Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when most galleries and museums are traditionally closed. Dark Day Picks highlights current exhibitions, new installations, books, and art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

Cantor Arts Center (Stanford University)—From Their Studios. This exhibition highlights the work of 13 professors, including Enrique Chagoya, Robert Dawson, and Jan Krawitz. Through January 10, 2010.

SFO Airport, International Terminal (North 20 Cases)— Scenes from Myths and Daily Life: Ancient Mediterranean Pottery (from the collection of Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology). If you must be at SFO Airport during the holiday madness, a visit to this fine selection of always-exquisite black-figure vases from BCE Greece and her colonies might calm your nerves.

SF MOMA, Caffe Museo—Andrea Voinot. Voinot works productively in the swath between representation and abstraction. Through January 19, 2010.

Dark Day Picks—Holiday Fare

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when most galleries and museums are traditionally closed. Dark Day Picks highlights current exhibitions, new installations, books, and art world tidbits. Today we feature more ephemeral events, all-too-brief sustenance for the holidays.

Y2Y Gallery, 251 Balboa Street, SF—Non*Mart‘s Stop & Swap event, December 19th only.  With a focus on post-consumer goods and recycled materials, Non*Mart encourages the use of existing resources in productive ways. The studio/gallery/shop offers a platform for artists who explore a more relational, less commercial means of economic exchange. Imbedded among many similar activities sponsored periodically by the gallery , the Stop & Swap event is a clever re-interpretation of the holiday gift-giving tradition. The perfect antidote to Capitalismas.

If you do have to buy, head over to Creativity Explored’s Holiday Art Show. Though the artists working and exhibiting here may have developmental disabilities, those haven’t prevented them from communicating movingly and effectively through their art. Possibly  you’ll go home with a future Martín Ramírez . . . Through December 23rd.

UC Berkeley, Zellerbach Hall—Mark Morris: Hard Nut.  Quirky, witty, but always in the end reverential where his muses are concerned, Morris turns the classic Nutcracker ballet on its head.  Although Morris has retained the Tchaikovsky score and Hoffman plotline, he’s shifted the action to the swinging 60s, and the setting provides ample fodder for great merriment. See Culture Vulture for expanded view.  Through December 20th.

Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when most galleries and museums are traditionally closed. Dark Day Picks highlights current exhibitions, new installations, books, and art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

MOAD, 685 Mission Street, SF—The Art of Richard Mayhew. Mayhew describes himself as an “improvisationalist,” a painter who employs paint as the medium of discovery.  Known predominantly for his landscapes (although he paints other subjects), his paintings are free-form, bordering on the abstract.  His muted color palette—delicate pastels, lush greens and deep purplish-blues—as well as his mastery of light, create moods that are real and imagined, both recognizable and ethereal. Says Mayhew “My art is based on a feeling—of music, mood, sensitivity and the audio responses of sound and space. I want the essence of the inner soul to be on the canvas.”  Through January 10, 2010.

Ratio 3, 1447 Stevenson Street, SF—Ara Peterson—Turns into Stone. In this exhibition Ara Peterson presents two distinct bodies of work—one, the series of backgammon boards, is a collaboration with his father; the other, a series of sculptures.  A 1997 graduate of RISD, Peterson has already logged in some impressive art world stats, including exhibitions at New York’s PS1; San Francisco’s Yerba Buena; Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory, as well as inclusion in collections of MOMA and the New Museum, among others. Through December 19, 2009.

Art in Storefronts—Bayview/Hunter’s Point. Kristine Mays (above), Elisheva Biernoff, Malik Seneferu, and others transform vacant store fronts in the Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood into evocative creative expressions. It’s the final installment in the Mayor’s pilot program Art in Storefronts that includes locations in the Central Market and Tenderloin districts. In her installation Strong Women, Precious Pearls, Mays vividly conjures up the hard-working women of Bayview through intricately-sculptured garments of wire.

Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when most galleries and museums are traditionally closed. Dark Day Picks highlights current exhibitions, new installations, books, and art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

Asian Art Museum, SF—Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam & Burma. The first major exhibition in the West to explore the rich but little known arts of Siam and Burma from the 19th century. Many of the than 140 works, including sculptures, textiles, paintings, and ceramics come from the Doris Duke Collection (recently donated to the Museum) and have never been on display before. The only venue for this show.  Through January 10, 2010.

Modernism, 685 Market Street, SF—Catherine Courtenaye: Fieldhand and Other Works. “Courtenaye’s inscriptions gently mock the idea that every move of the artist’s hand registers some truth of personality or mood. The whole point of calligraphic penmanship was to suppress vagaries of temperament.”—Kenneth Baker.  Through December 23.

Cain Schulte, 714 Guerrero St. SF—Justin Quinn: Keep Out This Frost. “Justin Quinn continues his transcription of Herman Melville’s epic Moby Dick into the letter E. This letter has become a surrogate for all letters in the alphabet, presenting a universal yet unreadable language.  This simplified system allows Quinn to explore the distance between reading and seeing.” Through December 23.

Dark Day Picks—New York Roundup

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when most galleries and museums are traditionally closed. Today Dark Day Picks departs from its usual coverage of San Francisco to highlight noteworthy events in New York.

Onassis Cultural Center—The Origins of El Greco. Holland Cotter reviewed this show as: the “most enwrapping and enrapturing art in town, framed by alert scholarship, a lambent environment (the installation design is by Daniel Kershaw), and a score of Byzantine music, arranged and performed by the Greek ensemble En Chordais, that will soak into your system and stay there.” See also VR The Making of an Iconoclast.  Though February 27, 2010.

International Center for Photography—Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video. A global survey of some of the most exciting photographers interpreting the theme of fashion. Through January 17, 2010.

American Museum of Natural History—Traveling the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World. Making stops at Xi’an, Turfan, Samarkand and Baghdad, this multi-faceted show includes dioramas, interactive exhibits, artifacts, performances by Yo-Yo Ma and a variety of films bring the legacy of the ancient Silk Road alive. Through August 15, 2010.

Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when most galleries and museums are traditionally closed. Dark Day Picks highlights current exhibitions, new installations, books, and art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery—Frances McCormack, recent paintings. For McCormack loosely interpreted botanical forms and architectural elements are the vehicles through which she explores the restraints/opportunities presented by the rectangular picture plane. Through Dec. 12.

Caldwell Snyder Gallery—Cole Morgan. Morgan harnesses his signature style—graffiti-like paint notations and pencil scratching—into the grid format. Sometimes Morgan’s work gets a little too self-conscious, but joy and whimsy always shows through. Through Nov. 30.

111 Minna Gallery—The Novemberists, including collages by former SF Supervisor Matt Gonzalez. Through Nov. 30.

Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when most galleries and museums are traditionally closed. “Dark Day Picks” highlights current exhibitions, new installations, books, and art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

de Young Museum—Amish Abstractions. The Amish faith embodies the principles of simplicity, humility, discipline, and community, but their quilts are anything but humble. This exhibition features 48 full-sized quilts, made from the 1880s-1930s.  November 14—June 6, 2010.

Museum of Craft and Design—Michael Peterson: Evolution/Revolution. Peterson produces elegant, abstract sculptures made from local woods. This exhibit traces his artistic development over the past 20 years. Through January 3, 2010.

San Jose Museum of Art—Chuck Close Prints. Painter Chuck Close was particularly concerned that his prints not simply be smaller versions of his paintings, but rather that printmaking open up an additional arena of investigation that would require him to engage in image-making in completely different ways. Through January 10, 2010.

Dark Day Picks: Photography

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when most galleries and museums are traditionally closed. “Dark Day Picks” highlights current exhibitions, new installations, books, and art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

Fraenkel Gallery—Carlton Watkins: Discoveries. Twenty-four recently discovered photographs from one of the most important photographers of the 19th century. November 5–December 30

Robert Koch Gallery—Holly Andres: Sparrow Lane.  In  this recent body of work, Andres, the queen of fictitious memories, maps out the transition from adolescence to womanhood. November 5–December 24.

Scott Nichols Gallery—Rolfe Horn: Shinjosui ~ Mind Like Water. Horn is is a master at creating drama in least expected places. By using complex and advanced printing processes, his luminous images glow with their own sources of light. This exhibition is the culmination of his fall 2008 trip to Japan and focuses on serene, calm, more meditative landscapes. November 5–January 2, 2010.

Dark Day Picks: SF Open Studios Weekend 4

Over the four weekends in October we’re highlighting San Francisco Open Studios, the largest program of its kind in the country. Artists invite viewers into their studios to see the work outside of the gallery system. SF Open Studios takes place during successive weekends in October, different neighborhoods on different weekends.

Weekend 4: October 31 & November 1
Neighborhood: Hunter’s Point Shipyard

Paula Clark, Bldg. 101, #1312

Susan Friedman, Bldg. 101, #1517

Dolores R. Gray, Bldg. 101, #1302

Julie Nelson, Bldg. 116, Studio A

Sawyer Rose, Bldg. 110, #205

Jane Woolverton, Bldg. 101, #1408

Maggie Malloy, Bldg. 116, #7

Dark Day Picks: SF Open Studios Weekend 3

Over the four weekends in October  we’re highlighting San Francisco Open Studios, the largest program of its kind in the country. Artists invite viewers into their studios to see the work outside of the gallery system.

Weekend 3: October 24 & 25
Neighborhoods: Financial District, North Beach, Potrero Hill, Russian Hill,SOMA, Tenderloin, Bayview, Excelsior

Jonah Ward—340 Bryant Street.

Deborah Howard-Page— 547 Arkansas Street (at 20th).

Mark Faigenbaum—611 Texas Street (at 22nd).

David Patchen—1750 Armstrong Avenue at 3rd Street.

Ed Calhoun—2325—3rd Street, #345

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