"Mad" Miles
02-13-2007, 02:28 PM
SOMA on the SOFA, or The Diary of a Culcha Vulcha
By R. Miles Mendenhall
2/13/2007
When I first started going to art openings I was a junior in college and they were the Studio Art student openings at UCI in the late seventies. I always liked them; there was a heady mix of intellectual discussion, sexual seduction and sometimes charming pretentiousness that I found fascinating and exciting. Plus some of them led to wild after-parties! Of course this was the height of the Sexual Revolution, AIDS had not become news and we were young.
I continued attending art and gallery openings after college in LA and Orange County and again in Chicago when I moved there for grad school. But when I moved to Sonoma County in 1997, I stopped. I’m not really sure why, I continued my pursuit of live music and dancing, and various other cultural interests, but I hadn’t attended any openings until just the last three weeks. Partly it was probably my snobbishness in thinking that out here in the ‘burbs the scene can’t be as cutting edge and cool as in “The City”. Partly it’s because I was busy working, getting a credential, and trying to start a teaching career.
It may also have had to do with my frustration over the years with the art scene. I didn’t “belong”. I wasn’t an artist, or a collector (no money), or a dealer (no capital or interest in the game) or a critic. I was just a viewer, and a talker. I once stupidly insulted a good friend of mine in Chicago when I told her that while I liked artists, and there were a few with the intellectual props to hold their own in a spirited debate, I found most to be childlike, inarticulate and while smart about the visual realm they worked in, not very good at talking about it. She is an experimental filmmaker, and I guess I pissed her off pretty good, because she cut me out of her circle and soon after moved to the country to live and work on an organic farm collective. (No, I don’t think I drove her out of the city! But who knows? I never got the chance to ask…)
Not only did I become disenchanted with the art scene because of my lack of a place in it. But the charming pretentiousness grew tiresome. There is something that openings have in common with the club scene, the almost universal attitude among the beautiful and the young, that being cool means standing around acting bored and antisocial. “Too cool to fool” is how I described it back in the early eighties. “I’m so sophisticated and above it all, and I’ll prove it by the blasé, pissed off expression on my face, my casual unresponsive and unwelcoming stance and my total lack of friendliness and openness to conversing with anyone outside of my tiny circle of friends!” Of course my response may have been simply due to my emotional insecurity and self-consciousness but the results are the same. I was in 3<SUP>rd</SUP> Street Aleworks a month back and asked a heavy metal musician if the attitude in the clubs was the same as it had been thirty years ago. He replied that not only it was but also that it was amazing how blasé audience behavior crosses many genres of music.
What I do like about openings is that they’re like cocktail parties that you don’t have to worry about being invited to, there’s free wine, cheese, crackers, and fruit. And sometimes interesting stuff and people to look at. Conversations can be interesting and no one cares too much if you say off the wall, goofy things because, hey, it’s the art world!
Recently I attended my first openings in ten years. First was at Quicksilver Mine Co. in Forestville with a show of thirteen local artists. I know the owner, Khysie Horn, a little, from the No Spray Action Network of 2000-2003. The art was great, lots of very crafty wood and metal work. I’m a sucker for great joinery and beautiful finishes. The crowd was your typical aging Boomer Ur-Hippy types and suburban hipsters. The same people I’ve been seeing at demonstrations and music gigs for the last ten years in the West County. I’d left a backyard Latin jam birthday party in Graton, so I was well prepared for a crowd. I ran into at least four or five people that I know. So no blasé atmosphere for us! Had a great time and then went back to the party.
https://www.quicksilvermineco.com/
The next weekend was an opening at A Street Gallery, also by thirteen artists, but these were billed as “young” artists. It started just after a book talk at the Sonoma County Museum with Erik Davis, who I’d heard before and is a friend of a friend. He talked with Jonah Raskin about Erik’s book, “Visionary California”. It’s a history and cultural critique of many, if not most, of the various religious and spiritual movements founded in the history of our state. It contains beautiful pictures of obscure, and not so obscure, religious and religious cult architecture in California. Erik is a very smart, articulate and talented writer/speaker. So on an intellectual buzz (I don’t go to a lot of book talks, but that’s a subject for another day) I headed for the new “Arts District” of Santa Rosa.
Now, I know the A Street area. It’s around the corner from the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County, where I’ve been to many a meeting or event. And I’ve been to the A Street Gallery for one play a couple of years ago and a couple of their exhibits, just not an opening. This night had gotten some press about how the A Street neighborhood was taking off as an arts scene.
As I pulled up, I saw Dave T. Carter, lead singer/writer of his band, The Trailer Park Rangers, out on the sidewalk smoking a fag. (He’s an Aussie, so Briticisms apply, no homophobia implied or intended!) I love his music and performances so it was nice to see him.
He was in front of his friend Laura Hoffman’s studio so I went in for the obligatory wine and cheese and to look at her work. I met Molly who was pouring and while chatting she told me that because the area was starting to take off as an arts location with various artists living and working nearby, they’d started to call it SOFA. For “South of A Street” a pun on SOMA, SOHO, etc. Never mind that it’s on A Street, so the name is a bit nonsensical. After hanging for a bit I went on to A Street Gallery, where I waxed pithy and wise to anyone who cared to listen to my silly comments about the work we were looking at.
Some interesting stuff, some not so, prices far beyond my means. I remember intricate paper works, two large paintings of nudes with an overt painterly style and post-apocalyptic gestures and some very creepy cartoon like colorful sculptures of disturbing animals that reminded me of the work of Johnen Vasquez (Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, graphic stories/comics) and Japanese Anime of the Pokemon variety. I of course didn’t find the sculptor to tell him since who wants to be told their work is derivative?
While getting more vino and snacks I had forgotten the name for the area that Molly had told me. (Whom it turns out is the artist who was also showing in Laura’s space, and shares it?) So I asked the lovely young wine pourer at A Street what they were calling this little Firenze by the freeway, she said SOMA, for “South of the Mall”. Get it? SOMA? South of Market? I remembered Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and the drug Soma that everyone was given in that future dystopia that kept them docile and happy.
As I went about introducing anyone who would pay attention to the new terminology (for me, for all I know it’s been called these names for years) Shepherd Bliss, whom I also know from No Spray Action Network (he initiated it) pointed out that Soma was also a word for body, as in “somatic”. Trust a poet to think of that.
So there it was! (I’d gone back and gotten Molly to remind me of her term. We’re talking two doors down here.) An epiphany. SOMA on the SOFA. Drugged, blissed out body on the chaise. What better phrase for an “Arts District” (which was the other term the more sober folk told me was the name for this burgeoning arts neighborhood) than a decadent image like that? Have you ever seen the Georges Barbier print called “Smoke”? I used have it hanging on my bedroom wall in Chicago. It represented the dream of decadent luxurious comfort that meant an indolent happy life for me. Why not that as an image for a new art scene?
I’ve left out a lot of other things that happened in those two hours. Like running into just about everyone I know from the peace movement centered at P&J. And seeing others that I know from the local live music community. And the brief discussion about the impossibility of real communication (all language is referential, not direct transference of lived experience) that I had with an artist.
Afterwards I went to Café St. Rose and had a reasonably erudite conversation with a wine snob about food, France, restaurants and wine. Then on to Batacha at the Forestville Club for Salsa and to end a day any Culcha Vulcha would embrace. Something is happening and, it’s “Soma on the Sofa”! All praise / mad props to Director Andrea Speer Hibbard of A Street Gallery and the other artists who work there for making it happen.
https://www.astreetgallery.com/
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Oh yeah, there was a crowd of young twenty something sophisticates, all dressed in art world de rigueur black, standing around the middle of the gallery looking “too cool to fool” and not talking very much. I was back “home”! “Same as it ever was…”
By R. Miles Mendenhall
2/13/2007
When I first started going to art openings I was a junior in college and they were the Studio Art student openings at UCI in the late seventies. I always liked them; there was a heady mix of intellectual discussion, sexual seduction and sometimes charming pretentiousness that I found fascinating and exciting. Plus some of them led to wild after-parties! Of course this was the height of the Sexual Revolution, AIDS had not become news and we were young.
I continued attending art and gallery openings after college in LA and Orange County and again in Chicago when I moved there for grad school. But when I moved to Sonoma County in 1997, I stopped. I’m not really sure why, I continued my pursuit of live music and dancing, and various other cultural interests, but I hadn’t attended any openings until just the last three weeks. Partly it was probably my snobbishness in thinking that out here in the ‘burbs the scene can’t be as cutting edge and cool as in “The City”. Partly it’s because I was busy working, getting a credential, and trying to start a teaching career.
It may also have had to do with my frustration over the years with the art scene. I didn’t “belong”. I wasn’t an artist, or a collector (no money), or a dealer (no capital or interest in the game) or a critic. I was just a viewer, and a talker. I once stupidly insulted a good friend of mine in Chicago when I told her that while I liked artists, and there were a few with the intellectual props to hold their own in a spirited debate, I found most to be childlike, inarticulate and while smart about the visual realm they worked in, not very good at talking about it. She is an experimental filmmaker, and I guess I pissed her off pretty good, because she cut me out of her circle and soon after moved to the country to live and work on an organic farm collective. (No, I don’t think I drove her out of the city! But who knows? I never got the chance to ask…)
Not only did I become disenchanted with the art scene because of my lack of a place in it. But the charming pretentiousness grew tiresome. There is something that openings have in common with the club scene, the almost universal attitude among the beautiful and the young, that being cool means standing around acting bored and antisocial. “Too cool to fool” is how I described it back in the early eighties. “I’m so sophisticated and above it all, and I’ll prove it by the blasé, pissed off expression on my face, my casual unresponsive and unwelcoming stance and my total lack of friendliness and openness to conversing with anyone outside of my tiny circle of friends!” Of course my response may have been simply due to my emotional insecurity and self-consciousness but the results are the same. I was in 3<SUP>rd</SUP> Street Aleworks a month back and asked a heavy metal musician if the attitude in the clubs was the same as it had been thirty years ago. He replied that not only it was but also that it was amazing how blasé audience behavior crosses many genres of music.
What I do like about openings is that they’re like cocktail parties that you don’t have to worry about being invited to, there’s free wine, cheese, crackers, and fruit. And sometimes interesting stuff and people to look at. Conversations can be interesting and no one cares too much if you say off the wall, goofy things because, hey, it’s the art world!
Recently I attended my first openings in ten years. First was at Quicksilver Mine Co. in Forestville with a show of thirteen local artists. I know the owner, Khysie Horn, a little, from the No Spray Action Network of 2000-2003. The art was great, lots of very crafty wood and metal work. I’m a sucker for great joinery and beautiful finishes. The crowd was your typical aging Boomer Ur-Hippy types and suburban hipsters. The same people I’ve been seeing at demonstrations and music gigs for the last ten years in the West County. I’d left a backyard Latin jam birthday party in Graton, so I was well prepared for a crowd. I ran into at least four or five people that I know. So no blasé atmosphere for us! Had a great time and then went back to the party.
https://www.quicksilvermineco.com/
The next weekend was an opening at A Street Gallery, also by thirteen artists, but these were billed as “young” artists. It started just after a book talk at the Sonoma County Museum with Erik Davis, who I’d heard before and is a friend of a friend. He talked with Jonah Raskin about Erik’s book, “Visionary California”. It’s a history and cultural critique of many, if not most, of the various religious and spiritual movements founded in the history of our state. It contains beautiful pictures of obscure, and not so obscure, religious and religious cult architecture in California. Erik is a very smart, articulate and talented writer/speaker. So on an intellectual buzz (I don’t go to a lot of book talks, but that’s a subject for another day) I headed for the new “Arts District” of Santa Rosa.
Now, I know the A Street area. It’s around the corner from the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County, where I’ve been to many a meeting or event. And I’ve been to the A Street Gallery for one play a couple of years ago and a couple of their exhibits, just not an opening. This night had gotten some press about how the A Street neighborhood was taking off as an arts scene.
As I pulled up, I saw Dave T. Carter, lead singer/writer of his band, The Trailer Park Rangers, out on the sidewalk smoking a fag. (He’s an Aussie, so Briticisms apply, no homophobia implied or intended!) I love his music and performances so it was nice to see him.
He was in front of his friend Laura Hoffman’s studio so I went in for the obligatory wine and cheese and to look at her work. I met Molly who was pouring and while chatting she told me that because the area was starting to take off as an arts location with various artists living and working nearby, they’d started to call it SOFA. For “South of A Street” a pun on SOMA, SOHO, etc. Never mind that it’s on A Street, so the name is a bit nonsensical. After hanging for a bit I went on to A Street Gallery, where I waxed pithy and wise to anyone who cared to listen to my silly comments about the work we were looking at.
Some interesting stuff, some not so, prices far beyond my means. I remember intricate paper works, two large paintings of nudes with an overt painterly style and post-apocalyptic gestures and some very creepy cartoon like colorful sculptures of disturbing animals that reminded me of the work of Johnen Vasquez (Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, graphic stories/comics) and Japanese Anime of the Pokemon variety. I of course didn’t find the sculptor to tell him since who wants to be told their work is derivative?
While getting more vino and snacks I had forgotten the name for the area that Molly had told me. (Whom it turns out is the artist who was also showing in Laura’s space, and shares it?) So I asked the lovely young wine pourer at A Street what they were calling this little Firenze by the freeway, she said SOMA, for “South of the Mall”. Get it? SOMA? South of Market? I remembered Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and the drug Soma that everyone was given in that future dystopia that kept them docile and happy.
As I went about introducing anyone who would pay attention to the new terminology (for me, for all I know it’s been called these names for years) Shepherd Bliss, whom I also know from No Spray Action Network (he initiated it) pointed out that Soma was also a word for body, as in “somatic”. Trust a poet to think of that.
So there it was! (I’d gone back and gotten Molly to remind me of her term. We’re talking two doors down here.) An epiphany. SOMA on the SOFA. Drugged, blissed out body on the chaise. What better phrase for an “Arts District” (which was the other term the more sober folk told me was the name for this burgeoning arts neighborhood) than a decadent image like that? Have you ever seen the Georges Barbier print called “Smoke”? I used have it hanging on my bedroom wall in Chicago. It represented the dream of decadent luxurious comfort that meant an indolent happy life for me. Why not that as an image for a new art scene?
I’ve left out a lot of other things that happened in those two hours. Like running into just about everyone I know from the peace movement centered at P&J. And seeing others that I know from the local live music community. And the brief discussion about the impossibility of real communication (all language is referential, not direct transference of lived experience) that I had with an artist.
Afterwards I went to Café St. Rose and had a reasonably erudite conversation with a wine snob about food, France, restaurants and wine. Then on to Batacha at the Forestville Club for Salsa and to end a day any Culcha Vulcha would embrace. Something is happening and, it’s “Soma on the Sofa”! All praise / mad props to Director Andrea Speer Hibbard of A Street Gallery and the other artists who work there for making it happen.
https://www.astreetgallery.com/
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Oh yeah, there was a crowd of young twenty something sophisticates, all dressed in art world de rigueur black, standing around the middle of the gallery looking “too cool to fool” and not talking very much. I was back “home”! “Same as it ever was…”