Serendipitous Art: Trash (March 9, 2016)

Trash on the street in San Francisco looked like art to me. Serendipitous art, unintended art.

For more unintended art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 132 (Santa Rosa)

Another new collage—one of a group from the past few weeks using new papers I've made—mostly in yellows, browns, oranges, and pink—although I've made some all-black and all-white sheets as well, these variously tainted with other colors, an effect achieved by deliberately not washing the glass plate they were printed from.

February 17, 2016—Untitled Collage No. 132 (Santa Rosa), using monoprinted papers. Image size: 18.8 x 26.0cm. Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed and dated on the reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, use the "Art I'm Making" tab here to the right, or visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Rain: Heavy Rain Added 2.85 inches to our Total (March 5, 2016)

Heavy rain throughout the day on March 5 left 2.85 inches of new rain in the rain gauge the following morning--a very welcome addition. That brings the total at my location to 22.00 inches for the 2015-2016 rain year, which runs from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016. 28.36 inches is the historical average for March 6, so we are still more than 8 inches below normal, but a little more rain is forecast this week. Despite the deficit, we're better off than last year, I'd think, as it pretty much stopped raining completely last year at the end of January. The rain appears to have been fairly variable from place to place. Last time I checked, the official total for Santa Rosa was slightly higher than the total at my location, while the total reported at the website I look at to get the historical totals reports only 19.88 inches as of today. A variation of 1-2 inches even in an area as small as Santa Rosa is not unusual.

[Update: As of 9:30PM on the 6th, we'd had another 0.75 inches, bringing the total to 22.75 inches—and it's still raining.]

[Update: Drizzle and light rain has continued. By today, the morning of March 9, we've had another 0.50 inches of rain, bringing the total at my location to 23.25 inches.]

Art I'm Looking At: Art at Stanford

I recently spent a day at Stanford University. I went to see the Art-o-Mat® that's supposed to be on campus, but, despite two hours of looking—questioning telephone operators, librarians, and people in the art building and at the Cantor Arts Center—I had to give up. I imagine it's there somewhere, but apparently its exact location is a guarded secret. The Art-o-Mat website mentions "Residential Services." Their officers were closed. A subsequent phone enquiry so far has been ignored.

After giving up, I went into the Cantor Arts Center thinking I'd look at the permanent collection quickly,  but immediately I got sidetracked by a show of mannerists prints. Prints and paintings of this period usually aren't my sort of thing—but I was quickly drawn into the show (Myth, Allegory, and Faith) and ended up seeing it all, in detail.

Detail is the right word. Myth, Allegory, and Faith includes etchings, woodcuts, chiaroscuro woodcuts, and engravings, but most of the prints on show were the latter—and engravings often of astonishing precision. Magnifying glasses, tethered to the walls, were provided to facilitate seeing the finest of lines, a nice touch. It's hard to imagine the time and effort required to produce this kind of work. I enjoyed nearly every piece there was to see, but favorites included: David Beheading Goliath (1540), an engraving by Giovanni Battista Scultori (1503-1575), shown below; Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Grows Cold (1600), by Jan Saenredam (Dutch, 1565-1607), shown left; Saturn (c. 1540, printed 1604), a four-block chiaroscuro woodcut by Giuseppe Niccolo Vicentino (Italian, active 1540s), after Pordenone; Neptune and Thetis (after 1551 to 1580), an engraving by René Boyvin (French, 1530-1598) after Léonard Thiry; The Three Fates (1538-1540), an engraving by Pierre Milan (French, active 1540 to around 1557); The Rest on the Return from Egypt (1575), an engraving by Cornelis Cort (Dutch, 1533 to before 1578), after Federico Barocci; and Venus and Cupid (1505-1536), an etching by Daniel Hopfer (German, 1470-1536), among many others. The luminous quality achieved in the engravings in particular was startling. Nearly every print included the human form—notoriously difficult to capture accurately in any medium, particularly when foreshortened. These artists have succeeded, using overlapping engraved lines that in some instances wrap themselves around contours with such natural grace and rightness that they beggar belief. Well worth the time. Through June 20, 2016.


I also saw an interesting group of drawings of the Battle of The Little Bighorn by one of its participants, one Chief Red Horse of the Minneconjou Lakota Sioux, who fought against Custer there, and a small (one-room) exhibition called Speed and Power, a rather disparate grouping of photographs from the Cantor Art Center's permanent collection. While the theme seemed a little forced, there were a few gems among them. I particularly enjoyed Mechanical Form 003 (2004) by Hiroshi Sugimoto (1948- ), shown here, and Satiric Dancer (1926), by André Kertész (1894-1985).

I had intended to look at the new Hopper and the Diebenkorn sketchbooks again at the Cantor Arts Center, but, with time running short and having seen them back in December, I headed next door to The Anderson Collection, in a low, modern building that looks closed even when it's not. I wanted to get a taste of the place to see if it was worth coming back to for a more leisurely look. Worth it? Yes.

The building (itself very interesting) houses only a portion of the personal collection of the Andersons (whoever they are—I didn't have time to find out*), who must be in the upper 1% of the 1%. Frankenthaler, Motherwell, Diebenkorn, Pollock, Guston, De Kooning, Nevelson, Rothko, Morris Louis, Wayne Thiebaud—many more. Just what's on display here would make a very fine museum of post-war modern art for a fairly large city, yet this is only one part of a much larger collection in the possession of a single family. I particularly enjoyed a black Louise Nevelson sculpture positioned directly across a passageway from a large set of black metal elevator doors—creating a pair of bookends—with an uncharacteristically dull De Kooning visible between them (the De Kooning one of the very few duds in the place.) Definitely worth another visit. Below is Wall Painting No. IV (1954), by Robert Motherwell (1915-1991).


*Following my visit, I looked at the website for The Anderson Collection.

Rain: A Little More Rain (February 3, 2016)

A little rain last night and today, mostly just drizzle, has added 0.25 inches of rain to our 2015-2016 precipitation total. More rain is on the way. So far, we stand at 19.15 inches at my location.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 131 (Santa Rosa)

Another new collage—one of a group I've made rapidly in the past two weeks , inspired by new papers I've made—mostly in yellow, brown, orange, and pink, but I've made some all-black and all-white sheets as well. This piece, more about form than color, uses the black sheets almost exclusively.

February 16, 2016—Untitled Collage No. 131 (Santa Rosa), using monoprinted papers. Image size: 10.8 x 19.5cm. Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed and dated on the reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Art I'm Looking At: Bonnard at The Legion of Honor

Pierre Bonnard, The Table (1925)
Tate Gallery, London

The Legion of Honor, in San Francisco, is now exhibiting a large group of works by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), the first major show of the artist's work on the West Coast in 50 years, according to the Legion's website. The show is Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia.

The layout is roughly, although not strictly, chronological. The first spaces focus on early work, generally from around 1890—the artist's Nabi period. The latest pieces are from the mid-1930s or so, but most of the work is arranged thematically. One grouping is mostly nudes, another mostly interiors. Later rooms focus on large mural-like pieces Bonnard painted for patrons.

Pierre Bonnard, Table Corner (1935)

Bonnard's career was a long one. In terms of artistic movements, his working life spanned late Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Pointillism, Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Futurism, Surrealism, the rise of pure abstraction in the Western artistic tradition, Art Deco, and Cubism, not to mention coinciding with a period of great evolution in photography. Yet, Bonnard always did his own thing. Although his work is clearly of its time (sometimes reminiscent of Matisse or Dufy), although his instincts were aligned with those of the Post-impressionists and the Symbolists, and despite a strong impact on his sensibilities from Japanese art, he never was tempted to experiment with Cubist deformation or to embrace abstraction, even as those two trends began to dominate modern art in the West. His favorite subjects remained richly colored interiors, somewhat mysterious nudes in interiors, and landscape and lush vegetation. Although some of Bonnard's work has strong abstract qualities—in this show, notably Table Corner (1935)—he never completely gave in to the abstract impulse. Ultimately, he was a sensualist.

Pierre Bonnard Nude Before the Mirror (detail; 1931)
Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna at Ca' Pesaro, Venice

The brushstroke is always evident. There is no attempt at strict realism, there is no attempt to hide the hand of the artist, to create an illusion of reality. His technique is thoroughly modern if we understand modern to have begun with Impressionism. His technical proclivities could be quite contradictory; he was at once fond of thin washes that let canvas show through the paint and of leaving areas of canvas entirely untouched—this transparency creating an effect suggestive of watercolor—while happily applying heavy dabs of paint right from the tube in other areas, or applying thick, creamy layers of paint for effect. Nude Before the Mirror (1931), on loan from Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna at Ca' Pesaro, in Venice, provides an excellent example of the transparency. Shown here is a detail of what appear to be curtains at a window behind the nude figure (above). In contrast, in The Table (1925), on loan from the Tate Gallery, London, (top of this page), Bonnard's impasto nicely suggests slabs of creamy cheese and shrimp on crackers and his lemons glow with thick oval smears of cadmium yellow. The slatherings of Wayne Thiebaud come to mind.
      

Pierre Bonnard, Woman Dozing on a Bed (1899)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The nudes are somewhat unsettling. They are always ambivalent—simultaneously a celebration of the female body and expressive of uneasiness. Woman Dozing on a Bed (1899), from the Musée d'Orsay, depicting the artist's lover (and later wife) Maria Boursin (also known as Marthe de Méligny), stretched out on a bed, is something of an exception. It seems a comparatively straightforward record of post-coital indolence (the painting is also known as The Indolent Woman). The painting captures lust renewed by the sight of lust temporarily slaked. It is the most purely erotic painting among the nudes. It brings Modigliani to mind in its apparent motivation, if not in style. Yet this painting, too, has deeper nuances. Stylistically, it evokes Edvard Munch, and no 20th century artist was better at expressing anxiety about sex and desire than Munch. A cat is curled up in the shadow of the model's hair. Everywhere there are cats.

Pierre Bonnard, Nude in the Bathtub (1925)
Tate Gallery, London

Some of Bonnard's later nudes seem more relaxed, as if the artist decided it's better in the end to celebrate sensuality (Woman Dozing on a Bed is an early work—among Bonnard's first nudes) even if he can never allow himself (or us) to be entirely at ease. Although the unsettling effects I speak of are real—created by veiled faces, turned-away poses, odd perspectives, and startling truncations—simultaneously there is much beauty in the nudes and their settings. In some of these paintings, color, surface pattern, and the female form manage to appear more important than oddities of composition, and, subordinated to the figure, they enhance rather than detract from sensual qualities. In others, however, it's harder to make a case for pure sensuality. Bonnard is paradoxical. Nude in the Bathtub (1925), from the Tate, London, is a case in point. The figure is cut off at the hips, partially submerged in a bathtub that appears lifted several feet off the floor—in the room but not of the room. Another figure, apparently male, perhaps the artist, enters from the left. Time seems to have stopped. It is a pregnant pause. The Bathtub (below), also from 1925 and in the Tate London collection, is similar.

Pierre Bonnard, The Bathtub (1925)
Tate Gallery, London

Pierre Bonnard, Marthe in the Bath, (c. 1908-1910)

Other highlights of the show include a group of rarely seen self-portraits and photographs by Bonnard, mostly small (about  2 x 2.5 inch) snapshots of friends and family, including travel photos. These small photos are modern prints from the original negatives. They're probably contact prints (printed at the same size as the negative), although enlarged in the exhibition catalog (and here). Wall text gives no information about size, but goes out of its way to point out that these were snapshots, that Bonnard would not have considered them artistic work. Nevertheless, a clear sense of composition is apparent in all the images, and one, Marthe in the Bath, a nude of Marthe de Méligny, with its ambiguous foreground and motion-blurred face, has all the qualities of the painted nudes.

The large mural-sized works that close the show include two of special interest, a pair of works commissioned by art critic George Besson for his Paris apartment. The first, completed in 1912, is a daytime scene. The second, from 1928, a full 16 years later, is a night scene (shown here). Both depict La Place Clichy, in Paris, as seen from inside a brasserie. Bonnard certainly loved cadmium yellow—and cats.

Pierre Bonnard, La Place Clichy (1928)

A large number of the paintings on display are from The Musée d'Orsay, in Paris, the Tate, London, and the National Gallery, in Washington D.C., and from other museums I've visited on multiple occasions. Despite that, and, although I've always admired Bonnard's work, I can't remember seeing a single piece in this show before. Everything seemed fresh. There are more than 70 works on display, but the galleries have been generously allocated. Nothing seems crowded. There is just enough to be deeply satisfying without causing fatigue. Notable for the quality of the work and for its breadth, going well beyond Bonnard's Nabi period, Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia runs at the Legion of Honor through May 15, 2016.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 130 (Santa Rosa)

A new collage—one of a group I've made rapidly in the past 10 days or so, inspired by a set of new papers I've made—mostly in yellow, brown, orange, and pink, but I've made some all-black and all-white sheets as well.

February 16, 2016—Untitled Collage No. 130 (Santa Rosa), using monoprinted papers. Image size: 14.2 x 15.6cm. Matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed and dated on the reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Places I'm Visiting: Art-o-Mat® at the San Carlos Public Library

On a trip into San Francisco to see the Bonnard show now on at The Legion of Honor , I took a quick detour down to San Carlos to see the Art-o-Mat® in the San Carlos Public Library. This one is very similar to the one at the Exploratorium, which I visited last week, but it's a different color (brownish-orange rather than red). It has an added box on the side that accepts $5 bills, again like the Exploratorium example.

This time I chose a small flipbook made from barcodes. The subject of the piece I got turned out to be Bruce Lee, the work of Scott Blake, who seems to like to make images out of barcodes. The little flip book zooms in on Barcode Bruce Lee, "a digital mosaic made entirely of barcodes from movie DVDs the Chinese martial artist appeared in."

This is the fourth Art-o-Mat® I've seen so far. There are eleven in California, 142 or so nationwide. I hope to visit the one on the Stanford University campus next. An Art-o-Mat® is a vintage cigarette machine converted to dispensing art rather than cigarettes. For more about the Art-o-Mat®, see this post.

Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms--Tulips, Daffodils, Fruit Trees, and Rhododendrons (Late February 2016)

A lot is going on in the garden at this time of year. Our two-toned daffodils bloomed on February 20. They're always a little later than the regular yellows daffodils. Our dwarf peach tree started blooming on February 15, the dwarf nectarine a day later. February 23 brought the first blooms on the last of the species tulips that have survived in the garden (many were eaten by ground squirrels, and the species tulips don't seem to live that long--nor do they spread much). They are a very cheery early spot of bright pink and yellow in the garden at this time of year. On the same day, the first flowered opened on the "Noyo Dream" Rhododendron on the side of the house—always the first rhododendron to bloom.

The Cocktail Glass Collection: High Tide Cocktails, San Francisco

In San Francisco recently I happened to drive by The High Tide, a bar at the corner of Jones and Geary. It has an interesting neon cocktail glass sign. I didn't see it at night, but I suspect the lights allow the head of the arrow to light up to become the top of the cocktail glass. In any case, an interesting custom sign.

For more, use the "Cocktail Glass Collection" tab to the right at the top of the page.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 129 (Santa Rosa)

New collage, February 15, 2016—Untitled Collage No. 129 (Santa Rosa), using monoprinted papers. Image size: 14.3 x 13.2cm. Matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed and dated on the reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Places I'm Visiting: The Art-o-Mat® at San Francisco's Exploratorium

The Exploratorium moved from its old location at the Palace of Fine Arts to Pier 15 on the Embarcadero a couple years back. I hadn't visited the new site before. The display area has been greatly expanded, it seems. Short on time, I decided to go in another time, when it wouldn't be necessary to rush. Mainly, I had wanted to see the Art-o-Mat® there, anyway.

The art vending machine at The Exploratorium turned out to be in the Exploratorium shop, which is accessible without paying the entry fee. I bought a piece of art (as well as a T-shirt showing the periodic table of elements and a little electric robot kit that draws random patterns with pens).

An Art-o-Mat® is a vintage cigarette machine converted to dispensing art rather than cigarettes. This is the third one I've visited of 11 in California. For more about the Art-o-Mat®, see this post.

Serendipitous Art: Reflected Window Light (February 18, 2016)

Light from the silvered windows of a building in San José made this pattern of light and dark on an adjacent building. Unintended art.

For more unintended art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 128 (Santa Rosa)

I finished a new collage on February 14—Untitled Collage No. 128 (Santa Rosa), this one using both monoprinted and painted papers. Image size: 17.6 x 12.1cm. Matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed and dated on the reverse. Signed on the mat.

[Update: This image was subsequently sold to Imagery Estate Winery and is in the winery's permanent collection. It appeared in 2017 on the label of their 2016 Muscat de Canelli.]

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Rain: Rain Again (February 17-18, 2016)

We had the first new rain today, February 17, since February 2. By afternoon 0.45 inches had accumulated and it was still raining early into the morning of the 18th. The total was 17.65 inches on February 2, which means we are now over 18 inches, but rain is in the forecast for the next day or two.

[Update: By the morning of February 18 (that is, by the time I awoke on the 18th), there was 0.90 inches of new rain in the rain gauge. That brings our 2015-2016 total to 18.55 inches at my location in Santa Rosa, although other stations are reporting somewhat less. The historical average for February 18 in Santa Rosa is 24.53 inches, so, the two-week dry spell that just ended set us back considerably. We are six inches behind normal again. What happened to El Niño?]

[Update: More rain on the night of the 18th and into the 19th added 0.35 inches. So, as of 5:00PM on the 19th, our 2015-2016 total stood at 18.90 inches (at my location; some local media have reported a little over 20 inches.]

Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms—Pink Flowering Plum, Golden Currant, "Dapple Dandy" Pluot

I belatedly report on some of the plants that have recently started blooming in the garden. February 5 brought the first blooms this year on the pink flowering plum behind the house (Prunus blireana) on the golden currant bush (Ribes aureum). The pluot "Dapple Dandy" (top) began blooming on February 11 this year.

"Dapple Dandy" bloomed on February 5, 15, 4, 2, 23, and 3 in 2009 to 2014, so a first bloom date of February 11 is neither early nor late.

The plum has bloomed on February 17, 11, 2, and 15 in past years, so February 5 is on the early side but within the normal range.

The golden currant has bloomed as early as February 10 (in 2011) and as late as March 5 (2013), so a first bloom date of February 5 is somewhat earlier than usual.

Places I'm Visiting/Art I'm Looking At: Aline Smithson at The Rayko Photo Center

I visited the Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco yesterday for the first time, a place I've known about for a couple of years but never quite made it to. I wanted to see the current show, but also wanted to see the Art-o-Mat® at Rayko, one of several in the Bay Area, and one of 11 in California. I've long had a vague idea it would be fun to visit them all. This is the second I've seen in person. (An Art-o-Mat® is a vintage cigarette machine converted to dispensing art rather than cigarettes. For more about the Art-o-Mat®, see this post.)

The Photo Center has camera displays (some for show, some for sale), formal gallery space, some informal space that was showing student work, a large selection of the work of local photographers for sale, and rental studio space and darkrooms (both digital and analog), as well as work areas for mounting and matting prints. The center has a regular schedule of classes. Virtually everything to do with photography is here. There is even a vintage photo booth in the space.

Among the photographs for sale, I particularly liked work by Ryuten Paul Rosenblum, Cherie Mayman, and Nicolo Sertorio. I was impressed by Ella Dean among the student photographers. Cherie Mayman's piece was a blurry, dreamy platinum print of what looked like bottles suspended in the air.

The main show was Self and Others, work by Aline Smithson from a number of different series. A few of the images are black and white. Most are large color prints. The various series—portraiture broadly defined for the most part—seemed united by a fondness for large, mostly unarticulated areas of bold color and an isolated subject, often looking right at the camera or just off camera, although a series entitled Arrangement in Green and Black: Portrait of the Photographer's Mother is a set of 21 plays on Whistler's famous portrait of his mother, all imitating that work by using the photographer's mother seated sideways to the picture plane against a plain background (pale green and black in this case) with a painting hanging on the wall behind. The subject is flamboyantly dressed, the attire very different from the drab colors Whistler's mother wears. The paintings on the wall are likewise a sharp departure from the grey and palest beige of the print on the wall in Whistler's painting, yet each of Smithson's hand-colered images is anchored by the strength of Whistler's simple composition.

Selections from the series Hollywood at Home included one of my favorite pieces in the show Red Nails and Daisies (left). In this series, Smithson, who grew up in Hollwood, has posed models in allusion to the staged photos of Hollywood stars in their homes that were popular in the 1940s and 1950s. In her blurb about the series, Smithson says "In a reality-TV society where celebrity and stardom is possible without talent or reason, the idea that anyone can become a star has indeed become a reality." The song "Hooray for Hollywood" comes to mind. Although my reproduction here fails to capture the subtlety of the lavender of the plastic flowers in the bathing cap, it should give some sense of how well Smithson has captured the color of the photography of the period.

Most of the photos in the show, however, are from a series called Revisiting Beauty, portraits of young women between the age of 14 and 17 "on the cusp of womanhood and not  fully aware of their own loveliness," as Smithson puts it (a detail of one image is shown at left). Each of the young women is photographed against a strongly colored backdrop enhanced with landscape images from California or China, although these landscape elements are so subtly integrated that it's easy to miss them altogether. There are allusions here to the entire history of formal portraiture, particularly painted portraiture. Beside the beauty of the women themselves, the most striking element in Revisiting Beauty is the use of color. There is an alluring simplicity and directness of color that goes very well with the simple dignity of the sitters and a not-quite-acknowledged hint of their sexual appeal. According to the wall tags, Smithson sees her portraiture as collaborative and her portrait series taken together as a kind of autobiography. Well worth a look. Self and Others runs through February 29, 2016.

The next show at Rayko Photo Center will be The Ninth Annual Plastic Camera Show, opening March 9 and running through April 29. Opening reception on the first day of the show, March 9, 2016.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 127 (Santa Rosa)

My most recent collage. A small piece.

Untitled Collage No. 127 (Santa Rosa). January 30, 2016. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image size: 10.5 x 13.8cm. Matted to 11 x 14 inches. Signed and dated on reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Movies I'm Watching: Wings (1966)

The Criterion Collection streaming on Hulu Plus is a treasure. I don't watch the films available there as often as I should, but last night I randomly selected a Russian film called Wings (1966) that was a real treat. Beautifully filmed and acted. Storytelling at its best. Well worth the 84 minutes it runs. Made by Larisa Shepitko. Starring (if that's the right word—there is no Hollywood glitz here)—character actress Maya Bulgakova as a once-heroic Soviet fighter pilot now living a life of quiet desperation as a school principal.

Somehow, I found myself watching Hobson's Choice (1954) afterward—a beautifully restored print and another fine film. I noticed something funny in Hobson's Choice: a nuclear power plant cooling tower is visible in the background of one of the scenes. I've seen the film maybe five times and never noticed it before. The story is set in the age of the bustle—when the bustle was brand new in the world of feminine fashions—so, perhaps around 1870, long before nuclear reactors....

Photo from The Criterion Collection website.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 126 (Santa Rosa)

Yet another new collage from the past week.... I'm trying to keep to the disciplined pace I set for myself two years ago--on average, one finished piece a week.

Untitled Collage No. 126 (Santa Rosa). January 23, 2016. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper (sandpaper), collage. Image size: 23.6 x 11.4cm. Matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed and dated on reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms—Yellow Daffodils (January 31, 2016)

Our yellow daffodils began blooming on January 31 this year. That's a tiny bit on the early side. It's the first time since I began keeping track that they've opened in January—although I'm missing data for a couple of years. They bloomed on February 3 in 2015, February 4 in 2013, February 2, in 2011, and February 5 in 2009.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 125 (Santa Rosa)

Untitled Collage No. 125 (Santa Rosa). January 22, 2016. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image size: 10.7 x 10.3cm. Matted to 11 x 14 inches. Signed and dated on reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Art I'm Looking At: Deborah Salomon and Lisa Beerntsen on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi

I'm pleased to announce the upcoming show on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi. We'll be showing paintings (oil and watercolors) by Lisa Beerntsen and collages by Deborah Salomon. The new show is entitled Facets: Collage, watercolors, and oil paintings by Lisa Beerntsen and Deborah Salomon. Lisa Beerntsen’s delicately colored paintings are suggestive of mineral formations and complex organic molecules. Deborah Salomon’s subtle collages of found material are overlaid with multi-faceted forms that reflect a life-long interest in crystal structures. Two Sonoma County artists take a faceted approach to space. On the Art Wall at Shige Sushi, 8235 Old Redwood Highway, Downtown Cotati, 94931. February 2 through April 3, 2016. Opening reception Monday, February 8, 2016, 5:30Pm to 7:30PM. Light refreshments served. Hope to see you there.

For more information about current and upcoming shows on The Art Wall, visit The Art Wall website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/artwallatshige/

Wines I'm Making: 2014 Cabernet Bottled

I finally got around to bottling our 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc (on January 24). We made only 25 bottles—but that's more than the vines yielded in 2015 (I expect to get only 15 bottles from the grapes harvested this past year). The wine is sound, but a little lacking in ripeness. The trees in the neighbor's yard have gotten so tall that the vines get too much shade now. I'm looking into ways to counteract that effect. I used the same label design as for the 2004, which was our first vintage.

Rain: More Rain (January 29, 2016)

A day of drizzle has so far added another 0.45 inches of rain to our annual total—which I will update as soon as the skies clear again. The total before this rain was 17.05 inches. The historical average for this date is 20.10 inches, so we'll still be below average even with this new rain, unless it pours overnight.

[It didn't pour with rain overnight, but I found 0.50 inches in the rain gauge on the morning of the 30th. So, our total is now 17.60 inches at my location—still about three inches below normal.]

[We got 0.05 inches on February 2, and more rain is expected overnight. The total is now at 17.65 inches at my location.]

Miscellaneous: Too Many Kinds of Beer?

Buying beer used to be so much easier. This is a view of about half of the beer selection at my local supermarket.

Art I'm Looking At: "Looking East" at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

By now, most anyone with more than a passing interest in art history understands there was a period of intense interest in Japan and things Japanese in the second half of the 19th century that had a profound impact on Western art and design. Because of that, I suspect "Looking East: How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gogh, and Other Western Artists" at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum will seem like a rehashing of the obvious to more than a few visitors. But don't let that keep you from going. There is much of interest on display, all from the collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston—well known for the quality of its Asian collections in particular.

The Boston museum must be bursting at the seams. I ran into a couple at the show from Boston who said its best pieces seem to be perpetually on loan somewhere (they came here to see work they rarely get to see at home), and, although I've never visited the Boston museum, I have seen many of its masterpieces on tour in Tokyo, including Van Gogh's 1888 portrait of the postman Joseph Roulin, which is now in the San Francisco show.

All the familiar points are made. Wall texts and a short video presentation touch upon the freshness of much of Japanese art and design to Western eyes when things Japanese began to arrive in quantity in Europe and the United States in the late 1850s. In particular, Western artists and designers were inspired by Japanese attention to scenes of everyday life; by bold compositions that often relied on large expanses of black, a lack of perspective and shading as illusionary techniques resulting in a flattening of the picture plane, use of strong patterning, sharp diagonals, and a fondness for boldly truncated scenes (and asymmetrical balance in general); by attention to detail in the applied arts; and by highly advanced full-color woodblock printing techniques—perhaps the most sophisticated in the world at the time. These and other ideas are illustrated by more than 170 Western and Japanese pieces, including examples of the decorative arts, paintings, prints, drawings, and textiles. Shown here is Kikukawa Eizan's Otome (c. 1818–23) and a painting by Cassatt (Caresse Maternelle, c. 1902), inspired by Japanese depictions of mothers with their children.    

Even if the ideas aren't new, the show is worth seeing for the individual works of art on display, and a worthwhile attempt has been made to show pieces side-by-side that illustrate the ideas discussed. In addition to the Van Gogh portrait, highlights include works by Monet, Cassatt, Toulouse Lautrec, Edvard Munch, and others, among Western artists; prints by Hiroshige, Hokusai, Eizan, Kunisada, and others, among Japanese print designers—including some of the finest individual impressions I've ever seen; some excellent decorative art; and, at the end of the show, a small group of photographs showing Japanese influence, including work by Karl Struss and Alvin Langdon Coburn. The latter's Tower Bridge (1909) is shown below.      

"Looking East: How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gogh, and Other Western Artists" closes February 7, 2016. At the Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St, San Francisco, CA 94102, (415)-581-3500. Open Tues—Sun  10AM—5PM. Closed Mondays. Prices for the show vary. Members get free admission. Children (12 and under) and SFUSD students are free. Adults $20 on weekdays, $25 on weekends. Seniors (65 and over), youths (13-17), and college students with ID are $15 on weekdays, $20 on weekends. These prices seem a bit steep, although they include general admission. That said, you'd need an entire day to see both the Japan show and the permanent collections, so, essentially, you're paying the entire amount to see the special exhibition–unless you move through galleries far more quickly than I do.

Art I'm Making: New Collage (January 25, 2016)

A new collage piece—Untitled Collage No. 124 (Santa Rosa). Finished January 21, 2016. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image size: 17.3 x 16.0cm. Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed and dated on the reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, use the Art I'm Making tab to the right, or visit my collage website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/.

Birds I'm Watching: White-faced Ibises at Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility

White-faced Ibises at Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility (in Petaluma) have been a hot topic among Sonoma county birders the past couple of weeks. A group of nine of these birds (rare in our area) has been hanging out there since early January. Today I got some good photos. Also of interest were a large number of Green-winged Teals, among other ducks.

For more information about bird watching in Sonoma County, see my Website Sonoma County Bird Watching Spots.