- Stephen Elliott: The Adderall Diaries
- Published: Oct 19, 2009
While the title suggests 'gothic romp,' The Adderall Diaries is more Montaigne-esque: a thoughtful inquiry into the relationship between our memories and our understanding of our selves.
- Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture
- Published: Sep 13, 2009
What I wanted from Slanted and Enchanted, and what I did not get, was a compelling narrative about the history of the independent movement that would include an honest look at the tensions inherent in its demographics (maybe I arrived at indie culture too late, but in my experience it's typically a white, middle-class phenomenon).
- Home is something I carry with me
- Published: Sep 04, 2009
A weekend-long art exhibition and film screening centered around questions about home: how to define it, and how we know when we belong.
- Full Immersion: Public Art Network's Favorite Bay Area Pieces
- Published: Aug 08, 2009
Americans for the Arts just released the Top 40 list of their favorite United States public art projects, and we in the Bay managed to have three projects nominated. Check them out.
- SMITHS: Composed of Tiny, Handmade Details
- Published: Jul 19, 2009
SMITHS is a unique project for the Bay Area: part-artist's studio, part-workshop, and part-general store. The name is a play on words -- "smith" means maker, as well as being the last name of the store's proprietress, Allison Smith.
- West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State
- Published: Jul 11, 2009
Mark Arax, a former journalist for the Los Angeles Times Magazine is the author of West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State, a collection of short profiles meant to showcase California "beyond the cliches."
- 3-for-1 at SF Camerawork
- Published: Jul 02, 2009
The notes from my trip to SF Camerawork last Saturday begin like this: "I'm into the Tom Petty that the desk staff is playing, but not so into Jim Stone."
- Alice Shaw's (Auto)Biography
- Published: Jun 09, 2009
Like most of her contemporaries, conceptual artist and photographer Alice Shaw has identity issues -- not to mention a lot of humorous questions about the efficacy of portraiture.
- Wordplay at the de Young
- Published: May 18, 2009
The trope here is signage as texture -- and the fineness of its weave into our everyday lives. In other words, the photographers here focus on the visual language of things like advertising and graffiti and how they inhabit the space of the human.
- Strand: An Odyssey of Pacific Ocean Debris
- Published: May 01, 2009
"Prehistory," says beachcomber and journalist Bonnie Henderson in her introduction to Strand: An Odyssey of Pacific Ocean Debris, "is written in refuse." And so are the habits of contemporary humankind...
- Kenneth Goldsmith's UbuWeb
- Published: Mar 22, 2009
To be a poet is a labor of love. To publish poets, even more so. Welcome to UbuWeb, a site devoted to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts.
- Paul McCarthy's Low Life Slow Life, Part 2
- Published: Mar 10, 2009
I don't know if the adjectives "loud" and "visually spare" usually come to mind when you think of Paul McCarthy, but after seeing Low Life Slow Life: Part 2 at the Wattis this month, I'm stuck with them.
- Ex Libro
- Published: Mar 07, 2009
Given the number of altered texts present at Ex Libro, Lisa Kokin's current show at the Donna Seager Gallery, one could joke whether it's a show for text-ophiles or for text-ophobes.
- A Conflicted Paradise: All Art is Propaganda, critical essays by George Orwell
- Published: Feb 10, 2009
It can be a strange feeling, reading essays on authors and topics that were once the height of fashion and are now old hat (such as Dickens, Eliot, Miller and Kipling), but the questions that Orwell struggles with remain pertinent: where do politics and the personal blend?
- The Sorry State of Amazon's Mechanical Turk
- Published: Feb 02, 2009
It's my opinion that Mechanical Turk attracts people who are used to thinking that their leisure time is worth zero, at least monetarily, so that being paid anything at all brings them out ahead.
- Anonymous Postcard
- Published: Jan 05, 2009
Do you have a burning criticism or commendation that you'd like to get off your chest but feel too shy to let others know? Or perhaps you're not shy at all, but you want your opinion to pack a little more visual punch?
- What The Bleep is Information Aesthetics, Anyway?
- Published: Dec 23, 2008
Academics and trendwatchers agree: in terms of mass communication, we live in a period of transition between words and images.
- San Francisco Sci-Fi Round-up
- Published: Dec 07, 2008
A friend recently reminded me that in theory science fiction sales are supposed to skyrocket during times of political malaise or frustration. While this may be the stuff of legend, I chose to celebrate election month by checking in with the staff at Borderlands, a genre fiction bookstore in the Mission, to find out what sci-fi books are the Bay Area's most popular.
- Gently Forcing the Question: SFMOMA's The Art of Participation
- Published: Dec 04, 2008
Most of the works in the exhibition set out to intentionally complicate what at some point in the mid-20th century was decided to be an overly simple relationship: that of the viewer and the art object.
- On the Successful Selling of Things: San Francisco's The Thing Quarterly Turns One
- Published: Oct 27, 2008
First and foremost, it's obvious that The Thing offers a unique product. Its founders and editors invite four guest artists a year to design an issue, which takes the form of an everyday object -- coaster, baseball hat, doorstop -- that somehow incorporates text.
- Planet Money
- Published: Oct 23, 2008
If it isn't obvious, Planet Money covers the economy, with a mission statement that boils down to "no jargon."
