a work in progress

Returning to SF!

2008-01-18T04:45:00.001-08:00

I will be headed back to SF this weekend. I'm really excited to get back home and back to work. (Admittedly, I am not as excited to seek out a "day job" to pay my bills.) I haven't painted in almost a month so I'll be eager to start making new paintings.
I have a group show coming up at the very end of February that runs through all of March. It will be an exhibition of photoreal paintings featuring myself and four other artists. I'd like to start and finish one more medium-sized painting (around 24" x 24", maybe 20" x 20") for the show between this weekend and the start of the show. I think I can manage.

Long overdue update

2007-12-24T03:11:00.000-08:00

Hello, hello. I am alive. I have been keeping busy, although there isn't much photo evidence of that.
I am currently on vacation in Washington state, enjoying some time off before things get hectic again.

To start things off, I attended the "Tiny" show at Studio Gallery in November.

I've also been working on my own paintings. Here is a nearly-finished piece from my shiny new series:

I would like to go over the entire piece with another layer of glaze before repainting the clouds and part of the subtle value/color transitions in the sky.
At the risk of sounding too artsy, I am thinking of titling the series "Future Perfect," in reference to the idea that the photos that I work from are inherently "flawed," but I spend many hours on them, painting in a photorealistic style, thus renewing their value.
This photo is "flawed" in that the camera (a Holga 120N) captures the edge of the lens itself, causing the dark corners (this is called vignetting). The film was also processed in the wrong chemicals - on purpose, in my case - to create unpredictable color results.

The following five photos are of a new direction that I am taking with the "Face of Crisis" series. I am not abandoning the altered portraits, but this is a new avenue that I am exploring. I have taken still shots from YouTube to create a five-panel piece that should, ideally, speak for itself.

These pieces are waiting for a coat of varnish and a few touch-ups, otherwise I would have already posted them on the official art website.

I have other pieces that have yet to be photographed, but I will post them as soon as I have those images.

First Thursday: September 6th, 2007

2007-09-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

I was a bit lazy with the camera this time around, but we made our rounds through 49 Geary, 77 Geary, Hang and the Hang Annex, Dolby Chadwick, and John Berggruen.

Here is the one photo I took at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery in 49 Geary:

The artist was Misako Inaoka. The birds were hybrids: bird-dogs, pig-birds, bird-sharks - here is a detail of the above image:

Many of the birds had motion sensors and moved and chirped when activated. It was fun to see people interacting with the art.

As a poor replacement for photos of my gallery frolic, here are some postcards that I picked up along the way:

Clockwise from top left: Jimi Gleason at Toomey Tourell, Tokihiro Sato at Haines Gallery, Shoichi Seino at Don Soker, Misako Inaoka at Stephen Wirtz, and Amy Trachtenberg at Brian Gross. I definitely recommend checking out all five of those shows, as well as the Stephen Namara show at Dolby Chadwick.

Studio Gallery, "City Streets"

2007-08-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, my friend Ria (Jumeen) Kim had her debut in a group show at Studio Gallery. Many of her friends and classmates, myself included, came to show her our support. She is part of Studio Gallery's annual cityscapes show, "City Streets." There are several other great artists in there, so I definitely recommend checking it out.

Recent gallery openings

2007-08-13T02:25:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos from recent gallery openings I attended:

Somewhere in 49 Geary on First Thursday -

111 Minna hosted the annual Fecal Face show on First Thursday. Some really intriguing art, but I arrived after it got crowded so I couldn't get a very close look.

See what I mean about the crowd?

Finally, the one photo I managed to snap at the Yumiko Kayukawa show at Shooting Gallery this past Saturday before my camera ran out of battery juice. Both Shooting Gallery and White Walls were crowded as usual, but I'll be back to get a good look at the art.

An introduction

2007-08-13T01:26:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to my new art blog. Hopefully you have been directed here through my art website, so that you know who I am. If you do not, my name is Anita Shih and I am a young emerging artist working out of San Francisco, CA. I will be using this blog to post works in progress, sketches, and other art-related happenings in my life.