The class is designed for beginner and intermediate artists, and focuses on developing visual skills by using many materials to explore personal ideas and to develop creativity. Students will work with both wet and dry materials including acrylic, ink, graphite and charcoal.

The class is taught by local artist Eun Hee Lee. No pre-registraton is required, just show up on the first day of class to enroll.

Sarah B.

RichmondSFBlog reader Claudine sent me the news last week of a new mural that is brightening up the Star of the Sea schoolyard on 9th Avenue.

The mural is a collaboration between USF student artists and the first graders at Star of the Sea School. In September, the two groups met to brainstorm ideas for a mosaic/mural and came up with the theme “underneath the sea”.

In October, the artists held community work days in which all members of the community were invited to help mortar, set tiles, and grout.

“The kids had a wonderful time seeing the mosaic come to life and getting dirty in the process,” Claudine said. Her son is in the first grade class that worked on it.

Thanks to the USF student artists and the hard working first graders of Star of the Sea for helping create this nice mural for our neighborhood!

Sarah B.

The Star of the Sea first grade class with their USF student artist mentors

A closeup of the tile mosaic in the new mural

The beginning, middle and end of the mural

The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America’s most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products, from splints for wounded military during World War II, to photography, interiors, multi-media exhibits, graphics, games, films and toys. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life – from the development of modernism, to the rise of the computer age – has been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, Eames: The Architect and the Painter is the first film since their death dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work.

This weekend only, the Balboa will also have the filmmakers on hand at select screenings for a Q&A with the audience:

Friday, December 2: Jason Cohn & Bill Jersey Q&A post 7:20, Intro prior to 9:10 show
Saturday, December 3: Jason Cohn Q&A post 1:50 show, Intro prior to 3:40 show

Eames: The Architect and the Painter shows daily at (1:50), 3:40, 5:30, 7:20, and 9:20.

“It all began with a chair…”

Sarah B.

A special sculpture has taken up temporary residency at the Legion of Honor. It’s the Baroque masterpiece The Medusa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The loan is part of The Musei Capitolini’s program The Dream of Rome, a project initiated by the mayor of Rome to exhibit timeless masterpieces in the United States.

This is the first time Bernini’s scuplture has traveled to the U.S. and only the third time it has left Rome in nearly 400 years.

Recent conservation efforts have restored the Medusa to its full glory and revealed previously hidden polish and patina. Believed to date from between 1638 and 1648, this extraordinary work takes its subject from classical mythology, as cited in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It shows the beautiful Medusa, one of the Gorgon sisters, caught in the terrible process of transformation into a monster. Her hair is turning into writhing snakes, which, according to Ovid, was a punishment from Minerva for having had an affair with Neptune, god of the sea. The punishment also made Medusa an instrument of death by turning anyone who looked upon her to stone.

Unlike most classical art that depicts Medusa as a monster in her post-transformation state, Bernini’s sculpture focuses on the agony of her transformation, showing the pain and anxiety she experiences, her mouth drawn in agony.

Bernini’s Medusa is on display until February 19, 2012 at the Legion of Honor Museum. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9:30am until 5:15pm.

Sarah B.

Saturdays in January with Donna Ozawa
Every Saturday from 1-3pm, artist Donna Ozawa will show students how to create fun artwork using a variety of mediums. Students will learn how to make marble mazes, scribble monsters, portable landscapes and cardboard automata (simple machines).

Saturdays in February with Lyall Harris
Artist Lyall Harris will lead art projects in book making, valentine’s day cards, map making and printmaking. Every Saturday in February from 10am until 12noon.

Fun with Photography Scavenger Hunt | January 15 & February 12
Photographer Jan Nicholas is back with more inventive photo challenges for young shutterbugs. Each day from 1pm until 2:30pm, kids will explore the neighborhood around the RDNC, as well as Mountain Lake Park, as they participate in a photo scavenger hunt.

To register for the free RDNC winter art workshops, download and complete the Multicultural Arts Program application and turn it in at the RDNC offices at 741 30th Avenue, or fax it to 751-5606. You can also register by phone at 751-6600.

There is a limit of two workshops per child, who must be between the ages of 5 and 12 and reside in San Francisco. Registration opens December 1 but spaces fill up fast so get your application in as quickly as you can.

Sarah B.

An interesting tweet from the Western Neighborhoods Project reminded me of a fun exhibition that took place in September, 2008 at Ocean Beach.

But first we have to go back more than 100 years to September 1902, when Bill Cody (aka Buffalo Bill) and his Wild West Show paid a visit to San Francisco. While they were here, he and his Indians lined up on Ocean Beach – on horseback – for an impressive panoramic photo with the grand Cliff House in the background.

Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show crew line up on Ocean Beach, Sept. 1902. Photo from the Cliff House Project

They also stopped by the Cliff House as seen in the photo below. I hope Buffalo Bill got a chance to stop in Sutro Baths while he was out here. I’m sure the eclectic collection of Sutro’s Museum would have appealed to the world traveling cowboy.

William F. Cody and five Native American men standing beside Cliff House, 1902.
Courtesy of the William F. Cody Archive

One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill became famous for the shows he organized with cowboy themes, which he toured in Great Britain and Europe as well as the United States. According to Wikipedia, he earned his nickname “after the American Civil War when he had a contract to supply Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat. Cody earned the nickname by killing 4,280 American bison (commonly known as buffalo) in eighteen months from 1867–68.”

Fast forward to 2008, when artist Thom Ross thought up the idea to recreate the infamous photo of Bill and his crew on Ocean Beach. Ross used a high quality version of the original 1902 photograph to create 100 life-size, painted cut-outs of the mounted Wild West show members.

It was an impressive sight to behold the Wild West horsemen brought back to life under the Cliff House again, albeit a completely rebuilt one from the Cliff House that stood there in 1902.

“It’s a Valentine to my hometown,” Ross, a San Francisco native, told the Chronicle back when the exhibition took place.

Sarah B.

Regarded as one of the most interesting artists of the Impressionist group, Pissarro is most known for his landscapes and urban views. But this new show focuses on a different aspect of his work that is more reflective of his personal passions.

The show explores three key dimensions of Pissarro’s life that helped define how he represented the human figure in his paintings. The exhibition includes over 100 paintings and works on paper of his family, his friends, and subjects that reflected his intellectual involvement with the social and political theories of his time period (1830-1903). “Pissarro was a lifelong anarchist,” begins one of the panels in the show.

Some of the works on display were created for close family and friends, and were never meant to be shown publicly. In a Pissarro first, the Legion of Honor exhibition brings together portraits of every member of the artist’s immediate family, who was regarded as a devoted husband and father.

Pissarro was a quintessential family man, yet conformity was anathema to him, and he actively encouraged his children to express themselves as individuals. He taught them to draw, to develop intellectually, and to question the received values of French civilization of the period. Pissarro represented this lively family dynamic, as well as his many friendships, through an ongoing series of portraits and genre scenes. – from the Legion exhibition

Another gallery in the show highlights figure paintings in which domestic workers were the central motif. A maidservant drinks her cafe au lait during a quiet moment, other paintings portray washerwomen and laborers at work.

He had great respect for the laborers he lived among, and he drew parallels between his own work and theirs; for him, the physical labor of painting was a deliberate, repetitive act not unlike hoeing, harvesting, and plowing the earth.

Camille Pissarro | Apple Harvest, 1888

Another room showcases a wonderful collection of works portraying rural markets in France, another extension of Pissarro’s interest in labor subjects. The pieces show the energy of the markets where women shopped to prepare their meals, and he captures them chatting, jostling, bargaining, calling out and sometimes gossiping among themselves. His depictions are “devoid of the beggars, pickpockets, and predatory men who often inhabit nineteenth-century urban views.”

A special gem of the exhibition is the inclusion of Pissarro’s book of drawings entitled Les turpitudes sociales, being shown publicly for the first time. Described as a “biting album of anarchist drawings”, Pissarro originally created it for his daughters who were living outside of France at the time. The actual book is on display, and panels displaying each page are on the walls.

The Pissarro’s People exhibition is at the Legion of Honor Museum, located in Lincoln Park at 34th Avenue and Clement Street. The show runs through January 22, 2012.

Sarah B.

Camille Pissarro | The Marketplace, 1882

Camille Pissarro | Portrait of the Artist’s Son, Lucien, 1874

David Yapp – Summer Fog, Lands End: Oil on Canvas

This weekend, artists all over the Richmond District will be opening their studios to share their work as part of the annual San Francisco Open Studios event.

Twenty artists from the neighborhood are participating this year, displaying art in a variety of mediums including painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and mixed media.

Use the map below to scope out the artists – click a marker to view their info or scroll down to see the list of artists. There might be one just around the corner from you!

Stop by any of these artists’ studios on Saturday or Sunday from 11am until 6pm to check out their work. No appointment needed!

Other neighborhoods participating this weekend are the Sunset, Duboce, Upper Noe Valley, Hayes Valley, Haight, Diamond Heights, Buena Vista, Mount Davidson, Twin Peaks, West Portal, and Glen Park.
Download the full Weekend 2 Map & Guide

This is the 36th year for the Open Studios event, which features 900 artists across the city and runs through October 30th. To see the other artists and neighborhoods participating, visit the event website.

Happy art-ing!

Sarah B.

Sonya Lee Barrington – Sea Stars. 100% wool; 60″ wide x 48″ high

Fong Fai – Nature Phenomenon: Acrylic on canvas 48″x36″

John Mickelson – “Tree Study III”: Archival pigment ink print on Hahnemuhle fine art paper. (18″ by 12″)

This Saturday, the Richmond District Neighborhood Center will host a “fiber fair”.

And no, before you start making fun, it’s not about getting your digestive system in order! It’s a fair about spinning, weaving, crocheting, knitting and dyeing with natural fibers. There will be hands-on workshops, demos and more fun to keep the entire family entertained.

The festival is part of How-To-Homestead’s 11 in 11 tour, designed to teach homestead skills to communities across the city. How-to Homestead is a multi-faceted arts organization that has at its center the creation, curation, and distribution of short films dedicated to 21st century homesteading. They’ve got all kinds of videos on their site like how to make a compost bin, how to home brew, how to vermi-compost in your apartment and more.

Saturday’s fiber fair is free and open to all ages. It takes place at the Richmond District Neighborhood Center, 741 30th Avenue, from 10am until 3pm.

Sarah B.

All photos by Ira Glick

Beginning this Friday, Table Asia Gallery will host a small gallery show, “Night and Low Light Photographs” featuring the work of Ira Glick:

Dr. Glick is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The Stanford University School of Medicine. His award-winning photographs have been shown at numerous venues and have graced magazine covers. He specializes in architectural landscapes and night scenes.

The show will kick off on Friday, September 16th with an opening reception from 5pm until 8pm. The artist will also be on hand from 1pm to 4pm, Saturday, September 17th. After that, viewings are by appointment (Contact Vince Meyer, gallery owner at 750-9955).

About his photographs, Glick says, “A central quest in my life has been to explore what is not known. As a physician I try to understand what is underneath the behavior you see in neurological and psychiatric diseases, the “darkness of the mind”. As a photographer I explore our habitat and how we live by shooting under low-light conditions. This has been an exciting adventure that has allowed me to see what is out there in ways that the eyes cannot.”

At age 75, Glick is also an avid basketball player and competed in the 2011 Bay Area Senior Games/California State Senior Games Championships.

Table Asia Gallery is located at 1101 Lake Street at 12th Avenue. Glick’s photos can be seen from September 16th through 24th only.

Sarah B.