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The long-running grassroots public art project Art in Odd Places returns with an edition curated by Furusho von Puttkammer that questions the idea of a return to “normal” after the pandemic with works critiquing U.S. politics and the mythos of the American Dream. Projects will range from the outlandish to the poignant. Lawyer-turned-artist Tootsie Warhol will be in character as ex-president Donald Trump to complain about Kehinde Wiley outsourcing the creation of Obama’s official portrait to China, and anonymous British street artist “Blanksy” will appear in a white spandex suit that passersby are invited to spray paint with provided aerosols, while Sara Lynne Lindsay will pay tribute to the victims of the last pandemic, the 1918 Spanish flu, by carrying a billowing white dress in which she’s written their names in wax down 14th Street. ....
G. Allen Johnson May 5, 2021Updated: May 10, 2021, 1:35 pm San Francisco artist Alicia McCarthy is one of the eight Bay Area artists featured in “Tell Them We Were Here.” Photo: Courtesy BAMPFA The worldview of the new documentary “Tell Them We Were Here,” which profiles eight current Bay Area artists whose work over the decades has not only made an impact but also helped inform the Bay Area’s artistic identity, is expressed by an early voice-over in the film: “Artists in the Bay Area are more devoted to a ‘life’ in arts rather than a ‘career’ in arts.” The inventive and informative film by artist and Gallery 16 founder Griff Williams and filmmaker Keelan Williams made its world premiere in the virtual cinema of the Berkeley Art Museum’s Pacific Film Archive on Friday, May 7. It also features local curators from BAMPFA, Oakland Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as other observers and artists such as filmmaker ....