Like this! All year!

More by Umbo here. A little more here. And here.

See it bigger here. More by Edward Steichen here. More about Edward Steichen here, here, and here.

More by Beth Yarnelle Edwards here. More about Beth Yarnelle Edwards here.

More by William Allan here.

I’m a big fan of the photographer Martin Parr generally, and am the fan of fans of his series British Food, especially at holiday time. I love this picture: for the unnatural tangerine glow of the filling; that the edge of the crust that looks nearly as orange; and especially for that tiny bright triangle of sun in the picture’s lower r... More

For those of you who somehow missed the news, or for those in parts more distant: SFMOMA turns 75 this January 18. Bay Area, if it hasn’t happened already, you are about to become intimately familiar with this pretty starburst, as SFMOMA prepares to spend 2010 celebrating 75 long years of life.

This post is a ‘save the date’ card for our long weekend anniversary extravaganza, happening January 16, 17 and 18 (Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend).

Six special anniversary exhibitions, showcasing hundreds of objects from the permanent collection, will be open that Saturday. There will be installations by Bill Fontana (in the Wattis) and Allison Smith ( on the fifth floor); the Mike Shine Show will be parked out on our Minna pad—in a borrowed SFMOMA artists gallery truck—on Saturday and Sunday; the Schwab room (that ground floor room off of the Atrium, where the cocktail bars normally live at the member openings) will be opened to Caffè Museo as a cafe extension/lounge; Bl... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, guests, or staff]

After the Kuchar Bros. screening last Thursday evening (George and Mike Kuchar, Recent Preservations: Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof, Tootsies in Autumn, A Woman Distressed, and Lovers of Eternity) I trapped Mike Kuchar in the back of the catering kitchen, near the walk-in freezer, and conduct... More

from Corey Keller, SFMOMA associate curator of photography:

On Sunday, December 13, photographer Larry Sultan passed away at home, surrounded by his beloved family. For several months he had been fighting a rare and virulent cancer, one that would not respond to treatment. In a series of humorous, thoughtful, and heart-breaking emails, he kept us a... More

December 6th marked the 40-year anniversary of what’s well known only as “Altamont”—the end of the sixties.  Los Angeles-based independent curator Jenée Misraje talks with two artists (named Sam) who’ve dealt with the history of Altamont in distinct ways.

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JENÉE MISRAJE

1969. It began with Richard Nixon assuming the White Hous... More

for Francis Heinzfeller

Magic is never settled; the one that should have it has it. The only definitive statement that can be made concerning its nature is that it is creative. Eros is the name of its agency.

Throughout my impassioned love for Kenneth Anger and his Magick Lantern Cycle I have heard of several stray films that over time have disa... More

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I went to the Bowman/Bloom Gallery in the Lower East Side because someone had left their cell phone on the bed at poet Eileen Myles’ 60th birthday party, and eventually it rang and Eileen learned it belonged to Richard Hell, and so she arranged to run it by the gallery where Richard Hell is one of a trio of Lower East Side artists showing work in the Nincompatibles show, which actually just came down a couple days ago. I promise you that any disappointment you may feel at not being able to see this show is dwarfed by my disappointment i... More

Pity the artist who works in celluloid. If compelled towards story-telling and the budgets typically commensurate with such, one must first bed down with tycoons and their retainers, then run a gauntlet of various ideological hit-squads in order to promulgate the work. Film has a diabolic power which sits uneasily on the collective psyche of this... More

The Diggers

I’ll start the ‘variations survey’ with an off-handed proposal by the Diggers, who popularized the free-store as a radical transformation of space and value.  Their free store (above) was realized in San Francisco, 1968.

“A perfect dispenser would be an open Automat on the street…No owner, no manager, no empl... More

Our monthly feature, Collection Rotation: some wonderful guest organizes a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. This month’s guest-curator is the totally marvelous San Francisco artist and filmmaker ANNE MCGUIRE. You can see some of her work in JIGSAMENTALLAMA, on through 12/19, at David Cunningham Projects. Thanks Anne!

_________... More

1. The Believer had a party for their current Art Issue last week at Electric Works Gallery, where the Paul Madonna show Album 01: In What Era Will You Get Stuck is currently up, and I liked it a lot. The artist has a lot of pieces featuring those nubby rubber monsters you put on top of your pencils in middle school (or now), with the waggling arms, and lots of text in his work (which I love) expressing career and other popular life anxieties. The title piece dooms the viewer to a sort of style/fashion/general relevance anxiety; the question of w... More

For about a year now I’ve been an avid fan of Sketchup, a freeware 3-D modeling program developed by our peninsula neighbor friends Google. It’s billed as an everyman’s version of CAD, and it has saved my artist butt many a time by allowing me to create quick and lovely 3-D sketches of exhibition spaces and installation proposals. I used it extensively on my last project in London, “COPYSTAND: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone,” emailing spatial mock-ups of furniture placement and measurements back and forth to the ... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name/ Place of Residence/ Occupation/ Hobby?

My name is Christo. I am information desk attendant at SFMOMA. I’m also a painter. A hobby of mine would be photography.

Do you collect anything?

I’ve noticed a collection of cameras in my apartment. And that just kind of happen... More

The rest of the Flickr set is here.

Will Yackulic’s books have always seemed to me a well-deserved respite from his exacting geometric typewriter works. Even before his art involved pulling paper through a wide carriage Remington, the books were a break from painting thousands of white and turquoise cubes. These earlier landscapes resembled the stark terrain of Superman’s planet Krypton.

Titles of Will’s books include A Serious Earth, Solar Doughnuts, Pac Mastery: Observations and Critical Discourse, Stendec, Death Race VSOP, Space Surveillance Variations and of... More

[Stephanie Pau, SFMOMA manager of interpretation, sifted through many hundreds of paper bits and pieces to put together a mini-retrospective of the museum's paper-trail history since 1935, on view now in our visitor education center.]

A few weeks ago, a new exhibition opened at the Koret Visitor Education Center, located on the second floor of the museum. It’s called Dispatches from the Archives, and I’ve organized it as part of the 75th anniversary suite of exhibitions. Dispatches is as much a reflection on as it is a celebration of SFMOMA&... More

The movie about the early days of Nelson Mandela’s unprecedented presidency in post-apartheid South Africa will be released on Friday, December 11th. It’s the first major film about Mandela and post-apartheid South Africa filmed on location in South Africa. The film is based on the novel “Playing the Enemy” by South African writer John Carlin. The story is about the South African rugby team’s quest for the world cup and its affect on race relations in the post-Apartheid society.

I have an ongoing interest in the play of images that p... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests. George Kuchar, legendary San Francisco filmmaker, lives in the Mission district and teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute.]

Hobby?

I like making pictures, videos, movies. Videos now, etc.

Do you collect anything?

I got a whole bunch of things because I didn’t like painting the ... More

Last summer my friend Tony and I began watching feature-length films that portray artists. Growing up in the US, these films were our first models for what it meant to live and behave like an artist. Watching them again has been an exercise in nostalgia but also a critical investigation into the national image of the artist. A few weeks into our research a friend pointed us to an excellent survey of artists-in-film by Temporary Services called Framing the Artists. It includes Bucket of Blood (1959) and Color Me Blood Red (1965), two B movies we had already watched that cast artists as serial killers. These are just two of dozens of films we found that not only stereotype artists but cast them as sociopaths, idiots, misanthropes etc. This from Temporary Services: It is our contention that by continually watching, cataloging, and analyzing these portrayals, artists can also gain a better understanding of their own responsibilities to their viewers and how the stereotypes hurt their abili... More

While visiting Githinji’s studio at 1018 Pine street in West Oakland we talked about a lot of things, mostly about the notion of ritual and process. Like many Black/African artists the ritual process of creating the material art object is foremost in Githinji’s mind. The ritual of making is the “art” and knowing that makes seeing and experiencing the object that is the residue of his ritual even more rich. He describes the process with an earnest look on his face “…that is what we do. It’s like James Brown, you know, to get under i... More

Man I am so jacked up on the biggest Shirley Temple in a dirty glass from Vesuvio, extra formaldehyde from the maraschino cherry, please. I went there for a mocktail after hearing Kevin Killian read from his latest book, Impossible Princess, at City Lights. Kevin Killian is so freaking funny, and his work is so brazenly vulnerable in that it’s vulnerable to be so weird and risky and also risque, and he just plunges into the hilarious muck of it with pretty much the best vibes I’ve ever felt off a writer giving a reading. Some litera... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name/Place of Residence/Occupation/Hobby?

Fayette Hauser, Los Angeles, California. Occupation is a dilemma. Right now I would say artist, writer—I’m writing a book, and archiving my photography, contributing to other peoples’ books, so it’s really a lot of history at this momen... More

*an ongoing series of individual images presented for speculation and scrutiny, with only tags at the bottom to give context. Because sometimes words are never enough…

In the first in an occasional series of posts focused on issues of conservation, managing editor of communications Apollonia Morrill talks with director of conservation and collections Jill Sterrett, about an installation by Barry McGee, and the ways the field of  conservation evolves to meet the demands of new artwork.

As a student of art history, I was always fascinated by the field of conservation. I started out studying medieval art; of those who work in with this material, conservators seemed most linked to its inner life and its makers. ... More

I first paid a visit to 871 Fine Arts when it was housed at 49 Geary. This must have been about three years ago. The long and wide room had posters on its walls, as well as original works by George Herms, Jim Dine, Franz Kline, and many others. In the very back was a tight square room packed with art books organized into interesting sections: Prints, Drawings, California Artists. The poetry section had an emphasis on its inevitable intersection with visual art. I went back a few times, often during the first Thursdays, in which the building was... More

1.

I was about sixteen years old, I was sitting on my bedroom floor, it was linoleum, I was writing on it with black nailpolish and smoking cigarettes. My mother knew I smoked and she hated it so I was forbidden to smoke outside in the streets where someone  might see me and judge her a bad mother for my habits, and I was not allowed to smoke in front of her, because she judged herself a bad mother for my habits. So that left my bedroom and that’s where I was, vandalizing my bedroom, lighting up Marlboro Lights, seeing if anyone wanted ... More

I remember when Tomo was only in one band. It was [Hey] Willpower first, or wait, Window Window, and then Tussle and then Coconut? Maybe his two solo albums came first. I’m not sure that’s right, but I do remember that I was never worried as he was joining up with group after group. He just seemed to snowball into a force that was needed simultaneously by three groups with three distinct sounds. The kind of role I would ordinarily ascribe to a producer or arranger. Not to even mention other pairings that lasted a show or two or were... More

I had to dress up to see Tim Miller at Yerba Buena tonight, because my friends are so fashionable. Like, Page McBee and Michael Braithwaite are the cutest couple ever, both looking like andro Blythe doll with cooler haircuts and more plaid. Page is a writer working on a collection of poetic essays about the body and until recently was stirring shit up as a Bitch Magazine blogger, posting  a controversial piece about trans women that really should not have been controversial at all except for pesky 2nd wave feminism rearing its tranemy (that wo... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests. Here's Timothy Buckwalter in the Koret Visitor Education Center.]

Name/Place of residence/Occupation/Hobby?

My name is Timothy Buckwalter. I live in Albany, California. I’m an artist and I’ve recently started curating and I also write about art. I have a blog about art. If I... More

*an ongoing series of individual images presented for speculation and scrutiny, with only tags at the bottom to give context. Because sometimes words are never enough…

Nick, a.k.a kukkurovaca, took this picture of Ellsworth Kelly’s Stele I in the SFMOMA Rooftop Garden. Looks like the person on the left is entering another dimension.  The dapper gentleman on the right may have just returned from it.

Nick says:

“There’s no real story to this photograph—If I remember correctly, I had just gone to see the Avedon exhibit for the first time, and the Adams-O’Keeffe for the third or fourth time, probably. I went up to the roof, got a beverage, and sat down to people-watch. I had my camera w... More

Collection of Bill Berkson & Constance Lewallen

[Our monthly feature, Collection Rotation: some wonderful guest organizes a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. This month's guest-curator is the marvelous Fayette Hauser, shining, beautiful Cockette, costume designer, & collector extraordinaire. On December 3, we're hosting the Cockettes for a rare film screening and celebration of... More

I Just returned from Jazz harpist Destiny Muhammad’s Birthday Celebration at the Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts in Oakland. Tonight Destiny hosted a group of musicians ranging from an extremely impressive youth jazz ensemble (youngest member 10 years old.) to a string trio featuring Vincent Tolliver and Tarika Lewis to internationally recognized artists such as Dwayne Wiggins of Toni! Tony! Tone!

Destiny Muhammad is a harpist in the tradition of Jazz innovators such as Dorothy Ashby and of course the legendary Alice Coltrane. Both Joh... More

As one of the creative artists and culture workers in West Oakland I’m often times on Pine Street in deep west Oakland talking and interacting with the artists, writers and musicians there. Just last week I stopped in to pay a visit to painter Githinji WaMbire at his 1018 Pine street studio. Githinji is a Kenyan artist working in Oakland. I came to “chop it up” with him and get some healing vibe from his sanctuary. It didn’t take me long to realize that this space is also a stage that Githinji uses to perform the ritual theater ... More

Eileen Myles, my favorite writer in the whole world living or dead, read at Modern Times bookstore Wednesday night. It’s now Friday and I haven’t gotten around to writing about it because I keep being paranoid that I have swine flu and taking to my bed at embarrassing hours. I think I am just exhausted from those tours I was on. Eileen has been traveling the entire world reading from her newest book, The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. Wednesday night she read from the title essay, which recounts her visit to the... More

I love the matching blue shirts and the Avedon gestures of these two.  The pictures come from Anitechi’s flickr, and she writes:

“This trip was our honeymoon, and I was glad there were fabulous exhibitions in my favorite museum. I appreciate that you like these photos. It will be a special experience to see our photos on SFMOMA’s blog.”

I heard an anecdote somewhere that the three words in the English language that evoke the most visceral response are “free,” “sex,” and “sale.” I’m not exactly sure if there’s a particular order to which is more popular, and it’s funny to think how someone could come up with a good marketing slo... More

I shot the first video anecdote just before catching a train leaving NY Penn Station at a coffee stand with Marisa Jahn. The night before, I had been in a bar near MOMA with Mexican curator Sofía Olascoaga, and after telling her about the general idea she said “Oh, like an anecdote archive?” and I said, “Yes, exactly.” Minutes later Sofía and I were  feasting on a Korean dinner with Tom Finkelpearl, director of the Queens Museum.  On the way to dinner, Tom gave an incredible account of a performance project, which wo... More

(The second in a two-part series from assistant curator of photography Lisa Sutcliffe, who organized both of our current collection exhibitions of Asian photography: The Provoke Era and Photography Now. Lisa posed a single question to the artists whose works are included in Photography Now. Part one is here.)

This week we’re returning to the question Why Photography Now? Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea presents SFMOMA’s new acquisitions by contemporary photographers working in Asia, and was conceptualized as a companion to our current ... More

Dirt princess seeks unicorn for woodland frolic, I’ll put some shine on that horn…..Desperately seeking Sugar! Hi Sugar, I miss you lady. If yr around and want some awkward conversation call me…..FTMS- Are you feeling the rush of the roids? Wish you could afford a hooker? Call me anytime. I’m into being a worn out mattress. ... More

The second installment of a semi-diaristic series of entries relating to travels and exhibitions in London and New York during October 2009. Read part 1 here

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Dear Open Space Diary (heretofore again lovingly referred to as “OSD”),

Gahhhhh! Well, I have utterly failed in my attempt at providing intre... More

While investigating various histories relevant to the Pickpocket Almanack program, Renny Pritikin pointed me to a rare publication surveying SFAI’s brave departure from business as usual, organized by Tom Marioni. It was a year-long series of weekly projects called The Annual or Annual Space. The series involved institutional partnerships and off-site locations including two events at SFMOMA.

I was instantly charmed by this image of stockings that match the SFMOMA grand staircase and walls.  Thanks Marco!

Here’s what he had to say about the shot:

“The legs belong to my girlfriend Holly. The story is nothing special, I was feeling creative after we saw the Robert Frank and Richard Avedon photographs and I saw the similarity ... More

I can tell you a bit about Ariel Schrag because I spent the last 4 weeks introducing her every night on the Sister Spit tour. Ariel grew up in the Bay Area, and did she waste her high school years drinking too much at the Rocky Horror Picture show and falling in love with bisexual witches named Perry? No she did not. Ariel, who went to Berkeley High, began documenting her experience as an out queer in the form of comics. They were ultimately compiled into 4 graphic novels – Awkward and Definition (9th and 10th grade, published in one volu... More

*an ongoing series of individual images presented for speculation and scrutiny, with only tags at the bottom to give context. Because sometimes words are never enough…

[Part two of a conversation, keyed to our One on One series, between Michelle Barger, deputy head of conservation, and Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, assistant curator of architecture and design, on Robert Overby's Hall painting, first floor.]

Michelle Barger: How did you come to chose Hall painting, first floor for your One on One talk? Were you familiar with Overby’s work as a commercial designer prior to becoming an artist, and did this play into your decision?

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher: In 2000, I was working at the UCLA Hammer Museum as the curatorial assistant when Robert Overby: Parallel, 1978-1969 was exhibited, so I have been familiar with all the various strains of his work since then, including the graphic design. However, this was before switching from a curatorial interest in contemporary art to architecture. When I was combing through the permanent collection database recently in search of works for an exhibition proposal, I was thrilled to discover that SFMOMA had one of ... More

[Assistant curator of painting + sculpture Apsara DiQuinzio, on the Utah desert, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, and more. Part I is here.]

In August I went to Utah for the first time to continue my art-mediated obsession with desert landscapes. I traveled to a portion of The Great Basin—famous home to the Great Salt Lake,... More

When I paid a visit to “The Fountain Of Giant Teardrops,” Neil LeDoux’s solo show at Silverman Gallery last year, I had seen only a very rough reproduction of one of the paintings in a newspaper. Underneath it was a small story regarding the roots of these pieces.

“He recounted seeing a fountain in the thick Louisiana forests, the fountain’s beauty was so astonishing that he immediately wanted to share it with his friends and family but when he took them back to see it it was nowhere to be found.” This piqued... More

In the mid-90s, on the block of South Van Ness bordered by 16th and 15th streets used to be a little art gallery called Bewegung. It was the brainchild of Heather Haynes, a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Heather lived in the back and the gallery was in the front. Heather was my best friend for a bunch of that decade, when I was young and just moved to San Francisco. I would come over to the gallery and Heather would be giving the whole space a spiritual cleanse, mopping it with a solution of like cow’s milk and blue crumbly b... More

Did you have your picture taken tonight at our Halloween party / Fall Members Opening? The full Flickr set is here!

Rita, a.k.a Seenyarita, snapped this picture at the entrance to the current Richard Avedon exhibition.  From time to time, the SFMOMA freight elevator is in use during public hours and the doors open, much to the surprise of visitors.  Rita explains her picture better than I could:

“I’ve been to see the Avedon show 3 times now. Probably will go back at least one more time before it’s over.  I was intrigued by the way that the image on the elevator parts to reveal another world. I feel that Avedon was able to show worlds to us through portraits on a white background. There was no need to see anything in the background beyond the subject since the portraits themselves spoke volumes.“

*an ongoing series of individual images presented for speculation and scrutiny, with only tags at the bottom to give context. Because sometimes words are never enough…

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It’s been many years since I’ve called myself a Woody Allen fan. By the early 80s—when I began my hardcore cinephiliac tour of duty—the critical darling of the late 70s had begun churning out such lighter and slighter fare that I was tempted to write him off entirely. By the time he’d entered a run of serious mid-career revi... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. This week and next, Michelle Barger, SFMOMA deputy head of conservation, & Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, assistant curator of architecture and design, together take on Robert Overby's Hall painting, first floor.]

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher: I was so excited to learn that Robert Overby’s large latex rubber cast of Hall painting, first floor from 19... More

Drinking the most anemic, milked-down coffee at a breakfast joint in Providence, Rhode Island, I so wish I was back in Cristy Road’s lightless, ornamented punk rock palace. The walls are covered, like totally covered, with Cristy’s illustrations, inky and graphic and punk and female, girls breaking down or falling in love or both at the... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name/Place of residence/Occupation/Hobby?

K: Katherine, Tampa, Florida. I am an elementary school media specialist. Hobby: reading! What a surprise.

A: My name is Andy, Tampa Florida is our town. I’m an environmental consultant and my hobby is politics.

K: Not the same politics,... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. Today's post is from curator of Media Arts, Rudolf Frieling.]

Do only fans truly understand pop culture? Anyone who has been a fan of one of our glob... More

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My first encounter with Letitia Inyang Ntofon’s paintings was in The Black Dot Café located at 1195 Pine Street in deep West Oakland’s Black cultural district known as The Village Bottoms. I have known her for several years but mostly as a poet and writer. Her paintings, especially as they were arranged and installed on the wall in this location gave them an elusive narrative quality that grew the more that I looked at them. They felt like a story without a specific plot that contained many inscrutable details. Of the seven pieces at leas... More

(The first in a two-part series from assistant curator of photography Lisa Sutcliffe, who organized both of our current collection exhibitions of Asian photography: The Provoke Era and Photography Now. Lisa posed a single question to the artists whose works are included in Photography Now.)

Photography, with its ability to “mirror” reality, has a more direct connection to the visible world than most other media, including painting and sculpture. It can also alter our perception of reality, either through the artist’s unique perspective, o... More

Sara Seinberg sits in front of me in the Sister Spit van, wearing a red flannel, her leonine hair piled atop her head, putting together this evening’s opening slide show on her computer. Seinberg does this every day in the van – assembles what has become a sort of opening credit to our nightly show, brightly moving pictures we project onto a screen or a curtain or in the case of last night, the back of some signage from a realtor’s office. We were performing in what was essentially an unused hallway of the office, a narrow room fashioned ... More

This week sees the arrival at last of the SFMOMA LiveArt/Performa 09 collaboration, METAL+MACHINE+MANIFESTO. Events started Wednesday evening with a symposium at the Italian Cultural Institute and continue through the weekend here at SFMOMA and elsewhere. Open Space has already seen some significant discussion of the project a few weeks back. Here,... More

Of the dozen or so art blogs I know of, Vvork is the one I most frequently recommend and regularly visit. It has become a familiar resource, a routine stop for informal research. Vvork is curated/edited by a team of four (spread across three cities) who “think of the site as an exhibition space…updated daily.” It mimics a physical�... More

When I went to see Todd Bura’s show “Misfits” at Triple Base Gallery back in 2008 I was in the middle of writing a poem titled “Dream.” It was almost done, but there was a central line that I knew would eventually be crossed out in favor of something stronger, a proclamation. When I left the show I was impressed by the extreme stillness it brought about in me. I was trying to figure out how work so pared down could be so overwhelming. I had heard that Bura insisted that the gallery’s office door be kept close... More

Dear Open Space Diary, (from here on out to be referred to lovingly as “OSD”)

Well, here I am in jolly old London. Hal-lo!!! I touched down earlier this afternoon and the plane ride was pretty good because it was a direct flight from San Francisco to Heathrow. Wow, it makes such a difference to have no stopovers! But ... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA visitors, artists, staff, or guests.]

Name / Place of residence / Occupation / Hobby?

My name is Raelle. I live in San Francisco in the SOMA district and I am the Artistic Director of Brava! For Women in the Arts in the Mission district in San Francisco. My biggest hobby is laughing, which I know sounds dumb but I like goin... More

It is 10:56am and we, Sister Spit, have been on the road since about 11pm last night. I made it as co-pilot and navigator until around 5am, drinking the very tallest, fattest cans of Red Bull, sugar free. I learned on past tours that sugar free Red Bulls do not crack one out as hard core as the sugared-up cans. So I got my sugar elsewhere – a six-pack of powdered sugar Donettes, a bag of almond Hershey’s Kisses, a sour apple Blow Pop and a thing of Ding Dongs. I tried to keep the driver alert and entertained by reading her Facebook statuses off my new Google phone, until a series of hallucinations (most disturbingly, seeing myself somehow sitting on the hood of the van like a gremlin on ... More

I have been waiting all summer long for the Mantles’ debut album. They had the party/performance October 1st at the Eagle Tavern, sharing the bill with Grass Widow and Yellow Fever. It is a vinyl-only release with a download card tucked inside. I love this, as it seems that music has gone so far away from being something we can hold onto and consult (like a map). There is some music that I think of foremost as mystical object: the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, Pharoah Sanders’ Live At the East, and anything ... More

Thirty years ago this fall the artist Jim Pomeroy and SFMOMA curator Suzanne Foley were corresponding about his proposal to include his text “Viewing the Museum: The Tale Wagging the Dog” in her survey of 1970s Bay Area conceptual and performance practices, Space/Time/Sound.  In light of recent discussions on Open Space about the New Langton Arts crisis and the role of nonprofit arts organizations, Tanya Zimbardo, Assistant Curator of Media Arts, here revisits Pomeroy’s analysis of modern art museums vs. artists’ spaces. Wonderfully, we ... More

I keep being on tour with Sister Spit, and we keep rolling into these art spaces to do our show and the art spaces keep having these pieces on the wall that are really alive on the wall, coming off the wall, escaping, bursting through the plaster like the Kool-Aid man if the Kool-Aid man was maybe female, sort of lumpy and luscious and labial. Pillowy and tactile and pink. I guess right now I mean Liesa Lietzke’s Polypsis, currently straining through the wall at The Lab on 16th Street, a bulbous mass of conjoined fabrics, Red Hots, strawberry Nerds, and other sweet debris. Things swept the floor of a little girl’s bedroom, the sort of little girl who has a sugar problem and lives her life in tutus and maybe isn’t even all that little. But Polypsis is, like, a tumor, right? So now I wonder why I see something so totally vaginal when ... More

*an ongoing series of individual images presented for speculation and scrutiny, with only tags at the bottom to give context. Because sometimes words are never enough…

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Photo: Scott Owens

Not sure how this worked, but Scott Owens claims this it is a  self-portrait, taken while on a field trip with The San Francisco Foundation to visit the new Rooftop Garden.  Looks like he’s having a good time inside Barnett Newman’s Zim Zum I (1969).

Loves it!

After an absence of almost three decades, conceptual sculptor and California native Robert Kinmont started making work again in 2005.  Marking his reemergence, yet inextricably linked to his early practice involving earthy materials and koan-like gestures, is Kinmont’s current solo exhibition at Alexander and Bonin in New York, surveying wor... More

Ryan Coffey asked me to read for the closing night of his 2008 show at Adobe Books. At the bar afterward he presented me with a collage that centered on an egg made of gold leaf. Floating above it there was a small red stain like an accidental Chinese ideogram — Ryan assured me that this was blood, that it was human, and I began to feel so at home talking with him. I remember that there was a well- rendered graphite portrait of the poet Philip Whalen hanging high in that show.

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