Another spectacular weekend spent visiting artist open studios . . . this time it was in the Mission district which, according to Mission Artists United, "has more artists than any other neighborhood in San Francisco." I hit the big buildings, spent two days at it, still didn't get to see everyone, but here are my top four favorites:
Sonya Philip
fiber arts
www.sonyaphilip.com
1890 Bryant Street, Studio 210
She calls herself a fiber artist, but I think she's more than that. She did have a lot of woven, knotted, sewn, and needled work. Some of it reminded me of Masako Takahashi's work, although Ms. Philip wasn't familiar with her. A mixed media sculpture caught my eye - it was a white dress form filled with little red & white fist-sized creatures which Ms. Philip called "the spleens." She explains here:
Diane Komater
wire sculpture
www.wireist.com
Her wire drawings are the best I've ever seen in this medium. Excellent, intelligent grasp of line with a good dose of humor. She also shows work at Velvet Da Vinci on Polk Street in San Francisco:
Kirstine Reiner
painting
Workspace Ltd., Studio 10a
2150 Folsom Street
kirstinereiner.com
I'm really at a loss for words when it comes to Reiner's work. It's perfect. Mind-blowing, really. Her rendering of flesh is so alive, it's hard to resist touching it. And she puts just as much care into her backgrounds, with emotional, modulated mixtures of colors and tints:
Natasha Dikareva
sculpture
Workspace Ltd., Studio 12
2150 Folsom Street
dikarevart.com
These sculptures drew me in more than anything else this weekend. I want one. They have enough symbolic and narrative content to keep me thinking for a long, long time and the form & colors are exquisite. Many of the wall sculptures on exhibit this weekend were commissioned portraits that centered around a cast of the subject's face. Surrounding the face was an integrated imaginarium specific to that person's story. Many of her other pieces were covered with ink-like scribing, which she called tattoos, but which really resembled ancient cartography. Natasha Dikareva's work makes spirit visible:
More quick shots of artists in their studios on my Flickr page.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment