Yesterday I hung a show at Scheidenhelm Architecture at 732 Chenery Street #A in SF (http://sf-arc.com/page.php?id=10). Carl Scheidenhelm is the owner, and he is friends with Tachina Rudman, who is my friend from her work with the Open Studios organization ArtSpan and their Art for City Youth program. (http://www.artspan.org/). Tachina is the mastermind behind the art shows at Carl's, and does a great job featuring exciting work there by local artists such as myself.
The show took about 3 hours to hang, which might seem long for a show that has 15 paintings. Because this is a working architect's office, however, it is necessary to work around existing furniture and office equipment. In the short run, this can seem like a hindrance. However, under Tachina's direction, and with my wife Kate's help, we were able to  display the work seamlessly in the space. The office is enlivened,  the work is showcased, and it looks great.
For this exhibit, I am showing work that has a strong  design emphasis. I use strong primary colors, and much of the work is very linear and geometric. Because of this, it fits very nicely in an architectural office, where it has qualities that it shares with architecture. We are now planning to have an opening on Wednesday, September 7th, at 6pm. I will post specific details later, but feel free to stop by the office storefront, gaze at the art in the windows, and perhaps knock on the door to see if you can take a quick tour. The exhibit will be up about 7 weeks, and will come down after the second week of September.

Last week I went with friends to the Picasso exhibit at the deYoung museum in Golden Gate Park in SF. Scores of his  paintings, prints and sculpture are on view there, part of a traveling show from the collection of of the Musee Picasso in Paris.
It is truly a gift from that museum, and the French Ministry of Culture, that these pieces are allowed to travel. I have never had the pleasure of visiting that museum; indeed, I have spent only 8 hours in Paris, and that was many years ago. So, viewing these works in my own town is a rare artistic and educational opportunity.
That said, I have never been a great fan of Picasso's paintings. He is wonderfully confident, creative and unafraid, but at times too self indulgent, and almost sloppy, in the execution of his ideas. In addition, he remains for me only a mediocre colorist, with occasional notable exceptions. (I have always been partial to Matisse, whose love of color and whose protean ability to reinvent himself and to invent new styles of painting makes him for me the defining talent of the 20th century.)
Despite these criticisms, I have never seen a bad Picasso drawing or print. He is perhaps the best draftsman of the last century. His sculpture is both astonishing and prescient in its creation of the major trends which followed it. And, his ceramic works are as free and lovely as his drawings. My niggling should not discourage a visit to this exhibition, which showcases a talent that is inspiring in its creative range and technical excellence. You should go and take a look- it will be well worth your time.

Here are some pieces that I particularly enjoyed:

• the "Portrait of Dora Maar" from 1937 (seen above). Picasso's use of color in this painting defies my criticisms, and his use of pattern is masterful.
  
• the assemblage sculpture "Tete de Tareau", or Head of a Bull, made so inventively and economically from bicycle handlebars and a leather bike seat. Breathtaking in its creativity and its defiance of sculptural canons.
• the "Self Portrait" from 1906, where he is clearly in the process of inventing Cubism, using a motif derived from African masks and their simplification of facial features that will be seen so dramatically in his later masterwork, "Demoiselles D'Avignon" (http://www.moma.org/explore/conservation/demoiselles/).