Art Archives — Page 155 of 206 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Bacon: The other other white meme

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April 2, 2009

By Molly Freedenberg

Last night, I slept with bacon. Or rather, I soaked up my whiskey and beer with a big fat bacon sandwich — slices of crisp, thick-cut pork piled between two sides of a cheese bagel — and then drifted off to sleep immersed (thanks to the bedroom’s proximity to the kitchen) in the smell of fried pig.

This has been happening a lot more often than it used to – and not just because I finally kicked that pesky eating disorder and discovered that bacon (and french fries, and pizza, and just about everything else) really does taste better than rice cakes dipped in mustard. It’s also because everyone around me seems to be eating bacon. Talking about bacon. Talking about art about bacon.

It’s got me wondering: When and how, exactly, did bacon become such a big friggin’ deal?

Baconstache: where two ironic trends collide. Photo courtesy of skullsandbacon.blospot.com.

Fantastic Planet tonight!

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April 2, 2009

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I might have to skip Venus vs. Serena, chapter 20: René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet is screening at SFMOMA tonight. Escape the first Thursday art stampede for privacy, darkness, and a playful scary dream.

One major reason I’m looking forward to seeing this movie is its soundtrack, by Alain Goraguer. I got a reissued vinyl edition (on the Pathe Marconi label) recently, and it is equally attractive and spooky. Goraguer worked with Serge Gainsbourg, and in some ways his La Planete Sauvage score reminds me of Gainsbourg’s soundtrack work with Jean-Claude Vannier. Without a doubt, Air has stolen plenty from Goraguer’s sinister yet sleek orchestration and his (and Gainsbourg’s, and Ennio Morricone’s, and Pino Donaggio’s…) use of sighing female vocals. The blog Electric To Me Turn — which gets love for taking its name from a Bruce Haack song — notes some of those corollaries, to which I’d add a resemblance to some David Axelrod sounds as well as the score for Shaft.

I’ve never seen anything more than clips of Fantastic Planet. But the movie is crammed with art references, is a big influence on early Hayao Miyazaki, and its surreal take on societal oppression and rebellion (inspired by the ’60s Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia) is more than applicable to the US, even if we’re in woozy morning-after status. Here’s a great trailer (love the voice-over, blue diamond effects, and the way critic Judith Crist’s last name is misspelled):

Hot sex events this week: April 1-7

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April 2, 2009

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

Will U and U be my Valentine? Learn how to ask at Negotiating Successful Threesomes.

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>> Clothes-On Sex! Resurrecting the Art of Frottage
Indulge your inner teenager and recapture those days of long, carefree make-out sessions – the days before “The Sex” started to overshadow everything. Sex and relationship educators Nellie Wilson and Reid Mihalko host this fun, informative, sassy, and arousing class on outtercourse.

Thu/2, 7-9:30, $30
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF.
sexandculture.org

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>> 91/2 Years Behind the Green Door
Simone Corday reads and signs her memoir about her first-hand experiences stripping at the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater, the place Hunter S. Thompson referred to as “the Carnegie Hall of public sex.”

Fri/3, 7pm, free
Good Vibrations
603 Valencia, SF.
www.goodvibes.com

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>> Negotiating Successful Threesomes
Is three company or a crowd? Do it right and three’s just a downright good time. Reid Mihalko helps those interested in M-F-M, F-M-F, F^3, M^3, or any combination of three consenting adults figure out techniques, common mistakes, and how to negotiate boundaries with live demonstrations and lots of laughs.

Sat/4, 7-10pm, $30
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF.
sexandculture.org

Taking the heat

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April 1, 2009

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› culture@sfbg.com

Chef Damon Barham, an instructor at the California Culinary Academy in the Potrero Hill District, is 32, with boyish good looks, a wide, expressive mouth, and the energy and build of a cross-country runner. He has a nonchalant way of spicing up explanations with Borat impressions ("vary niiiice") and fiery mamma mia!, pinching-the-air Italian accents. If online rating sites give any indication of general opinion, students absolutely adore him. "Chef Damon ROCKS!!" gushes a former pupil on RateMyProfessors.com. "There’s so much knowledge one can squeeze out of my fave chef!! :)"

But Barham, who teaches a restaurant production class, is unafraid of dishing out blatant criticism. "No," he declared frankly to a couple of students who’d been hard at work on an elaborate putf8g of their amuse-bouche of rice cakes and snow peas. "It’s a mess."

It’s absolutely crucial that Barham give his students a "sense of reality," as he calls it. The class he teaches, restaurant production, comes at the tail end of CCA’s culinary arts program, following ten months of plodding through slow-paced courses like kitchen math and principles of European cuisine. In restaurant production, the final two-month course at CCA, Barham leads his eager, though often ham-fisted, students through the harried, breakneck creation of haute cuisine for paying customers at Carême 350, the student-run restaurant.

After Barham’s restaurant production class and a three-month unpaid externship at a restaurant, graduates sink or swim in the real world. And, as one CCA grad put it to me, in order to make it in the food industry, "you have to be as serious as a heart attack."

On my recent tour of CCA’s campus — a chef’s paradise of stainless steel, enormous state-of-the-art appliances, and soaring views of downtown — a couple of students in a European cooking class admitted to me that they were "definitely a little nervous" about cooking food for paying customers. But they were thrilled for the chance to have Barham as an instructor.

After spending an evening in Barham’s restaurant production class, it was easy to see why.

"Hey, guys!" hollered Barham at his five students, who were scrambling to assemble their mises-en-place. He crouched, one hand balled in a fist at his side, and the other pointing stiffly toward the dining room. "We’ve got one hour till people start walking in that door!" he roared. Barham circled through the kitchen, clapping rhythmically and yelling, "Let’s go!" Students visibly picked up the pace. One student directly in front of me glanced up at Barham, then resumed slicing a bulb of fennel with renewed gusto.

A few minutes later, Barham interrupted a student, Benjimin Hill, who was painstakingly arranging vegetables for a duck confit. "Don’t contrive things," Barham chided, repositioning the food. "Don’t waste time doing a stupid little cucumber fan or a sunburst of carrots. Just put a pile of carrots on the plate."

"I was really pumped to be coming in here and working with Chef Damon," Hill told me later as he spread some bright, buttercup-colored polenta across a baking pan. "I really like him."

HOTEL HARD KNOCKS

When Barham graduated from California Culinary Academy a decade ago, he was no stranger to the rigors of the industry. Long before Barham attended CCA, he went to what he calls "the school of hotel hard knocks." He started working in kitchens as an 11-year-old, washing dishes and shaping meatballs in an Italian restaurant in Arizona. "I had these old Italian guys pouring me glasses of Barbera, glasses of Chianti," he remembered.

When he was 14, his father, a hotel manager, would call on him to wash dishes, chop vegetables, or cook on the line if the dishwasher, prep guy, or line cook didn’t show. And if a housekeeper, bellhop, server, bar back, or busboy called in sick, he’d cover for them, too. On the weekends, while other kids were out playing baseball, he’d be working an assortment of jobs, occasionally pulling 16-hour days.

Barham continued cooking on the line and serving tables through high school and beyond. By the time he was 22, he landed a job as an assistant wine buyer at The Fish Market, a seafood restaurant in San Mateo. Not long afterward, the restaurant owner offered to promote him to a managerial position. But Barham wasn’t interested. His passion lay elsewhere.

So in 1999, he enrolled in CCA to "fill in the gaps" in his knowledge. "We had these really crazy tests," he recalled. "If you missed three days of class, you failed." But he worked hard and estimates that he ranked fourth in his class.

After he graduated, Barham made rent and repaid his CCA student loans — which he continues to pay down today — with a medley of jobs: private chefing, cooking on the line, waiting tables, and a part-time job as the culinary assistant to Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook fame. (With a sly smile, Barham remembered that one of his tasks entailed feeding Yan’s koi.)

Then, in the spring of 2004, Barham called the CCA to see whether the school was hiring. He ended up landing a job as an associate instructor in garde manger (in a kitchen, the garde manger prepares the cold food). According to Barham, CCA has changed noticeably since he was a student. "People might argue that it’s not as tough as it used to be," he said. "The tests used to be more stringent. If you failed, you just failed."

During his five years as a CCA instructor, Barham has taught classes about foods of the Americas, garde manger, and contemporary European cuisine skills. For the past year, he’s been teaching restaurant production, a class that students anticipate with anxiety and excitement.

A SCUFFED DIAMOND

While Barham receives rapturous praise, online and off, the CCA isn’t exactly basking in a glowing reputation. Some CCA alumni are unhappy with the return on the $47,400 they invested in their culinary education — particularly when the high-prestige jobs they dreamed of turn out to be elusive.

But Jennifer White, who took the helm as CCA’s president in October 2007, has been looking to make changes. The school, she said, was "a diamond that got scuffed and needed to be brought back to its brilliance." She now uses her orientation speech to address cable TV’s glamorization of the food industry. "If you think you’re going to be on the Food Network," she warns incoming students, "this isn’t the place for you."

For his part, Barham feels little sympathy for embittered alumni. "We do the best that we can here to get these people out and prepared for the industry and to be fully functional chefs," he said, sitting at a table in Carême 350 and noshing on a hunk of bread. "But at a certain point," he continued, throwing up his hands, "they gotta leave the nest and fly on their own. If they get eaten by an alligator, they get eaten by an alligator."

I asked Barham if he keeps track of how his former students are faring in the industry. "Not really," he replied with obvious disinterest. He makes an effort not to develop personal relationships with his pupils. "I don’t have a bunch of students on my Facebook account," he said. He doesn’t take ownership of any of his former students’ successes or failures, either. "That would be hugely narcissistic," he said with a stony expression.

What about his current students, who clearly admire him — does he love them back? Not especially. "I’m not trying to be anybody’s friend," he told me. Despite the five years Barham’s spent behind the sleek, protective walls of the academy, it seems he’s maintained the guarded toughness he developed in the "school of hotel hard knocks." He told me if there’s one thing he’s constantly reminding his students of, it’s this: if he ever leaves academia and returns to the industry, "You’re gonna be my competition."

Stormy weather

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April 1, 2009

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› johnny@sfbg.com

It’s a pleasure to see Sean McFarland receive the Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers. Last August, McFarland was one of the eight artists or groups showcased in the Bay Guardian‘s second annual photo issue. The Baum Award is a national honor designated for photographers at a pivotal point in their development, and in McFarland’s case, that development is the opposite of predictable. While many photographers work toward "dazzle ’em" displays of technical virtuosity, McFarland has moved away from earlier saturated digital color images toward simple Polaroid photos that possess ominous allure.

Did I say simple? McFarland’s dreamlike images of weather and landscapes are only simple in appearance — they require subtle combinations of photography and the increasingly popular practice of found-image collage. In terms of subject matter, they personalize and miniaturize the vast and unsettling images of the semi-settled West present in the camera art of Michael Light, David Maisel, and Trevor Paglen. The title of Lindsay White’s current show at Ping Pong Gallery, "A Field Guide to the Atmosphere," might just as well apply to McFarland’s work. The atmosphere is stormy, and as troubling as it is beguiling.

SFBG In the last year or two, your work has shifted away from urban views to elemental images: sky, sea, vast land. What has set you off in that direction?

Sean McFarland I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which the earth changes. In an urban environment, we build buildings, roads, and parks, changing the landscape. These are immediate and obvious alterations of our environment. Our actions also change the landscape as we alter the climate — more frequent and powerful storms, rising seas. By focusing on making images of the natural world, of the landscape, I’m interested in making pictures of us. How we change the earth and how the earth effects us.

SFBG Your work from the earlier 2005 era reminds me a bit of a short film, site specific_Las Vegas 05, by an artist named Olivo Barbieri. It has amazing colorful aerial views of Las Vegas in which the city really looks like it is comprised of toy buildings and cars. Were you looking for that kind of "making strange" effect when presenting views some might take for granted?

SM The work I was making from 1999 until around 2002 tried to take things that were fake and make them look real. When I first started re-photographing the collages I was making (in 2003), the miniaturization effect was an unexpected but welcome result. I was working in the other direction, making the real look fake. The collages are made by hand, so the edges are rough and messy. The selective blurring of images was there at first to hide where the images were put together, but it was that transformative quality of the focus that made the process intriguing to me. With the collaged images, I was taking pictures from all over, real images of real things, and by bringing those disparate elements together, the pictures raise questions about what was actually in the photograph.

The image of the park (in the Guardian‘s August 2008 Photo Issue), for example, has the playground from Dolores Park, but with the downtown skyline and bridge removed and replaced with a sky from another city. It may be the absence of the urban center normally in the background that makes the picture seem odd, or it could be that the light from the sky is not the same reflecting off the foreground. The relationship between fact and fiction is one of the strongest reasons I work with photography as opposed to other visual art forms.

SFBG You mention collage as a part of your process. That might not be so apparent to someone who casually glances at your photography. Can you tell me a bit about your approach to collage, and also if there are any collage artists whom you especially like?

SM Lately I’ve been working to make the collage process less apparent. In the past, the images took the final form of a C-Print, made in a darkroom. Now I’m using Polaroid film. Polaroids are mementos and souvenirs of moments, places, and things that actually happened; they imply that whatever is in the picture was witnessed, was real. Since I can’t really take the images I’m making, I’m using collage to do so. A good example is my image of the airplane flying over the black ocean and white land. The picture of the plane is taken from a satellite image of Earth, the land is a photograph I made in the Exploratorium (it’s a picture of an exhibit that shows how land is changed by wind currents).

SFBG Books are a big visual inspiration to me, so I liked seeing you cite the Field Guide to North American Weather and Gerhard Richter’s Atlas as two recent sources of fascination and perhaps material. What drew you to those books and what do you like about them?

SM I enjoy those books because they are both wonderful collections. I work from an archive of several thousand images. This is probably why Atlas is so fascinating to me. It’s the source material (mostly photographs) that Richter uses in his work and it made me even more interested in his work. I like the Field Guide because all the pictures in it are of weather-based natural phenomena. Some of the photographs in it are pretty hard to believe, but actually happened.

SEAN MCFARLAND: THE 2009 BAUM AWARD FOR EMERGING AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERS

Thurs/2 through May 23 ( reception Thurs/2, 5–8 p.m.), free or donation

SF Camerawork

657 Mission, second floor, SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org

Go into the light

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April 1, 2009

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In an online interview, experimental filmmaker and violin drone pioneer Tony Conrad relates a story: one night, underground drag superstar Mario Montez wandered into the apartment Conrad shared with filmmaker Jack Smith, and at Smith’s behest began an impromptu performance. When Smith flicked on a beaten up 16mm projector to serve as a makeshift spotlight, he and Conrad became transfixed by the play of light that reflected off Montez’s sequined outfit. While it would be glib — and certainly fun — to declare that 1960s structural film was born from the glittering gyrations of a drag queen, Conrad’s anecdote is but one development in his longstanding fascination with the excessive sensory effects of shooting light out into the void. Conrad’s 1965 16mm film The Flicker is perhaps his purest and best-known manifestation of this — 30 minutes of black and white stroboscopic bliss (or hell) that cast its long shadows over Brian Gysin’s dream machines, and more contemporarily, Anthony McCall’s striking digital light and fog projections. You’ll have the chance to see how much flashing light your eyes can take when San Francisco Cinematheque presents screenings of Conrad’s films in conjunction with the New York-based polymath’s weekend-long residency at the concurrent Activating the Medium Festival. While Sunday night’s program features The Flicker, it also puts it into context as a jumping off point for Conrad’s subsequent process-based films and public access video works, in which activities such as electrocution and cooking take on a rhythm as mesmerizing as staring into the pulsating light of a film projector.

TONY CONRAD: FLICKERING JEWEL

Fri/3, 5 p.m. (Program One: "Window, Perspective Shadow")

Sat/4, 8 p.m. (Program Two, with Conrad in performance)

Sun/5, 7:30 p.m. (Program Three: "Flicker and Process Films/Works on Video"), $15

San Francisco Art Institute, 300 Chestnut, SF

www.sfcinematheque.org

Visceral reality

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April 1, 2009

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Already a veteran Irish Republican Army volunteer serving his second penitentiary term at age 27, Bobby Sands was leader of Republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze, a.k.a. Long Kesh, outside Belfast in 1981. Early that year he commenced a hunger strike joined by numerous other inmates, an action intended to define IRA incarcerates as political rather than criminal prisoners while boosting international attention for the independence cause.

After 66 days, he was the first of 10 participants to die. The strike’s cessation five months later (participants joined in at staggered intervals) was claimed as a victory by Conservative P.M. Margaret Thatcher and the mainstream British press. Yet the inmates won most of their demands, IRA membership surged, and the "Iron Lady" was thereafter target No. 1 for patriotic loathing among Irish free-staters.

Hunger is the first feature by Steve McQueen, the London photographer, sculptor, and maker of often black and white shorts created primarily for the more rarefied atmosphere of museums and galleries. Their minimalist rigor is very much present here in the exactitude of composition as well as their emphasis on physical detail and visceral experience. It took Julian Schnabel until The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) to find a full-length subject that suited his tactile sense while excusing a lack of narrative instinct or interest; McQueen’s got there on the first try. Hunger is completely realized, without compromise. It’s convincingly ugly in an aesthetically beautiful way, cool to the touch, admirably near-perfect, and off-putting.

We’re introduced to Sands only after several lesser figures take brief center stage: Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), a guard whose work weighs heavily on him; new prisoner Davey (Brian Milligan), who refuses to wear "the uniform of a criminal," thus joining the already in-progress "blanket protest"; and older cellmate Gerry (Liam McMahon), who introduces him to the "dirty protest." That protest consisted of caking walls with smeared feces, directing urine into the corridor, and letting uneaten food rot. We finally glimpse Sands (Michael Fassbender) during visiting hours; he puts up a fierce fight as he and others are violently dragged to a forced shave-and-wash.

Hunger is clinical, politically neutral, almost purely observational — interested in simply displaying rather than commenting on the sacrifices made. It’s not unlike McQueen’s series of postage stamps commemorating British soldiers killed in Iraq — created as part of his role as "official war artist" — that were opposed by the Royal Mail and Ministry of Defense.

Ethical debate is limited to one, 17-and-a-half minute shot in which Bobby and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) lay out personal, political, and religious arguments for and against a potentially lethal strike. It’s only in the subsequent, equally stock-still sequence — a guard sweeping an entire hall-length of piss — that the director’s severity risks feeling schematic.

Needless to say, the final act is unrelenting, with its hallucinations, open sores, and actors starved under medical supervision to scarifying effect. But McQueen finds unsentimental poetry in surprising places throughout, from the snowflakes falling on Lohan’s beating-scarred knuckles to Sands’ lifeless face as a winding sheet is drawn over it. The institutional palette, bare-bones use of sound, even the fully exposed sinewy-to-sticklike male bodies turn docudrama into a kind of exquisite art project, at once devastating and hermetically sealed. *

HUNGER opens Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters.

Boobs!

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April 1, 2009

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› superego@sfbg.com

ALTER EGO Yo, yo, yo waaasssuuuppp in the Sheez Franheezy! It’s me, DJ Daddy Huf ‘n Pufz, takin’ over this Super Ego shit and giving you da club reals for reals! That sorry skinny faggot Marke B. had to go get his kneepads repadded or some shit — don’t drop the soap on the 22, y’all — so I’m stepping in with the 411 in the 415 after dark. But first I gotta open a big ol’ can of NO HOMO on this column, yo. You feel me, man? Fuck all that gay-ass gay and art school dropout shit B.’s always squealing like a little pink piggy about. I mean, I got four words to describe his nightlife problem: no boobs and no bottle service. And where the fuck’s the VIP? All you "alternative" types need to drop the asshole attitude and those fucked-up granny outfits and get on the velvet rope tip. You ridin’ with Big Daddy Joe now, and this is how we roll.

Rollin’! Dude, I just flew in from the Winter Music Conference in Miami (big ups!) with my partner Timmy "Turbo Iroc" Nguyen. He’s that whack kind of Asian dude who tries to talk all hood and stuff, but then when you say, "Yo, what?" he gets all stiff and repeats it in English. Makes me bust a nut every time, cuz you know he talks Chinese or some crazy shit to his parents at home. Naw, he’s cool, and this is why our set-up works: He gets me into all the Asian parties on 11th Street, and then I get him into all the white ones. Hey, I ain’t racist! Double the ladies, double the pleasure! I just got that tattooed with barbed wire and roses around my left bicep.

Anywheezy, da WMC. Fuck the music, you should have seen the fine-ass poolside "talent," dawg. Those chicks had plastic in all the right places — and they didn’t just use it to cut up my lines, know what I’m saying? Lemme tell you, they were all about the Big Daddy Pufz, the decks-wreckin’ Romeo in wraparound Guccis. My Twitter was smokin’! Five or six of those hotties, two cans of body chocolate — throw in a sweet bag of lean and I got my first video, yo.

Back to the Yay — me and Turbo gonna throw on our sickest Affliction tees, slick up our cuts, and make this a weekend the ladies will never forget, for serious, dude. Duuude. Dude!

Dude? *

HOLLYWOOD NIGHTS

This muthafuckin’ part-ay looks so off the ho-ho that they gots to rewind it, back it up, and put on a triple "z" at the end. Bay Area Breedz Entertainment, your No. 1 Bay Area party connection, is pullin’ it all out for NBA star, my man, Stephen Jackson on his b’day b’day — with a full-on, "up close and personal" performance by SNOOP DOGG himself!!! Snoop! In. Da. Heyaaaz! Yo, my Hummer just got a hummer. Woof! This slammin’ yay-fair is an "exclusive celebrity birthday," co-hosted by Shaw Town, Next Level Events, Location415, Ankh Marketing, Deshawn Mitchell, and J.E. Media. Da best!!! No sportswear, tennis shoes, hats, or T-shirts. Keep it classy, y’all.

Fri/3, 9 p.m., $20 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

CHRISTIAN AUDIGIER HIGH FASHION CLOTHING EVENT

Not to be missed, party people! This exclusive luxury lifestyle event is all about living large. You know those way-dope hats, shirts, and bags with all the sparkly fancy writing on them that high-profile celebrities like Manny P., Colby O. Donnis, Jayde Nicole, Ike Taylor, Michael White, and the smokin’ hot Ikki Twins wear? Fuck Ed Hardy, Christian Audigier’s your man for the true L.A. look with UFC cred. Your host, my man, Boogie will be giving out thousands of dollars’ worth of sophisticated Christian Audigier apparel at the one and only Boss 750 Luxury Lounge Nightclub. And the first 50 ladies get a free gift bag! Reserve your booth now, dawg — this one’s gonna be hecka packed. Dress code strictly enforced, no baggy clothes or sports attire.

Sat/3, 10 p.m., $20. Boss, 750 Harrison, SF. www.boss750.com

SAMANTHA RONSON

Yo, I don’t get it, y’all. If you’re gonna be a lesbo, why you gotta look like a punk rock dude? I like the lesbians with the big racks and long-ass fingernails on the porno who get down in the hot tub with the whipped cream. Warm it up, ladies! Yeah. Just don’t try to compete with me and my boys in the satisfaction department, fo’ rock ‘n reals. Ain’t nothing like a real man’s loving. You with me, fellas? Knock ’em back. Boom. This man-chick Ronson may use that Lohan hottie as a muff-warmer, but a girl behind the "wheels of steel" trying to spin like a real DJ? What to the what-what? If she shares out some Lindsay, though, I may let her sing a verse on my forthcoming album, Bay Up or Shut Up, Bitchez. Drop date: May 15 on Rock Star Energy Drink Records. Free downloads now on the MySpace.

April 10, 9 p.m., $15. Slide, 430 Mason, SF. www.slidesf.com

A talk with Steve McQueen

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March 31, 2009

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By Johnny Ray Huston

Steve McQueen’s Hunger brings the story of Bobby Sands to the movie screen. As far as directorial debuts go, McQueen’s is a prodigious, visceral one. While a lot of filmmakers try to create Hitchcock-style suspense movies, in Hunger, McQueen goes deeper than those surface concerns to deliver the type of formal daredevilry and structural experimentation worthy of Hitch. He revives the bio drama genre — more specifically, the political bio drama — with a story of one man starving to death. I spoke on the phone with the Turner Prize-winning artist in January about Hunger and topics ranging from his Queen and Country project (Royal Mail stamps depicting recently deceased UK soldiers) to the 1982 Wimbledon final.

SFBG What is the status of Queen and Country at the moment?
Steve McQueen The Art Fund in England has supported the project, and aligned with me and the relatives. It’s a process. People have to be convinced. I spoke to Gordon Brown a couple of months ago, and he wrote back and is looking into the logistics. It’s something I don’t want to let go of until we get it done.

Steve McQueen photographed by his Queen and Country art project

SFBG It seems there has been a heightened back and forth between the UK art world and feature film, with you and Douglas Gordon, or going back further, people such as Isaac Julien. And also there are filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant, David Lynch, and Michel Gondry, who have had gallery-related projects. By extension, considering you’ve made short works in the art world, I wondered what drew you to want to make a feature for commercial theatres.
SM I can’t answer the question as far as other people are concerned, I can answer simply for me. When I was in art school I wanted to be in film school, and when I was in film school, I wanted to be in art school. I was in NYU for three months but I hated it and left because they wouldn’t allow me to throw a camera up in the air. I went back to London to continue where I’d left off there, within an art context.
That back and forth has always been happening, though. It isn’t exclusive to now. Obviously there’s Warhol and Man Ray. And Ken Russell and so forth.

SFBG I’m glad you bring up Ken Russell — the descriptions I’ve read of [McQueen’s 1993 short film] Bear remind me of the wrestling scene in Women in Love.
SM I never saw it. I saw Tommy.

Still from Steve McQueen’s Bear

SFBG For whatever reason, though, publications such as Artforum have really shifted their emphasis more to film and film-related art in recent years.
SM Feature film is more populist in its content and approach – it reaches more people. The net gets cast broader or wider year after year within the arts.
Also, film has a certain glamour and appeal to the mass public, and if you can cross over, then people love you even more.

Local Artist of the Week: Dean Smith

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March 31, 2009

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LOCAL ARTIST Dean Smith

TITLE thought form #13a, 2008, graphite on paper, 24 by 17.8 inches

THE STORY "Revisiting the 1905 spiritualist book Thought Forms by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, I present an updated group of visual thought forms. Composed primarily of graphite on paper, this precise and deliberate series is rooted in my interest in scientific illustration and the concomitant aesthetics of wonder: an old and constant human impulse to render the invisible visible."

BIO Smith lives and works in the East Bay. His work has been collected by the British Museum, L.A. County Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum, among other public collections.

SHOW "thought forms 2003-2009," Wed/1 through April 25 (reception Thu/2, 6–8 p.m.). Tues.–Fri., 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Gallery Paule Anglim, 14 Geary, SF. (415) 423-2710.

WEB www.deansmith.us

Event fee policy threatens How Weird and other festivals

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March 26, 2009

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The How Weird Street Faire has become a popular event, particularly with the Guardian staff, including (from left) Associate Art Director Ben Hopfer, Culture Editor Molly Freedenberg, City Editor Steven T. Jones, and Art Director Mirissa Neff.

By Steven T. Jones

The city’s budget crunch and stricter policies on making special events pay up front for all city services that they’re required to use are once again threatening the How Weird Street Faire, a popular dance festival now in its 10th year that seems to battle city bureaucracy every year. Now, the grassroots organizers are challenging policies that could leave San Francisco with only events sponsored by deep-pocketed corporations.

Organizers say they can’t come up with the almost $10,000 that the San Francisco Police Department is requiring them to pay up front, a tab needed to pay for cops that do little except stand around at an event that would rather be allowed to police itself. The May 10 event is scheduled to take place around Howard and 2nd streets after city officials made them move from their previous spot 10 blocks away.

“The SFPD is demanding we pay them nearly $10K up front for police services, which was not discussed at the ISCOTT [the city body that issues street closure permits] hearing and is twice the amount of 2007. We simply do not have the money for this and they are threatening now to not plan for our police services. I have a bad feeling they will not sign off on our ABC license [needed for beer sales],” lead organizer Brad Olsen recently wrote in an appeal to City Hall for help.

Snap Sounds: The New Dawn — There’s a New Dawn

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March 25, 2009

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Hey, man (and woman). One of the recordings I’m most enjoying lately is There’s a New Dawn, by…(wait for it)…the New Dawn. It’s on Jackpot Records.

I’ll admit it, I don’t know a ton about the New Dawn, or this recording, other than that in vinyl form it has been known to fetch outrageously high prices from collectors. You could view the New Dawn as a precursor to the Wipers, though they seem overtly Christian today. This is a way-too-underknown but increasingly appreciated Northwest band.

Some things I like about There’s a New Dawn:

— amazing movie preview-like spoken intro about walking hand in hand and gazing out across the sea
— the raw, minimal, tough, electric-mosquito-on-the-attack guitar sound of “I See a Day”
— the vintage-Vietnam Era lyric “I see a day when life will mean much more/Than growing up to die”
— the pounding, surging rhythms of “It’s Time”
— the creepy yet seductive ballad “We’ll Fall in Love”
— the classic 1970s romantic Hallmark Card-style cover art

Viva the New Dawn, again. Read all about them in Ugly Things and here.

Janus A.D.: David Enos strikes again

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March 25, 2009

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David Enos is a man of many talents: artist, musician, moviemaker. He recently had a show of art at [2nd floor projects], he’s made a lot of great comic books in the last few years, he did the covers (vinyl and CD) for the new album by the group he’s in, Papercuts. And now, Mr. Enos the director steps behind and in front of the camera once again to add a small chapter to a filmography that includes animated portraits of Jim Morrison, Dennis Wilson, and Leonard Cohen.

His latest effort adds a personalized twist to the great Damon Packard‘s flair for making movies that are previews. Witness Enos as the handsome caped romantic lead of Janus A.D., “an entirely different motion picture experience.”

SCENE: RedLine shakes the bass up

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March 25, 2009

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Taken from SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour — on stands in the Guardian now. Interview by Marke B. Photo by Pat Mazzera. Art Direction by Mirissa Neff. Mens room courtesy of Matador.

Ultraviolet, Kozee, Roommate, Rob Cannon, and Blackheart

To say that the woofer-rumbling, ragga-ripping dubstep sound has exploded on the club scene in the past few years is an understatement almost as low as the genre’s freakiest frequencies. Dubstep seems perfect for our hyper-multicultural, urban-nomadic age, blending street rhythms with the most intricate laptop sonic technology available. It’s especially perfect for the Bay, with its shimmering blend of moody menace and artistic bombast, and has duly been embraced by a number of DJs here, many with roots that stretch back to the early days of 2-step, drum ‘n bass, and even rave.

DJ Ultraviolet (pictured in red, at left), heads up the fab two-year-old RedLine dubstep collective, and has been bringing her immaculate technique and overflowing energy to the decks in San Francisco since 1997. She was a seminal player in the drum ‘n bass and breakbeat scene, as part of the Sleeveless collective with the Femmes Fatales, and was associated with the legendarily raucous Sister DJ crew. As a true vinyl fetishist, she was being booked at the tender age of 19 to play jungle at underground ’90s raves and played a part in the Future Breaks FM (miss you!) juggernaut of the early aughts.

Now, along with the wonderfully gifted DJ Kozee, her "second in command," Ultraviolet reps the burgeoning female dubstep explosion, producing tracks and bringing a touch of grimy glamour to the scene with the MakeOut Sessions, RedLine’s regular blowout at Matador. The upcoming installment of MakeOut features Matty G of Santa Cruz (www.myspace.com/mattygbeatz) pumping tracks from his new album, Take You Back.

MAKEOUT SESSIONS
Fri/27, 9pm, free
Matador
10 Sixth Street, SF.
www.myspace.com/redlinedjs

SFBG Who’s all involved in RedLine?

ULTRAVIOLET Kozee and I, who do a lot of the event planning and are working on a big project together; Babylon System (www.myspace.com/thebabylonsystem), a.k.a Roomate and No Thing, is one of the top production crews in dubstep, currently on tour in Europe; the three DJs of Blackheart (www.myspace.com/lordsofblackheart) from Oakland are our newest addition; DJ Rob Cannon (www.myspace.com/djrobcannon), our youngest member; our L.A. residents Emu and Pawn, who are also a part of the SMOG crew down there, and on our business end, Cyn, Bruxxy, and Dymphna.

SFBG Do you think the dubstep sound is reaching a critical mass? Is the scene in danger of getting stale?

Shout-out to 50 hot local fashion designers

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March 25, 2009

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By Juliette Tang and Laura Peach

San Francisco’s fashion scene is vibrantly alive. In our city, you can find almost any garment you want, whether it be a new pair of yoga pants or some crushed velvet medieval slippers, straight out of the studio of a local designer. We love supporting local culture, and we love that there are so many talented designers out there contributing to the melting pot that is San Francisco style.

Besides those we featured in this week’s Spring Fashion Issue, we want to give some shout outs to 50 designers who’ve been on our radar lately. These individuals each have a unique approach to fashion, but together, they contribute to the vast diversity and uniqueness of our distinctly San Franciscan fashion culture.

Distilled Clothing

MEN
1. Printed playful hoodies: Gama-Go
2. Fashionable urban dandywear: Nice Collective
3. Hip-hop flavored urban streetwear: Upper Playground
4. Sexy undies for men: Diane Kirkland of DMK
5. Clothes for art/fashion rockstars: Shotwell
6. Loud and colorful nu rave hoods: Official Tourist
7. Casual daytime menswear: Artificial Flavor
8. Tongue-in-cheek geek chic: Distilled

SCENE: Kalri$$ian comes on to your sister

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March 25, 2009

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Taken from SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour — on stands in the Guardian now. Interview by Marke B. Photo by Matthew Reamer. Art Direction by Mirissa Neff. Crotch-buffing by Kalri$$ian. Location: Shattuck Downlow

kalri$$ian0309a.jpg

In these trying economic times, does the Bay really need a motor-mouthed, drug-snorting, pussy-obsessed playboy hip-hop collective — one that shouts out Eric Estrada, acid house, and Optimus Prime while bragging about using paper bags for condoms and instructing someone to "juggle balls in your mouth like a circus act"? Well, yes, actually. Hilariously quick-witted San Francisco-based beastly boys Kalri$$ian certainly bring the sparkling regression to match the recession — by channeling naughty spirits from rap’s past like Kool Keith, Shock G, and Prince Paul, and literally melting themselves to audio gaga as they "lick Cool Whip off your flatmate." The bouncy braggadocio of Kalri$$ian’s new album, Tales from the Velvet Pocket (Psychokinetics) and over-the-top flashback image somehow seem perfectly refreshing right now.

Experienced Bay nightlifers will recognize some long-time scenesters among the Kal’s colorful cast. No need to fret over missing all the in-jokes, though — Kalri$$ian’s got a million of ’em, and most involve doing lines off your girlfriends’ ass. Check them out live at the release party for Daly City cool kid Mochipet’s new Bunnies & Muffins platter:

KALRI$$IAN

April 4, 9 p.m.– 5 a.m., all ages
The Ranch
1433 Van Dyke, SF
www.kalrissianbaby.com

SFBG You sure got a lot of people — it’s like you’re a super group or something. Tell me about who’s all involved …

"UNCLE" TONY HIGHRISE (producer) You’re goddamn right this group is super! I’ll tell you what — I wouldn’t have left Miami unless it was for something really, really super. I came up on the scene in Delaware back in the day. I was a freelance hype man for a while with my cousin Wicked Awesome J, rest his soul. After the accident, I drifted south and started wearing polyester. It just seemed like the thing to do. Polyester was tough in Miami — it’s not that breathable, you know. But I was committed.

KEYLO VENEZUELA (producer) We ARE super group. We make fantastic sound music and tell our stories to everybody. The music is the passion that covers the world.

SMOOTH RICK CHOSEN (vocalist) I’m an ex-Barbazon School of Modeling student who got hooked on pills and realized he had a gift, in his pants.

SXSW the un-Safeway

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March 25, 2009

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Sparks. No, not the band, or the caffeinated boozy beverage, toasts of rock collectors’ circles and past South by Southwests, respectively. I’m talking about the real dealie, flying furiously off the spot where a sander met the metal-codpieced crotch of what appears to be a Suicide Girl-gone-to-seed, right here at the ’09 installment of FXFY — otherwise known in impolite company as Fuck by Fuck You fest. Sparks flew at the Typewriter Museum, far from the heavily trod, pizza plate-littered Sixth Street, epicenter of last week’s South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas.

I had my doubts when the two bikinied, booted, vaguely She-Devils of the SS leggy ladies entered, hoisting and spinning drill rifles beside bellowing Imperial Battlesnake vocalist West Nile, a petite, heavily tattooed man who describes his instrument/contribution to the Chicago band as one part "throat," another part "Napoleon complex." Goody gumdrops, I thought — that’s exactly what underground music needs: more retrograde sexism. Just the tiresome, Neanderthal-pandering ticket to go with indie’s ever-tightening embrace of throwback 1990s, alternative nation/X-treme, good/bad taste aesthetics. Goes great with those omnipresent buffalo checks and Jane’s Addiction’s reappearance at a Playboy party in a boarded-up Safeway.

But then the bikini girls dramatically whipped out the sanders, bringing West Nile to his knees, shielding his eyes and begging for mercy. You couldn’t help but grin along with the beer-drinking redneck headbangers — and in the process forget to tweet at the sheer backhanded goofiness of it all. SXSW ’09 motto No. 666: get your fun where and while you can — lack of funds, political correctness, and originality be damned. Praise the audacity and pass the ammunition.

Welcome to the terrordome, almost two decades after the first go-around and on the brink of the last recession: this time the enemy is more than public — it’s wildly texting witticisms into the Twittering wind while bemoaning the slowness of AT&T, remarking on who isn’t here rather than who is, and clearing out early from the Convention Center press room, while word on the street and in the halls is that attendance is 10 percent down though artist involvement is up. The bags of corporate marketing swag are lightening because the fat-cat sponsors aren’t swaggering with quite the same gusto. There are no free Saucony kicks and gratis logo T’s. Our local landfill keepers thank you.

The SXSW star power dimmed slightly as Quincy Jones — rather than Pete Townsend or Lou Reed — happily free-associated and name-dropped through the conference keynote, though there were some last-minute saves. Metallica made a not-so-secret, relatively intimate, air-tight yet relaxed appearance, courtesy of Guitar Hero, at the 3,000-capacity Stubb’s. Neil Young was said to be skirting the fest as manager Elliott Roberts talked up the first installment of Young’s forthcoming, meaty archival box set and Jonathan Demme debuted Neil Young Trunk Show. Kanye West was, according to one Twitterer, "pissing off" people and promoting his G.O.O.D. Music artists during a "secret" headlining spot at Fader Fort (now, in its new spot, more like a sweltering interment camp than a luxe retreat). Can’t say for sure — though I was wondering if West would be locked to Auto-Tune — because I had a pressing date with the always-riveting PJ Harvey, debuting her new, alternately ethereal and enraged long-player at Stubb’s on Saturday.

That said, SXSW wasn’t without its charms — between the disarmingly art-geeky Devo, donning those red pyramid hats once more, and Erykah Badu, gathering more than 10 of her native Dallas buds as the Cannabinoids, for an ultra-short, improvised set, truncated thanks to an alleged stalker. Betwixt the loving Doug Sahm tributes with son Shawn Sahm, Augie Meyers, and Alejandro Escovedo, and a mesmerizing 1 a.m. Silver Apples turn, you could always stop and smell the jalapeño brisket tacos and listen to the nightbirds cackle and whoop. This was a South By perched at the precipice — and the gaps left by the retreating MySpace party buses and major labels were filled by comedy showcases, an increased hip-hop presence, and scads of drifting local emo waifs and crust punklets, all drawn by the bright lights, frenetic activity, and word of Facebook.

You’d think the roiling brew would be combustible, yet strangely, it isn’t — even when you mix in all-day drinking, 80-degree weather, death metal pizza paper plates everywhere, and the odd unenlightened crack like the one I heard at the Mess With Texas free show at Waterloo Park — a "si, señor" in a bad faux-Mexican accent in response to accented vocalist Ami Shalev of Israeli band Monotonix telling everyone to sit down and "shut the fuck up!" (P.S.: they did.) Perhaps these loud yet occasionally imperceptible leaps across the fissures — by street-level pop groundlings and seen-it-all scenesters, united by the equalizing thunderclouds of bass drums and roach-coach allure of cheap tacos — are SXSW’s real treasures.

Glad I saw: PJ Harvey and John Parrish, Metallica, Silver Apples, Lady Dottie and the Diamonds, Micachu, Past Lives, Little Boots, Roy Head, Flower Travellin’ Band, We Have Band, Akron/Family, Mayyors, Woods, the Sonics, Dirty Projectors, Nite Jewel, Silk Flowers, Garotas Suecas, Total Abuse, Girls, BLK JKS, Cause Co-Motion!, Tara Jane O’Neil, the Sun, Explode into Colors, the Bronx, AIDS Wolf, Moriarty, and Adam Stephens.

Most likely to benefit from band name confusion: Cut Off Your Hands (Say Yeah), Nid and Sancy.

Tele-who?: Telepathe, Telepathic Butterflies, Telekinesis

Muthas for drunk listening: Never do SXSW sober. Everything sounds better when you’re drunk off your ass on Shiner Bock, stumbling into your neighbor’s lit cig, and asking strangers too loudly, "What band is playing?" while Metallica roars through "Master of Puppets" in the background.

>>More:
Read Kimberly Chun’s full SXSW coverage on the SFBG Noise blog

Sweet symphony

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March 25, 2009

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Has the Parenthetical Girls’ extreme makeover reached completion, or are their collective sleeves still hoarding hidden tricks to be revealed in future remakes/remodels?

The Portland, Ore., avant-popsters — formed in 2002 and originally calling themselves Swastika Girls after a Brian Eno/Robert Fripp song — first grabbed the ears of the listening public three years ago with a double-dose of fractured melodies and droning lo-fi noise. Pivoted around leader Zac Pennington’s preening, twirling vocals, 2006’s Parenthetical Girls and Safe as Houses (both Slender Means Society) jumbled childlike whimsy with bit-lip sexuality, electronic glitchery, and dizzying song structures.

Glockenspiels mingle with unnamable blips and squelches, quivering confessions shove up against tense, volatile arrangements — unabashedly fraught with drama, these recordings inevitably garnered more than a few comparisons to the work of fellow art-damaged experimentalists Xiu Xiu. Still, both discs offer plenty of testimony to Pennington’s distinctive vision. Strip away the songs’ tendencies to scratch and scrape, and one can’t help but notice his fondness for playful, extravagant composition.

That said, few could have predicted the baroque gleam-and-shine of last year’s sumptuous orchestral-pop oddity, Entanglements (Tomlab). Having teamed up with a rotating crew of collaborators in the past, Pennington at last finds his ideal partnership with a quintet of like-minded string-lovers. Additionally, more than a dozen classically trained musicians are brought into the studio: the result is a twisted, trilling naughty-boy stepson to Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle (Warner Bros., 1968)

Entanglements‘ title couldn’t be more fitting: flitted out in borderline-Shakespearean verse, a tale of young, doomed love unfolds as body parts and fluids are exchanged fitfully and freely among the heaving rise-and-fall of cellos and violins. Pennington’s vocal pirouettes remain as enchantingly fey as ever, particularly when dishing out pearls as snappy as this couplet from "Young Eucharists": "And what such fates we two betray, as your sacred legs gave way?"

PARENTHETICAL GIRLS

with No Kids

Fri/27, 9 p.m., $10

Cafe du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

Outsider art

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March 25, 2009

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Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director and cowriter of Tokyo Sonata (2008), is likely best known stateside for his contributions to the J-Horror genre (like 2000’s Pulse). But the scruffily low-key director is the first to admit, with assistance from translator Taro Goto, that his kindred Nipponese overlords of the urban-chills are generally regarded in their homeland as "eccentrics." It’s peculiar, he observes wryly, "that [J-Horror directors] are seen as the representatives of Japanese cinema around the world!"

Yet one suspects Kurosawa relishes his outsider label. Following the trajectory of Hollywood craftsmen like Sam Fuller, he has worked within genre to reach for a more acutely poetic, fantasist’s reality. It has allowed him to pursue lines of inquiry that extend beyond commercial concerns and strictly scary story arcs, though his association with J-Horror has somewhat obscured a continuing fascination with capturing a rapidly changing Japan. The tenderly isolated parents and children of Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) would recognize with shock the disintegrating recession-era family in Tokyo Sonata, but the horror here stems from the unspoken context of a country where once-ironclad norms concerning patriarchal power and filial piety are melting along with the boundaries between the virtual-spiritual-fantastic and the physical-mundane-realistic.

When Tokyo Sonata‘s lost, laid-off salaryman Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) goes through the motions of leaving for an imagined office, he’s like a ghost deprived of his machine. Intriguingly, Kurosawa empathizes: "I’m in a rather unstable position myself, as a filmmaker, so it’s possible I’m projecting some of my own experiences onto my characters. But I don’t see it as a completely negative aspect of my life. I think it gives me the chance to potentially achieve freedom from certain elements of society, morals, laws, interpersonal relationships, and those things that do tend to constrict us in life." (Kimberly Chun)

TOKYO SONATA opens Fri/27 in Bay Area theaters.

Off the wall

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March 24, 2009

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› johnny@sfbg.com

It’s Saturday morning, and Michael Rosenthal Gallery is crowded — because it’s playing host to a baby shower. The current show of paintings by Terry Hoff is partly obscured by the small celebration. In one corner, Rosenthal sits on a couch. Aside from the dark circles around his eyes, you wouldn’t know that he’s caught up in perhaps the strangest of a string of recent art thefts at SF galleries.

At 3 a.m. on Friday, March 20, police notified Rosenthal that his Valencia Street space had been vandalized. Arriving at the site, he was surprised to discover that while a pair of computers, an expensive printer and scanner, and a bag of Nikon cameras were still there, four paintings from the current show by Hoff were amiss. "The first two cops [to arrive] were totally uninterested," Rosenthal says, adding that when he gave the missing works an estimated value of $40,000, the answer he received was blunt: "They said, ‘Too bad — if the paintings were valued at $50,000, everyone would be here’" (SFPD didn’t return calls for comment.)

The theft of the Hoff paintings marks the third time in the past six months that a street-level San Francisco gallery was the target of a robbery. On Oct. 15 last year, two paintings by the late Margaret Kilgallen were stolen from the SoMa space Gallery 16, which was putting on a 15-year retrospective. (Unlike the majority of the exhibition, neither Kilgallen piece was for sale.) Less than a month later, someone walked into the Mission District gallery Triple Base and took a painting by Jay Nelson from the wall.

"It’s horrible," Gallery 16 owner Griff Williams says, when asked about the Kilgallen theft. "The whole experience continues to be horrible because we haven’t settled any of this. There’s a personal sadness — Margaret wasn’t interested in the art market, and didn’t sell her work by choice in the shows we did with her. It also points to the ugly side of the way things are valued, and how insurance companies want to undervalue the work."

"People don’t know that if they steal artwork or buy stolen artwork, it has no value in the market," says Triple Base codirector Dina Pugh. "It doesn’t have value unless you have the title to the work, and the gallery is always looking for stolen pieces."

The three recent thefts, while not necessarily related, share some commonalities beyond the street-level position of the galleries. Kilgallen, Nelson, and Hoff all knew or know the San Francisco artist Barry McGee, the sole focus of a lengthy April 2008 Artforum article on the proliferation and market value of stolen artworks. (In fact, Hoff owns work by both Kilgallen and McGee.) In a 2006 issue of ANP Quarterly, Darryl Smith from the Market Street gallery the Luggage Store recounts an experience buying a piece by McGee on the street.

"[The thefts] point to all these issues that the art world deals with in terms of valuation," says Williams, whose space has been vandalized more than once without any art being stolen. "As an art project, you could take someone’s work and see what you can get for it on the street. With Barry’s [McGee’s] work, there’s a street cred to stealing it."

The theft of the Terry Hoff paintings differs from the Gallery 16 and Triple Base robberies in one crucial way: the artworks were recovered. At press time, both the San Francisco police and the individual who returned the paintings were unavailable for comment. However, at 2 a.m. March 21, Rosenthal was awakened by a call from police informing him that the Hoff paintings were recovered, albeit with some scratches and damage. "It was a whirlwind of emotions," Hoff says of the experience.

In the current market, art might not seem to have strong value. "You’re gonna sell Terry Hoff paintings on Market Street?" Williams asks, only somewhat rhetorically. Pugh has a pragmatic view of the situation. "With the economy going down the tubes, there are so many things that come along with it — violence, robbery. People are desperate, and I expect more [thefts] to happen. It’s making galleries be more cautious and vigilant."

“Meet Me at the Center of the Earth”

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March 24, 2009

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PREVIEW This collection of "soundsuits" by Nick Cave (the Chicago artist, not the Australian musician) is the most anticipated show of the season. If, as this paper’s D. Scot Miller has observed, Afro-surrealism is in the air, then Cave’s art — a fusion of fashion, body art, and sculpture so imaginative that it might possess transformational qualities — is a prime example. His wearable constructions are eye-boggling counterparts to the Afro-surreal music of figures both present (Chelonis R. Jones) and newly revived-from-the past (Wicked Witch). Cave’s art also possesses aural qualities that won’t be evident until the show opens. A former dancer with Alvin Ailey and the current chair of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s fashion program, he’s also collaborating with choreographer Ronald K. Brown on some performances in May.

Cave’s soundsuits arrive in the Bay Area as a ceremonial contemporary extension from the fabulous but nostalgic European fashion on display in the de Young Museum’s Yves Saint Laurent show. In fact, the most bizarre and audacious of that exhibition’s pieces — a 1965 bridal gown that resembles an intricate cocoon or sock — might as well be an old colonial relative of Cave’s wearable works, which are constructed from a wide variety of natural and artificial material. These acid-trip Bigfoot creatures and dancing rainbow phallus totems are fun, but they kick. Cave made his first soundsuit in response to the Simi Valley aesthetics of the Rodney King verdict, and in an older project he rescued racist lawn jockeys, turning them into figures of promise and potential.

MEET ME AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH Sat/28 through July 5, $3-$6 (free first Tues). Opening reception Fri/27, 8-11 p.m., $12-$15. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-ARTS. www.ybca.org

San Francisco style

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March 24, 2009

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› culture@sfbg.com

When it comes to fashion, San Francisco is an interesting paradox. Bay Area designers and consumers are notoriously innovative, politically conscious, and stylishly playful. Many who grow up or study here go on to make waves on a national or international scale. And yet this city still is not considered a global style center in the way that New York, Paris, or Milan are. In recent years, even L.A. seems to be getting more attention as a legitimate fashion capital than San Francisco.

With spring (and spring fashion lines) afoot, we decided to profile some of our favorite local designers — those who, regardless of their popularity outside city limits, have decided to stay put or move here to contribute to the San Francisco fashion design dialogue. We predict it won’t be long before the fashion establishment is singing their praises — and wearing their designs. On Lawrence Cuevas and Marivel Mendoza, from left to right: 1) Denim double pocket shirt, avocado tee and twill shorts by Turk+Taylor; 2) Leather jacket and sheer top by Mi, leather hotpants by Shaye, jewelry by Muscovie Design; 3) Raindrop dress by Sara Shepherd, kit leather button shoes by Al’s Attire, jewelry by Muscovie Design; 4) Leather jacket and jeans by Mi, dot tee by Turk+Taylor, white tie by Indie Industries, wing-tip shoes by Al’s Attire; 5) White tee by Mi, corset skirt by Shaye, jewelry by Joy O, polka-dot hat by Al’s Attire. (All Photos by Jeffery Cross. Photo illustration by Mirissa Neff. Styling by Lauren Cohen, Laura Peach, and Juliette Tang. Hair and makeup by Shamika Baker)

SOCIALIST STYLE

With delicate features, a smattering of transparent freckles and dark blonde hair that hangs in messy curls to her elbows, Shaye McKenney could be a model. But her approach to fashion is more altruism than narcissism. After returning from an extended sojourn that took her to India, tribal Amazon, and on many nomadic adventures in between, the Oakland native and daughter of a designer opened La Library on Guerrero Street— a borrow-or-buy boutique whose purpose is to make stylish clothing available to all.

“The sense of ownership we have is not sustainable,” says McKenney, whose business model was inspired by the designer handbag rental concept seen in Sex and the City. Which is why she doesn’t just sell outright the airy white dresses, embroidered linen jumpsuits, and leather hot pants she makes from her mother’s fabric remnants. It’s passion for social change — as well as for a good pattern and great fit — that drives her. The whole point is being able to share. “We should not have to sacrifice glamour and art because of money and a bad economy.”

OLD-FASHIONED, FASHION FORWARD

Tucked away in a former North Beach butcher shop among towers of vintage hatboxes and fabric bolts stacked to the ceiling, custom clothier Al Ribaya is king of the cutting board. His old world tailor shop Al’s Attire makes every imaginable piece of clothing to order, paying more attention to detail than profit. “It’s a difficult thing to make money at,” he admits. “People don’t know what it takes to build something one stitch at a time.”

The other distinguishing factor about Ribaya’s shop is that he outfits people from head to toe. Using the same effort, energy, and remarkable focus, he makes everything from shoes crafted with soles of repurposed tire treads or turn-of-the-century buttons to suits, shirts, pants, jackets, skirts, and dresses. He even makes hats from suit fabric remnants. Every garment is custom labeled with the wearer’s name (alongside Al’s, of course). But despite all this retro hard work (and handiwork), Ribaya’s styles are remarkably fresh and modern. On Lawrence, clockwise from top: 1) Striped hat by Al’s Attire; 2) Double-pocket zippered denim shirt by Turk+Taylor; 3) Chambray golf jacket by Al’s Attire; 4) Dark denim jeans by Mi, 5) Silver wing-tip shoes by Al’s Attire; 6) Seersucker shorts by Turk+Taylor, 7) Brown leather jacket by Mi; 8) Avocado tee by Turk+Taylor. Underwear and socks by American Apparel.

FORM AND FUNCTION

What if one piece of clothing could be worn seven different ways? What would happen if you took a jacket and turned it upside-down? Or backward? These are the questions that the innovative, boundary-breaking creative minds at Harputs Collective have been asking. Their answer— called the swacket —hangs beside an oversized mirror in the airy industrial Harputs Own shop. The collective members are waiting for curious customers to come and play with the architectural sweater/jacket outerwear—putting it on backward, changing the swooping collar into a hood, then flipping it upside-down and adding a belt, until the most flattering fit is found.

The studio was started in September, a serendipitous confluence of a few thoughtful designers, a retiring tailor who stocked the store with fabrics and machinery, and an established high-end retailer with such a sense of play he will dye garments from New York lines when they are past season just to see if they will sell better in indigo than white. Our favorite part? A garment that fits well and can be worn several ways is less likely to go out of style — and therefore inspires us to consume less. (Our least favorite? They declined to participate in our fashion shoot. But we love ’em anyway.)

FASHION PHILOSOPHY

Mi Concept‘s visionary pieces are offered as a bespoke capsule collection for people who appreciate fashion-forward, cutting-edge design — and who aren’t afraid to look like time travelers from some distant utopian future.

Before designing any piece of clothing, Dean Hutchinson, creative director of the Mi Concept, asks himself, “How do I stimulate conversation?” The purpose, Hutchinson, says, is to challenge people to think beyond fashion. It must be working: ever since Mi Concept emerged at 808 Sutter last December, conversation and buzz have followed.

Peek inside the unmarked store and you’ll find an eerie modernist sarcophagus illuminated by fluorescent tubes, where dauntingly expensive-looking clothes cling to hangers as if worn by invisible ghosts. Together the space and the clothing create a synthesis of progressive, modern design.

Hutchinson eschews classic forms in favor of postmodernist distortion, working with asymmetrical lines and deconstructed shapes, often incorporating multiple silhouettes in a single garment to create an effect that evades easy labeling in any genre. “The other day someone said it was like a marriage between Rick Owens and Jil Sander,” Hutchinson said. “That was sort of flattering. But I don’t think about fashion like that. I have an initial idea, and then it just takes on it’s own life. It’s art.” On Mari, clockwise from top: 1) Bias-cut raindrop dress by Sara Shepherd; 2) Rouched front dress with pockets by Jules Elin; 3) Bell sleeve wrap jacket by Jules Elin; 4) Corset skirt with teal detail by Shaye; 5) Kit leather button boots by Al’s Attire; 6) Brown leather hotpants by Shaye; 7) Black leather jacket with sleeve zippers by Mi; 8) Polka dot hat by Al’s Attire; 9) Zipper-front dress by Turk+Taylor. Underwear and socks by American Apparel.

ECO-FRIENDLY FOR EVERYDAY

Jules Elin’s designs for women are simple and casual, without sacrificing style. The ideal wearer seems to be someone who is practical and comfortable but can appreciate the occasional coquettish detail — like a bell sleeve or a floral lining — on an otherwise unembellished piece.

While Elin is conscious of seasonal trends, there is nothing overtly “fashion-y” about her classic silhouettes: a swing coat is spruced up with extra-large buttons, a zippered jacket is adorned with a ruffled Peter Pan collar, and both are stylish without coming across as self-consciously en vogue. Elin’s pieces are made with organic cotton and get bonus points for not having to be dry-cleaned. On being called an eco-designer, Elin reflects, “I never really thought of it as being progress; I thought it was the right thing to do.”

When it comes to the designs themselves, San Francisco is always an inspiration. “There’s a lot of movement and architecture to the pieces,” she says. “But they’re also really sweet in a way that matches the demographic of this city.” And it’s Bay Area weather that determines the length of Elin’s sleeves: always long enough to be worn over the hands when it’s cold. San Franciscans are responding positively in turn, and even the dire economy hasn’t slowed the growth of her brand. “It’s just made me realize I can always work harder.”

CLASSIC SF DAYWEAR

When examining Turk+Taylor‘s well-edited collections of sustainable, nouveau-preppy clothes, the aesthetic appears so cohesive you could never tell that they nearly always result from a disagreement between the designers, Andrew Soernsen and Mark Lee Morris. “We fight all the time,” Soernsen proclaims. “We end up yelling.” During our interview, Soernsen and Morris often contradicted one another while answering the same questions — even the straightforward ones. “But somehow,” says Morris, “it all comes together.”

Soernsen and Morris don’t have fashion degrees. “We can’t sew. We aren’t pattern-makers.” The two designers run their business out of Soernsen’s apartment in NoPa, where boxes of samples are stacked on the floor, racks of clothes clutter every room, and eco-friendly fabrics perilously overflow from shelves and surfaces. Somehow, amid the jumble, they’ve managed to create beautiful collections of casual daywear year after year.

This year was the brand’s fifth, but neither Soernsen nor Morris has quit their day-jobs. “I don’t know how we have time to do this,” Soernsen admits. “We’re so unorganized.” The self-deprecating posturing belies the fact that they’ve grown into an influential label synonymous with San Francisco style. A perfect example? Pop into the SFMOMA store, and you’ll notice the museum tees are all by Turk+Taylor.

ACROSS THE POND AND INTO THE BAY

Sara Shepherd is, at heart, a contradiction: edgy London meets cuddly San Francisco. Originally from England, Shepherd moved to San Francisco to attend the Academy of Art University and stayed on to teach at the academy and create a fashion line out of her SOMA studio.

Shepherd’s Victorian menswear-inspired clothing evokes images of urban dandies and Byronic heroes, but her work is consciously feminine and innately modern. With tailoring that emphasizes shape over ornament, Shepherd draws her inspiration from classic British icons, whether fictional, like Alice in Wonderland, or real, like Elizabeth I. Despite the distant historical comparisons, her vision remains practical and wearable for San Francisco women who “know their own mind, who feel strong and confident in what they wear and who they are.” Like Elin, she’s also careful to consider San Francisco weather when designing. “There needs to be the opportunity to layer the clothes. There’s always, always a layer to them.” More local design! See our Pixel Vision blog for 50 more of SF’s hot designers and an exclusive guide to reconstructing a boring button-down into something better, with designer Miranda Caroligne.

WHERE TO BUY

Al’s Attire

1314 Grant, SF; 415-693-9900. www.alsattire.com

Harputs Own

1525 Fillmore, SF; 415-923-9300. www.harputsown.com

Indie Industries and Joy O.

www.indieindustries.com and www.joyodesigns.com

Available at Studio 3579, 3579 17th St., SF; 415-626-2533

Jules Elin

www.juleselin.com

Available at Ladita, 827 Cortland, SF; 415-648-4397

Muscovie Design

www.muscovie.com

Available at Collage Gallery, 1345 18th St., SF; 415-282-4401

Mi

808 Sutter, SF; 415-567-8080. www.themiconcept.com

Sara Shepherd

www.sarashepherd.com

Available at M.A.C. 387 Grove, SF; 415-863-3011

Shaye

La Library, 380 Guerrero, SF; 415-558-9841

Turk+Taylor

www.turkandtaylor.com

Available at ABfits 1519 Grant, SF; 415-982-5726

SXSW: Taking stock of the art of the rock poster at Flatstock

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March 23, 2009

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Eats and beats: Bob Motown of Two Rabbits Studios, N. Hollywood.

Who says the so-called rock poster is dead? A bevy of bright talents in full effect at SXSW’s Flatstock 20 at the Austin Convention Center.

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Dan MacAdam’s Crosshair, Chicago.

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LeDouxville.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Farflung, MSTRKRFT, Eleni Mandell, the Homosexuals, and mo’

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March 18, 2009

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Men at work: MSTRKRFT’s “Work on You.”

Yes, San Francisco, you’re unstoppable. As usual, the city by the Bay bays – nay – howls at the moon. More worthy sounds that didn’t make it to print.

Judgement Day
The Bay Area band is using the tools of Bach and Beethoven for… devil horn-throwin’ eve-ill! Wed/18, 8 p.m., $10. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.

Eleni Mandell and Victor Krummenacher
The LA singer-songwriter strikes an arch, jazzy note with her praised **Artificial Fire** (Zedtone) and the ex-**Guardian** art director digs deep with **Patriarch’s Blues** (MagneticMotorworks, 2008). Thurs/19, 8 p.m., $12-$15. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.