Italian Christmas Market at the Museo Italoamericano

Italian Christmas Market at the Museo Italoamericano  

The Mercatino di Natale is the cheeriest Italian tradition in the Bay Area, inspired by the famous Christmas markets in Northern Italy and throughout most of Europe.

Come join our community in the celebration and pick the perfect gift for family and friends: artisanal food, handmade jewelry, latest Italian fashion, trendiest accessories and more. All unique items are made by Italian Artisans. We can't wait to give you a hug!

Time and place: 10:00 am - 6 pm Saturday; 10:30-5:00 Sunday
Museo Italo-Americano, Fort Mason Center BLDG C, San Francisco.

In collaboration with Forchette Tricolori, a vibrant cooking club where, originally, women shared recipes and celebrated good eating. 

How to keep busy this Thanksgiving Weekend

From Hoodline: http://hoodline.com/2016/11/castro-events-thanksgiving-week

SF State 29th Annual Stillwell Student Juried Exhibition

 Leo Stillwell Self Portrait

Courtesy SFSU

The majority of the exhibition at the SFSU Fine Arts Gallery features art students’ latest work in a variety of medium.  The most moving piece in the exhibit is a Golden Gate Bridge replica sculpture, titled “Crisis Line: (415) 781-0500,”  referring to the San Francisco Suicide Prevention Crisis Line, composed of bright red miniature plastic people fused together.   

Nearby was a laugher, a bulging circle made from hundreds of emoji stickers, titled, “Please Just Call Me.”

One wall of the exhibit showcases letters and drawings by watercolorist and oil painter Leo D. Stillwell Jr, who died in 1948 at age 22.    The letters, which include drawings, were written by Stillwell to his friend Russell Hartley.   Beautiful small paintings and drawings also adorn the backs of the envelopes.  The letters were found about 25 years ago in a dumpster on Duboce Street by Alan Perry, who recently donated them to the University.    Stillwell’s mother donated 500 of his works to SF State in 1987, although her son never attended SFSU.  Bay Area journalist and former SF Chronicle writer Jesse Hamlin wrote about the exhibition recently in the Chronicle.

I arrived at the exhibit 15 minutes before closing, so I was in a hurry and didn’t take notes.   The Gallery does not allow photographs.    After I left, I saw signs directing me to another gallery several hallways and doorways away.   When I got there, it was closed.  I passed by some large pottery workshops finding my way on the way out of whatever building I ended up in.    Not to go all John King here, but hopefully when the new SFSU buildings go up on 19^th Avenue after the Muni revamp, there will be easier access to public spaces, less need for outsiders to wander the campus, and more people seeing the art being created here.

San Francisco State University

Fine Arts Building, Fine Arts Gallery

Wednesday, November 09, 2016 to Thursday, December 01, 2016

Gallery hours: Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11am to 4pm. 

The gallery will be closed for Thanksgiving break, November 23 through November 26. 

Free. 

E-mail: gallery@sfsu.edu

Phone: 415-338-6535

Posted by Phil Gravitt

Frank Stella at the de Young and Bruce Conner at SFMOMA

The museum visitor could not ask for a great contrast in styles and philosophy than the two retrospectives now up in San Francisco; Frani Stella at the de Young and Bruce Conner at SFMOMA. Stella specializes in bright, bold, non-expressive art, just right for that expensive loft, big corporate office or museum wall. He was crowned "Art King of NY" right out of art school and has consistently remained popular.

Bruce Conner's huge retrospective, now at SFMOMA, is a polar opposite. A deliberate outsider, a Peck's Bad Boy of art, Conner adored being angsty, depressive, grim, an avant guarde practice of art sketched in black. By the time he died at age 74 in 2008, the San Francisco–based artist had created films, collages, photograms, performances, assemblages, drawings, and paintings. He avoided celebrity like the plague and reveled in his outsider status. If Stella's work deliberately avoids emotion and any definition of self, Conner positively played with both ideas to the point where he announced his death....twice, before actually dying in 1974.

Conner told Kenneth Baker (then art critic for the SF Chronicle), "My entire history as an artist coincides with the history of the bomb," he told me in 2000, "and it's colored almost everything I've done. But I also don't see why you can't have a good time and be aware of your own mortality."

Frank Stella at the de Young through Feb 26, 2017

Bruce Conner at SFMOMA through Jan 22, 2017

Rebecca Solnit at the Green Arcade on Thursday, November 17 + calendar of events

Thursday, November 17, 7pm
(doors open at 6:30)
At the 3rd Floor
McRoskey Mattress Factory
1687 Market St. 

The Green Arcade and
University of California Press
Present:

A Release Party for:
Nonstop Metropolis:
A New York Atlas

with Rebecca Solnit & Joshua Jelly-Shapiro, editors

A note from Rebecca: This event has been planned for a long time. But after the election, we're making it a focus on cities as cosmopolitan places of coexistence, tolerance, subversion, resistance, and joy, of Black, Asian, Latino, Muslim, Jewish, Quaker, immigrant, queer, drag, trans, feminist lives and victories. Please join us.                   
HOSTED BY: The McRoskey Mattress Company


Tuesday, November 22, 7pm
Poetry with Chet Wiener, Michael Palmer and Sarah Riggs

Sunday, December 4, 10am-6pm
The 3rd Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair
At City College, Mission Campus 

Wednesday, December 7, 7pm
The San Francisco launch of Mat Callahan's
The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco: 1965-1975

  Saturday, December 10, 7:30pm
Poetry with Sarah Rosenthal, Aja Couchois Duncan
and Arisa White

Tuesday, December 13, 7:30pm
Poetry with Susan Gevirtz & Mystery Guest