Local arts-boosting organization ArtSpan celebrates its 50th anniversary now through October 16, with the annual SF Open Studios program showcasing the magnificent creativity of hundreds of San Francisco artists. If you haven’t been (or haven’t been in a while), now’s the time to reconnect with our still-vibrant art scene, through personal studio visits and other interactions. This year, full-scale, mounted exhibitions in unique venues rarely available for the display and enjoyment of visual and multimedia art continue the program’s reputation for a spirited, adventuresome approach.
In a public statement, ArtSpan Executive Director Joen Madonna highlights SF neighborhoods, and how the features of each location impact artists’ practices. On occasion, the very subjects and style on which an artist chooses to focus are expressly influenced by the surrounding architecture, residents, or natural world. SFOS, Madonna notes, is also an economic boon to the city, with people swinging from one district to another, supporting local vendors, restaurants, bars, and other small businesses (not to mention public transport). And of course, buying some are helps the artists themselves survive!
This year’s special features include: An exhibition of 300-plus artworks at SOMArts Cultural Center; the annual 1890 Bryant Street Fall Open Studios, Sept. 27-29, and an exhibition at the San Francisco Public Library called “Disco Days to the Tech Craze: 50 Years of ArtSpan SF Open Studios.”
Two participating artists caught our eye in particular, and are both welcoming curious art-lovers into their studios on the second week of the event, September 29 and 29: Multimedia artist Charles H. Stinson and painter and sketcher Diane Olivier.
Olivier’s works are primarily landscapes, cityscapes, or figurative portraits of live models. Many of the latter—and among the pieces she is likely to share during open studios—feature the same woman. “That’s Emily, she’s my muse,” Olivier says. “I’m very picky about models at this point in my life. I want models who show up with every aspect of a human being. They change and own themselves.”
The right model or a landscape with visceral expressivity also brings out in Olivier the tactile, active, alive-in-the-moment quality found in all of her portfolio. Scenes of places to which she travels and leads workshops—Croatia, France, the Sierra Valley, and others—express more than just texture, color, composition, line, and form.
“You’ve just touched on the most important part of my artwork, when you mention tactility. Whether it’s my fingers to the paper, the feel of dragging a wet or dry material across paper, or the ephemerals like the sand, wind, sun, those are the highlights of my experience.”
The tactile intention caries over to the figures. Here especially Olivier is highly attuned to the sensory element of her hand. “It’s as if my hand is touching the model as I’m drawing. People are emotive. Looking for the emotional context started when I became a undergraduate student with a teacher who was spiritual, emotional. He asked us to draw what we were feeling. That became central and continues to be.”
During workshop breaks or solo travel, Olivier will plant herself with her sketchbook outdoors on a stoop or bench in a tiny village and draw scenes from life. If it’s a very hot day, an elderly man or woman might bring her a glass of water and a piece of chocolate, or a hat they think she should be wearing. They’ll talk about art in their lives; maybe even invite her to see a 12th century marking on the I-beam of their house or the view out a window.
“This happens in every culture and country I’ve been to. Drawing in a different country gives you a passport to people you would not normally have. You can visit sites up the yin-yang, but these experiences are unique,”
When leading workshops Olivier helps people without being pedantic to better see their surroundings. “So many people don’t actually see what they’re looking at. I remember while driving and seeing a golden tree with gorgeous leaves. My (companion) entirely missed it. He didn’t even see it because it wasn’t important to reaching our destination.”
A double-page spread of Rovin Street in Croatia has day and night time views of the location. Details of the architecture, the play of light and shadow on surfaces, musicians in the night scene perched at the top landing of a stairway, and people dining al fresco turn place into character. It’s as if the drawings speak and say, “I can be all things: quiet, peaceful, intimate, but also lively with the sound of music or voices, and after the sun sets, mysteriously and magically dark.”
In technical ways entirely different, Stinson’s connection to his subject matter, materials, and artistry is equally dynamic and essential. Using collage as an example of what he describes as “sculpting with ideas,” he says, “I play with collage as an abrogation of parts, but there’s also discarding unnecessary parts. I play with objects, stick odd things together, take photos, then go back and assemble and disassemble them in more ways. I think of sculpting in ways beyond physical. Abstract concepts are pulled together: What odd ideas that others might put in opposite sides of the room combine to create provoking, useful thoughts? Sculpting can lead into process or organizational changes.”
Beneath all of Stinson’s work that includes majestic bronze buddhas and yogis, several series of marvelous devices that include collections such as “Devices of Dubious Utility,” “Wall Devices” that beg to communicate but convey futile, indecipherable messages, and 20 devices from a fictitious “Museum of Post-Truth Artifacts.” A new line of textiles Stinson will have in his studio this year are a reaction to his dwindling 3-D eyesight. “I realized it was rapidly worsening. It was easier to focus on 2-D pieces. I was learning tiling techniques and created designs from photos of that work. It was tremendously fun.”
Stinson said his art practice helps to contain his anxiety about the world around him. “Art is a passion and how I cope with the events of life. (In some works) it is me documenting my fears during the AIDS epidemic when I lost so many friends. Or, it’s me continuing my time when I was working full-time in public health and technology and spent my evenings making art. My brain always wants to learn new techniques, new approaches, and creativity. Beneath it all, I’m struggling to make sense of an increasingly complex world that’s quite scary.”
Stepping back to summarize and view with a broader lens the work of these two artists, it’s surprising to find how much humor, hope, and authenticity are through lines. If the topic in Stinson’s work is a politician’s outrageous lies aimed at harming other people, he elevates human coping mental manipulations such as satire and spiritual transcendence found through meditation as noble responses.
With Olivier, the downward gaze of Emily, her open kimono revealing her breasts and bare belly is both intimidating and an invitation to celebrate the human body. Seafood seen at a Croatian market gets two treatments: freshly caught and plush, and later, a skeleton void of every soft tissue except the head. The works declare life to be as it is: messy, delicious, pure, complex, sensory, and sensual.
SFOS promises to be all of these things and more. The artists and visitors who participate in open studios are a public declaration that we humans create and cultivate remarkable expressions of place, identity, and most vital of all, trace fine dreams of better worlds and who we hope to become.
ARTSPAN OPEN STUDIOS runs each weekend through October 13. More info here.
