I jumped off the Black and Gold ferry on Labor Day at 9:03 AM PST into the mouth of the San Francisco Bay. With the Pacific to my back while bobbing up and down in the crisp cold waters that I used to call home, I thought about the concept of August. Taylor Swift sang about not too long ago, poets have written about the late summer month frequently, and august means respected and impressive. I think I had an impressive month in San Francisco. I have spent the last four weeks taking care of my friend’s dog, Cactus, an operatic Blue Heeler. It also was exactly a year since I completed the 211-miles of the John Muir Trail. I returned to the trailhead in Yosemite, gazed over the valley at Olmstead Point, and swam in the clear waters of Tenaya Lake. These landscapes speak to me in ways words generally fail. There is a feeling in Yosemite that I get unlike anywhere else for me. I think it might a genuine sense of freedom. For me, these places of wildness is where my creativity is nurtured, roots take hold, and I am able to return to the urban spaces ready to produce.

In terms of the art experience in San Francisco, I re-visited my old haunts and read poetry at City Lights, walked the Mission murals, and saw my drag queens perform. The uniqueness (often overlooked) of San Francisco is that it is small, intimate, and it has that feeling that “you kind of have to know” to seek it out. San Francisco expects something of you unlike other cities in the world (and particularly US cities), the viewer, to be engaged. It is not the moveable feast of Paris, it expects you to bring a hot dish to the party. Nor is it the cacophony of New York City, San Francisco expects you listen. This is why so often, people get faked out by it’s stunning natural beauty and miss it’s real pervasive culture. I have often said, I really did leave my heart in San Francisco, but my brain and body are in New York. San Francisco forces you to feel, forces you like an unstoppable tide to ask yourself a question, and maybe you might just experience something new. Like many expectations of humans, we disappoint, and we move on. You don’t ever have to answer a question you don’t want yourself to answer. I won’t ever move on from San Francisco because the gift it gave me whether I wanted it or not. I look closer because of San Francisco. And for that vision, I am grateful. ART

Black Gold: Untold Stories at Fort Point ⭐️⭐️Hot Take: Context is everything. Unexpected, Dialogue, Thoughtful Now on view through Nov 2 at Fort Point and organized by FOR-SITE. Black Gold: Stories Untold invited 17 contemporary artists and collectives to “reflect on the resilience, struggles, and triumphs of African Americans who lived in California from the Gold Rush to the Reconstruction period following the Civil War (c. 1849–1877).” I was moved by one sculpture by Demetrie Broxton, Eyes That Have Seen the Ocean Will Not Tremble at the Sight of the Lagoon, 2025. His use of beadwork and scale captured my imagination. You could see the sculpture glimmering from rooms away, which felt like a European museum with a strong sightline to the end of the fort. The textile was refreshing against the dark red of the brick. Having been to Fort Point before, seeing new sculptures take up this abandoned military structure was powerful. Similar feelings to Christo and Jeane-Claude’s work of temporary installations in the landscape. Their intention was by placing work in a context for a temporary amount of time makes you see that existing landscape differently and for the viewer, it is changed forever. It seems to me, this work was working similarly but more additive. These art objects are adding, not subtracting. These stories are widening a once narrow reporting of California history.

Ruth Asawa at SFMOMA ⭐️⭐️⭐️Hot Take: Comprehesive. Materiality. Inheritance.

Ruth Asawa deserved this kind of show while she was still alive and the de Young tried to give it to her in 2006. Yet, her children have done an amazing job at raising her national and global profile since her death in 2013 ( I was honored to have assisted with her memorial service and loved passing underneath her sculptures every day at work). Though, I have been disappointed with SFMOMA since it’s reopening after the pandemic. It doesn’t seem like they have command over their space and this lack of understanding shows. They closed the Botta skylights and made the the special exhibit space darker, in what it seems to be an effort to control the shadows made by the sculptures. But, by doing this - they suffocate the room and the feeling is unnatural. Instead of the general lightness and organic tendencies Asawa was working for, the sculptures weight the viewer down.

My favorite part of the installation was a re-creation of her home in Noe Valley with wood paneled ceilings of the 1970s and her working with her family. Ruth, at her core, was a teacher. And teachers don’t just teach the children they are assigned. They teach their children, their neighbors, their politicians, their businesses, and us. Ruth teaches us through her sculptures about movement, light, patience, and material. I walk through each gallery and it is so clear to be that I am being taught not only a new way to see, but a new way of making. To make, to do, and to be different in those spaces. I look forward to this exhibit in New York and to see how New Yorkers (and the world) responds to this unique San Francisco teacher.Kunié Sugiura at SFMOMA ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Hot Take: New artist for me (and she is 81!). Stunning scale. Specificity. Color! I went to SFMOMA for Ruth Asawa and I stayed for Kunié Sugiura. Wow, what a delightful surprise of canvases. From the beginning of the exhibit, I was captivated by what she was able to achieve with a camera and canvas through her “photopaintings.”She made me miss New York with three canvases, Central Park, Deadend, and Ferryboat. I love the canvases of color and closeness she was able to achieve. Her work invites you into the color and I felt like I was swimming in the trees, or lying down on the sand. The work is tactile and I could feel it. I do hope she gets some new exhibits here in New York (she was exhibited at MoMA in her 30s), I feel like she is still underrepresented in the canon, especially in the shadow of Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.

What I am excited about in September : Nancy Holt :: Echoes & Evolutions: Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels at Sprüth MagersMan Ran: When Objects Dream at The Met Galas at Little Island and The Met Opera Returns (Turandot and others!) Mark Dion at the Perez Art Museum (Miami)

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