Curator Patricia Maloney uses "Brass in Pocket" by Chrissie Hynde/The Pretenders to set the stage for Make You Notice at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. Hynde stands in the shadow of women rockers like Patti Smith, Joan Jet, and Pat Benatar--all women who didn't appease commercial interests to play in dotting girl groups. Female rockers possess/ed gritty hard-edged sex appeal and powerful personas that challenge/ed the male-centric rock world. In "Brass in Pocket" Hynde assertively lists some of her assets (arms, style, fingers, imagination, etc.) that she is going to employ to demand your attention. The four artists in... Read More

In an election year, it's inevitable that Americans will tend toward solipsism with even greater ease. This is an interesting moment to investigate contemporary American identity while we are internationally reviled, in the midst of a seemingly endless war halfway around the globe, and divided into various camps of us and them (blue and red, recent immigrants and descendants of immigrants, etc.) Given our cultural disparities, including the vast gulf between most Americans and the art world, an exhibition attempting to come to terms with who we are as Americans can itself be problematic. Reconciling America: Miraculous Encounters with the... Read More

I became aware of SFAC Gallery's most recent show, Breakthrough: An Amateur Photography Revolution, via email one Thursday morning. My interests piqued by the show's description, I surfed onto their website where I found images of the exhibition, JPGs representing the curator-chosen photos(that were themselves once JPGs) in the gallery and a couple of installation shots with people mulling around the gallery space. My interest was sustained online and I ended up visiting the exhibition a handful of times, this essay being the result of those excursions. However, the events that led up to me landing foot in the gallery... Read More

I like saying "lucky day." The words have an infectious upbeat quality that rattle in my mouth. As a title for a visual art exhibition, Lucky Day is only somewhat less gratuitous sounding, but it sparkles none-the-less. As if to suggest that this Lucky Day could belong to anyone or, more acutely, that the exhibition, which basks under the bright umbrella of these words, is sure to surpass expectations. Though the exhibition does have some surprises in store, SFAC gallery director Meg Shiffler had something entirely more personal in mind when organizing the show. It turns out that Lucky Day... Read More

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) selected four artists to make works about this historic disaster from a contemporary perspective. Margaret Tedesco was one of four artists commissioned to make new work for the SFAC Exhibit "The Dust Never Settles." Tedesco proposed an edition of ten copies of ten flip books (100 flip books for the 100th anniversary year). Her initial point of departure, Tedesco said, was historical eyewitness accounts written by individuals who lived in San Francisco at the time of the quake. However,... Read More