In the Dark: Three Considerations
Niall McClelland, Joe Bender, and Francesca Pastine
group show, February 12th - March 26th, 2011
@Eleanor Harwood Gallery

We've been fan of Vancouver based Niall McClelland for years now. He was in our 7.5 anniversary show in 2007. We're pleased to see his showing currently in San Francisco... Opening night pics: Francesca Pastine

Work by Niall McClelland

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Got an email from Jeff who's working on a project of installing 20 lil' doors about San Francisco in "impossible locations" created by artists from around the country. --> I know I'd love to stumble across this door after a late night and ponder its existence.

Guess we should be on the look out for weee people who are very protective of what's ever behind their doors.

I just installed the first of about 20 doors created by artists from around the country and sent to me for installation around San Francisco. This first one was the first that I designed and made. Below is the proposition that was sent out as a call for the work.

"The idea is to install small doors, unexplained portals, throughout the city. To start, in San Francisco. These doors would be scaled down to a size that is cognitively possible but whimsically improbable. Maybe 15-25 inches or so. Pet door sized. I don’t imagine them to be operable, but the more detailed in appearance the better.

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Jerroen Blok has been a Free Fridayz participant for years always submitting great drawings. This Dutch artist is currently showing new works in Amsterdam at GO Gallery till March 6th. Below are some photos from the opening of Vroeger Later back in December.

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Derek Weisberg returns to Anno Domini (San Jose, CA) for his second solo exhibition with a brand new body of ambitious and courageous work. Weisberg continues to examine his own life and the world around him, attempting to answer questions, which have plagued humans since the beginning of time.

February 4 - March 19, 2011

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Artist Maggie Haas was born and raised in New Hampshire. She moved to San Francisco to attend graduate school at CCA, where she got her MFA in 2010. Maggie recently let me poke around her studio in the Mission, where we chatted about west coast utopian ideals, hardware stores, and quilting. -Interview by Suzanne Stroebe

MH: I'm a huge fan of Northern Renaissance interiors... that moment when painters (and paint) got really good and a little secularized, an artists turned their eyes to world around them. And then, reaching forward in time and backward in sentiment, I've been returning to the work of the Pre-Rapahelites over and over, since I was a child. Their sense of color and omnivorous observation of the natural word led to some really hallucinatory looking work sometimes, and they also marked a period when craft, idiosyncratic handmade functional objects, was being considered and celebrated. I spend a lot of time looking at interior design and home-improvement books and blogs, sometimes gleefully but often with a lot of eye-rolling, too. And Minimalism is something I think about quite a lot, both as an ideal, and as something to be fought with and complicated.

MH: There was a clear moment when I was an undergraduate when I realized how much the preparatory drawings for sculptures mattered to my work, the diagrams and blueprints, as it were. More recently blueprints and plans have come to be a real part of the content of my work, too, not just a drawing style. My work is concerned with the way we build things, especially the way amateur builders build, and so I spend a lot of time thinking about the color palettes of lumber yards (all those 2x4s stained red or blue at the end!) and hardware stores (safety colors, neon colors, the nice periwinkle of the chalk used to snap level lines, grays, purples and greens of different grades of drywall). It's exciting to approach those tools and materials with an eye to pleasure as well as practicality.

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Cecca Morrone hailing from Chicago via Nagoya, Japan studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago emailed over some of her "objects" work. Fitting on such a cold day in SF today. View Cecca's website for more: ceccamorrone.com

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A great video of Kid Zoom working on his show This City Will Eat Me Alive in NYC - Enjoy our interview w/ Kid Zoom & our Studio Visit.

Did we spy a "The Muska" sighting?

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Wasn't going to write an intro for Ron English because if you're here at Fecal Face you should already be well aware of this iconic artist. If you need to know, read his bio below.

Thanks to Daniel Rolnik (danielrolnik[at]@gmail.com) for conducting this great interview for Fecal Face.

One of the most prolific and recognizable artists alive today, Ron English has bombed the global landscape with unforgettable images, on the street, in museums, in movies, books and television. English coined the term POPaganda to describe his signature mash-up of high and low cultural touchstones, from superhero mythology to totems of art history, populated with his vast and constantly growing arsenal of original characters, including MC Supersized, the obese fast-food mascot featured in the hit movie “Supersize Me,” and Abraham Obama, the fusion of America’s 16th and 44th Presidents, an image widely discussed in the media as directly impacting the 2008 election. Other characters carousing through English’s art, in paintings, billboards, and sculpture include three-eyed rabbits, udderly delicious cowgirls and grinning skulls, blending stunning visuals with the bitingly humorous undertones of America’s Premier Pop Iconoclast.

Trial and error. I had a gig painting landscapes a long time ago at one of those production houses where they taught me a lot of techniques. I also worked for a few different artists, so I had to learn how to mimic their styles.

I did some paintings for Rohhny Decone, Larry Rivers, Marcus Darvy. When I first moved to New York in the 80’s I was a ghost painter. Yeah, it’s a good job to work and you get paid.

Oh yeah. It’s funny because I always get what I wish for, but it’s kind of like the old genie in a bottle thing – I wish that I could have people see all my paintings and the paintings I would make [for those artists] would end up in museums, it’s true. I always forgot to ask “could I sign them” but it’s not really your thing. It’s like if you go on tour with the Rolling Stones and you’re the bass player, you’re not really in the band and you don’t think you’re in the band –maybe after 30 years or so you think you’re in the band like Ron Wood [guitar]. It’s funny because it’s someone else’s art, they’ve built their own language, and if you went to art school there’s a certain amount of that stuff that you can just do. Their art was more about their concepts and I did it because I wanted to learn a lot of techniques.

Well Mark was probably the ultimate situation because initially there were only 3 other painters working with me, but later there were like 40. Guys were coming in from Russia and Poland, people who were trained as master painters and knew all the technique. And even from day one Clark Decarro was a classically trained painter from Canada, so he showed me how to make glazes, but it’s interesting to do something with someone sitting right next to you and where you can say “Why is this not working” and they’ll be respond by saying “here’s what you’re doing wrong”. They’re all there with you and I think that’s the best learning environment - when you can’t overcome something and there’s someone to show you how to do it right there. There are always bumps in the road, eventually you can figure it out on your own, you can read books, there are a lot of things you can do. If you want to get somewhere you’re going to get there, but it’s always nice to have a set of directions.

I have two assistants. One assistant comes in one day a week and stretches the canvasses and the other guy pretty much does everything - like all those weird houses with the comics all over them that are in the paintings. He puts together the houses and then puts the comic book collages on them and then he’ll set up the shot. When we were at Art Basil last week painting a big mural he took lined up and shook all the spray paint.

I mean all that time it takes to do that stuff slows us down and the fact that they are doing all that for us is just amazing.

Sometimes they put too much pressure in the cans, so you turn them upside down and relieve some of the pressure. If you turn them upside down it just sprays, it doesn’t release the paint. And, as soon as you’re done spray painting you turn the can upside down so paint wont dry in the tip and ruin it. It’s also good if you want to do fine lines to make the pressure [in the can] super low. You never quit learning, you just don’t.

One of my friends learned a lot of his techniques from reading books, but I’m just not much of a reader.

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More then once I have found myself running around New York City with this crazy kid calling himself Gaia. It is usually by the time documenting has taken the jump seat to the nights off handed antics. Never the less-> when Andrew hit me up with a solid photo batch of his latest street adventure down in his own neck of the woods I was more then eager to send them off to pasture.

This Big Cock is located on Howard St. in Baltimore. The image is a rooster messenger cradling the head of St. John as depicted by Guido Reni. My question to you Sir Gaia, "How can you depict such and image, knowing the Blackest Sabbath is coming for you?" Yeah, it is one of those had to be there moments. Regardless, have a look as Gaia is an incredible illustrator that just happens to play in the streets. -Manuel Bello

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Photo: Travis Jensen (San Francisco)

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Ryan Wallace Featured Solo
Hilary Pecis Project Room
February 12, 2011 — March 05, 2011
@Guerrero Gallery

Digital collages of found Google images from SF based Hilary Pecis making a comment on our internet age. Brooklyn based Ryan Wallace mixed media works and paintings.

Really liked the one on the right from Ryan Wallace

Mike Giant and Corey Arnold

Digital collage from Hilary Pecis

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Human Shark Attack - Sunday 2/13/11 - Pacifica beach 1:30pm

Photo: Betty Bigas

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