…(Stevie).’ (Photo by Terry Lorant/OMCA) Yo-Yos & Half Squares: Contemporary California Quilts Oakland Museum of California Sept. 12, 2015 – Feb. 21, 2016 OMCA starts the fall season with the work of five Bay Area female quilters, showing 20 quilts from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Seeking orderly patterns and demure fabrics in your textiles? This show is not for you. Working with full denim pant legs, velvet and glittery polyester, Ang…

…ough neither is an alumnus. For decades, Stanford doctoral candidates in art history have worked as interns with the collection, including Neil Benezra, now director of SFMOMA. Benezra harbors no ill will that their collection is going to Stanford, not his museum. “What the Andersons have wanted for many years is to have a museum-quality space dedicated to their collection,” he said. “That is something that of all the institutio…

  COCOON On view March 2 – April 4, 2016 Cocoon is the result of CEE32H: Responsive Structures, offered by Stanford Architecture.  This design build course focused on the structural and spatial possibilities of welded wire mesh, for the design of a contemplation space.  The installation encourages introspection and pause for students, passers-by, and visitors to the Anderson Collection.  The progression of arches provides a spatial t…

…lime ends, the beautiful painting is the perfect setup for an exquisite, lacquered acrylic disk by Robert Irwin. The disk, divided horizontally by a shadowy gray bar, is bathed in ambient light that appears to carve visual space as if it were a solid mass. The Bay Area and L.A. selections are not comprehensive. Edward Ruscha, John Baldessari and David Hockney, for example, have been integral to the art life of Southern California for half a centu…

…uring the NPR Tiny Desk Concert above). The social critique is wrapped in a tight, funky arrangement, summing up the appeal of this Cuba Rican singer: she writes danceable tunes that make you think. Made to order for a KQED Arts audience. Details of her Saturday show at the Independent are here.   Sept. 21 – 25: The Berkeley Old time Music Convention is both a conference for the artists and a chance for music lovers to hear some of the best…

…lic investment in the arts as assistant director of Palo Alto’s Community Services Department. “Because the cost of living is so high, and the cost of doing business is so high.” But the very same economic boom has created more people in a position to invest in art. Pace, Halpern says, could well be the harbinger of things to come. “That they took this risk to come here to see what they could do, see if there was a collector base they could tap i…