ruth laskey: 7 weavings

i ran into a ruth laskey yesterday when we were both scoping out the free sandwiches at the easter egg hunt at work (please, i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried). she's one of those folks that i'm acquainted with on various levels, i've been admiring her art work since she was my senior in grad school, i managed to convince her to do our first show at the spare room project (she was very gracious, there was little convincing), and we've been library co-workers for several years, although despite sharing the same position for a while, we almost never actually see one another.


(detail of Twill Series (Avocado) via ruthlaskey.com)

anyways, i think she's great. i think her work is great. she a weaver via being a painter that began weaving to, for all intents and purposes, make her own canvases. she considers the structure that holds the paint in the same care and regard as the paint itself, and then the paint evolved into embroidery and then the image, the pattern evolved into self contained weavings. her current work is a series entitled "twill" in which she hand dyes the threads used to create the geometric patterns in the weavings. the results are quite subtle and unassuming, there is a slow and delicate tenuousness between the weightlessness of the weaving as a whole and the weight of the image, the color, the angles, woven through.
ruth has a solo show opening up this friday at ratio 3, and if you're around san francisco, you should most definitely be there. i know i will. the show is up until April 26, so you've got no excuse to miss it. and if you're not in sf, check out her website: www.ruthlaskey.com.


(detail of Twill Series (Cloud Grey) via ruthlaskey.com)

casual labor

alex clausen (image via kala.org)

a week or two ago i stopped by the 'casual labor' show at the kala art institute in berkeley after getting a lovely woodgrain show card in the mail from my friend alex (who we've been courting for our little art space). i'd never been to kala, although i'd been meaning to check it out because there is always interesting stuff coming out of their artist in residence program. the space was amazing, full of beautiful well-used and well-loved printing equiptment, and rampant with creative energy. you walk through the studio space to get to the gallery (which is what you'll be doing in our new set-up, on a much much tinier scale), which i liked very much, and thought really suited the work in the show.


zachary royer scholz (image via kala.org)

the show seemed to me to be much about doing and less about being and therefore, my cup of tea entirely. it featured Alex Clausen, Zachary Royer Scholz, and Kirk Stoller, all somewhat rough and tumble investigations about the curiousness of space and objects. i was inspired by the motion in the work, there was nothing static in the show, it made for a sort of tension in the air between the pieces.
'casual labor' is up til march 29, and if you're in the bay area, you should stop by. more info is on the kala website.


kirk stoller (image via kala.org)

free the net!

erin tuned me in to meraki a while back and we've been waiting with excited anticipation for it to reach us so we can expunge greedy old comcast from our lives. 'free the net' is meraki's project to create a community based network (similar to a co-op) in which they provide free signal repeaters to people willing to install them in their home. with each repeater the signal creeps a little farther and slowly the network blankets the whole city. i believe sf is the first city they're trying it with, but judging that it works (which it is, so far) they plan on expanding exponentially. pretty cool, especially after the san francisco free internet let down of the last few years.

erin mcelroy

if you're incredibly lucky, like i clearly am, then the smallest circle in the concentric ripples of inspiration that surround you, is your home. maybe if you've done something good in a past life it's right down the hall or maybe you even share a garage studio and a bathroom darkroom and run a humble gallery project together. oh yes folks, i start my search for stimulus and amazement in the breast pocket of my t-shirt, close to my heart, and there's erin. and she's not just my first feature because she's near and dear, she's brilliant and she works hard for the money.

erin mcelroy is a photographer and a painter and a photographer/painter although she's up to her elbows in a handful of other things as well. Her work is a something of a merger between personal relationships and cosmic occurences, the geometry of the manmade and the soft folds of the organic, the history of wood and found object canvas and the new breath of image and paint, and a dense, structural black with a soft dreamlike color palette. The following is her own statement which I stole off of her website: www.erinmcelroy.net. She also has an opening tomorrow night at City Art Gallery on Valencia in the Mission if you're in SF.







“Decision, the moment of saying yes, is prompted by something deeper; recognition.” – Jeanette Winterson, Weight

What triggers the release of my camera’s shutter is barely based upon the isolated moment that my subject exists in; it based upon something much older, something that has already occurred,something already vaguely recognized through my own eyes. They say that we only dream about things that we have already allowed into our brains, and in this way my photographs are snapshots of flickering collective memoir. As I go about my daily life, chance-sightings whispering bells of familiarity occur. Sometimes it’s the desperate look in a stranger’s eyes; sometimes it’s the angle between a blade of grass and a friend’s shoe, but either way, it’s familiar. Whether I print the photograph directly or I go on to work through it as a photo-transfer painting, my own processing of the subject’s familiarity surfaces first and foremost. -Erin McElroy

building resources

i forgot to mention earlier, but one of the true delights of the weekend was treating myself to a totally unnecessary trip to building resources, a scrap/re-use yard in bayview that always has something that i don't need, but have to have. this time it was more wood cabinet knobs (of which i have quite a collection going and no plan in sight of what to use them for). i tried for the double whammy of treating myself to SCRAP also, but my splurging plan was foiled when they were not open for an reason which was undisclosed on their cardboard "we're closed today" sign. what i love most about these places, other then my wholly consuming addiction to junk, cast-offs and re-use, is that they're in these industrial parts of town that i otherwise never really go to, and there is something about these locations that feels like the end of the earth, solitary and expansive, like nothing and everything could happen there. i mean SCRAP is usually surrounded by garbage and building resources is built on some of the more toxic land in san francisco, but i guess when you are a person that tries to make useful and beautiful things out of waste and junk, then you try to see desolation as possibility. which makes me hopeful because it must be something of how these amazing places came to be.