November 11, 2024

Gray Loft Gallery ~ The New College Circle exhibition closing

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photos by Styrous®
(except where noted)


Last Sunday I had the pleasure of attending the closing reception for The New College Circle exhibition at the Gray Loft Gallery (link below).       
 
During the event I had the fantastic fortune to find and buy a 45 RPM album by Crime and have Henry S. Rosenthal, aka Hank Rank, autograph it. The album contained Hot Wire My Heart and Baby You're So Repulsive, both songs I already had on 45's, but the album had other songs I didn't have.         
 
 

 
Crime - Live 1978 
album photo by Roberto Morrison
45 RPM album
 
 
  
 
Jan Watten w/ Hank Rank
 
 
Another group in the show, Other Music, had their albums Prime Numbers and Incidents Out Of Context for sale but I'd bought both albums sometime in the early eighties . . .     


 
. . . however, I did buy one of their t-shirts . . . 

 
. . . which is 100% cotton AND made in the USA! 
 

 
Other Music T-shirt 
photo by Jan Watten



Meredith Tromble (curator) & Jessica

 
 












 

 
 
      
Viewfinder links:       
         
Crime           
Gray Loft Gallery            
Jan Watten                 
     
Net links:        
         
Gray Loft Gallery          
Jan Watten                         
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
Styrous® ~ Monday, November 11, 2024           
        















November 8, 2024

Chinese carved pedestal table

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Chinese carved rosewood & natural gray mottled marble top round table. 1920's.    


        
       
        
 
 
 


Rosewood is hard, tough, strong, and dense. True rosewoods come from trees of the genus Dalbergia, but other woods are often called rosewood. Rosewood takes a high polish and is used for luxury furniture-making, flooring, musical instruments, and turnery.        
 
 
 
Genuine rosewoods belong to the genus Dalbergia. The pre-eminent rosewood appreciated in the Western world is the wood of Dalbergia nigra. It is best known as "Brazilian rosewood", but also as "Bahia rosewood". This wood has a strong, sweet smell, which persists for many years, explaining the name rosewood.           
 

 
 
As rosewoods are strong and heavy, taking an excellent polish, they are suitable for guitars (the fretboards on electric and acoustic guitars often being made of rosewood), marimbas and recorders. There is a site that specializes in Panama rosewood sets for guitars (link below).        
 
 

 
In general, world stocks are poor through overexploitation. Rosewood is now protected worldwide. At a summit of the international wildlife trade in South Africa, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) moved to protect the world's most trafficked wild product by placing all 300 species of the rosewood tree under trade restrictions. At CITES meetings in 2013, 2016, and 2019, additional rosewood species were listed for protection, triggering market booms in China.               
 
 

       
       
        
       
       
        
       
        
Viewfinder links:    
       
Turkish Delights              
     
Net links:            
        
Panama Rosewood Sets        
Woodworker's Source ~ Rosewood From Around the Globe       
       
        
       
       
        
Styrous® ~ Friday, November 8, 2024        
        
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

November 3, 2024

New College Circle Part 2: Other Music & Crime




It is totally amazing to me how my life is a never ending parade of circles/cycles intermingling, colliding and during The New College Circle exhibition at the Gray Loft Gallery in Oakland, SEVERAL of them came washing me away to Memory Land!   
 
Participants in the exhibition included David B. Doty, Henry S. Rosenthal and Dale S. Soules, all wonderful and excing music flashbacks for me from the seventies and eighties.           
 
Doty, Rosenthal and Soules recorded a superb series of Avant-garde music albums under the name, Other Music. Their works were inspired by Avant-garde musicians such as Harry Partch, Lou Harrison and others of that ilk. I discovered their album, Prime Numbers, sometime in the early eighties; I have been intending to write about it on a future article on the vinyl LP section (link below); NOW I need to get on the ball and DO it.    
 
Doty and Rosenthal (aka Hank Rank) formed one of the early San Francisco punk rock groups in the seventies, Crime (link belows). They were intense to say the least; I caught them at the Deaf Club on Valencia Street, San Francisco. I bought their 45 RPM, Hot Wire My Heart, the "B" side had Baby You're So Repulsive. How could you pass up that?            

Well, back to the exhibition! It will have one more showing on Saturday, November, 9, then the closing reception will be the next day, Sunday, November, 10, from 4 to 6 PM.    

Closing reception: 
Sunday, November, 10, 4 to 6 PM   

         
This exhibition is a celebration of fifty years of creative achievement launched by an experimental education at New College of California (NCOC) in San Francisco.  On view in the exhibit are archival materials, costume design, film, drawing, landscape design, music, installation, sculpture, performance, and photography.

Featured Artists
Carola Anderson, David B. Doty, Michael Patrick Lynch, 
Elaine McKeen, Henry S. Rosenthal, Dale Soules 
and Meredith Tromble who curated the show

In the mid-1970s, a group of young artists at New College of California fueled their creative practices with friendship and the radically experimental education offered by the school. They drew each other, recorded their own physiological data, performed plays written by their professor, invented musical instruments, and received credit for a gallimaufry of life experiences. At the time, statistics revealed that of students graduating with an art degree, only 5% were still making art ten years later. But in the ensuing decades each person in the New College Circle created their own path over, under, or around the barriers that stop young artists from becoming mature artists, pursuing creative practices and careers. This exhibition presents the New College Circle’s vibrant work in context with the unique institution that prepared them to thrive creatively throughout life.             
 
Closing reception – November 10, 2024
 
 

Installation photos by Styrous®



  


 
 
 
 
Michael Patrick Lynch 

 
 


 








 
 
 
above: Michael Lynch
below: Time As the Crow Flies - 2023
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Dale S. Soules & Other Music

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 

 

 
 
 


 
 
      
Viewfinder links:       
         
Crime           
Gray Loft Gallery            
Lou Harrison             
Harry Partch             
Jan Watten                 
     
Net links:        
         
Gray Loft Gallery          
Jan Watten                         
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
Styrous® ~ Sunday, November 3, 2024