Show UP

We almost didn’t go. It’s been a year and a half since we’ve attended an art opening/reception and since the new wave of Covid variants and back-on-with-the-mask-rules, we thought no one else would go either.

Thinking of our Lang’s never give up motto, with the core tenet we always show up, we got in the car, buckled our seat belts and headed in.

Google Map directions guided us over the Golden Gate Bridge then along the path that we drove year after year to work at Electric Works. Past many memorable sites we call “scenes of triumph.” 

Past the innovative green SFPUC building, with an amazing collection of artworks (including three of our prints) curated by the SF Art Commission.

Past the State of California Building where Senator Scott Wiener's office hosted many outstanding art exhibitions. 

Past the SFPL Main Branch where our Reading Stones are on display and where we totally triumphed in 2012 with our The Plastic in Question.

Past our old digs on 8th Street. The Buzzell Electric Works building looking very closed and shuttered. 

Onward to Minnesota Street Project Remember Pre-Covid when MSP was the lively hub of galleries and events with readings and receptions, the book fair— on and on. We spent so many happy hours there.

Onward to the Rena Bransten Gallery for the exhibition Just one word: Plastics 

With our masks secure, pulled up tight over nose and mouth we stepped in to the largely empty atrium. But, we had an uncanny feeling of belonging when the Greeter looked Richard in the eye and asked, "Are you Noah’s dad?" Out of the blue!!! How did he ever recognize Richard with just the thin slip of his face visible? The greeter Sigfried went on to name Clementine, Aloysius and Kris. It is in the eyes, in the eyes.

Gallerist Trish made us feel especially welcome with the comfy chairs so we settled in to see if and who might attend. Before we knew it we were off and running...Richard was holding forth…

Left: Gallerist Trish Bransten     Center: Richard Lang      Right: Mansur Nuruallah transforms materials that are bound for the trash.     Pics from his recent residency at Recology.

To be in the presence of the inspiring Tony Cragg, Palette 1982 with our Shovel Bands hung in proximity was a conjunction of triumphs. Along with Nurullah’s Absence of Light wall piece and William T. Wiley’s Unknown on the floor. 

Soon the gallery filled up with lots of people and lots of small dogs. Even with their masks on, most folks were recognizable but for some it took a double-take to recognize after such a long sheltering time.

We applaud the commitment of the true-blue art professionals and appreciators who always show up. And family who show up: The Lang Gang with Noah, Kris and Clementine since their camping trip was smoked out from the Dixie Fire. They dressed up and showed up. Check out Clementine, stunning in lime green.

It was a grand gathering, even with the muffle behind masks conversation, we got the one word, loud and clear, PLASTIC.

On our way out, there was nothing muffled about @telstarlogistics yabai-kawaii firetruck! and the karaoke. @mike_arcega ’s karaoke and SMOKE!!!

 

38th Parallel

After over a year of sheltering tight, the Covid vaccination is giving us the lift we need to think about enjoying time with other people. We laughingly now say, “Hey, come on over and see what we did during our Covid vacation."

When “outside and distance” became the new normal, we realized that here at RanchoD we have plenty of both. Inspired by the likes of open-air sculpture parks of Storm King in New York and Oliver Ranch in Sonoma, we are creating and placing sculptures on our property.

Welcome to Art Mind Park

On Saturday July 31, we hosted a group of ten people and two dogs from the 38°N Explorers Club for an official inaugural tour of our gardens and sculpture grounds. Thanks to Steve Dunsky for organizing the excursion of folks associated with the Visions of the Wild film festival. This year the festival went online and around the world introducing us to planetary citizens concerned with place and our place in it.

Visions of the Wild sponsored the Global Recycled Plastic Art Challenge introducing our One Beach Plastic project and Shannon and Kathy O’Hares’ Obtainium.

The Nature, Sculture, Community program featured Steve Oliver (Oliver Ranch) and Dana Turkovic  (Laumeier Sculpture Park) 

First stop on our AMP tour: signing in... 

Then we proceeded to the walk the walk and talk the talk about the biological imperative that connects the artworks in our outdoor arena: The Gate, The Drought Dots, The Shrine. Check out Art Mind Park blog a repository for more stories the sculptures/artworks. AMP is still very much a work in progress. Yes, it is the creative process that motivates — the visions of what we have not made yet that keep moving us forward.

Surrounded by the glorious and eye-dazzling images in Richard’s studio, the potluck offerings were delicious and the conversation was lively. Everything goes better with the Large Hadron Collider.

In the afternoon, a smaller group was on its way to Kehoe Beach. 

With the blamy ocean air and the sand swept clean, for most people on the beach, plastic was far from mind. But, as we like to say, "we're professional" and so were the other enthusiasts from our group. Before long we had collected plenty of common shards and recognizable pieces along with a couple of rare finds.

Steve discovered a new geological category of glomerate - glasstiglomerate (campfire melted beer bottle with embedded rocks) akin to the plastiglomerate we used in our Reading Stones.

Dragana retrieved this bolt, getting it out of the waste stream. It goes into the special collection of Bricolage, the moniker the French Dadaists used to refer to objects to be repurposed in a McGiver-like action. A Bricoleur is a handyperson, a DIYer, who can make something out of nothing. We are long practitioners in this industrial-age re-use fun and frolic.

Such a pleasure to share with kindred spirits, among so many other things, the 38th Parallel.

Just One Word

 

Just One Word  from the Rena Bransten Gallery: 

Each minute one million plastic bottles are used around the world [Reuters].  “… and every minute a chance to change the world…” Dolores Huerta [labor leader, civil rights activist, and catalyst of the environmental-justice movement].

Acknowledging our concern for wildlife, planetary sustainability, and the overwhelming impact of environmental injustice on our children – particularly low income and people of color – the Rena Bransten Gallery is pleased to announce our membership in the Gallery Climate Coalition.

Inspired by ecological heroism, we present Just one word…Plastics, an exhibition including work by Edward Burtynsky, Tony Cragg, Mark Dion,  Guillermo Galindo, Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang, Chip Lord, Susan Middleton, Vik Muniz, Mansur Nurullah, Aaron Siskind, and William T. Wiley.  The exhibition will be accompanied by a small shop of zero-waste, ecologically sound, common household goods. The title is taken from a line in The Graduate (1967), a piece of advice from the old guard encouraging a lucrative career and extolling this new material and its many promises.   In retrospect we see the advice as both naïve and sinister – a foreshadowing of environmental disaster. 

Press release HERE.

Reading Stones

Book object: Reading Stones

13 plastiglomerate stones in a cloth bag

Plastic may be with us for forever, as in these “reading stones” that we found on Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Stones like these are washing ashore onto to beaches everywhere. It is not known how these stones are formed but some scientists believe they are the burnt residue of plastic that was once shipped to Asia for recycling where it was partially incinerated, then accidentally sent adrift.

These stones are evidence of a new geology being formed by melting plastic debris into pyroplastic plastiglomerates. Theses facsimiles of stones are made from polyethylene, polypropylene, along with a smorgasbord of colorants and chemical additives. In these charred remains, as “reading stones” they ask us to decipher our present and future relationship to resource extraction and our dependence on petroleum-based products.

The history of the Earth can be read in the layers of built up sediments. Each stratification offers an insight into a moment in natural history. On the Geological Time Scale, the Anthropocene describes the human impact on the planet, the Age of Oil describes the planetary catastrophe of our petroleum-based consumer culture.

People often do not understand the equation of oil=plastic, but every year thousands of barrels of oil and natural gas are extracted and used to make plastic. That plastic straw in your beverage is extracted fossil hydrocarbons. 

The act of “reading stones” can refer to both the scientific practice of geological investigation and the ritual of lithomancy which seeks to interpret the patterns of stones cast by those wishing to divine the future. Traditionally in lithomancy, 13 similar stones were each assigned a symbol: astrological, planetary or elemental then placed in a bag. In a daily ritual, while pondering a question, 3 stones were drawn at random from the bag. From that group a message was read; a meaning was assigned in an intuitive way.

These “reading stones” serve in both capacities:

As a marker of the enduring impact of plastic on the planet.

As a message for the future. 

Take three stones from the bag. Upon inspection you might recognize the charred remains of a toothbrush or a bottle cap; a tuft of rope or a clump of melted single-use plastic bags.

Place these stones in an arrangement that invites a close reading.

Conjure a question that only the stones can answer:

What is it that is being extracted? Is our future as a species being extracted? Is hope itself being extracted? As the most powerful and destructive entity on planet Earth, what can we do?

The stones sing, “let’s face the music and dance.”

Reclamation: Artists’ Books on the Environment juried by Betty Bright (Independent Curator and Historian), Mark Dimunation (Chief of the Rare Books and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress), and Ruth Rogers (Curator of Special Collections at Wellesley College) is in conjuction with the Extraction project. 

Reading Stones will be at the San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch, Jewett Gallery (lower level), 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, from Saturday, July 3 – Sunday, September 5,  2021, Monday – Sunday 10:00 am – 5:30 pm.

Doug Woodring | When Spider Webs Unite, They Can Stop a Lion

Thanks to Doug Woodring, Founder and Managing Director of Ocean Recovery Alliance in Hong Kong, and Paul Rose, global explorer and environmentalist in Geneva, the impact of the Hong Kong Net Man lives on through the stories they tell about the interconnectedness of all life and the impact of plastic. 

Their lively banter and heartfelt appreciation for each other is viewable here in their conversation for The Global Biodiversity Festival. https://www.globalbiofest.com  

We are big fans of the upbeat to convey environmental messages and Doug's presentation of the Ethiopian story When Spider Webs Unite, They Can Stop a Lion is just the right amount of peril and positivity.

As we always say in our talks, “It wasn’t bombs and bullets that brought down the Berlin Wall, it was blue jeans and rockn’ roll—style and joie de vivre.” In 2013 for the Ocean Art Walk to commemorate the cessation of trawl fishing in Hong Kong Harbor we created NET MAN , constructed with nets gathered in a buy-back program to benefit out-of-work fishermen. He's celebrating along with his counterpart twin at the Marine Mammal Center, Sausalito—Ghost Net Monster.

Kudos to Doug and Paul for accentuating the positive!!! Sing it Bing...

Power of Color

Wassily Kandinsky proclaimed, “Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body.”

From Faber Birren's early studies on how color affects mood in interior spaces to the calm relaxation we feel when surrounded by color in the deep forest green of a natural setting, we have long known about the power of color to evoke emotional and physical responses.

The healing power of color is in full display at the new Kaiser Permanente building in Berkeley. The eagerly anticpated facility opened on May 5 in the neighborhood friendly location of 10th St off San Pablo. The center will focus on three primary areas of care: adult and family medicine, OBGYN and pediatrics, and will include a mental-health office, pharmacy and injection clinic for those needing regular shots, vaccinations or IV medications.

Just imagine walking through the soft green of this Kaiser corridor punctuated by our Chroma Pink and Chroma Purple. Then, just imagine, taking a closer look, discovering that these prints are photographs of hundreds of pieces of plastic collected from Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore. 

Can you feel Kandinsky's expression of color as vibratory spirit?

Are you feeling better already?

With gratitude to Ginny Tominia, Senior Art Consultant at Chandra Cerrito / Art Advisors, in Napa, CA, who curated and facilitated our participation.

Conversations.org: A Day with the Langs, by Anne Veh, Richard Whittaker

It has been almost ten years since this article was first published. The love expressed in this story continues today, growing ever stronger. Onward we go with the work we were enlisted to do on that fateful day of our first date. Much gratitude to Anne Veh, Richard Whitaker, Works and Conversations and Daily Good for keeping our plastic story alive. In 1999, we never imagined that picking up plastic trash would become our life work, but it has. Read the story here: Conversations.org: A Day with the Langs, by Anne Veh, Richard Whittaker