Few traditions in the art of singing have proven so valuable and resilient as San Francisco’s Merola Opera Program.
The distinguished training program, which presents its 55th season’s “Grand Finale” performance on Saturday at the War Memorial Opera House, is as concentrated in intensity as it is in first-rate talent.
Some 30 participants selected from a pool of 800 for their star potential are molded by the finest in the profession, coached in singing, acting, stage presence and everything in between.
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By:
Maiya Edgerly
08/02/12 4:00 AM
Danielle Fox, the owner of Slate contemporary gallery who recently celebrated her first year as director of Oakland Art Murmur, points to collaboration and diversity as reasons for the monthly event’s success.“If there’s anything that Oakland possesses, it is diversity. That’s what is so unique about Oakland. We have nonprofit galleries, artist-run galleries, commercial galleries and classic-car showrooms,” Fox says.
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For more than 30 years, photographer Cindy Sherman has used herself — and only herself — as the subject of her portraits. Yet in every picture she looks like someone else.Working as her own stylist, makeup artist and costume designer, Sherman is a master of disguises. Her characters are so eerily real that you have the feeling you’ve met them before. Whether you want to meet them again is another question.“Cindy Sherman,” now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, includes more than 150 photographs by Sherman, considered one of the most influential contemporary artists.
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A portrait tells two stories: one about the artist and one about the subject. At the Mexican Museum, the stories are expressed in paintings, ceramics and mixed-media works that speak volumes about culture and identity.“Caras/Cuentos (Faces/Stories)” explores the rich tradition of portraiture in Hispanic, Chicano and Latin American art. Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition offers a fascinating look at the power of the human face.
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By:
Kathy Bowman
07/11/12 5:08 PM
A portrait tells two stories: one about the artist and one about the subject. At the Mexican Museum, the stories are expressed in paintings, ceramics and mixed-media works that speak volumes about culture and identity.
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By:
Murray Paskin
06/27/12 5:43 PM
The uniqueness of “Awakenings,” an exhibition of granite sculpted heads by Mexican artist Jose Velazquez at Polanco Gallery, lies in the poetic integration of meaning and stone.The stone itself — its shape, coarseness and texture — plays a significant role not only in determining the nature of the finished pieces, but also their power.Although Velazquez, a self-taught artist from Guadalajara, has themes for each piece in his first show in The City, they are far from literal descriptions.
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By:
Kris Vagner
06/21/12 4:00 AM
ArtGameLab at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is the result of a successful experiment in crowdsourcing. Last summer, museum staffer Erica Gangsei — inspired by the Brooklyn Museum’s “Click!” crowd-curated photo show as well as the Bay Area’s creative energy and playful spirit — issued a public call for people to design games that could be played at the museum.
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The diverse and remarkable history of social justice and gay activist Harry Hay comes to the fore in a jam-packed exhibit on view in the San Francisco Public Library’s Jewett Gallery.“Radically Gay: The Life of Harry Hay,” curated by Joey Cain, includes amazing documents, photographs and memorabilia covering many varied facets of the gay rights pioneer, who was born in 1912 and died in 2002 in The City.
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“The Magic Flute” may be the most familiar offering in San Francisco Opera’s summer season, but a high-tech production opening this week at the War Memorial Opera House promises to live up to the challenge of presenting an old favorite in a new setting, while remaining faithful to the music. Three thousand tempera-and-chalk paintings created by Jun Kaneko — being projected with pioneering Autodesk Inventor 3D software — are the backdrop to Mozart’s 1791 masterwork, which has received memorable productions in The City featuring designs by Gerald Scarfe and David Hockney.
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When photographer Richard Misrach and his wife moved in to their Berkeley hills home in 1997, they stumbled on something that became an iconic project for Misrach.“We didn’t know about the view when we bought the house,” says Misrach, who appears in a City Arts & Lectures presentation Monday at Herbst Theatre.The home, where they still live, was engulfed in vegetation. After a week’s manicuring, Misrach and his wife saw the full span of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and San Francisco’s sparkling skyline.
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