The Civic Center neighborhood on Friday night was a hive of activity. Live 105 was presenting its annual "Not So Silent Night" rock concert at Bill Graham, Debbie Reynolds was trying out a new show for Las Vegas at the Herbst Theatre, it was another Homo Night at the Opera featuring "The Rake's Progress," the Symphony was presenting an all Berlioz program (which I'll write about in part two)...
...and if this weren't enough activity, the Hayes Street merchants from Franklin to Laguna were hosting a "block party."
At the shuttered grocery store near the corner of Hayes and Laguna, an art show called "Off The Point" was having an opening party.
A group of artists with studios in the Hunters Point Shipyards decided to have a Christmas gallery on Hayes Street for the first time and had sent me an invitation to come check it out.
There were a few nice pieces here and there...
...but most of the art was fairly ghastly.
When I took the photo above of the man intently studying a wall hanging...
...the woman on the left sitting on the wooden block snarled at me, "No photography of any sort is allowed!" with a very nasty sense of entitlement.
This made it much easier to turn right around and walk outside, where I hung out with a bunch of cute, drunk and stoned skateboarders who were making fun of the art. Off the point, indeed.
Tsk, tsk, Mr. Mike. Be nice to your local artist - LOL! I put a brief mention of the show (plus a link to your review) at http://baartquake.blogspot.com/ But I didn't say much about the show either and found the space cold and uninviting. I did like some of the stuff but their web pages gives such small images that it's almost impossible to get a feel for the art work. I feel that the hysteria from unknown artists over photos is quite overplayed. I've put my images up on my blog and on the SOMA artists web site and haven't had a problem. Now, I'm an unknown but so are most of the artists at this show so I think there's no excuse for the "no photos" BS. Or the rudeness
ReplyDeleteDear Nancy: Thanks for laughing. I wanted to tell the lady, "Get with the script, do you want coverage or not? And the last thing I want to do is steal your crappy art." I also don't particularly appreciate it when outsiders come to my neighborhood and act like they own it.
ReplyDeletehaha...dude she didn't want you takin' pics of the artwork because she doesn't want people to know that the paint-by-numbers squad and the pile-junk-together-and-call-it-art crew are making "art" that hideous.
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