Celebrating the deYoung Museum - Moraga Library Exhibit

Moraga Library Photography Exhibit by Thomas Pappas, November 1 - 30th, 2014

Art in public spaces is always a special treat because of the joy it brings to so many people! For me, finding the art, then creating an image of the artist’s work that stands out in its surroundings is a challenge, so I am always looking for an opportunity to capture such images.

The deYoung Museum is a beautiful copper-clad structure set in beautiful surroundings in Golden Gate Park. It is a hard structure to photograph because of the twisting 144 foot observation tower, never quite seeming to be level! As befitting such a fine museum, the surrounding gardens and outdoor sculpture are unique, and provide a wonderful experience on their own. This show is focused on the gardens and free spaces in the museum.

A visit to the deYoung usually means a walk through one of the nearby neighborhoods to the park. The photos of the succulent plants were captured while strolling on upper Ashbury Street, with the exception of one, which was taken in Moraga on Rimer Drive.

Finally, I have included some photographs of the beautiful Heart Sculptures that can be seen around San Francisco. Sponsored by the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, more than one hundred have been created. The first artist to create a Heart was singer and artist Tony Bennett. Entitled “I left my Heart...” it is permanently displayed on the northwest corner of Union Square. Many of the sculptures photographed during this project have since been removed, with many of them going to private spaces where they can no longer be enjoyed by the public.

About the Artist

Thomas Pappas is an eclectic photographer with interest in street, landscape, portrait and nature photography. Working with both digital and film, his work encompasses many locations including the Western United States, San Francisco, New York, the Bahamas, and Greece. He has also photographed many local events including the CAIFF Film Festival, Heritage Bank Tennis Championships, and Campolindo and Miramonte sports.

Technical Information 
All of the prints on display were made digitally, using Canson Baryta Photographique archival paper and Canon Lucia Inks.

This article and photo sourced from:  http://patch.com/california/lamorinda/celebrating-deyoung-museum-moraga-library-exhibit-0 

Tenderloin upstart Book & Job aims to level the art-gallery playing field

 

Carson Lancaster is tired of the bullshit. He’s tired of watching the same handful of mainstream galleries hang the same artists and shun a majority of San Francisco’s young, talented artists. “It’s like that scene in Scanners. You know, the one where the guy’s head explodes? That’s what it feels like every time I walk into one of those places,” he said.

Lancaster is the owner of Book & Job, an art gallery that seeks to do exactly the opposite: make San Francisco’s art market accessible to both artists and consumers. Located on Geary and Hyde Streets, Book & Job blends into the grit of the Tenderloin and in no way resembles the blue-chip megaliths huddled toward Union Square. The space is tiny. There’s no team of attractive sales people standing at the entrance, no bubbly event photographers milling around, no tuxedos, and no free champagne.
However, it isn’t uncommon to see a small throng of young people spilling from the entrance on a given Saturday night, or passers-by (likely coming from galleries down the street) stopping in their tracks to gander at the commotion — looking for something, anything, that slightly resembles uncharted territory: candid photographs from inside of a ramshackle San Francisco mosque, say, or a couple of naked male performers feeding each other wedding cake while dancing to Celine Dion. That, Lancaster feels, is an art scene.

Which is why Lancaster is all ears if an artist wants to show work at Book & Job. Though it began mainly for photographers, in the past couple of years the small gallery has broadened its horizons to include just about anything — paintings, zines, and performances. “People come in all the time and say, ‘I like this place because it’s pure, because it’s real, because it’s no bullshit,” he continued. “It’s known in the community as the no bullshit gallery.”

Sat/13, Lancaster's walls will feature work from an analog photography club called Find Rangers, which sent out an open call to artists around the world. Lancaster and a group of colleagues started the club for many of the same reasons he opened his gallery. “It’s a grassroots affair,” he said. 
As a former photography student at Academy of Art University, Lancaster wondered why many of the best students would flee San Francisco after graduating, but he eventually came to a realization: “The San Francisco art scene sucks. It is very close-minded, unfriendly, not open to interpretation, set in the same ways. And for young artists at CCA [California College of the Arts], SFAI [San Francisco Art Institute], and Academy of Art, to go to an art gallery in the city [and inquire about showing their work], they’re going to be told to go fuck themselves in so many words.”

Lancaster spoke of a disconnect between San Francisco's relatively insular gallery scene and the high number of art students in the area. From 2002 to 2012, San Francisco received more art funding per capita than any another city in the nation, according to a 2014 study released by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago. And yet, the city's abundance of talented artists cannot break in and are thus forced to seek greener pastures, usually in New York or Los Angeles.

Lancaster believes that this is largely because art galleries in San Francisco have tight business models, and that giving artists a chance just doesn’t allow them to stay afloat. These galleries, he said, would rather show artists they know can sell. “They have their roster of artists,” he explained. “December is Ferris Plock, or September is Jay Howell or Mike Giant, and it's the same names over and over again. It’s more like a meat factory. It’s the meat aisle.”

This is especially prevalent nowadays, Lancaster explained, as many of the higher-end galleries are struggling themselves with out-of-control rents and the city’s shifting cultural values. In the past year, particularly downtown, a rash of galleries have either relocated or completely shuttered.

But Lancaster isn’t worried about Book & Job. His lease is written such that his rent stays fixed — and relatively low — until 2022. For next eight years, Book & Job cannot be priced out, even as the neighborhood continues to transform around it. “This is place is blowing up,” he said, pointing out the new cafés and restaurants that are now sprouting up around the Tenderloin. All the same, in the coming years Book & Job will serve as a small preservation of what remains of city’s DIY ethos, a channel through which local artists can be discovered without having to flee the city. 

“It’s a really nervy thing to do," Sarah Barsness, one of Lancaster’s former Academy of Art teachers, says of the gallery. She explained that it’s extremely difficult to open a successful art gallery in the city, let alone one as “subversive” as Book & Job. “He's doing the thing that you’re never supposed to do, which is having a lot of work that he sells for nothing, and spreading it out to a different, broader population — younger people and fellow students,” she explained. 

She even compared Lancaster to Andy Warhol and other pioneers of the pop art movement, who sought to strip art of its “preciousness” and “elitism” by selling prints for pennies on the dollar. Ultimately, Barsness explained, this made art more democratic. “It’s really important right now because we’re at a high point of elitists,” she said. “It’s over the top.”

By making art more democratic, she explained, galleries like Book & Job “bring artists back into the conversation,” making art more about art and less about business. But Barsness believes many San Francisco galleries have always operated this way. “San Francisco collectors are notorious for not buying San Francisco art,” she said, explaining that galleries have had to survive by bringing in work from other cities. 

While Barsness feels that the economic cards are not stacked in Lancaster’s favor, she feels that Book & Job embodies much of what art stands for. “Art is not supposed to preach. It's supposed to show you an alternative way of thinking, so that questions emerge," she said. “[Book & Job] is a little work of art, in that sense, making you ask: Do galleries have to operate this way? Is it wrong to have galleries operate this way? And why is it wrong?”

For Lancaster, however, Book & Job’s place in the art world isn't so much subversive as it is deeply personal. In March, Lancaster found his close friend, renowned San Francisco artist Shawn Whisenant, dead from a health issue in the back room of the gallery, where he had been sleeping. Whisenant was a San Francisco street artist and photographer and one of the last “true” San Francisco artists, according to KQED’s Kristin Farr, who remembered him fondly after his passing.
And for Lancaster, Whisenant’s artistic ethos of "no B.S." will always shape how Book & Job is run. A day doesn't go by in which Lancaster doesn’t think about what Whisenant would have done. “He’s the angel and devil on my shoulder,” he said.

The room in which Whisenant died has been converted into a dark room, and for now Lancaster plans to share it with other like-minded photographers and use it to hone his own skills. “If someone is checking their phone and they see my open call [for a Find Rangers Camera Club exhibit], and they dust off their camera and buy a roll of film, I’m doing something right,” he said. “That’s not just me selling a booklet to help pay rent, that’s helping someone’s creativity … and that’s really cool.”

Find Rangers Camera Club exhibit
Sat/13, 7-11pm
Book & Job Gallery
838 Geary, SF
www.book-job.com


For Original Article:  http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2014/09/09/tenderloin-upstart-book-job-aims-level-art-gallery-playing-field 

Banksy’s San Francisco legacy: High-value art

 A piece of a Victorian home with Banksy's work on it was taken from San Francisco to Santa Barbara to be framed for display. Paul Schurch, second from right, speaks with Scott Haskins about framing the piece.

 Left to right, Scott Haskins, Francesca Ruggeri
and Oriana Montemurro examine the piece by Banksy.

 Paul Schurch takes a close look at the Banksy graffiti.

 A painting of a rat clutching a magic marker by the anonymous street artist Banksy is shown before its removal from the side of the Red Victorian inn at 1665 Haight St. in San Francisco. Banksy left the graffiti there in 2010.

 A piece of a Victorian home with Banksy's work on it was taken from San Francisco to Santa Barbara to be framed for display. Paul Schurch, second from right, speaks with Scott Haskins about framing the piece.

This month, a street art enthusiast kicked off a campaign to save a work of graffiti painted in San Francisco by British street artist Banksy.

The once-fringe artist has reached growing audiences in recent years after the release of “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” his Oscar-nominated documentary film. In October 2013, Banksy again gained mass attention with a month long residency in New York.

But in 2010, before he reached his current level of mainstream popularity, Banksy painted a series of works around San Francisco, hitting neighborhoods like the Mission and Chinatown. We’ve collected a number of images of Banksy’s San Francisco work in the slideshow above with help from KQED Arts. Also included are images of Banksy’s work from Los Angeles, New York and the West Bank.
Brian Greif, 53, worked to save a stenciled rat that was spray painted on the side of an historic building on Haight Street before the owner painted over it.

In keeping with a promise, Greif is rejecting six-figure offers to sell the work as he tries to find a public home for it.

Greif’s efforts to restore and display the painting, however, showcase the complicated debate about preserving and profiting from street art.

High school fashion in 1982: Are you in these photos?

“And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their world …”

There’s no shortage of excellent fashion files in the Chronicle photo morgue, from bathing suits to Rick Barry. But I have a special place in my heart for these archive photos taken by Gary Fong, for a September 1982 project about different styles of dress in high schools. The Chronicle visited three local schools. There’s a very strong Breakfast Club-y Fast Times-y vibe to the images, featuring subjects deliberately chosen to represent a variety of cliques from the era.

This week is Part I: McAteer High School in San Francisco. If there’s a strong enough response, I’ll post 1982 photos for Part II (Tamalpais High) and Part III (Lincoln High) later in the summer.

Important! If you’re in these photos, please contact me at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com for my Let’s Go to the Q&A project. I’d like to catchup with the people in the photos for a joint San Francisco Chronicle/The Big Event fashion feature that would run in September.

A few more thoughts below the heartbreaker smoking Marlboro Lights …

* Above all, thanks to Gary Fong, who took an impressive amount of time setting up these photos, plus two more schools you’ll hopefully see later. In my travels through the archives, Fong is one of the legends. He took the photos that jumpstarted our “Star Wars Coronet project, and is quoted in the oral history. He’s still in the Bay Area at Genesis Photo Agencynow.

* I’m as surprised as you are by all the smoking. I went to Burlingame High School from 1984 to 1988, and there was a strict no smoking policy — although neighboring Mills High School still had a smoking section. It’s amazing how much San Francisco public schools have changed in 31 years. I’m pretty sure you can’t put soda in a vending machine now …

* Black and white disclaimer that multiple commenters will ignore because no one reads the post: Apologies that these aren’t on color film. The Chronicle didn’t run color images until more than a decade later, so it’s rare to find color photos from earlier than 1993 in our archives. Just pretend it’s an artsy Francis Ford Coppola/”Rumble Fish” thing. (Or you can accuse me in the comments of decolorizing the images, which at least one person does every time we run a fashion post …)

* The photos appeared in a September 24, 1982, Chronicle story about teen styles, written by Paul Liberatore. (Sample line: “Of all the styles, the punks are still the most outrageous with their colored hair sculpted into ugly terrains. They’re into spike bracelets, dog collars and chains, jackboots and goofy high-top tennies.) Liberatore currently writes a column for the Marin-Independent-Journal.

* McAteer High near Twin Peaks closed in 
1982 2002 with little protest. Enrollment and test scores had been going down, it was replaced by a School of the Arts and the campus now hosts Academy of Arts and Science. McAteer seems like it was a good school in the early 1980s, and I’m impressed by the diversity. RIP McAteer High.

* If you don’t see your favorite trend, chances are good it’s in the Tamalpais and Lincoln high school photos. (Topsiders! Derby jackets!) Fong, Liberatore and their editors did a good job of covering as many 1982 styles as possible between the three schools.

* Vertical photos usually don’t look good in these galleries. I’ve included a few more larger versions below.

* Please send me an e-mail if you’re in these photos!

PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder/editor of The Big Event. He takes requests. Contact him at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com. Follow him on Twitter @peterhartlaub. Follow The Big Event on Facebook.

 

Articles and Phtos Sourced From: http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/2013/06/13/high-school-fashion-in-1982-are-you-in-these-photos/#13167101=0