SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES OPENINGS

FIRST THURSDAY - 06.02.11 Part I

(with assistance from RWM)



How the pros spot the best art. Click Here.

***

Toomey Tourell Gallery: William Edwards - Chemical Reaction.

Comment by AB: Perfect matching sets of circular ceramic discs by William Edwards, all discs in each set frosted with luxuriously sensational matching glazes. How does get those looks? His father was a custom autobody painter, he tells me, so there's a big clue-- skills honed at an early age.

***

Corden Potts Gallery: Isa Leshko - Thrills & Chills.

Review by RWM: Surreal times at the amusement park, perhaps also a sense alienation being confronted with the wild angled images. The motion captured is thrilling. The experience can also be chilling.

***

Modernbook Gallery: Fan Ho - A Hong Kong Memoir.

Comment by AB: So much has changed in Hong Kong since the 1950s and 60s that you'll have difficulty reconciling the Hong Kong pictured in Fan Ho's romantic vintage images with the dominant world-class metropolis that it is today.

***

Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery: Kenjilo Nanao - The Roots of a Painter.

Comment by AB: Half a century of paintings by Bay Area artist Kenjilo Nanao range from figurative introspections to elemental color-field abstractions.

***

The McLoughlin Gallery: Flying Solo - Laura Kimpton; Every Reverie - Barbara Traub.

Review by RWM: Birds as spirits, guides and totems. Also the workings of the heart here and searches for freedom. Birds make such wonderful symbols, but they also can be internalized. Solemn at times, yet uplifting.

Comment by AB: An over the top extravaganza of funk style frames and refuse-dense assemblages slathered with high-gloss acrylic uproariously overwhelms the gallery. Laura Kimpton's never met a discard she can't convert. Worth a visit. In the side space, see Barbara Traub's surreal photographic Burning Man retrospective. Revised enlarged book coming soon.

***

Patricia Sweetow Gallery: Gail Wight, Sid Garrison and Terri Friedman - Unspecified.

Comment by AB: Sid Garrison's abstract colored pencil drawings have a look all their own, not like pencil drawings, but you're not sure what. And that's what entices you in, this unique technique that he appears to have mastered. Also on the docket are Terri Friedman's irradiated fantasy-scapes on plexiglass and delicate spiderweb renditions burned onto vellum by Gail Wight.

***

Dolby Chadwick Gallery: Shelley Hoyt - Recent Paintings.

Review by RWM: Great views of the bay from the Berkeley Hills by Shelley Hoyt. The City sometimes gets lost in the fog, but the sky ever beckons. Nice atmospherics.

***

Addendum:

***

Do you think San Francisco art openings coverage might possibly warrant just a smidgeon of this. Do you think? It's year number 9 here... and all of it for you...

***

First Thursday - May 5, 2011

First Thursday - April 7, 2011

***