Oakland Museum of California/Courtesy

At first, the construction workers would reflexively pose as photojournalist Peter Stackpole would raise his camera to capture photographs of them at work. Eventually, Stackpole bonded with the crew, and he became just another one of the boys on The Bridge, at which point the workers wouldn’t even notice the camera when Stackpole aimed it. This relationship was conducive to very candid photographs of their lives over the course of two years as they built the Bay Bridge.

While there are many photographs documenting the construction of the bridge, “Stackpole’s were different because he has the eye of the artist,” said Drew Johnson, curator of photography and visual culture and the curator of the exhibition. “Peter Stackpole: Bridging the Bay” at The Oakland Museum of California is currently displaying the photographs, which bridge the chill-inducing views from the top with the everyday lives of the construction workers from 1934 to 1936.

It all started with an informal invitation from one of the workers; without official authorization (and with the aid of the bridge builders), Stackpole boarded a boat that would give him access to the bridge. Stackpole was one of the first photographers to get his hands on the compact 35-millimeter camera, which was more mobile than prior models. Because of this technological advance, Stackpole was able to get incredible shots of the city as well as the Bay.

The shots eventually captured the attention of the people at Time Magazine, who were in the beginning stages of publishing a photo journal called Life Magazine. “At the time, it was where you went to see what was going on around the world,” Johnson noted.

Stackpole’s work became so well respected that it was featured in publications like Vanity Fair, and he went on to photograph Hollywood events and celebrities. In one overhead shot on display, Errol Flynn is smiling gleefully while hanging from a mast on a boat.

During his two years documenting the bridge’s construction, Stackpole became incredibly close to many of the workers, including bridge builder Joe Walton. One photograph features Walton and a caption that mentions Walton’s generosity — he showed Stackpole how to climb the ladder without “blacking out.” The workers would often pass out because of the altitude, and workers would coach Stackpole on how to maneuver the bridge safely.

Stackpole’s parents, Ralph Stackpole (who was friends with the muralist Diego Rivera) and Adele Barnes, were both Bay Area artists. In 1991, the Oakland Museum of California was exhibiting Stackpole’s work when Stackpole’s home in the Oakland Hills sucummbed to a fire. Stackpole lost much of his work, as well as works by his parents and some Rivera pieces. The works displayed here were saved from the same fate.

Twenty-eight people lost their lives during the construction of the Bay Bridge. The aftermath of one of these deaths is documented in the photograph entitled “Quitting Time” (1935). It was custom for the workers to head home early when there was a death, and the photograph portrays a sullen group of men on a boat on their way back to land.

One of the photographs, entitled “Cable Saddle” (1935), gives the viewer a glimpse of the San Francisco skyscrapers from the bridge. This shot was made possible by one of the bridge workers, who loosened up some hanging safety rope to clear the view. These workers constantly risked their lives not only for the sake of Stackpole’s photographs but also to provide an alternative form of transportation that would have a lasting effect on the lives and the culture of Bay Area residents.

“Peter Stackpole: Bridging the Bay“ is on display at the Oakland Museum of California through January 26, 2014.

Contact Rene Hernandez at rhernandez@dailycal.org.

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Herman Miller, Inc./Courtesy

“Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller” at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design manages to make one of the most fundamental aspects in our domestic lives — furniture — an expression of modern company culture and consumerism. “Good Design” emphasizes the story behind the design of the furniture by providing extensive written information on Herman Miller Inc.’s company history and the sales campaigns that led to the success of modern design in the furniture market.

To set the foundation, the exhibition begins with a discussion of Herman Miller Inc.’s founding figures and the company values they established in the 1930s. One of them, Gilbert Rohde, was the operative force moving the company from period reproductions into modern furniture. During the heart of the Great Depression, he understood that design had to take on a new focus, namely “Design for Living,” which was Herman Miller Inc.’s exposition house at the 1933 to 1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.

Company leadership tied its Midwestern straightforwardness in with Rohde’s cosmopolitan regard for style; Herman Miller Inc. furniture was meant first to optimize its function — as with the company’s most famous design, the ergonomic Aeron chair — and then to be beautifully designed. George Nelson, a founding figure of the company, explained to Fortune magazine in August 1946, “Enclose space as if it were precious … for the sake of … the life that goes on within it.” This fundamental attitude toward design being “little to do with conscious style” and “a lot to do with human scale — and human need” informed everything that the company did in later years.

This modern way of “doing design” expanded into the realm of marketing and merchandising as well. Rohde, who had worked in journalism and advertising before joining Herman Miller Inc., recognized that people’s antiquated conception of furniture would have to change if they were ever to be convinced of the modern aesthetic. However, he also noticed that Americans were ready for new ideas as the nation recovered from the Great Depression.

In order to do this, Herman Miller Inc. pursued some of the most inventive sales methods the furniture industry had seen, setting up complete home miniature displays in department stores, even staffing some of the displays with designers who could help customers plan their own homes. While scale models were a typical sales device, the concept of putting them in full apartments and allowing people to rearrange the furniture meant that they could really come to see how Herman Miller Inc. furniture could fit into their lives and living spaces. Also featuring in as many design publications as possible, Herman Miller Inc. was out to get noticed and ready to convince the world of their furniture concept.

Design feats in their own rights, many of the advertising campaigns that Herman Miller Inc. has run through the years were also defined by the same company values that informed their furniture design. For example, advertisements for Chadwick Modular Seating were bold black-and-white presentations with a dynamic image of the modular sofa and the simple phrase, “It turns, circles, winds, and zigzags.” The rest of the text in the ad refers to the functional benefits of modular seating, in a humorous description of all the various issues that traditional couches present in life (“keep your people from catching the dreaded ‘stuck-in-the-corner’ disease”).

The ad exemplified exactly what Herman Miller Inc.’s founding figures aimed to achieve with their furniture — unfussy style and optimum functionality for a modern life. As Marc D’Estout, curator of the museum, has explained: “The company culture is exactly why Herman Miller has been able to work with and embrace forward thinking design … This is important contextual information that enriches an exhibit of displayed objects, and speaks to the importance of design philosophies in the creation of products.”

“Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller” is on show at the Museum of Craft and Design through Oct. 6.

Contact AJ Kantor at akantor@dailycal.org.

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Naeem Mohaiemen/Courtesy

Brooklyn-based. Los Angeles-based. Tokyo-based. Location serves to indicate cultural ties, identification and legitimacy. But to say that Yamini Nayar, one of the eight artists featured in current YBCA exhibition “Migrating Identities,” is “Brooklyn-based” is both reductive and loaded.

“Migrating Identities” showcases the work of eight transcultural artists who are collectively concerned with the multiple cultural influences on their lives. The artists — Nayar, Michelle Dizon, Ala Ebtekar, Naeem Mohaiemen, Meleko Mokgosi, Wangechi Mutu, Ishmael Randall Weeks and Saya Woolfalk — were born between 1969 and 1981 and represent a cultural stratum of emergent diversity in the United States. The artists move between the United States and other countries, such as India, Bangladesh, Botswana, Japan and the Philippines. Each artist takes a different approach to his or her experience — some highlight the internal divide caused by these multiethnic forces, and others embrace the confluence.

Nayar uses light jet print to merge photographs of mundane resources like wood panels, bubble wrap, cement and gauze, which are torn, bent, placed atop each other and manipulated with paint. Nayar angles these gritty images to evoke an unsettling sense of “what am I looking at?” While this could arguably be an indication of novice artistic gaze, it is also an apt reflection of Nayar’s thematic interest.

The convergence of multiple raw materials — and the subsequent sense of uncertainty it stirs for the viewer — parallels the disorientation of the artist’s own experience with multiple cultural forces. Nayar strips and alters the materials in her pieces and takes the functionality out of architecture. This technique is used to “disrupt its metaphorical connotations” and illustrate the “interior psychological state of splitting” — a result and reflection of disembodied cultural identity.

Like Nayar, the other artists explore personal cultural histories and also address global issues like colonialism, globalization and war. Ebteker examines the intersection of the two places he jointly calls home — Tehran and Berkeley — through a series of images that merge the similarly masculine postures of Iranian wrestling figures and East Bay B-boys. Mohaiemen presents films and images laden with 1970s politics, highlighting the mistranslations of ideologies across cultures.

Born in Peru to American-born parents, Weeks uses recycled materials to explore personal and collective cultural narratives. One of his displayed artworks, titled “I-beam,” is a considerably large collection of books — mostly his father’s and mostly on topics of Cuban revolution and Latin American history — glued together and hung from the ceiling.

Dizon presents “Perpetual Peace,” a video installation that displays various images of globalization in the Philippines. Dizon provides voiceover narration for the video, which is also supplemented with the video of the artist in the act of narrating. Through this, Dizon inserts herself vocally and visually into the narrative, and yet the side-by-side presentation of the videos creates a sense of distanced spectatorship.

The exhibition features artists “guided by their ability to move fluidly between cultures, and drawing from the uniqueness of their individual journeys, these artists reveal the ways in which their identities have been transformed by the confluence of mobility, cultural retention, and personal history.”

“Migrating Identities” is an important and provocative collection, providing a space for conversation about cultural identity, mobility and personal history of contemporary multicultural artists. As the eight artists highlight the fluid mobility across geographic terrains, they demonstrate a less fluid disembodiment of cultural ties and experience.

The detail of an artist’s location is, then, simply an indication of where he or she currently works and lives. As the “Migrating Identities” exhibition stresses, a sense of cultural belonging and history for an individual is not limited or specific to time or space.

Contact Denise Lee at deniselee@dailycal.org.

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Chris Granillo/Courtesy

Oakland boasts so much art that it’s impossible to take it all in. Some of it appears furtively, illegally, on the streets and under the onramps. Some of it shows in upscale galleries all over town, with price tags and author credits. Occasionally, the same artist spans the two worlds, leading us to question the nature of graffiti — and of art. Nite Owl’s show at Loakal is one of these boundary-testing exhibitions.

Loakal Art Gallery and Boutique is a multipurpose space. Located near Jack London Square, the setting is hip and clean and away from the madness of downtown. Coming through the front doors, you have the immediate choice of gallery space or retail therapy.

The gallery up front showcases a well-known graffiti artist named Nite Owl in a show called “Aesthetic Transience.” True to his moniker, Nite Owl’s works largely feature owl designs — one grumpy-looking, tough, urban owl in particular. The artist uses reclaimed wood and canvas surfaces and, notably, a borrowed traffic sign. The appeal is obvious and has a strong local flavor; two of Nite Owl’s largest works appear over slaps and bills and are headlined “HELLA.” The aim of the artist is described on his Facebook page as “eclectic artworks inspired by travels, trips and hip hop culture with a splash of big brother paranoia.” The Nite Owl show is complemented by an intuitive hip-hop music set provided by DJ Baysik, who spins new and old hip-hop, mixed to please the crowd rather than to show off. The combination of sight and sound gives visitors to the opening a great sense of the aims of the gallery.

Chris Granillo’s “The Sacred Language of Mystics” is in the transitional space of the gallery, fitting placement for a liminal set of works. Granillo’s style is esoteric and indigenous, using hermetic symbols in a flat, simple figure. Eschewing symmetry and reaching for something more subconscious than conscious, Granillo’s show reaches for something raw. His “Zetans Trial” invites the curiosity and then confronts the onlooker with something unexpected.

Behind the facade, the main part of the building is a large open warehouse. The main foyer is beautifully arranged, with excellent lighting. The corners are partitioned into individual artists’ studios, some of which are open for viewing. Large-scale close-up paintings of everyday objects by Terry Furry are displayed in the open space, including a stunning hand-crank mixer rendered 6 feet long. Furry also shows a collection of religious-themed curios and reliquaries featuring athletic supporters as well as a studio full of very intimate portraits of young urban men in various states of undress.

Artist Sharaine Bell’s studio reveals curious and haunting images of traffic jams, mostly in monochrome. These paintings are strangely affecting despite their common subject matter. Across from her space, dioramas by Jane Elliott offer something very original. Elliott is executing a graphic novel series called “About Mayfair,” the story of a post-petrol world using dioramas as a medium. Their graphic quality and lyrical expression is very compelling.

The retail boutique space of the gallery is almost as interesting as the art. A great deal of handmade craft is offered at good prices, including custom wood iPad stands, quirky handmade jewelry, screen-printed bags and 3-D printed objects. A refreshingly original assortment of Oakland-themed T-shirts is also for sale, including a series based on the giant cargo cranes dreaming of becoming AT-AT Walkers. For art gallery crafts, all of these are offered at very fair prices and are definitely tempting. Loakal Gallery is an intensely Oakland-flavored experience. In both art and craft, it is showing the beating heart of the city.

Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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Andrew Fox/Courtesy

“Do search,” said artist Richard Diebenkorn, “but in order to find other than what is searched for.” This motto is an apt approach for museum-goers at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, which is currently housing works by the Bay Area painter. The exhibit, “Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years,” on view through Sept. 29, chronicles a 13-year period in the artist’s life inspired by the relationship between urban landscapes and natural elements. Tracing the metamorphosis from complete abstraction to figuration, the collection of paintings forces viewers to search for meaning and clarity.

Earlier pieces seem to draw inspiration from Willem de Kooning, the Dutch-American abstract expressionist painter whose art has been described as complex and ambiguous. Diebenkorn’s de Kooning references are prevalent in his early works, which feature graffiti-like drawings and splattered ink. This chaotic representational art at times includes letters from the English language, which Diebenkorn describes as “alphabet soup.” Transitioning out of this indefinite phase in his career, which he described as “exercises in seeing,” Diebenkorn began to make use of his surroundings — both interior and exterior — as inspiration for his work.

One gallery space in the museum takes viewers on a journey through the artist’s slowly developing working methods. We are able to identify his favored themes and experience the shifting nature of his artistic identity. An example is his meditation on scissors; somewhat harsh, and perhaps even suggestive, the paintings of scissors done in oil are either painted solo or in couplets — with lemons, tomatoes or other kitchen utensils. This obsession with the utilitarian tool demonstrates the productive nature of Diebenkorn’s working process and his ability to focus on the complexity behind a simple, everyday object. These little paintings seem to be the modern version of Monet’s haystacks or cathedrals — an impression that challenges the relationship between still-life and painter.

Larger-scale paintings range from flattened, geometric compositions, like his color field paintings that resemble the aerial view over agricultural regions, to representational landscapes like “Seawall, 1957” — a coastal vision of the intersection between earth, sea and sky. These natural elements play a major role in the rest of the Berkeley series. When painting “View from the Porch, 1959,” Diebenkorn said, “Strong verticals and diagonals serve as a reminder that the Berkeley series was created in an environment shaped by the intersection of natural and manmade elements.”

This observation can be applied to both UC Berkeley’s campus and the surrounding area and is what Cal students are proud of. Think of our urban spaces — Telegraph Avenue, the skyscrapers of downtown Oakland that can be seen from the roofs of most buildings, the modern architecture of newly built edifices on campus — that are balanced with the natural aspects of Berkeley — the fire trails behind Clark Kerr Campus, the peaceful marina, Tilden Park, Strawberry Creek, the eucalyptus groves.

This intersection produces a kind of loneliness in Diebenkorn’s paintings. His landscapes usually lack human forms, and when he does paint them, they are isolated — walking alone, curled up drinking coffee, reclining nude. The very Edward Hopper-esque solitude suggests ambiguous psychological interactions with oneself. The thick application and layering of paint somehow mirror the complex layering of the human psyche — at once beautiful and confusing.

It is easy to walk into the gallery spaces and admire the elegance of Diebenkorn’s lines or his use of heavily saturated colors, but somewhere deep within the white museum walls, the midcentury artist is encouraging viewers to search beyond the four borders of his paintings to find meaning behind his relationship with the canvas.

Contact Addy Bhasin at abhasin@dailycal.org.

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Sasha Kelley/Courtesy

Coinciding with this month’s edition of Art Murmur was the opening of “Headspace,” a solo exhibition at the Krowswork Gallery featuring the work of Oakland-based artist Sasha Kelley. On view through July 13, Kelley’s work depicts relationships within the black community in the Bay Area through the use of photographs, video and installation, as well as textual commentary and poetry. More than just documenting certain moments and relationships, however, “Headspace” offers a deeper reflection on black life and the connection between people and places.

The exhibit essentially consists of three rooms (or, rather, “headspaces”) that each convey its own theme, message and mood. Featured in one of the rooms is a large video projection and an installation piece consisting of several TV screens, both presenting clips that document the interaction between the artist and her partner — clips presumably shot in the couple’s home. In effect, the visitor can simultaneously watch the couple embrace affectionately on one screen and moments of individual solitude on another. Presented alongside these pieces are works of poetry. Recording moments of joy, anger and silence, these video clips are at once strikingly intimate, removed, playful and thoughtful.

The middle room of the exhibit consists of a collection of black-and-white photographs arranged in a square formation on one of the walls. Shot in settings such as backyards, public transportation and sidewalks around the Bay Area, these photographs have a rough quality and edge. The potentially serene image of two youths eating ice cream is invested with a grim ambience due to its concrete backdrop and the defiant, guarded glares of the subjects. The sense of difficulty and distress exuded by the photographs is underlined by their placement in a square, making their impact even more dynamic and forceful. Despite the somber environments, however, the feeling of a strong black community nevertheless shines through these images — a community that comes together for parades, dancing and celebration. Especially captivating is the touching image of three young boys on a living room carpet, saying grace before their meal of delivery pizza, and that of a young girl, clearly in a state of agitation, standing amid a group of youths on the sidewalk.

The third room of the exhibit contains a handful of photographs displayed along its walls. The difference in atmosphere created by the photos featured in this room and those in the middle room is immediate and striking, noticeable at first simply due to the transition from black-and-whites to color photographs. These final images radiate warmth, joy and creativity. There is, among others, the photo of a young couple coming together for a lingering kiss; that of an artist immersed in work in a vibrant, colorful studio; and that of two girls smiling contagiously at the camera in a summer setting. Having these photos spread out evenly around the room rather than in a concentrated composition creates the feeling of being enveloped by their warm aura.

Although the exhibit doesn’t necessarily suffer from its absence, having simple captions providing information on the location and subject matter of the photographs would have been a gratifying addition. Given the fact that the exhibit is anchored in a specific geographic area, it would have been interesting as an observer to be able to identify more closely with this setting. Regardless, the profound nature of Kelley’s “Headspace” speaks for itself through the mediums employed — spaces filled with adversity but also spaces of community, joy, beauty and love.

Contact Corinne Platten at cplatten@dailycal.org.

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Clara Hatcher/Courtesy

The Legion of Honor’s exhibition “Impressionists on the Water,” in conjunction with America’s Cup, offers an examination of the important role boating themes played in the social and artistic contexts of late 19th century French painting. Many of the painters were themselves interested in sailing, rowing and yachting, and their intimate knowledge of boats is made clear in the technological detail of their paintings and designs. Upon entering the exhibition, visitors are greeted by “Nana” (1890), a large and imposing cedar French cruising gig and an example of the sophisticated design of Fernand Delmez frequently depicted in the paintings of Monet and Renoir. Nautical subjects were also popular at the time, as they provided a vehicle for Impressionist painters to express their interpretations of reality and modernity as well as allowing them to pursue their interests in the effects of light and atmosphere.

The exhibition traces the theme of boating in the history of French art, beginning with early Impressionist maritime painting and ending with Post-Impressionist works. The early paintings include Eugene Isabey’s “Fishing Village” (1852), an oil painting that adds a narrative to its nautical depiction by communicating what it was like to live and work on the coast in adverse conditions. The early section of the exhibition also includes a series of etchings by Charles-Francois Daubigny from “The Boat Trip” (1862). The series includes a stunning depiction of “The Floating Studio,” a boat Daubigny acquired to allow him to work directly on the waterways and that he named “Le Botin” (Little Box).

Inspired by Daubigny, Monet created a similar vessel in order to take to the water to paint, captured in his “The Studio Boat” (1874). Monet’s oil paintings and chalk drawings stand out as by far the most striking in the collection. The flurries of brushstrokes and pure colors in “The Seashore at Sainte-Adresse” (1864) and “The Seine at Argenteuil” (1873) set his work apart, making a powerful impact on visitors. The loose, broken brushstrokes of Renoir’s “Oarsmen at Chatou” (1879) are similarly spectacular. Several of the works — such as Renoir’s “The Seine at Argenteuil” (1874) and Monet’s painting of the same name — attempt to capture the atmospheric river at Argenteuil, a popular tourist destination at the time.

One of the rooms is devoted entirely to the yachtsman, boat designer and painter Gustave Caillebotte. Caillebotte’s paintings are notable for their steep viewpoints and the sense of unabating realism conveyed in works such as “Sunflowers on the Banks of the Seine” (1886). Caillebotte’s works not only demonstrate his skills as a painter but also his expertise as a yachtsman; in “The Regatta at Argenteuil” (1893), he painted himself steering a boat with one finger. Such ease of steering conveys his mastery of boats.

After the Caillebotte room, the exhibition begins to feel somewhat disjointed. Post-Impressionist painters such as Paul Signac and Maurice Denis reinterpret the theme of boating by placing the river and sea within a new aesthetic of flat, decorative designs, such as the wallpaper designs of Denis. These works, although beautiful, leave the visitor with a sense that they have all been thrown together merely because they each depict a nautical subject of sorts. In this room, one also finds a somewhat unlikely nautical sport enthusiast in Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. “The Passenger from Cabin 54” (1896) operates as a change from the nightclub scenes he is so famous for, yet it still feels a little out of place in the exhibition.

These turn-of-the-century French boating images represent the calm before the storm of the more radical modern art movements that would follow. While the exhibition does not exactly thrill visitors and, at $17 a ticket, may leave students feeling underwhelmed, niche art enthusiasts will likely find this exploration of boating as a pastime and this artistic subject a delightful and satisfying experience.

Meadhbh McGrath is the arts editor. Contact her at mmcgrath@dailycal.org. Check her out on Twitter at @MeadhbhMcGrath.

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The Allen Ginsberg LLC./Courtesy

“He looked by that time like his father, red-faced corpulent W.C. Fields shuddering with mortal horror…” Thus reads the inscription of a photo depicting American icon Jack Kerouac and taken by Allen Ginsberg in 1964 — just a few years before the former’s death. Far from the exuberant youth depicted in earlier photos, this portrait offers an entirely different image of Kerouac: that of the aging alcoholic, slumped dejectedly in a battered armchair.

This captivating photograph is one of the many snapshots included in “Beat Memories,” an exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in downtown San Francisco featuring the photographs taken by American poet and leading Beat figure Allen Ginsberg. While primarily celebrated for his poetry and social activism, Ginsberg also visually documented the characters of the Beat Generation, a collection of writers and artists active in the aftermath of World War II who advocated for radically new ways of living in the decade between 1953 and 1963. These photographs and negatives were largely neglected until the 1980s, when Ginsberg was encouraged by photographers Robert Frank and Berenice Abbott to revisit them. At that time, Ginsberg reprinted many of the photos, added inscriptions and began taking new photos of the remaining “Beats.”

Besides Kerouac, other well-known figures featured in the photographs include William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Robert LaVigne, Bob Dylan and others (the lack of prominent female figures within the Beat Generation is one thing that, perhaps inadvertently, stands out in this exhibit). Some, such as Kerouac and Burroughs, appear in several images — a testament to their intimate relationship to Ginsberg — whereas others make a more fleeting impression. The real heart and nerve of the exhibit lies in the contrast between the earlier and later photos. The spontaneous photographs taken in the early 50s show Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady in their prime — youthful, radiating and smiling. Flash forward just a decade later, and you get the haunting photo of Kerouac described above: an image of a defeated man.

The gritty backdrop provided by the urban environments of New York City and San Francisco reinforces the strength of the photographs. On that note, as Ginsberg’s captions detail the location of each photo, and for anyone familiarized with either city, the exhibit is a great opportunity to get a feel for what various neighborhoods were like midcentury. Especially mind-boggling are Ginsberg’s notations of the amount of rent paid for his different apartments at the time — two-digit figures that seem like a surreal joke when compared to the ridiculously rent-inflated situation of today. Interestingly, the vibe emanating from the setting alters according to the time frame. In the earlier photos featuring the lively and seemingly carefree Beats, the environments captured by Ginsberg seem charmingly rugged. In the later photos, however, one can’t help but feel that New York and San Francisco seem like quite melancholy and dilapidated places to be.

Finally, as a positive surprise, the exhibit offers more than just images of members of the Beat Generation. For instance, a series of intriguing photos chronicle Ginsberg’s extended travels throughout the world, shot in places as varied as Morocco, Russia, Japan and India. Even more powerful are the handful of photos taken of Ginsberg’s extended family, such as the touching image of his paternal grandmother, Rebecca Ginsberg, in the midst of Seder preparations — or the photo of his uncle Abe Ginsberg raising his hand to wave at the camera from his deathbed. These photographs move beyond capturing Ginsberg’s various relationships to his fellow Beats to offering a glimpse as to his family situation and Jewish identity.

Contact Corinne Platten at cplatten@dailycal.org.

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Lisa Levine/Courtesy

The paradox of our technological interconnectedness is a profound disconnect. We’re all guilty of it — taking a concert photo for Instagram rather than enjoying the event, or Facebooking and tweeting to up our social clout. Despite constantly being plugged in, the real-world connections to our communities are more tenuous than ever.

“Almost There,” a group visual art show at the David Brower Center’s Hazel Wolf Gallery in Downtown Berkeley, addresses the rapidly diminishing phenomenon of in-person, face-to-face interactions. The show explores the role of physical spaces — public spaces such as stadiums and city streets — in facilitating or limiting human interactions. More than 250 works were considered for the show. Ultimately, jurors selected the work of 20 Bay Area artists. Although curated from local talent, the resulting exhibit makes a claim about the universal desire and struggle for authentic connection.

From Annie Hallatt’s “Gathering at the Tree of Life: Al-Walaja,” a large mixed-media piece paying homage to a Palestinian protest parade, to Justin Hoover and Chris Treggiari’s “Your Recipes Tell Your Story,” a wood and glass display housing scrawled recipes from various cultures, the exhibition extends beyond the Bay Area and examines critical human connections. “Show and Tell” is a digital video in which volunteers present objects of personal significance to their computer cameras. Two volunteers simultaneously vie for the viewer’s attention in the video’s split screen, and the constructed “Skype date” becomes cluttered and disorienting. We are treated to anecdotes of ancestral violins, fermented kombucha and Incan clay pots. The global implications of our video communication systems come into play when two foreign-language volunteers describe packaged noodles and a carved indigenous urn, respectively.

Clutter is a recurring motif in “Almost Together.” “A Gathering of Soles,” a piece by Judith Selby Lang and Robert Lang, is a tightly cropped photograph of shoes in various states of deterioration at the Point Reyes National Seashore. The cropping of the photograph, as well as the consistent focus on the shoes — there is no romantic blur, no nostalgic vignetting at the photograph’s edges — gives the illusion of continuity beyond the frame, as if the environmental degradation that the shoes represent could extend for miles. The content density in “A Gathering of Soles” is mirrored on the opposite side of the gallery in Brian Donohue’s “Student Section Memorial Coliseum,” a photograph of student spectators at a football game at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium in 2003. The juxtaposition between discarded, decaying shoes and lively spectators reminds us of the disconnect between our lifestyles and their unintended consequences. The gathering of souls at Memorial Stadium is unaware of the decaying shoes on a shore not too far from the game. Disconnect, as it turns out, is no spectator sport — we are all participants.

“Student Section Memorial Coliseum” is one of many pieces that reference the Bay Area. Carlo Abruzzese’s “Mapping: Alameda County Demographics” uses gold, purple, pink, scarlet, orange, peach and white squares to depict the fragmentation of Alameda County population demographics, demarcating borders and internal regional differences with no reference to what populations the colors represent. It is a stunning abstract grid — kaleidoscopic and provocative. The grid is also present in Julie Garner’s “The Chess Players,” a surreal piece composed of woven pigment prints.“The Chess Players” makes a banal street scene more foreign to the viewer than John Watson’s photographs of African villagers, also in “Almost Together.” The woven grid contends that, even in public environments rife with opportunities for connection, our alienation prevents us from interacting authentically with our world.

“Almost Together” manages to connect us with our evident disconnect, bringing together local talent in a highly ambitious exhibition. It is a monumental show, striking right at the heart of what it means to be human in an increasingly technological world.

Contact Natalie Reyes at nreyes@dailycal.org.

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Thobias Faldt/Courtesy

After trekking through several blocks of the gritty Tenderloin District in San Francisco, stepping into the historic Phoenix Hotel for the third annual rendition of ArtPadSF — an art fair featuring emerging and contemporary art — was a somewhat surreal experience. On its website, ArtPadSF promises to offer its visitors “the best of the contemporary art market in an intimate and unique setting.” Sure enough, the setting is nothing if not unique. With its classic American motor-lodge vibe, luxurious palm trees and dazzling pool (combined with the weekend’s fabulous, sunny weather), the Phoenix felt more like the set of neo-noir thriller “L.A. Confidential” than a place to stage an art exhibit. In other words, before exploring the various artworks, the temptation to just order up a strawberry daiquiri, lounge poolside and people-watch had to be overcome.

As ArtPadSF invaded the Phoenix for the weekend, 40 rooms of the hotel were cleared out and turned into individual galleries, featuring art from the Bay Area and beyond. Although the rooms were of similar size and shape, each exhibit made use of the space in a distinct way. For instance, in one room occupied by a Los Angeles-based gallery, even the small accompanying bathroom area was utilized, as visitors were invited to step in and pull aside the shower curtain to view the artwork. In addition to these gallery spaces, ArtPadSF offered its visitors video screenings, panels, live performances and other special events. While some of the featured artists and galleries have been collaborating with ArtPadSF each year since its inception, for others, this weekend marked the first time being involved with the event. When asked about the selection of art for the program, Maria Jenson, director of ArtPadSF, explained that it consisted of a “mix of commercial art, art collectives and nonprofit art” and that the desire was “for each piece of art to be able to stand on its own.”

Weaving in and out of the different rooms, the mixture of artwork made it difficult to derive a unified theme. Take, for example, the space occupied by Krowswork, an Oakland-based video and photography gallery. Jason Hanasik’s haunting video explores the construction of masculine identity, following the coming-of-age of Sharrod, a young man who joins the navy in Virginia. The exhibit was displayed alongside Mark Baugh-Sasaki’s steel and granite sculptures, which examine and question the interaction between the natural landscape and the industrial world. Striking an entirely different note, Bay Area-based artist Zio Ziegler’s vast paintings covered the walls in abstract combinations of colors, lines and patterns. Other works included everything from life-sized installations questioning the poses we commonly assume in front of mirrors (such as that of a woman pressing close upon a mirror with an eyelash curler) and a series of images of a family dressed entirely in and surrounded by cardboard.

The eclectic mix of artistic styles, themes and media meshes remarkably well with the quirkiness of the Phoenix Hotel and its position in the middle of the Tenderloin. ArtPadSF is fun — it’s playful, it’s innovative, it’s contemporary and it’s slightly crazy. However, one thing this event feels lacking in is the “provocative” aspect described in the program guide. Despite ArtPadSF’s attempt to capitalize on its location, just by walking a few blocks around the surrounding Tenderloin neighborhood, one sees things a lot more provocative than anything displayed at this exhibit.

Contact Corinne Platten at cplatten@dailycal.org.

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