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Reviews
Critical analyses of contemporary art
Looking Outward: Bay Area Now 9 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
The ninth iteration of Bay Area Now at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts asks of-the-moment questions about knowledge production and creation.
A Question of Hu: The Narrative Art of Hung Liu
Through her process, subject, and material choices, Liu uplifts subjects that historically would not have the socioeconomic power or privilege to be memorialized in paint.
Textile as transcript: Adriene Cruz in Converge 45’s Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship
Vibrant, mixed media textile works honor the history of Black women.
Who do you carry with you? Malcolm Peacock at SE Cooper Contemporary
Through audio, participatory sculpture, and memory, the exhibit poses the salient questions: “who are you carrying with you?”
Painting Toward Life: Jesse Murry at Reed College
Painting as a matter of life or death.
Political agitation through reflection: Zarouhie Abdalian at KADIST San Francisco
A group exhibition from KADIST’s collection demonstrated how artists make powerful political statements by abstracting language and material.
Sponsored Connections
Sponsored Connection | Christine Miller: Syrup on Watermelon at Portland Art Museum Reviewed
Portland artist Christine Miller turns historical racist imagery into tools for Black liberation and love.
Sponsored Connection | Diedrick Brackens & D’Angelo Lovell Williams: The Quick at lumber room Reviewed
Two artists collaborate to explore kinship, multigenerational learning, and community.
Sponsored Connection: Maya Vivas / Ori Gallery
Ori Gallery (Portland, OR) offers artists the space they need to be creative.
Sponsored Connection: devynn emory
devynn emory invites people to engage with grief, death, and community.
Sponsored Connection: Nat Turner Project
Nat Turner Project (Portland, OR) is a fugitive, migratory space working to end the precarity of Black life.
Sponsored Connection: Converge 45
Converge 45 (Portland, OR) is building an organization where curators and artists can work together.
Conversations with outstanding West Coast artists and art workers directly funded by generous organizations
THE BEST West COAST ART
Each week, our regional CLIFF NOTES columnists pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast. We send them straight to your inbox.
Interviews
Intimate conversations with artists about their life, work, and inspiration
Good Taste: interview with Courtney Dailey from Nike
We talk to Courtney Dailey from Nike about art, design, and creative inspiration in everyday life.
Facing Life: Pendarvis Harshaw & Brandon Tauszik interviewed
A two-year conversation chronicles a multimedia project about California prisons and formerly incarcerated individuals.
Opening Space for Bay Area writing: Claudia La Rocco and Jackie Im in conversation
La Rocco and Im discuss (art) writing, editing and curation, and the roles of community and institutions in the art world
We are having this conversation now, yesterday, and tomorrow: Michael Espinoza interviewed
The Portland-based artist talks about Queer Ancestors lost to persecution, disease, fatal sadness, and closets.
Good Taste: interview with Jessie Manning from Street Disco
Good Taste is a new column about West Coast creatives in all industries.
Leveraging Strengths, Moving Forward: Elena Gross and Kimberley Acebo Arteche Interviewed
Roula Seikaly talks to the two co-directors of Berkeley Art Center about how they approach collaboration, creating meaningful life-work balance, and how BAC welcomes diverse audiences.
Love Letters
Micro essays on artists we can’t stop thinking about
Love Letter to Toby Bluth
Before Disney ever introduced family-friendly gay characters, Bluth used the saccharine visual language of his employer to create a queer fantasy world of his own.
Love Letter to Ben Cuevas
Fiber sculptures explore gendered constructs, feminist ideologies, and the restraints of the body.
Love Letter to Julie Green
An Oregon-based educator and artist inspires her students to find beauty in everything.
Love Letter to Kenjiro Nomura
A Seattle-based painter captures 1930s Seattle, Japanese Internment, grief, loss, and recovery—all with his brush.
Love Letter to Essie Somma
A painter challenges the traditional approach to classical painting through vice, intimacy, and the quotidian.
Love Letter to Jeannene Przyblyski
A Bay Area-based educator inspired students to look harder, ask deeper questions, and to take a stand.
Pairings
Art that makes us think of food and food that makes us think of art
Immersive Frida Kahlo & Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino
What do blockbuster immersive art exhibits and junk food have in common?
Raúl Guerrero & Mexican food in the United States
Raúl Guerrero’s paintings of food celebrate the Mexican-American experience.
Nasim Hantezadeh and summer stone fruit
An LA-based artist’s biomorphic works on paper evoke the vocabulary of food.
Jim Shaw and The Apple Pan’s egg salad sandwich
The globby Americana of Jim Shaw paintings and an overstuffed egg salad sandwich.
Wayne Thiebaud & Ghia’s Le Spritz
Wayne Tiebaud’s distinctly Californian sense of lighting and the perfect non-alcoholic aperitif.
The Why
The stories that inspire West Coast creatives
John Baldessari and Bad Photography
Seattle-based photographer Natalie Krick on making her own rules about good photography.
An Endless Pursuit to Describe the World in Watercolor
Artist Alexa Grambush uses painting to understand the world and its complexities.
Aaron Shurin’s Poetic Punctuation
A writer discusses how an unlikely combination of punctuation changed his writing forever.
Tom Friedman’s 1000 Hours of Staring
How a blank piece of paper inspired Variable West’s founder to be an art critic and writer.
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We cover art in California, Oregon, and Washington, but encourage pitches from anywhere. Check our Call for Pitches page to learn about all our formats.