From Synthiefrau on YouTube, via matrixsynth:
“Hi lovely Synthfolk, it’s all the same with my animals. The dog sleeps in my bed and Cleo the Cat walked on my Synthesizer.”
Author: catsynth
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Angela Oswald, Hilla Heuber, Valerie Scott at SoCha Cafe
A few weeks ago I attended a group opening at SoCha Cafe. It is in the far southern end of the Mission District in San Francisco (or at the edge of Bernal Heights). I usually don’t find myself in this area unless I am on the short San Jose Avenue Freeway, but that’s a topic for another time.
One of the artists whose work I specifically came to see was Angela Oswald.
[Angela Oswald. (click image to enlarge)]
Her paintings have a surreal quality, organic but other-worldly. She also tends to use dark colors with a few light elements, a palette that was quite apparent in her pieces in this show. The painting in the image above also evoked an underwater landscape. These themes can be seen in her other work as well.
I was immediately drawn to two very geometric architectural-themed paintings by Hilla Hueber.
[Hilla Heuber. Blue Moon (2008). (click image to enlarge)]
I like the clean straight lines of the images, and how they evoke structures and spaces within an imagined city. There are small details beyond the abstract shapes, like the standpipe in Blue Moon that add the sense of an urban setting. At the same time, she uses the color and geometry to play with our sense of space – they seem to be simultaneously interior and exterior views. (Indeed, the title “Inside Out” suggests that this ambiguity is deliberate.)
[Hilla Heuber. Inside Out (2008). (click image to enlarge)]
Although not included in this show, Hueber also does photography. I liked her “remixes” of Richard Serra’s sculpture in Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park as well as her images of the photogenic Contemporary Jewish Museum here in San Francisco.
I was also introduced to Valerie Scott, who presented several large-scale paintings in the front room of the cafe. Her paintings were very abstract but intended to convey her “joy, depression and sorrow”.
[Valerie Scott. Untitled. (Click image to enlarge)]
Her largest piece Untitled featured amorphous areas of primary colors (red, blue and yellow) with fuzzy edges. Although it appears vertically online, it was hung horizontally at the show. By contrast, Can’t See the Forest For The Trees focused on shades of green and more minimal gestures.
[Valerie Scott. Can’t See the Forest for the Trees. (Click image to enlarge)]
Although the shapes were more sparse, the painting itself had a strong texture. It looked a bit like an areal view of a landscape. Some of Scott’s newer pieces (such as Mo and Blowin’ in the Wind, which I don’t think were part of the show) are quite different, and have much more defined shapes and sharper contrast.
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Transbay Terminal overpass demolition
I often walk by the overpasses that connect (or once connected) to the soon-to-be-defunct Transbay Terminal here in San Francisco, including the Fremont Street “bridge to nowhere” and the curving elevated road over Howard Street. Both have been featured in Wordless Wednesday photos on CatSynth the posts Fremont Street Overpass and Shine.
[Click the above images to visit the original posts.]
The bridge to nowhere used to connect the Fremont Street exit off of I-80 to the Transbay Terminal. The Fremont Street ramp, which included the last remaining pieces of the Embarcadero Freeway, was truncated and left this bridge hanging. It was a particular favorite “architectural feature” of mine in the city, and in fact qualified as a “Thomasson” or hyper art structure in that was present and maintained but served no purpose.
The elevated road over Howard Street continued to function as a bus entrance to the terminal.
This past week both structures were demolished, as part of the project to replace the entire Transbay Terminal with a new modern transit center. Thanks to a tip from a close friend, I went to shoot some photos of the demolition in progress.
The Fremont Street bridge is completely orphaned on both sides. Only the single arch remained.
In the second photo, one can see the “Buses Only” ramp that temporarily replaced the bridge. That ramp was completely gone already.
The Howard Street overpass was being dismantled in pieces.
One could see the metal skeleton amidst the remaining concrete sections.
Here is a short video of the Howard Street overpass demolition in progress:
By Monday, the Fremont Street overpass was completely gone. And Howard Street structure will be gone soon as well. It is sad to so them go. For me, they were landmarks, part of the architectural landscape of the neighborhood. However, in a city where people get upset easily about architectural changes and preserving landmarks, these seem to have gone largely unremarked upon. I am glad I got a chance to see the demolition and take photos before they were gone. Indeed, some of the images can be quite beautiful in their own way. There is something about aging and decaying urban infrastructure, even when it is being reduced to a pile of concrete rubble and twisted rebar. But I would have rather seen it preserved – I wonder if San Francisco can ever do anything as creative with its old infrastructure as New York did with the High Line.
I may post more images in the near future.
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Weekend Cat Blogging #276: A quiet morning
It’s a quiet, rainy morning here. So we are just relaxing a bit. Luna was sitting quietly on the carpet for an extended period of time, which gave me an opportunity to play with the cameras. First, a detailed black-and-white portrait (36mm):
Next, it’s over to the iPhone camera for more fun with the Hipstamatic app:
I think both the green lens effect and the monochrome of the first image capture qualities of this morning. So does this nice big yawn:
A quiet, moody and gray morning like this is actually welcome. It’s an opportunity to rest and turn inward.
Weekend Cat Blogging #276 is being hosted by Patchouli and Pam at Sidewalk Shoes.
The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at When Cats Attack!
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
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Four Squared, Arc Studios
A couple of weeks ago I visited the Four Squared exhibition at Arc Studios and Gallery – I attended the opening and also visited again later when it was quiet. I present some of my thoughts and observations before the exhibition closes tomorrow, September 18.
The basic idea of the exhibition is that each artist contributes 16 pieces, no larger than 10 inches apiece, that can arranged in a four-by-four grid. The pieces stand on their own as individuals or as a whole, but in each case they 4×4 collection follows some coherent theme. Keeping the numerical theme going, there were a total of 16 artists, so there were a total of 256 (4 x 4 x 4 x 4) pieces in the exhibition.
There were artists whose work I was already familiar with, such as Silvia Poloto, Kristina Quinones and Rebecca Fox, and others who I discovered for the first time. Among the discoveries was Sidnea D’Amico:
[Sidnea D’Amico, installation view.]
Her pieces feature high contrast color and iconic elements representing household items, female figures and firsts. Keep Out, Private, which its geometric and urban feel, particularly caught my attention, as did Still Life 4 for its simple shapes and color.
[Sidnea D’Amico. Keep Out, Private and Still Life 4 (2010)]
The pieces among D’Amico’s set that I particularly liked shared a sense of color and contrast with the purely abstract pieces by Silvia Poloto, whose work I have followed for many years.
[Silvia Poloto. Abstraction in Motion series (2010). Installation view.]
Hers were among the smallest in the exhibition, each one a miniature version of the elements that appear in her larger works such as concentric circles, soft-edged color fields, and tangled lines. The were very inviting, and I had to resist the desire to simply take one and put it my pocket. I doubt I would be invited to any more art openings if I did that.
Rebecca Fox is another artist who usually works on a larger scale. Her large metal sculptures have both a strength and simplicity, with the geometric shapes and smooth textures. Like Poloto, she has brought the quality of her full-scale works to these miniature panels:
[Rebecca Fox. Installation view]
Each panel focuses on shapes that are round but not perfectly circular – both organic in terms of curved shapes but also mechanical in terms of the metalwork.
Molly Meng’s work in the exhibition is about as contrasting to the previous artists as one can get. Her mixed media panels feature found objects with a weathered quality, placing intimate personal objects, photographs and clips from newspapers and magazines, inside of weathered wooden boxes:
[Molly Ming. La Premier Phase #3, Phase Deux #3, and Phase Deux #4. Images from Arc Studios website. (Click to enlarge.)]
Meng used the arrangement of the grid to form a narrative, with each row representing a different phase of life. Each of the three images above were from a different phase.
Mitchel Confer’s series, entitled “IOU or not”, also is focused the stages of life, and in a very serious way. This summer, while preparing for the exhibition, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, and the focus of his life changed to focus on taking care of himself and spending time with his family. He abandoned his original plans for the exhibition, and instead created 16 blank wooden panels:
[Mitechel Confer. IOU or NOT. Installation view.]
Each panel is an “I.O.U.” of sorts. The buyer may keep the panel as is, or exchange it at a future time for a completed panel based on a series of sketches. If he does not recover, the panels become his last works of art. There is a very morbid quality to the project – but one I am not in a position to judge given where I am in my own life. But one cannot help but reflect on life after seeing it. I did like the sketches he did present, with their urban architectural elements.
[Mitchel Confer]
I went to review his website and saw that architecture and cityscapes are a prominent theme in his work. He also did a series based on freeways. Seeing that his visual interests seem to have so much in common with mine makes this story all that more poignant.
Other series that I did notice in the exhibition were those by Brian McDonald and Fernando Reyes. Both artists mentioned dreams as an influence and although quite different, their work immediately brought cartoons and comics to mind.
[Brian McDonald. Slippy (2010). (Click image to enlarge.)]
[Fernando Reyes. Details XIII (2010). (Click image to enlarge.)]
There will be a closing reception and artists’ panel tomorrow, September 18, at Arc Studios, 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco, between 10AM and 3PM.
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Preparing for tonight’s performance
I have been busily preparing for tonight’s solo performance at the Luggage Store Gallery.
Because of all the other things going on in my life and the limited time to prepare, I had to scale back a bit and keep things simple.
On the bottom row is a custom analog noise synth with chaotic elements created by Travis Johns, the iPad running Smule Magic Piano, and the monome. Above this row, there is the Dave Smith Instruments Evolver, one of my Chinese metal bells, the iPhone running a looping app that I often use called TTW2, and the MacBook running “mlr2” and other programs with the monome. I am using a few other apps that are not in the photo, including the Smule Ocarina on the iPhone, and SoundThingy and a guzheng simulator on the iPad. This may still sound complex, but each device is small and self contained, and the interconnectivity is kept to a minimum. I can pick each one up and play it while others run independently.
I am organizing the set into three major pieces. The first mixes purely electronic sounds with an old NBC broadcast of Count Basie from the 1950s. The second features the guzheng simulator with some rhythmic elements and sample loops, set against the Indian string instruments (ektar and gopichand). The third mixes the Evolver with the Ocarina on the iPhone.
One thing that I have revived after not using them for a while is the “Big Band Remotes” recordings from the Internet Music Archive. I still have a recording project I want to finish that uses them, but it also “felt right” to incorporate them into this performance.
As she often does, Luna sat down on the beanbag chair to supervise the goings on.
At night, she tends to be even more camouflaged than usual. The beanbag chair seems to slowly roll over itself over the course of time in a geological manner. The label from the bottom is starting to show at the top.
For those in the area who wish to attend the show tonight, it is at 8PM at the Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market Street (near 6th) in San Francisco.
