Author: andres@davidperry.com

$3.5 Million & 14,000 Plus!

Huge Sales & Attendance at 2012 SF Fine Art Fair May 16 – 20 at Fort Mason Center

New “7×7 ArtBike” Auction raises $10,000 for San Francisco Bike Coalition

www.sffineartfair.com

22 May 2012 – San Francisco, CA: As the moon moved in front of the sun at around 6pm Sunday, May 20, 2012, the other things being eclipsed on San Francisco Bay were records as the SF Fine Art Fair (www.sffineartfair.com) saw a staggering attendance of 14,000 plus and sales of more than $3.5 million. The West Coast’s most important art fair ran May 16-20 at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion and featured 70 dealers, from 28 cities in the United States and nine other countries including the United Kingdom, Thailand, China, South Korea, Spain, Austria, Mexico, Canada, and Israel.

“Never before have we had such a wide selection of art from around the world,” said Rick Friedman, director of the SF Fine Art Fair. “I am pleased that we attracted both experienced collectors and enthusiastic newcomers. We presented treasures for every budget level from $1,000 to $1 million, but averaged in the $25K-$50K level. We successfully opened the private and exclusive art world to many eager first time buyers who ‘caught the fever’ and began collecting art at Fort Mason this weekend.”

In addition to the lively trade in art, this year’s SF Fine Art Fair paid tribute to beloved Bay Area philanthropist Roselyne “Cissie” Swig with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” honor on Thursday night. In addition, the internationally acclaimed William Wiley was the Fair’s “Featured Artist.” On Saturday, the Bay Area’s Asian cultural institutions were highlighted with tributes in food, panels and song, while over 3,000 people poured through on a special “sneak preview” event Wednesday evening to raise funds for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. A new addition this year was a special section of the Fair devoted to the East Bay’s Oakland Art Murmur. In addition, other local cultural institutions and projects such as the Chinese Historial Society, ArtSpan, the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, ChinaSF and America’s Cup were featured at the Fair. Throughout it all, San Francisco’s acclaimed Academy of Art University provided free shuttle bus service from Fort Mason to other fairs around town.

One of the most popular and eagerly anticipated additions to this year’s lineup was the “7×7 ArtBike” auction in which seven bikes provided by Public Bike were given a full artistic makeover by noted artists and then auctioned off. The result: over $10,000 for the nonprofit San Francisco Bike Coalition.

“The San Francisco Fine Art Fair has gotten better every year,” said gallery owner Seb Hamamjian. “I repeatedly heard from several whom I consider to be respected in the SF art community that this fair was of high quality and a ‘must attend’ on the annual calendar.”

“The mid career contemporary artists flew off the walls and big sales went to masters as well,” Friedman said, noting that a 1960 Kenneth Noland went for $750,000 an Andrew Wyeth for $175,000 and a Joan Mitchell for $150,000.

While virtually every gallery in the Fair reported significant sales, a heavy volume of sales activity were reported from the following galleries: Westwood Modern, Center Space, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, George Krevsky Gallery, Hamamjian Modern, Hang Art, K. Imperial Fine Art, Madison Gallery, Sandra Lee Gallery, CK Contemporary, Kips Gallery, Robert Green Fine Arts, Stephanie Breitbard Fine Arts, Villa del Arte Galleries, and Zemack Contemporary Art.

“Our closing day saw the greatest attendance,” said Friedman. “Many fairgoers waited till Sunday afternoon to make their buying decisions, when a flurry of buyers blew in to grab up their carefully chosen treasures.”

The 2012 SF Fine Art Fair took place at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion (Marina Boulevard @ Buchanan Street), May 16 through May 20, 2012. Details about next year’s Fair will be released shortly. www.sffineartfair.com

Cross-Pollination: The Art of Lawrence Ferlinghetti

June 23–September 23, 2012, at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art

www.svma.org

29 May 2012 – Sonoma, CA: This summer, the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art (www.svma.org) honors the creative life of Lawrence Ferlinghetti with the exhibition Cross-Pollination: The Art of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s work, in both literature and art, is a drive for liberation, transformation, and union—through love, literature, political struggle, nature, humor, art. Again and again, in paint and in words, he ponders themes of “Her”/woman, the Sea, man adrift, war and pacifism, and engages in direct dialogue with other artists and writers, including Homer and Joyce, Ginsberg and Van Gogh, Picasso and Pound. The exhibition, on view June 23 through September 23, 2012, focuses on key themes that have occupied the artist and poet throughout his creative life, in both word and image.

“We are thrilled to be presenting this exhibition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s works, of which I am personally a big fan,” says the museum’s Executive Director Kate Eilertsen. “This exhibition takes a unique approach in looking at thematic parallels that have been consistent in his work, in whatever medium he chooses.” Long celebrated as a poet and publisher, Ferlinghetti, now 93, was first a painter, pursuing his craft at the Sorbonne in Paris shortly after his naval service in World War II. For more than sixty years, he has continued his passion for image-making in paintings, drawings, prints, and mixed media works that have been widely exhibited, including a major survey exhibition in 2010 in Rome and Calabria.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born March 24, 1919) is acclaimed as a poet, painter, liberal activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers in San Francisco. As early as his 1955 book A Coney Island of the Mind (published in 1958 by New Directions)—a collection of poems that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of over 1 million copies—he wrote about himself as a painter and the challenges of the visual artist. The first poem in the bestselling book addresses the work of Goya; and further along, in poem 12, he writes: “‘One of those paintings that would not die’ / its warring image / once conceived / would not leave / the leaded ground / no matter how many times / he hounded it / into oblivion…”

Cross-Pollination: The Art of Lawrence Ferlinghetti is guest curated by Diane Roby, an artist and curator who for several years has catalogued Ferlinghetti’s visual art at his Hunter’s Point studio in San Francisco. For this exhibition, she looks especially at the overlap of word and image as Ferlinghetti addresses recurring thematic material. “In Ferlinghetti’s art,” says Roby, “words give rise to image-making, and word and image meld in paint. The poet and painter, with pen and brush, turns his attention to his world of words and paint as he ponders questions of human existence and aspirations.”

Cross-Pollination: The Art of Lawrence Ferlinghetti tracks these themes through selected paintings, drawings, prints, and notebooks. Several works on loan from the artist will be exhibited for the first time, including notebooks of writings with pictures in the margins, and sketchbooks with text, as the artist forms his thoughts in line and verse. A viewing room will present video and audio clips of the artist reading and at work in his studio. Among these clips is the 1957 Allen Willis film “Have You Sold Your Dozen Roses?,” with a voiceover by Ferlinghetti (presented courtesy of the East Bay Media Center).

Cross-Pollination: The Art of Lawrence Ferlinghetti is generously supported by Cherie and Keith Hughes.

Cross-Pollination: The Art of Lawrence Ferlinghetti will be on view at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 551 Broadway in Sonoma, June 23 through September 23, 2012. The Museum hours are Wednesdays through Sundays 11am– 5pm. Museum admission is $5 general; free for students in grades K-12. Admission is free for all visitors every Wednesday. More information about the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art is available at www.svma.org or by calling (707) 939-7862.

TV Listing. May – June 2012

Ten Percent — LGBT-TV for Northern California

Mondays – Fridays, 11:30am & 10:30pm and Saturdays & Sundays at 10:30pm on Comcast Hometown Network Channel 104 in Northern California.

www.comcasthometown.com

Episode # 140
Monday — Friday, May 21 – 25, 11:30am & 10:30pm
Saturday & Sunday, May 26 – 27, 10:30pm
David Perry interviews Lewis DeSimone author of “The Heart’s Story” and chats with creative consultant Kile Ozier.

Episode # 141
Monday — Friday, May 28 – June 1, 11:30am & amp;10:30pm
Saturday & Sunday, June 2 – 3, 10:30pm
David Perry speaks with Belinda Dronkers-Laureta, Director of API Family Pride about their upcoming banquet honoring families and their LGBT children. David interviews Sister Ruth Hall of The Family Link, providing housing and support to families facing life-threatening illnesses.

Episode # 142
Monday — Friday, June 4 – 8, 11:30am & 10:30pm
Saturday & Sunday, June 9 – 10, 10:30pm David Perry talks with Cecila Chung, transgender advocate and newly appointed San Francisco Health Commissioner. David chats with the Rev Jim Mitulski of Berkeley and formerly of MCC.

Episode # 143
Monday — Friday, June 11 – 15, 11:30 am & 10:30pm
Saturday & Sunday, June 16 – 17, 10:30pm
David Perry interviews Desiree Buford of FRAMELINE’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival and speaks with Michelle Bateman President of Little Brothers, Friends of the Elderly.

Episode # 144
Monday — Friday, June 18 – 22, 11:30am & 10:30pm
Saturday & Sunday, June 23 – 24, 10:30pm
David Perry chats with Vincent Fuqua, Commissioner of the San Francisco Gay Softball League and talks with Peter Gee and Raul Sinense, a couple challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Ten Percent is also available 24/7 through the “On Demand” Feature through your Comcast Cable Network. Choose “Get Local” and “Comcast Hometown” to access Ten Percent. Past shows may also be viewed online at www.comcasthometown.com.

Become a fan on Facebook: 10 Percent on Facebook

About 10 Percent

Comcast Hometown Network (CHN), Comcast’s regional cable network covering Northern and Central California, continues its commitment to quality original programming with Ten Percent, a weekly interview series that focuses on lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender (LGBT) issues. The half-hour show, created and hosted by long-time San Francisco media professional David Perry, airs on Channel 104, Mondays – Thursdays at 11:30am & 8pm and is available to all Comcast digital cable customers throughout Northern and Central California. Each episode will then be available online at www.comcasthometown.com as well as on Comcast’s popular ON DEMAND platform, which is free to Comcast digital customers. To view Ten Percent ON DEMAND, Comcast Digital Cable customers can tune to Channel 1 on their Digital Cable lineup or press the ON DEMAND button on their remote control, then click on the “Get Local” section, then click on “Comcast Hometown.”

“I jokingly call the show ‘Charlie Rose for the LGBT world,” said David Perry, Producer/Host of Ten Percent. “We may be only ten percent of the general population, in round numbers, but our issues are one hundred percent front-and-center in today’s world. Whether it’s the fight for marriage equality or debates about gay clergy or the right to serve openly in uniform, our issues are reflective of the world at large.”

“David has a well-known and unique voice that bridges many communities,” said Jason Holmes, Executive Producer at Comcast Hometown Network. “David’s talents and the launch of Ten Percent further enhance Comcast’s commitment to our communities and Comcast Hometown Network’s compelling, community-based regional programming,”

William T. Wiley to be Artist Guest of Honor at The San Francisco Fine Art Fair

May 17–20, 2012, at Fort Mason Center

“A Conversation with William T Wiley” hosted by Art Critic Dewitt Cheng Followed by Reception on Saturday, May 19, 5pm to 7pm

www.sffineartfair.com

8 May 2012 – San Francisco, CA: The San Francisco Fine Art Fair ((www.sffineartfair.com)) at Fort Mason Center’s Festival Pavilion, May 17–20, 2012, salutes William T. Wiley as the Artist Guest of Honor. The Fair presents a Public Installation Retrospective of selected works, titled “Anything Goes: The whit end wizdumb of William T. Wiley,” curated by DeWitt Cheng and presented courtesy of John Berggruen Gallery. An award ceremony and on-stage interview with Wiley and Cheng will take place in the Fair’s Theater on Saturday, May 19, from 5pm to 6pm. The talk will be followed by a reception for the artist in the VIP Lounge from 6pm to 7pm. These events are open to all attendees at the Fair. The San Francisco Fine Art Fair runs from Thursday, May 17, through Sunday, May 20, with preview receptions on Wednesday, May 16 to benefit Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The 2012 Fair also honors San Francisco arts patron Roselyne “Cissie” Swig with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

“It’s our pleasure to pay tribute to the long and inventive career of William T. Wiley as the Artist Guest of Honor,” said Rick Friedman, SF Fine Art Fair Director, “and to feature his works in the Fair’s Public Installation Retrospective.”

William T. Wiley’s works may be recognized for their visual puns and sly humor, yet guest curator DeWitt Cheng writes, “Despite their absurdist humor and visual inventiveness, they tackle big issues: the defoliation and pacification of Vietnam; apartheid, genocide, police abuse of power and political violence; offshore drilling and ocean desertification; fundamentalism and creationism; and the ‘old lie,’ glorifying and glamorizing war. … His mixture of art-history appropriations (Winslow Homer, Bosch, Breughel, Manet), cartoon surrogates (Mr. Unatural [sic] and Zenry) and comic patter create a cultural mashup that never settles into political correctness or hardens into esthetic amber, remaining unruly, alive, and undogmatic.”

A master of a broad range of media that includes drawing, painting, prints, tapestries, sculpture, film, performance, and pinball, William T. Wiley, now 75, first came to prominence in the Bay Area and nationally in 1960, while still a student at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute). That year, he was included in the “Young America Show” at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, and received his first solo museum exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Identified with the Bay Area “Funk Art” movement, Wiley’s idiosyncratic works soon garnered national and international attention.

William T. Wiley’s works were included in nationally prominent exhibitions, such as the Whitney Annuals (1967, 1968), and 1983 Whitney Biennial; “An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture” at the Museum of Modern Art, NY (1984); many other prestigious venues; and internationally at Dokumenta V (1972); the Venice Biennial (1972, 1980); in Amsterdam, Berne, Cologne, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Paris, and throughout Japan. Solo museum exhibitions also included SFMOMA (1981); San Francisco’s de Young Museum (1996); The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2005), and others. In 2009-10, The Smithsonian American Art Museum presented “What’s it All Mean?: William Wiley in Retrospect” (2009-10), which subsequently traveled to the Berkeley Art Museum. Reviewing the retrospective for the Wall Street Journal, Sidney Lawrence wrote of Wiley’s “skillfully drawn, pun-loaded and casually enigmatic work, often subverting modernism’s language of geometric abstraction and assemblage with a glut of personal meaning.”

William T. Wiley’s works are in public collections across the U.S. and abroad that include the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum at Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and locally in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Oakland Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Sacramento’s Crocker Art Gallery, and numerous other institutions. His works have long been represented in San Francisco by John Berggruen Gallery.

The San Francisco Fine Art Fair at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion (Marina Boulevard @ Buchanan Street) runs May 17 through May 20, 2012, with preview receptions on Wednesday, May 16, from 5:30pm-9:30pm benefiting Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Fair hours are Thursday, May 17–Saturday, May 19, 11am-7pm; Sunday, May 20, 11am-6pm. Individual tickets are $25 for one day; $40 for a four-day pass (May 17-20). Tickets for the Opening Preview Patron Party (We., May 16, 5:30pm-7pm) are $125, which includes a 4-day Pass. Tickets to the VIP Opening Reception (Wed., May 16, 7pm-9:30pm) are $75, which includes a 4-day Pass. www.sffineartfair.com. Facebook: www.facebook.com/SFFineArtFair ; Twitter: twitter.com/SFFineArtFaira

Artist-altered Bicycles Featured in “ArtBike” Exhibit and Auction at the 2012 San Francisco Fine Art Fair

SF Fine Art Fair, Largest Arts Fair on the West Coast, May 16–20 at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center


www.sffineartfair.com

4 May 2012 – San Francisco, CA: Since the Stone Age, humans have been fascinated with their wheels. This age-old fascination will be on full display at the 2012 San Francisco Fine Art Fair with a special exhibition and auction of artist-altered bicycles called “ArtBike,” to be unveiled on opening night, May 16. The third annual San Francisco Fine Art Fair takes place May 16-20, 2012, at Fort Mason’s Festival Pavilion (www.sffineartfair.com).

Described as “a poetic collaboration of artists, businesses, and the community working in concert towards a rewarding, valuable and entertaining experience,” by project manager Seb Hamamjian of Hamamjian Modern, “ArtBike” has pulled together artists, galleries, Rob Forbes’ Public Bikes, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, and the San Francisco Fine Art Fair for this innovative project. The sculptural bicycles on display will be auctioned during the fair, with proceeds to benefit the educational programs of the SF Bicycle Coalition.

The bikes, displayed in a circle on pedestals, will be unveiled on opening night by members of Verasphere’s drag queens led by David Faulk and Michael Johnstone. The exhibition and auction will run throughout the fair and end on Sunday, May 20, at 3pm.

“ArtBike” participating artists include Ken Kalman (George Krevsky Gallery, San Francisco); Gino Miles (Ten472 Contemporary Art, Nevada City); Michael Osborne (Hamamjian Modern, San Francisco); Gustavo Ramos Rivera collaborating with Kathryn Kain (Westbrook Gallery, Carmel); Klari Reis (Cynthia Corbett Gallery, UK); Moe Thomas (McLoughlin Gallery, San Francisco); and Cyrus Tilton (Vessel Gallery, Oakland).

Among the bikes on display is Ken Kalman’s winged “Chariot of Fire,” which refers to mythological messenger gods (Hermes, Mercury, the Thunderbird, and Ezekiel), who “rode like the wind.”

Klari Reis’s “Pedestal Bike” is a deconstruction embedded in a colorful multi-layer pedestal, with the manufactured object displayed as art and the base as her sculptural creation, an approach that plays with the definition of what is on exhibition. Reis’s unique method of pigmenting and painting with viscous epoxy polymer defines her immediately recognizable style.

Cyrus Tilton’s “Fossil Fuel” draws from the artist’s interests in anatomy and natural history, applied to forms found in the bicycle. “I see many similarities between the anatomy of a bicycle and that of an animal,” says Tilton, who was born and raised in the Alaskan wilderness northeast of Anchorage. Central to Tilton’s works are concepts of respect for nature, and questioning humanity’s relationship to nature and one another.

THE SAN FRANCISCO FINE ART FAIR

An unprecedented number of leading museums, arts and cultural organizations from throughout California and other regions have joined the third annual San Francisco Fine Art Fair. This year’s cultural partners include the San Francisco Arts Commission, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Modesto Art Museum, Napa Valley Museum, San Jose Tech Museum, Museum of Monterey, The Oakland Museum of California, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, and the Chinese Historical Society, among others from California and the Southwest. Presented in Fort Mason’s lavish 50,000 square foot Festival Pavilion overlooking San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, the fair will feature more than 90 galleries exhibiting 5,000+ works of art from over 400 artists.

The San Francisco Fine Art Fair will be held at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion (Marina Boulevard @ Buchanan Street), May 16 through May 20: Wednesday, May 16, 5:30pm – 9:30pm; Thursday, May 17, 11am – 7pm; Friday, May 18, 11am – 7pm; Saturday, May 19, 11am-7pm; Sunday, May 20, 11am-6pm. Individual tickets are $25 for one day; $40 for all four days. Preview on May 16, tickets are $125 for 5:30pm — 7pm and $75 for 7pm – 9:30pm; which includes a four day pass to the Fair. www.sffineartfair.com. Facebook: www.facebook.com/SFFineArtFair ; Twitter: twitter.com/SFFineArtFaira