artMRKT & ArtPadSF opening this week.

Hung Liu, The Sewer, 2013, oil on canvas, 72 x 72 inches. Nancy Hoffman Gallery

This is certainly proof of the old adage that when it rains, it pours. Two huge art fairs, opening in the same town, in the same week. 7x7SF has a game plan for those who are already overwhelmed: http://ht.ly/l48ZQ

artMRKT San Francisco, the Bay Area’s premier contemporary and modern art fair, opens today, May 15, at the Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason. The show will feature 70 galleries from around the globe, bringing some of the world’s most intriguing artists and galleries

Walter Robinson, Capitol Hill Billy, 2012; Plywood, steel, polyurethane plastic, rubber, digital print on tyvek; 32.5 x 32 x 21 inches. Catherine Clark

Regular hours: Friday, May 17, 2013 - 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.. Saturday, May 18, 2013 - 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sunday, May 19, 2013 - Noon to 6:00 p.m.

http://www.art-mrkt.com/sf

Daniel Green. Smell Sumo Feet Wrestlers. 2002. Creativity Explored

ArtPadSF, a smaller but edgier art fair opens tomorrow. Located in San Francisco Tenderloin district, the area is a bit rough around the edges but full of hidden treasure for the adventurous art seeker. The Phoenix Hotel closes to the public and turns 44 rooms for the creative and traveling into an art benefit for SF MOMA.

Over the course of the weekend, art patrons will be given the run of the hotel including the tropical courtyard. That's just for starters. The 4-day weekend promises more of the same, with screenings, panels, performances, access to a wide range of galleries and opportunities to talk to the artists.
http://artpadsf.com/

http://www.examiner.com/article/art-pad-and-artmrkt-opening-this-week-san-francisco

Sandra Yagi Open Studios Preview

I recently made a studio visit to Sandra Yagi, in her South Beach studio. Sounds almost tropical, doesn't it? It's an old CalTrans building nestled up against the Bay Bridge on-ramp. The last time I visited this building it was to see Tina Vietmeier.

Sandy just moved to this studio from her old place on Belcher Street. (I interviewed her there five years ago.) The same rolling cart and easels were here in "South Beach" (Rincon Hill), but this studio seemed a lot brighter, with huge windows along one wall. Sandy said it could get a little too bright, and she just got some curtains to cut down the mid-morning glare.

If you're not familiar with her work, Sandra paints with classic old-world methods, using familiar symbols and iconography to convey timeless and contemporary concerns. Lots of skeletons, animals, imagined landscapes, and darkly funny situations.



Sandra works out her ideas in sketchbooks before going to paint. She often uses 3D models to work out position, viewpoint, and lighting. Besides the occasional live model, Sandy has several skeletons (human and other) and she makes clay models when necessary. She showed us a box full of clay chimps that she was using to choreograph a fight scene.

These classic methods seem commonplace and hardly worth mentioning to most painters, but I think many art visitors/ viewers are completely unaware of the long road to the canvas. Another good reason to visit Open Studios (and ask questions) this month.

Sandra Yagi's building is holding an Open Studio event this weekend, starting Friday evening, October 23, 6-9 pm.
Saturday and Sunday, October 24-25, 11 a.m. to 6 pm. 
South Beach Artists Studios at 340 Bryant Street, near 2nd Street
Sandra Yagi is on the 3rd floor, suite 320, Studio 10.

Another interview with Sandra Yagi: NeverStopSeeing.com
Her blog: Beyond the Comfort Zone

Click on any image for more (and larger) photos of Sandra Yagi in her studio!

Open Studios Report: Kirstine Reiner

from guest blogger, T. Newson

I stopped by the new studio of my friend Kirstine (KerSTEEna) Reiner, during the ArtSpan sponsored San Francisco Open Studios. Her studio is now in Workspace Ltd., a revamped industrial space located at 2150 Folsom Street in the Mission District of San Francisco. The light is good and the space much more condusive to painting than her recent studio spaces in Dogpatch, where an unidentifiable miasma of environmental toxins made her feel sick all the time, or her first studio space in the Workspace building itself, which was also the access route for another artist into his studio.

Reiner has also recently found a new apartment in a nearby neighborhood (one of my absolute favorites), with a sunnier microclimate than her previous one.

The photos here don't do justice to Reiner's paintings. (Click on photo to see larger image.) She is one of the best I have ever seen for technique (including what I've seen in the Louvre), and within the deceptively simple images there resides both a vibrant tension and an expansive, often sublime tranquility.


See more of her work at:
http://reiner-art.blogspot.com
(photos by T. Newson)