheimer, a Chicago- and San Francisco-based artist, about his upcoming exhibition, Inside every man, part of him wants to burn …

Art21 Educators 2011-2012: Todd Elkin and Teri Hu

Art21 Educators 2011-2012: Todd Elkin and Teri Hu

This week, we introduce the fifth pair of Art21 Educators, Todd Elkin and Teri Hu, hailing from the Bay Area in Northern California.  Last week, we featured Jeannine Bardo and …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Hungry in San Francisco Part 2

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Hungry in San Francisco Part 2

New relationships are often built over food. We sit down to share a bowl of soup together and rise knowing each other better than before. But food’s not just a …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | So Long Grad School!

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | So Long Grad School!

Over the last four weeks, I daydreamed about my final post for my contribution to Art21 Blog’s Open Enrollment column.  Since January, my final semester at San Francisco Art Institute …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Under the Influence

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Under the Influence

Now if anyone happened to dial up the title of this post hoping to see me (or anyone, for that matter) reach down deep and start talking about making art …

Monday Painter/Sunday Banker

Monday Painter/Sunday Banker

I am so pleased to be a new guest blogger at Art21.  We were encouraged to introduce ourselves in our first blog post, and so I thought I would write …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Hungry in San Francisco

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Hungry in San Francisco

One hundred feet below the Starbucks and suits of San Francisco’s financial district, Grubhub.com’s posters beckon from the BART station walls. The online food delivery service offers every kind of …