Outsound Presents Conduct Your Own Orchestra Night

Last Thursday, I participated in another round of “Outsound Music Presents Conduct Your Own Orchestra Night”. I played iPhone and Kaoss Pad in the “orchestra” along with Tom Bickley (recorder), John Hanes (percussion), Simon Hanes (bass), Carlos Jennings (synthesizers), Bob Marsh (guitar), Marianne McDonand (harp), Ann O’Rourke (percussion), and Rent Romus (saxophone). The event was organized by Matt Davignon.

I also signed up once again for one of the slots as a conductor. I used my graphical symbols, giving different symbols to different musicians throughout the course of the 10-minute piece. Each performer interpreted the assigned symbols as he or she saw fit, while listening to what others were doing. Ann O’Rourke had her metal cat-shaped CD holder again, which as perfect for the “cat” symbol. I also added a lot of direct pitch instructions to this performance, i.e., having specific musicians play a “C” or an “E” for a period of time, to build up unisons and harmonies and provide more variety to the texture. I was actually quite happy with the range of sounds and musical phrasing that resulted.

John Hanes conducted a rather minimal piece, where everyone was instructed to play only the pitch “F” (if one had a pitch-capable instrument) and eighth notes. Within this He built of a minimal texture with a fair amount of dynamic range by having people enter and exit on his cue. For his piece, Tom Bickley gave us the basic concept of choosing a number between 5 and 10, and then repeat a pattern of counting up to that number and sounding a short staccato note The results was a sparse pointed texture, with various clusterings and the different performers moved in and out of phase. In the middle of his piece, Bob Marsh added his voice and words, and gradually moved away from the stage towards the back of the room as the piece drew to a close.

One issue that has become apparent is that my iPhone has performed far worse as a musical instrument since I upgraded to OS 4.0. It runs slow and some applications quit unexpectedly – this did happen once when I was cued for a solo note, leading to a somewhat amusing but somewhat embarrassing moment. Fortunately, for a small and friendly show like this it is easy to laugh off.

Zecca and Frazier, Gallery 16 – and Views of the City at Artist Xchange

A few weeks ago I went out to a couple of openings on a night when I thought I wouldn’t. But after a little bit of rest I was ready to venture out into the still bright and unusually warm evening.

First up was Gallery 16 for the opening of an exhibition featuring the work of Alex Zecca and Suzanne Frazier.

Alex Zecca’s large scale works are composed of thousands of straight lines meticulously drawn in ink. The pieces emerge from the interactions among all the lines. As the artist states, “Color, mixing, reaction and saturation, as well as sequence and systems are the visual dialogue central to my work.” It is hard to imagine the amount of work (physical and metal) that goes into creating something like this.

Some of the works were single color, in which complex images emerge from the density of intersecting lines as well as the angles at which they cross. My favorite pieces in the exhibition were the monochromatic series JANUARY 26, 2010.


[Alex Zecca. JANUARY 26, 2010. Courtesy of Gallery 16, San Francisco CA. (Click to enlarge image)]

Each of the twelve sections contains 1260 lines out of which the overall geometric texture of diagonal lines and curves emerges, as well as a texture that resembles interference patterns in optics. Color adds an additional dimension to some pieces, such as FEBRUARY 5, 2010. In the piece, the interference patterns are the central element created by the lines, with complex and subtle color transitions at odd locations within the overall image.


[Alex Zecca. FEBRUARY 5, 2010. Courtesy of Gallery 16, San Francisco CA. (Click to enlarge image)]

The paintings in Suzanne Frazier’s Tidelog series with their thick curving shapes and bright colors seem very different at first, but they also follow a very meticulous (and time-consuming) process. Frazier was inspired by the entanglements found along the northern California coastline. She made photographs of masses and strands of kelp, projected the images onto the wall of her studio, and then traced the shapes onto acetate, which she then cut out and used as an “alphabet” from which to create the paintings. The results are paintings whose colors and overall composition are abstract, but whose components are shapes from nature.


[Suzanne Frazier. Tidelog #9. Courtesy of Gallery 16, San Francisco CA. (Click image to enlarge)]

While creating the paintings, she also found that the spaces between curves were themselves interesting, and filled these very various textures of dots, crossing lines, etc. Thus, just as with Zecca’s ink drawings, one is compelled to look closely at these paintings to see the detail. Indeed, it was the detail that particular drew me to certain works in the series, such as Tidelog 7 and Tidelog 9.


[Suzanne Frazier. Tidelog #7. Courtesy of Gallery 16, San Francisco CA. (Click image to enlarge)]

The exhibition at Gallery 16 will remain up through July 16.


Next, it was off to Artist Xchange for the “Views of the City” show. Regular readers know that views of the city (or of cities in general) are central to my own artistic output as well as what I look for in others. I do tend to look for more unique views of the city, less traveled neighborhoods, unusual perspectives, or spaces and details that are otherwise overlooked. It is too easy in a city like San Francisco to fall into the trap of producing postcard images or trite pieces that would look at home in a souvenir shop, and several artists in this exhibition did just that. But several artists did express unique views of the city that caught my attention.

Sonja Navin was back with her views of familiar highways such as I-280 and side streets around the city. We have reviewed her work before, including her exhibition back in March. Complementing Navin’s work was Zue Acker, who presented her own highway painting as well as images of downtown city blocks were familiar to me as a resident. Indeed, her painting empty downtown – long shadows is exactly the same location as one of my Wordless Wednesday photos!


[Zue Acker. Installation view at Artist Xchange. (Click image to enlarge)]

Paul Kirley captures the city in mid motion, such as his painting Clay Bus showing a Muni bus moving along Clay Street. He refers to these works as “Mixed Photo / Paint Dreamscapes”, blending expressive paint and photographic compositions together on a single canvas. Rather than paintings of blurred or modified photographs, the painting itself becomes the process that causes the photographic images to blur and disintegrate in places.

Elizabeth Geisler’s cityscape images included locations or views in the Bay Area that I did not know well, such as the Richardson Bay Bridge near Sausalito.

[Elizabeth Geisler. Twilight (Richardson Bay Bridge)]

Finally, Joaquin Sorro’s Dolores was a fun piece with buildings and trees at add angles, and seemingly in mid-motion as one might find in a comic book. In fact, his image reminded me of some of the experimental comic art I have been reading about recently, but which will remain a topic for another day.

Emergency (X)tet, Meridian Gallery (and The Candy Store)

Last Saturday I attended a performance of the Emergency (X)tet at the Meridian Gallery. Unlike a normal string quartet or quintet, the number of performers in the (X)tet is variable. And on this particular evening X was equal to 7, with Adria Otte, Angela Hsu, and Jonathan Segel on violin, Bob Marsh and Doug Carroll on cello, Kanoko Nishi on bass koto, and Tony Dryer on contrabass.

All Emergency (X)tet performances involve free improvisation. But like all good free improvisation, a structure emerges within each piece. Some sections focused on short tone bursts, others on long harmonics, and others on extended techniques such as striking the body of the instrument. I particularly noticed the use of “prepared violin”, in which objects were inserted between the strings of the violin to change the timbre and performance characteristics (similar to a prepared piano). At various points the violins as well as the contrabass were all performing with various rods inserted in between the strings.

In the second half of the performance, the string (X)tet was joined by Kinji Hayashi performing butoh dance. Butoh dance emerged in post-World War II Japan. Most performances of butoh that I have seen involve very slow and deliberate motion, usually in white make-up and has an overall dark or absurdist theme. As with the purely instrumental pieces, the dance movements were improvised in response to the music, but it had an overall structure. Hayashi first emerged from the hall covered in newspaper, forming a sort of a sort of “newspaper monster” or large mass moving slowly. Every so often, one could glimpse his hands or face underneath.


[Click to enlarge image.]

The slow movements were punctuated by dramatic or even comical fast motions (at one point, an audience member’s purse was pulled underneath the newspaper). As the piece unfolded, more and more of the newspaper was cast away to reveal the dancer in full traditional costume, with dramatic movements along the full length of Meridian’s performance space. As with many improvised pieces, the ending came at an unexpected moment.


On display at the Meridian Gallery during the performance was the exhibition The Candy Store featuring the work of John deFazio and Leigha Mason. DeFazio’s 100 Xerox collages based on cantos from Dante’s Divine Comedy was on display in the music room, and was probably the closest aligned to my artistic interests, featuring graphic and text images in black and white. Some were abstract, some featured cultural or historical references, others included disturbing imagery. He also designed several large funerary urns with very whimsical designs dedicated to mythical figures as well as popular culture. The title piece for the exhibition was Mason’s life-size candy shop installtion. The resin and sugar objects are bright and translucent, and seem very inviting, until one gets closer and sees the hair and fingernails embedded within. Mason seems to play upon this mixture of invitation and revulsion, which also was apparent in her accompanying drawings that featured children with grotesque faces expressing joy, perhaps that of “kids in a candy store”.

Elaine Buckholtz, Jars Filmed Inside

During Carnaval a few weeks ago, a friend and I took a break and visited Triple Base in the Mission District, where we saw Elaine Buckholtz’s solo show Jars Films Inside. For this exhibit, Buckholtz has turned the entire gallery into a single immersive work of art that is simultaneously a performance space. Visitors can interact with the objects in the gallery and use them to create their own experience of the work.


[Elaine Buckholtz. Gallery installation view.
Photo courtesy of Triple Base Gallery. (Click to enlarge)
]

The first thing one notices upon entering the gallery is the large curved mirror in the center, and the lined with small glass jars, beakers, vials of all sorts filled with various objects. They seem like specimens from a “scientific” collection of a previous century, pretty or interesting things trapped and preserved in jars. The mirror was rotating slowly, and the reflection of the bottles on the wall create a black line that undulates across the surface, and occasionally breaks into two lines that then reconnect.


[Elaine Buckholtz. Installation view with mirror. (Click to enlarge)]

On close inspection, the vessels contain photographic film, glasses, pebbles, tiles and other objects. It seemed they were all selected to play with the light that passes through the glass, obscuring or modifying it.


[Elaine Buckholtz, Jars filmed inside.
Photo courtesy of Triple Base Gallery.
]

Indeed, the installation as a whole seems to be about playing with light, both directly an indirectly. There is the light through the jars, the often translucent objects in the jars, and the large central curved mirror reflecting the jars and the viewers. There are also a number of handmade optical devices that viewers can pick up and use to view the light of the installation in even more ways.

This was an exhibit that invited exploration and play. This can be a bit surprising for regular gallery visitors who are used to the tradition of “look but do not touch” in art, and I probably would not have picked anything up without having been invited to do so by the staff and thus missed out on the full experience.

In the basement of the gallery (which is accessed via a trapdoor and a ladder) was Hunter Longe’s installation entitled Perception Projection Delay. It consisted of a large drawing of spiral, with similar moving image projected onto it, given a sense of constant and somewhat disorienting motion.


[Hunter Longe, Perception Projection Delay.]

The clean curves of the spiral, flatness of the screen were a contrast to the rough surfaces of the basement, but the silence and overall darkness seemed to fit together. Especially coming after the vibrant colors and crowds of Carnaval, the calmness of the environment and the patterned motion of the image seemed very inviting, at once meditative and a canvas for fun and imagination, and it captured our attention for some time.

The exhibition will remain on display at Triple Base through July 3, so do check it out if you are in the area.

Mission Arts and Performance Project, June 2010

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Mission Arts and Performance Project (MAPP), a bi-monthy neighborhood event in the Mission District of San Francisco that transforms homes, garages, cafes and other local businesses into makeshift galleries and performance spaces. I have attended several MAPP events in the past, and this was the largest I had seen in a long time – and while it is great to see the event thriving, it meant that in my limited time I was only able to see a few things.

This time there was a good balance of visual art in addition to performances. I did stop at Wonderland Gallery on 24th street. Several artists were featured, with several pieces that had an urban and/or graphic feel. Gianluca Franzese’s monochrome acrylics of a building in Chinatown the Mission police station caught my attention (in the photo below), as did some abstract geometric drawings by Paul Hayes (I did not get a decent photo, but do check out his flickr site).

[Gianluca Franzese. (Click image to enlarge)]

It was an rather warm evening (as I mentioned in my last article, we have had a few exceptionally warm weekends), perfect for walking around the neighborhood to take things in. At a garage along Folsom Street dubbed “Blue House”, I encountered the jazz trio Calliope. Visually and sonically, they appeared to step out of the 1940s into an blue illuminated garage in 2010:

Calliope

Calliope was followed by Susan Joy Rippberger performing her performance piece Slip Dance. Rippberger has done several visual works and installations focusing on slips as a very symbolic garment from another era. In this piece, she puts on slips from a large pile one at a time, and at the end reverse the process by removing them one by one.

[Susan Joy Rippberger. Slip Dance.]

While watching, I was thinking of the jazz performance right beforehand and thinking how it would be interesting to have vintage music in the background, perhaps from a small radio, as part of the piece.

I briefly stopped at nearby “La Case de los Sentidos” which featured a series of performances along with visual art pieces under the title “Immigration or Displacement? A World without Borders.” I also stopped a couple of times the Red Poppy Art House and was happy to see them participating more fully in this MAPP after their absence at previous events.

Angular and Architectural (901 Market Street, San Francisco)

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the opening for an exhibit entitled Angular and Architectural in downtown San Francisco. The title itself features elements that reappear in my own photography as well as my viewing and appreciation of art. Plus it was conveniently on the way home from work.

901 Market Street is one of those typical older office buildings one sees downtown (this building dates back to 1912). It is an imposing stone building, a bit heavy and a bit ornate. The inside, however, features an open modern atrium, very clean, full of light and space, and a perfect “canvas” for an art exhibition, particularly one whose theme is architecture and geometry.

What made this particular exhibit stand out was the pairings and combinations of different artworks, among the best combination arrangements I have seen in a while. Many of these combinations involved paintings by John Haag paired with sculptures by Rebecca Fox and Yong Han. We have seen Fox’s and Han’s metal sculptures before at Open Studios and elsewhere, but Haag was a new discovery. Here is one of his paintings, Midnight Seranade, coupled with one of Fox’s sculptures:

[Click to enlarge image.]

The black-and-white of the painting matches the dark color of the sculpture against the white background, along with the thick bands of black and gentle curves.

Here we see another painting, this time coupled with one of Han’s sculptures, last train of thought:

[Click to enlarge image.]

In this painting, the strong angles and thin lines in the painting match the sculpture, and both have a somewhat Art-Deco quality.

Here is one more set, with the sculptures framing the painting from either side:

[Click to enlarge image.]

The curved shapes and bright red in the last painting bring up the red elements in the two sculptures to either side.

This exhibit reminds us how the placement of disparate works in exhibition is itself a creative act, finding elements across artists and media that somehow work together.