Mesh Magazine

Balazo Gallery
2183 Mission St. @ 18th
Friday November 30 @ 6 pm

My friend Amy Woloszyn is a local bicyclist, political activist & artist who was the victim of a hit & run accident 2 months ago on Capp Street @ 23rd Street.

She suffered a fractured skull, lacerated liver, numerous cuts & bruises and almost died. Now she has to wear a neck brace for the next three months and use a cane to get around. Because she will be out of work for an undetermined amount of time, she & her friends are trying to raise money to pay her bills and rent while she heals.

This benefit will be an art & services auction— paintings, massages, bake sale, that sort of thing with music performances throughout the night. She also has some chef friends who are going to prepare delicious foods.  Come if you can!

This exhibit at Giant Robot features the work of artist-illustrator-crafter Susie Ghahremani. A graduate of RISD, she’s worked for Nickelodeon, Chronicle Books, and The New York Times. The artwork in this exhibit conists of animals & musical instruments. Check out pictures from the opening earlier this month.

Fecal Face just introduced me to the work of Oakland artist Marci Washington via this interview. Seems like every new artist I get into is a graduate of California College of the Arts and Crafts. I love the way she describes her most recent work:

“It’s like I’m illustrating a novel that doesn’t exist. If it did, it would probably be a lot like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, or Bleak House- novels which function as social commentary as well as beautiful romantic epics.”

Spooky and beautiful and tragic … all her images express so much pain and loneliness whether it’s a gold chandelier shining brightly in an otherwise empty & pitch black room, a body floating down some misty river or a woman frozen in place, transfixed by her reflection.

I was introduced to Casey Jex Smith at the Marin Headlands Fall Open House in October and really liked his use of color and geometric shapes. Now he is just one of the artists featured in “The There There,” an exhibition of East Bay artists at the Esteban Sabar Gallery in Oakland. Other artists include Derek Weisberg, Josh Keyes and Crystal Morey and proceeds from the show will help pay medical bills of local writer & curator Theo Konrad Auer.

A new show @ Candystore by Diana Fayt, complete with handmade babushkas. Folklore is a series of kerchiefed women painted on cardboard envelopes mailed to the artist from all over the world… along with a collection of ceramics. Check out Fayt’s Etsy shop and blog, one black bird, to see more of her work. Now earlier this month, Apartment Therapy took a virtual tour of the artist’s home and it really blew me away… I love her color choices and the way her art is incorporated into her home (see photo below).

I grew up in the DC-area where museums are free-free-free, so paying admission always bums me out a little. And that’s why I’m so excited for tomorrow’s Yerba Beuna Arts & Culture Free-4-All. 12 museums will open their doors from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with free exhibitions and activities. Fun for the whole family. I’m going to be hit up the Jeff Wall exhibit at SFMOMA for sure.

Tonight at the corner of Haight & Ashbury you can join in the grand opening of the RVCA Retail’s first flagship store (stores in LA, NYC, Tokyo, and Sydney are in the works). Art, music, fashion and pop culture.

The first exhibition is entitled Family Tree. The show will include work by R.Pimple, Phil Frost, Pushead and Craig Stecyk and runs through December 31.

This new fall art show @ Doe opens Friday, November 9th with a reception starting at 7 pm. The show is comprised of collages by Lorena Siminovich, an SF-based illustrator. Right From Wrong pictured above.

Also, you might want to check out Siminovich’s wall decor company, Petit Collage… there are some fantastic peices like Blue Robot pictured below.

Cottontail

MUSTN’T is Vasta’s first one-person exhibition.

“The starting point for the series was Angela Carter’s feminist reworking of fairy tales- I wanted to capture the sense of magical realism and the gothic in her storytelling.”

The opening reception will be held November 1st from 5- 8 pm @ the Patricia Sweetow Gallery.

I biked over to GGP this weekend to see a new exhibit at the de Young featuring over 70 sculpture & paper works by American artist Louise Nevelson. She’s best known for filling abstract boxes with discarded pieces that she found on the New York City streets, giving them “a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created.” There’s something so romantic about using found objects. The ability and imagination required to take trash and turn it into art is so inspiring.

These pictures simply don’t do her work justice. The size of the artwork is overwhelming and the curators did a phenomenal job arranging, lighting and explaining the works and how they related to one another. I recommend taking the time to watch the short documentary of Nevelson’s work through the eyes of six artist-admirers. Footage of the artist is just phenomenal. Her head wrapped in a colorful scarf, draped in loose flowing clothing, fake eyelashes, extreme makeup, waving her arms around and ordering young men to lift and cut hunks of wood to her specifications, all the while clutching a clove cigarette in her hand. Sensational.