Tag Archives: San Francisco

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | The Importance of Being Sketchy

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | The Importance of Being Sketchy

I am freaking out! In one month, I’ll be installing my artwork at The Winery SF for San Francisco Art Institute’s MFA Thesis Exhibition. Last year at this time, my …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Coded Cloth

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Coded Cloth

We speak in code when words aren’t safe to say. Faced with threats, our language goes subterranean, carving new passageways of communication. Encrypted messages use accepted forms of expression—recognizable letters, …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Something to Talk About

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Something to Talk About

There’s nothing quite like the graduate critique seminar – a visit to a classmate’s studio where ten to fifteen artists are hopefully hopped up on enough caffeine that they’ll engage …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows: The Plaid Fad

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows: The Plaid Fad

In November 1991, Nirvana played on all of our car stereos. We smoked clove cigarettes and drove through the Oakland hills with Nevermind blaring over the speakers. Kurt Cobain drowned …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Amy Balkin

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Amy Balkin

For the past couple years, I have been teaching Bay Area-based artist Amy Balkin’s work within a curriculum about environmental art and “land expropriation.” I teach her work besides Karl …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Rigo 23

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Rigo 23

I first encountered Rigo 23’s work this past summer staying with friends in San Francisco’s Mission, where Rigo 23 partially got his start as an artist through his engagement with …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: And the Nominations Are In…

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: And the Nominations Are In…

Yesterday morning, the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations kick started the award season for excellence in television and movies. A variety of awards have already been given out this …

Going to California: Nightmare City, Part 2

Going to California: Nightmare City, Part 2

“It is hard to find California now, unsettling to wonder how much of it was merely imagined or improvised; melancholy to realize how much of anyone’s memory is no true …

Going to California: Nightmare City

Going to California: Nightmare City

Every few decades, people decide it’s a good idea to move to California. First, it was for the gold. Then aerospace technology, then Los Angeles. In the 1960s, it happened …

Going to California: Gina Tuzzi, Part 2

Going to California: Gina Tuzzi, Part 2

Nostalgia is the longing for a home that never was; its subject is an idealized place where the troubles of today hold no sway. In paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Northern …

Neil Young. "Neil Young," (Reprise Records, 1968). From the writer's collection.

Going to California: Gina Tuzzi

Going to California: Gina Tuzzi

It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and … all that seemed clear was that at some point we had aborted ourselves and …

Going to California: David Wilson, Part 2

Going to California: David Wilson, Part 2

Albert Bierstadt bathed the Sierra Nevada in heavenly light while Ansel Adams photographed Half Dome as though it were on the moon. Many artists depict California’s natural features as mythic …

Going to California: David Wilson

Going to California: David Wilson

My hometown of Lafayette, California, encompasses a 925-acre nature area, the boundaries of which press up against the town’s suburban roads and cul-de-sacs like a face against glass. When I …

Going to California

Going to California

Many people in the East … have been to Los Angeles or to San Francisco, have driven through a giant redwood and have seen the Pacific glazed by the afternoon …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 William Kentridge: Anything is Possible

Kentridge in the Classroom

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 William Kentridge: Anything is Possible

Kentridge in the Classroom

Support Art21 The William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible BACK TO SCHOOL campaign is dedicated to raising awareness and funds for Art21’s free education programs and resources accompanying William Kentridge: Anything …

Open Enrollment

Reading the MFA Program

Open Enrollment

Reading the MFA Program

Back in June, I wrote about a new Internet meme that I started because I was so excited about the idea of circulation. Well, my professor Robin Balliger has done …

Open Enrollment

OMG Mid-Grad Crisis or RTV/MFA

Open Enrollment

OMG Mid-Grad Crisis or RTV/MFA

Sometimes when I’m sitting in class, I switch to a third-person perspective and feel like I’m watching a reality television show about myself. One of my professors, Clark Buckner, assigned …

The Nature of Art: Footprints

The Nature of Art: Footprints

It’s hip to be high-minded these days. In the cultural spheres, showing awareness of environmental concerns can prove to be a savvy PR move, and architectural firms and museum committees …

The Nature of Art: The Bigger Picture

The Nature of Art: The Bigger Picture

We’re accustomed to porticoed Greek temple-style museums, white-walled galleries, conspicuous label texts, a high level of organization, and clearly-defined thematic spaces. For those of us who are city-dwellers, we expect …

Open Enrollment

My MFA Letter to Santa

Open Enrollment

My MFA Letter to Santa

Dear Santa, Hi! My name is Jeffrey, I’m 26 years old, and I live in San Francisco, California.  I know it’s kind of early to be writing to you in …

Open Enrollment

Back to School!

Open Enrollment

Back to School!

With the last days of July upon us, I shed a tear and take a deep breath as I prepare for my final year at San Francisco Art Institute. My …

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: Feeding Suburbia

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: Feeding Suburbia

In the early 1970s, Bill Owens began to document the suburban boom in the California Bay Area. Every Saturday for a year, he photographed middle-class Americans in and around their …

Open Enrollment

New Internet Meme: Cheers!

Open Enrollment

New Internet Meme: Cheers!

With my summer break between the first and second year of my graduate studies at San Francisco Art Institute in full force, I’ve taken a few weeks to visit some …

Open Enrollment

Standing Ovation for Networks

Open Enrollment

Standing Ovation for Networks

With my first year at San Francisco Art Institute done and done, I’m reminded of the big and scary (but fun!) questions I had one year ago. Last August, a …

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

Holey maps, pre-natal forms, stuffed animals, and more in today’s roundup: The first exhibition in the United States ever devoted exclusively to the drawings of Season 3 artist Roni Horn …

Open Enrollment

Life After Graduation

Open Enrollment

Life After Graduation

by Matthew Newton and Jeffrey Augustine Songco First, Matthew interviews Hunter College alum Jules de Balincourt on the occasion of his solo exhibition at Deitch Projects, followed by Jeffrey’s look …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Educating Artists in the 21st Century, An Introduction

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Educating Artists in the 21st Century, An Introduction

Art21’s Open Enrollment column is a forum for nine people currently enrolled in some form of art graduate study to take on a variety of topics and to challenge some …

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

In this week’s roundup you’ll read about Tasmanian wolves, patented patterns, cartoon anthropomorphism, ancient mythology, portico projections, and a big gift: Bestiarium, a large-scale survey exhibition of watercolor paintings by …

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

This week Art21 artists illustrate NASA’s history, depict child’s play, map the Black Atlantic, render galaxies in glass, leave their mark on the last decade, and reflect on our future: …

Blogalogueing with Lee Montgomery

Blogalogueing with Lee Montgomery

LeE: this is me.. LeE… the one I told you about. You: Hi Lee! You know I just realized I could have probably been doing the interview this whole time, …

Blogalogue, Part 4: Lee Montgomery

Blogalogue, Part 4: Lee Montgomery

Lee Montgomery got his BA in Film at Bard College, and an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. As the founder of Neighborhood Public Radio, Lee …

Initial Thoughts on SF

Initial Thoughts on SF

The San Francisco Bay Area is still new to me. I am still trying to learn as much as I can about both the history of art in the area …

This is so contemporary!

This is so contemporary!

German artist Tino Sehgal recently spoke about his practice in a discussion with Jens Hoffmann at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. Sehgal has been showing …

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will host a talk with Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie and brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner (of indie rock band The National) on Saturday, …

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

New photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3) are on view at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco through October 31. Sugimoto’s latest body of work titled Lightning Fields depicts electricity. To …

BOMB in the Building

Flash Points

Harrell Fletcher interviewed by Allan McCollum

BOMB in the Building

Flash Points

Harrell Fletcher interviewed by Allan McCollum

Welcome back to BOMB in the Building, where each week we’re featuring a BOMB contributor relating to a Season 5 artist. This week, we’re switching it up again and featuring …