Currently on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art, the sculpture will be returned to the Pompejanum in Germany later this year.
An Ancient Roman Bust Purchased for $35 at a Texas Thrift Store Is Now Being Repatriated to Germany
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KCSCP: Portals and Reflections, Kindness Gallery
Jeff Burk, “Rock Fall, IL”
A portal serves as a door, an entrance that connects one space to another. The Kansas City Society for Contemporary Photography exhibit “Portals and Reflections” offers viewers a visual gateway between worlds. Twenty-five local fine art photographers produced 50 images displayed at Kindness Gallery. Aptly, these works are entry points into constructed realities as well as a transitory waystation to dwell in the past and present.
Step through the doorway of the unassuming brick building next to Blackhole Bakery along the busy corridor of Troost Avenue. Once physically standing inside the spartan gallery, viewers are able to mentally journey to disparate places. TR Barnard’s two star-swept works printed on metal, “Van Goghst” and “As the World Turns,” portray the night sky as a “portal into the universe that surrounds us, protecting us and keeping us grounded.”
“Rock Fall, IL” by Jeff Burk studies a door frame unattached to walls and located in a cleared paved lot occupied by weeds. Leafy trees, a house, and a car in the near distance appear to represent another plane of existence. The juxtaposition of an object with seemingly abandoned purpose and the suburban backdrop invites the viewer to step beyond the image and imagine a story to address questions of what, why, where, and how.
Paige Burrows spent the summer of 2022 exploring the world through windows. Burrows photographed what she saw in windows and through them as well as the frame itself. “Alpine Tunnel” depicts alpine trees on a hill poised to thrust into cottony clouds. Crossbars in a window frame create a focal point to anchor the viewer’s gaze. Burrows “plays with reflection and abstracts” in her photos as a “pathway to a mysterious edgy vibe” as found in “Pikes Peak.”
Shirley Harryman’s “Uncertain-Reflections” ventures to Caddo Lake, home to the world’s largest cypress swamp. Two black-and-white images capture towering cypress trees in silhouette. Their reflection on the watery surface reveals a haunting yet peaceful scene, a portal to an otherworldly realm.
“RIP Brancusi” by Jackson Daugherty parlays a distorted reflection into an examination of corporate architecture in Dallas, Texas, prompting thought about the permanence of hierarchy and status. What meets the eye externally distracts and obscures what behavior occurs within the building’s structure.
Jacquelyn Carioscia’s “Fenestella” challenges viewers to study an arrangement of circular shapes and consider vantage points in order to extract meaning with scant context. Converging lines in Gary Hodson’s “Underground Passage” propel the viewer toward a vanishing point. Bold colorful graffiti escorts the eyes along the way. As a portal to the Cold War era, “Stairway to Past Armageddon” by Nate Hofer shows a dark concrete stairway leading underground to a former nuclear missile storage bunker in Gardner, Kansas.
The exhibit provides not only a portal across space and time, but also a series of looking glasses to examine, explore, and reflect on what we encounter.
“Kansas City Society of Contemporary Photography: Portals and Reflections,” continues through April 29 at Kindness Gallery, 5529 Troost. Hours are 11 to 4 p.m., Saturdays. For more information, kcscp.org.
Coinciding with the Season 11 Launch, Art21 Will Release All Past Episodes on YouTube to Stream for Free
Art21, the award-winning filmmaking enterprise, is in the midst of its 11th season, which features artists and collectives like Cannupa Hanska Luger (previously), Hank Willis Thomas (previously), and Guerilla Girls. Grouped thematically in three episodes— “Everyday Icons,” “Bodies of Knowledge,” and “Friends & Strangers” —the new season centers around the political landscape in the U.S. and how, regardless of where they call home, the artists are shaping culture through care and a more meaningful consideration of what it means to be part of a community.
“When we began thinking about how to frame this latest season of Art in the Twenty-First Century, we considered our current historical moment and decided to turn the lens inward and focus on the United States,” Tina Kukielski, the executive director and chief curator, said. “In this first episode, we wanted to highlight artists who challenge and question American monuments and iconography.” “Everyday Icons” centers on Amy Sherald (previously), Rose B. Simpson, Alex Da Corte, and Daniel Lind-Ramos, who each question historical narratives, subvert aesthetic traditions, and offer new visual languages for the contemporary landscape.
To coincide with the launch, Art21 is also sharing all of its past episodes for free viewing on YouTube in an effort to make the series more accessible. Seasons eight, nine, and ten are currently available and take viewers on journies from Johannesburg to Berlin, London to Beijing, and Mexico City to Chicago to follow artists like Zanele Muholi, Olafur Eliasson, Anish Kapoor, and Nick Cave. Other seasons are organized more thematically, grouping artists based on a common idea rather than physical location. Since debuting in 2001, Art21 has released nearly 40 episodes, offering insightful looks at how the art world, aesthetics, and cultural interests have evolved during the last two decades.
Episode 1 of Season 11 aired earlier this month, and the second is scheduled for June 23 on PBS. Keep an eye on Art21’s YouTube for the remainder of previous seasons to be released throughout the year.
A still from “Olafur Eliasson in Berlin”
A still from “Everday Icons” showing Daniel Lind-Ramos
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Coinciding with the Season 11 Launch, Art21 Will Release All Past Episodes on YouTube to Stream for Free appeared first on Colossal.
Archive of intimacies: the photography of Wolfgang Tillmans
The evening is warm, the party has gone late. How warm, how late: it’s hard to say. Enough that the window is cracked open, a black square of night visible beyond it. Warm enough and late enough that everyone is on the floor. Two people lie side by side, knees bent beneath them. In the corner, someone’s on their back, fingers wrapped around a glass beer bottle. It’s hard, in the photograph, to say where one body ends and another begins. Yes, we are at that point in the party. An empty pack of cigarettes lies stranded toward the bottom of the frame, its smoke gone somewhere out the window and into the night.
When I first saw this image—the 2008 photograph Birthday Party by the German artist Wolfgang Tillmans—it was a small printout, taped to the wall of the co-operative house in Boston where I lived for my last year of college. I mistook it, at first, for a photo taken in that house. It was an easy mistake to make. How many times had I seen a scene like this—of sticky wine and smoke and uncomplicated touch from all sides—happen here? Countless. They blurred together in my mind. Seeing Tillmans’ photo, these moments shuffled into focus with uncanny clarity. It was like coming across a high-definition rendering of a faded memory: a memory that was not mine, of course, but that felt, somehow, like it was.
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The photo hangs now at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), where Tillmans’ exhibit To look without fear—the first major showing of the photographer’s work in Canada—opens this month. To look without fear arrives after its debut at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) last fall, drawing together images from across three decades of the artist’s career. Dispatches from ’90s queer clubs in Berlin and London sit beside abstract compositions of form and colour across from still lifes of flowers and lobsters. Together, these assembled works ask for a certain way of looking, one suggested by the exhibit’s infinitive title. Describing what motivates him to capture a moment, Tillmans has remarked: “I want to record it, so there is a record of it.” His record urges the viewer to remember places and intimacies and pleasures that might otherwise blur into the past—out of focus, out of view.
“The Cock (kiss),” 2002. Credit: Wolfgang Tillmans
Even if the name Wolfgang Tillmans is unfamiliar, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen his work. In 2017, Tillmans’ portrait of Frank Ocean, titled Frank, in the shower, appeared on the cover of Ocean’s acclaimed album Blonde. In the photo, Ocean’s hand obscures his face, green buzzcut peeking out above. Last year Tillman’s work surfaced in bookstores when The Cock (kiss)—a photo of two men, well, kissing—was featured on the cover of the novel Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. These ongoing circulations of Tillmans’ photography are both a testament to his wide-ranging influence on our visual culture (he’s been called “one of the world’s most significant living artists” by the New York Times), as well as a barometer of his continuing influence on queer artists across forms.
Tillmans was born in 1969 in the small German manufacturing town of Remscheid. As a teenager, Tillmans would catch the train into London—ostensibly to take English classes, which he did, but also to put on lipstick in the train station and try his luck at the city’s gay nightclubs, getting back on the train home before midnight. One of his earliest photographs that he considers a work of art is a self-portrait from 1986, Lacanau (Self). Tillmans holds the camera from above, angling it down at his body. What we see is a wide swath of pink T-shirt, his leg barely separated from the ground beneath it. It’s both hyper-realist and willfully abstract, charged with the youthful exertion of a body feeling out its proportional space in the world.
Tillmans photography has gone on to consider that question of how to render, in two dimensions, the three-dimensional problem of the human body—its constraints and liberations, its sculptural possibilities. He’s an attentive and accomplished portraitist in the fashion world, whose photos of Kate Moss and Chloë Sevigny appear in To look without fear. But the body really comes alive, under Tillmans’ lens, in scenes of proximity and obscurity—in nightclubs and house parties, bathrooms and bedrooms. “I want to capture the community of being together,” Tillmans explains during a preview of the AGO show, “as a couple, as friends, as a group, as a mass. Sharing this togetherness is also always sharing solidarity, shouldering and appreciating the hardship and joy of what it means to be alive.”
In the 1990s, Tillmans started to create a growing body of these images when he left Germany to study photography in the U.K. He’d tried his hand at art school back home, but dropped out after six weeks—one day before the Berlin Wall fell. In England, Tillmans stuck with it, producing lasting works of, as he puts it, “guys and girls feeling each other on the dance floor.” One 1992 series titled Chemistry Squares depicts scenes at Chemistry, a house and techno night at the now-defunct Sound Shaft club in London. (As a rule, Tillmans does not display images of underground spaces or parties until they have closed down.) The dozens of images are just glimpses—each a small square of detail, a couple inches wide, displayed side by side—as if caught between strobe lights on the dancefloor. A hand with a cigarette. A back of a neck. A flash of hair beneath a raised arm.
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As a “record” of those evenings, the photographs leave much unsaid. We have no sense of what Chemistry looked like, who was in attendance, how much it cost to get in. Tillmans’ photos are evocative, however, as coordinates to the heat map of that night, witnessed from up close. The camera knows—and so tells us—how one person saw another, the facts of skin that formed the bodies that formed the crowd. Perhaps, the photos suggest, you must get this close to understand what it was really like to be there. So close that now, decades after the club has closed, sweat still collects on a neck beneath the lights.
Installation view, Room 1. “Lacanau (Self),” 1986, is visible upper right. Credit: Wolfgang Tillmans
At the AGO artist preview, Tillmans, wearing a green jacket from ’90s-influenced streetwear brand Palace, passes through the gallery rooms while discussing the past few days. He’s been busy. In collaboration with his team and the museum, the artist has adapted his MoMA exhibit specifically for the AGO space. Pieces have been resized, rearranged. Today, a week out from the exhibit’s opening, Tillmans is focused and deliberative, but never serious. His smile flashes often. At one point, Tillmans indicates a pair of metal beams where two images are affixed. “These beams interested me,” he says, “because they are 12 inches—the size of the prints I’ve been using since the early ’90s.” He smiles again. “I’m like a child when he realizes something fits.”
As has become standard for Tillmans’ exhibits, most photos in To look without fear are displayed without frames. Instead, the artist uses Scotch Tape or binder clips to hang his images. It’s an improvised, offhand aesthetic that belies its careful planning, orchestrated down to the inch. The exhibit, arranged in roughly chronological order, forces you to use your body—leaning back to see one photo, bending down to see the next. When the MoMA show premiered last fall, critics and viewers alike talked about that sense of scale, with scenes of the past surrounding you from all directions. Crowded raves and old Pride parades. Adidas tracksuits and clunky bass synthesizers. One reviewer confessed: “The show made me so nostalgic that at times, I wanted to crouch down and weep.”
“Deer Hirsch,” 1995. Credit: Wolfgang Tillmans
But there’s more than easy nostalgia at work here. History, in these rooms, is too unresolved, too particular to Tillmans’ life. Halfway through the first room, I come across a large sepia image from 1995 titled Deer Hirsch. In it, Jochen Hirsch—Tillmans’ first love, who passed of AIDS-related pneumonia two years after the photo was taken—stands facing a deer on a wide beach. Hirsch’s hands are raised, indicating he has no more food to give. The deer sticks out its tongue in reply. “The photo looks like it was a big production,” Tillmans admits, “but in fact it was just an afternoon walk. What you are seeing is that Jochen had just fed all our food to the deer.” There’s such suspended tenderness in the image that I hesitated to speak when near it—out of reverence for having stepped into Tillmans’ memory, out of care not to startle the animal away.
For Tillmans, the past is unresolved, particular—and alive. In a final room containing work from the current millennium, the artist shifts the scale of his archival eye. Several tables fill the large space, each one covered with fragments of text. There are newspaper articles about the Iraq war. There are think pieces about the rise of homophobia and nationalism. There are scientific reports on microplastics in the human body. It’s part of the series titled truth study center, a collection of media sources that construct the reality according to which our lives are governed. On the surrounding walls, the exhibit assembles photos we might think of as archetypal Tillmans: a hand reaching into a pair of red gym shorts, a queer club in New York. The tables sit below, gazing up, as reminders of the operations of power that run always beneath these intimate scenes. (When I say always, I mean it: I was surprised to find an article discussing caste discrimination in the Toronto school system, dated just two weeks prior.)
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“Frank, in the shower,” 2015. Credit: Wolfgang Tillmans
“History is not something other,” Tillmans explains. “History is right here and now, and we have to take care of this moment.” Keeping a record of our moment, for Tillmans, still involves capturing the shared choreographies of “being together.” Yet he also acts, increasingly, as a custodian of large-scale power structures that define past and present. In all of these roles, Tillmans is engaged in a practice that asks us to look at—and then remember—what is at risk of going unseen. Something so small it escapes notice: a splinter in the foot, a touch in a crowded club. Something so big it evades depiction: beliefs we take for granted, invisible as air, about the way things must be.
Looking up from the tables, I notice, in a far corner, Birthday Party—the same photo of a warm evening years ago that hangs in a house where I once lived. Or, almost the same one. Tillmans considers each print of his to be a distinct physical fact, defined by its material quality and where it is placed in the world. Again pointing out something I hadn’t noticed, he indicates the thin shadow cast between image and wall. “Looking sideways, we can see that this is not nothing. A photograph is actually a body.” I turn around and take in the crowded gallery walls, dozens of images and their shadows filling the room. As Tillmans walks ahead, quick enough that some air displaces around him, you could swear—for a moment—the photos behind him begin to move.
Sotheby’s to Auction Works From Iconic American Photographers
A Mini House That Feels Large When Surrounded by Nature
While still in the concept phase, this 484-square-foot tiny home design by Bologna-based firm STUDIOFEM is too good not to share. Architects Francesca Morsiani and Mujgan Merve Rinaldi designed The Mini with a proposed location in the village of Cavusin, Nevsehir, Turkey surrounded by mountains. The rectangular structure is clad in dark brown vertical panels interspersed with floor-to-ceiling windows for a sleek, minimalist exterior.
The full-height windows ensure the interior will be filled with natural light while offering the occupants framed views of its surroundings. The large panes help connect the inside with the landscape and make the interior appear larger.
Despite its limited square footage, the interior feels open with sight lines to the outdoors from most angles. In the open living space, the kitchen cabinets run along one wall before turning into a built-in bench at the entrance of the bedroom. The low surface also acts as a shelf to hold books and objects.
The walls are covered in simple wood panels with the grain adding texture to the space.
Renderings by UVISUAL.
Critical Role’s Vex and Vax Get a New Sculpture From Dark Horse Direct
Check out the exclusive first look at twins Vex’ahlia and Vax’ildan from Critical Role’s Legend of Vox Machina.
The stories behind some of the East Bay’s most iconic beer cans
Anyone who says they don’t judge beer by the label is lying. Whenever anyone enters the beer aisle of a grocery store or bottle shop, they’re judging the cans whether they know it or not. And if they don’t already have a purchase in mind, they’re scanning for the beer that speaks to them the most, whatever catches their attention in a sea of artistic renderings of animals with hats or anthropomorphic fruit.
To get to the backstory on some of the unique art we’re likely to find on our local beer cans, Nosh spoke with a number of East Bay breweries and artists to see how they attempt to tackle the challenge of setting themselves apart on the shelves. Here’s what they said.
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Buck Wild Brewing
401 Jackson St. (near Fourth Street), Oakland
Of the around 9500 craft breweries in the United States, only 17 of those breweries are 100% gluten-free. Oakland’s Buck Wild Brewing is the only such brewery in California.
“For many years gluten-free has had a bit of a negative stigma attached to it,” Michael Bernstein, the founder of Buck Wild, explained. “So we are really trying to dispel that and what we try to do is market ourselves as just fantastic craft beer that happens to be gluten-free.”
Bernstein said the artwork on the company’s cans, by Oakland freelance designer Molly McCoy, serves to differentiate Buck Wild in the crowded beer market. As part of a recent marketing push to position the brewery as a “California brand,” Buck Wild has released six new cans with art portraying a theme or landscape synonymous with the state, such as the redwoods, the wild coastline, citrus orchards and the Sierra Nevada.
“We worked our darndest to make sure we were doing something very unique that could stand out from the others,” Bernstein said, “and I really feel like we’ve accomplished that.”
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East Brother Beer Co.
1001 Canal Blvd. (near Wharf Street), Richmond
Rob Lightner, the co-founder of East Brother Beer Co. was born and raised in Oakland. But with co-founder Chris Coomber, he decided to open a brewery in early 2017 in Richmond, attracted to its great industrial history and its less-prominent position in the region.
“We make classic styles of beers,” Lightner explained, “understated, balanced, easy drinking, not super hyped, of just high quality.”
East Brother’s can design is also understated, but that doesn’t mean its without a thoughtful design. According to Lightner, East Brother wants to let its product speak for itself, staying “consistent with the beer inside” through simple art.
The line on each can is meant to look like the water line on the freighters off Richmond’s shore, Lightner said, and the muted colors match the freighters’ washed out colors. For the cans logo, East Brother worked with Chicago design studio Good Beer Hunting.
Very little has changed with its cans — or its lineup of beers — in the six years since East Brother first opened. A few months ago, when East Brother launched its first new beer since, the company went back to the drawing board to choose a new color for the blonde ale, said Jaime Dooley, East Brother’s marketing manager. The final pick: a classic-looking green and gold Dooley said was chosen for the colors’ warmth.
“We’re looking for a color that kind of feels cohesive with everything but speaks to who we are,” Dooley said, “and what the beer is like because the colors also kind of have to somewhat mimic the beer that’s inside.”
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Fieldwork Brewing
1160 Sixth St. (near Harrison Street), Berkeley
100 West Juana Ave. (near Washington Avenue), San Leandro
Fieldwork Brewing is constantly developing new beers, so they decided the best way to develop artwork quickly is to create templates that allow them to swap in images “to match the vibe of whichever beer is going in the can,” said Ian Gordon Fieldwork’s director of marketing.
The brew team creates the beer and also names it, so when it gets to the design team it’s all about finding imagery that suits the name. Fieldwork originally worked with Gamut, a San Francisco design firm, for its can art. Gordon, one of Gamut’s founders, eventually moved to Fieldwork as its full-time marketing director, so the company’s designs are now created in-house.
Some of these templates include their Adventure series labels such as Pulp or Fog Ripper. Another is a full panel layout which is artwork-based, such as Slaying Power. Belgians have their own style, with gold and birds, such as Annette and Lilith.
If Fieldwork’s label designs had to be described in a couple of words, Gordon says it would be “wanderlust, evocative and understated.”
Since Fieldwork doesn’t distribute to stores, they don’t have to compete for shelf visibility. Instead, Gordon said, “we are competing for visibility in peoples minds, so we’re always looking for novel ways of shaking things up, standing out, and making something memorable.”
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?fit=360%2C237&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?fit=1200%2C791&ssl=1″ decoding=”async” width=”1200″ height=”791″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=1200%2C791&ssl=1″ alt=”Wish You Were Here beer cans” class=”wp-image-491832″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?w=2560&ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=360%2C237&ssl=1 360w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=200%2C132&ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=768%2C506&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1012&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1350&ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=1200%2C791&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=1568%2C1033&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?resize=400%2C264&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wishyouwerehere.jpeg?w=2400&ssl=1 2400w” sizes=”(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px” data-recalc-dims=”1″>
Roses’ Taproom
4930 Telegraph Ave. (near 49th Street), Oakland
Hillary and Luke Janson met at art school, so they had a clear creative vision for their future brewery: light, airy and warm. They wanted the space to “feel like a hug when you walk in,” Luke said. It only made sense that when they decided to open Roses’ in 2017, the company’s can art had to parallel this sentiment.
For every new beer that they release, the Jansons pull from their running list of names, concepts and visual language. Though their process varies, different lines of beers, such as lagers or fruited IPAs, have the same sort of “visual language,” Luke said. He’s the main designer for Roses’ can art, though the company sometimes commissions the help of other artists for special can designs.
Roses’ is always experimenting, rotating its beers, wines and seltzers. That means Luke does a lot of label-creating. Through trial and error, he’s learned that their most successful labels “wrangle the materiality of the can,” using a sticker with a metallic base that allows them to print the art over can-looking material. The result, Luke said, is a “twinkly effect.”
Transitioning from larger-scale art to that on a beer label is about changing expectations of what level of detail will actually end up on the can, Luke said. Some textures and colors that exist in one medium will not translate once printed on a can.
“Figuring out the right way to translate that materiality into what is ultimately a different product has been a learning experience for sure,” he said.
To make Roses stand apart, Luke often thinks about what’s going to catch consumers’ eyes. “I’m always really proud when the thing inside is the best I’ve ever made, but I’m also really happy when it looks beautiful.”
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?fit=360%2C192&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?fit=1200%2C638&ssl=1″ decoding=”async” width=”1200″ height=”638″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=1200%2C638&ssl=1″ alt=”Radler cans” class=”wp-image-491838″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?w=2560&ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=360%2C192&ssl=1 360w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=200%2C106&ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=768%2C409&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=1536%2C817&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1090&ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=1200%2C638&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=1568%2C834&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?resize=400%2C213&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/two_pitchers.jpeg?w=2400&ssl=1 2400w” sizes=”(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px” data-recalc-dims=”1″>
Two Pitchers Brewing
2344 Webster St. (near 24th Street), Oakland
Tommy Hester and Wilson Barr met in college as pitchers on a baseball team.
“We were not very good,” Hester said. “We spent almost all our time on the bench and found the shared love of craft beer.” From that Two Pitchers Brewing was born, a brewery that focuses on craft radlers (a mix of beer and fruit soda, also known as a shandy).
Each of Two Pitchers’ cans displays a specific character, such as the “Disco Queen,” “Water Boy,” or even a pop-top van. Hester and Barr come up with each character, the concept and the layout, then their graphic designer, Marlene Silveira, creates the final design. Hester said the goal is keeping things fun and approachable.
“You don’t need to have a triple IPA that tastes like you’re biting into a pine tree to have something that’s craft beer,” Hester said. “It can be light, it can be fruity, it can be approachable but still keeping that quality. And that’s what we want our branding to be as well.”
Hester figures that on the shelf, you’ll get a quarter of a second of someone’s time, so it’s important to make sure their label pops and conveys the feeling of their beers. Part of this is having the fruits in the beer included on the label, so people quickly understand what they’re getting into.
“It’s basically trying to kind of thread that needle,” Hester said, “and both inform and attract in a fraction of a second.”
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?fit=360%2C247&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?fit=1200%2C822&ssl=1″ decoding=”async” width=”1200″ height=”822″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?resize=1200%2C822&ssl=1″ alt=”Wondrous brewing can” class=”wp-image-491843″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?w=1770&ssl=1 1770w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?resize=360%2C247&ssl=1 360w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?resize=200%2C137&ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?resize=768%2C526&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?resize=1536%2C1052&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?resize=1200%2C822&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?resize=1568%2C1074&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/wondrous.png?resize=400%2C274&ssl=1 400w” sizes=”(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px” data-recalc-dims=”1″>
Wondrous Brewing
1306 65th St. (near Hollis Street), Emeryville
After working in Bay Area breweries for a while, Wynn Whisenhunt, the owner and head brewer at Wondrous Brewing, moved to Germany for eight months to study beer making. After learning more about the craft, he moved back to the Bay, opening his own brewery in May 2021.
Wondrous’ focus is lagers, but it also brews a fair amount of West Coast-style hoppy beers, mixing Whisenhunt’s love of classic German-style beers and his West Coast roots.
When looking for a logo, Whisenhunt found a Sweden-based designer Andreas Pedersen online. The working relationship was so good, that Wondrous has been collaborating with Pedersen on can designs ever since.
Whisenhunt will come up with the idea for the label and then email Pedersen to come up with a design. “95% of the time I’m so amazed that he comes up with something, like, so perfect,” Whisenhunt said of Pedersen’s can art.
“I’ve never met him in person, I’ve never even talked to him over the phone,” Whisenhunt said. “We’ve just been pen pals pretty much for the last three years.”
Whisenhunt said that the goal is a simple, consistent style that people can look at on the shelf and think, “oh yeah that looks like a Wondrous beer.” Wondrous uses its own shape and size of label to help differentiate the cans, Whisenhunt said.
To Whisenhunt, being true to the Wondrous brand is more important than having a complicated design to stand out.
“Beer gets fun and technical and crazy and artsy,” he said. “But sometimes just having something simple and comfortable and easy to read is great.”
Some additional can artists to know
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?fit=360%2C141&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?fit=1200%2C469&ssl=1″ decoding=”async” width=”1200″ height=”469″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=1200%2C469&ssl=1″ alt=”Artist and beer cans” class=”wp-image-491848″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?w=2560&ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=360%2C141&ssl=1 360w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=200%2C78&ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=768%2C300&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=1536%2C600&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=2048%2C800&ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=1200%2C469&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=1568%2C613&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?resize=400%2C156&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/davidson.jpeg?w=2400&ssl=1 2400w” sizes=”(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px” data-recalc-dims=”1″>
Erina Davidson is an education program coordinator and artist at Kala Art Institute. While her main focus is in printmaking, she has designed beer can labels for Temescal Brewing and the recently-closed Rare Barrel brewing’s Hello Friend offshoot.
For Davidson, these labels were one of the first chances she had to showcase her illustrations in a public space. For her first label with Hello Friend, she was chosen from a call for customers to tag local artists through Instagram. Similarly, Davidson was chosen for Temescal Brewing through a call for artists for their sixth anniversary label.
“I know that there are a lot of graphic designers where it’s just kind of a regular part of their job,” Davidson said, “But for me, this kind of design work is really kind of just a fun way for me to think about illustration or color design, and I just consider myself lucky if I get paid to do it.”
Designing a beer label has very different expectations and parameters than Davidson’s usual art: it has to be a particular size, it has to appeal from different angles, and you have to consider the 360-degree view on the can.
Davidson makes a mix of art that’s fun to look at and with personal style, as well as work that involves her personal narrative and digs deeper. She felt she had to approach the beer labels differently than her other work, by just letting go and making something fun.
“I personally appreciate all the different designs that I see and I just like seeing other artists take on that format,” Davidson said. “So it was nice to have been able to do that as well, and it was really fun to see something you design on the rack at Berkeley Bowl.”
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?fit=360%2C226&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?fit=1200%2C754&ssl=1″ decoding=”async” width=”1200″ height=”754″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=1200%2C754&ssl=1″ alt=”A futuristic beer can label” class=”wp-image-491851″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?w=2475&ssl=1 2475w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=360%2C226&ssl=1 360w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=200%2C126&ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=768%2C483&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=1536%2C966&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1288&ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=1200%2C754&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=1568%2C986&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?resize=400%2C251&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-berkeleyside-cityside.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kimball3.jpeg?w=2400&ssl=1 2400w” sizes=”(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px” data-recalc-dims=”1″>
Scott Kimball was riding his bike around Richmond when he decided to stop into the now closed Benoit-Casper Brewing. While there, he ran into Scott and Veronica Davidson, who now own Ocean View Brew Works. This coincidental meeting led Kimball to become the artist behind Ocean View’s logo and labels.
The most recent label that Kimball designed for them was a collaboration beer with Federation Brewing. Because Federation’s brand is science fiction-themed, the name for the beer was “Martian City,” which Kimball said is a name taken from a family inside joke: As kids, Kimball and his brother would marvel at the complexity of a big freeway exchange in the Bay Area.
“It looked like something out of the Jetsons with the swooping going every which way,” Kimball said. “And we as kids, we called it Martian City.”
From that name, Kimball designed a label with hop martians in high tops, a futuristic city and space whales – combining the themes of both breweries.
For Kimball, the process of can design is pretty flexible. He shows the Davidsons a sketch and if they like it, they go with it.
Kimball said there’re some things that you have to keep in mind when designing a label that don’t come up much in other art styles, such as keeping the front image centered and making it “attractive enough to grab somebody,” while still making space in the design for the legal requirements on the can.
At the end of the day, though, Kimball says this kind of work is simply fun.
“It’s just good to work with a fun product that everybody loves,” He said. “Everybody likes a nice beer.”
City, artists seek input on permanent Harriet Tubman statue
As the City of Philadelphia prepares for the creation of a permanent Harriet Tubman statue on the grounds of City Hall, local residents now have a chance to voice their opinion on the first statue of a Black female historical figure in the city’s public art collection.
The Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE) will host the first public meeting with five semi-finalist artists competing to create Philadelphia’s Harriet Tubman statue on Monday, April 24, at 5:30 p.m.
The virtual public meeting will be an opportunity for the semifinalists—Vinnie Bagwell, Richard Blake, Tanda Francis, Alvin Pettit, and Basil Watson—to hear directly from the public before they create initial design proposals for the project.
“We encourage all Philadelphians to be a part of this historic public art commission for the city by attending this and future public meetings and making their voices heard,” said Kelly Lee, Chief Cultural Officer for the city and Executive Director of OACCE. “Philadelphians are passionate about Harriet Tubman and her contributions, and are empowered by her story, so I am confident that the artists will be inspired by their feedback.”
The five semifinalist artists are:
Vinnie Bagwell is a sculptor who casts in bronze and bronze resin. A native of Yonkers, New York, she is an award-winning artist whose work has been displayed nationwide.
Richard Blake’s sculpture monuments are on display across the country. An artist and educator, Blake has deep roots in Philadelphia.
Tanda Francis is a Brooklyn, New York-based artist with an extensive resume of public art. Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally.
Alvin Pettit, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, has been sculpting and painting for more than 30 years. He has also worked as an educator and currently serves on the executive board of the Jersey City Arts Council.
Jamaican artist Basil Watson has honed his skills for more than 45 years, completing major commissions for organizations across the world.
The meeting will be held via Zoom and a recording will be available on OACCE’s website for those who are unable to attend. Written feedback can also be shared by filling out this form from Tuesday, April 25 through Friday, April 28.
Register for the virtual public input meeting here.
“Community engagement through public input meetings is integral to our public art process,” said Marguerite Anglin, Public Art Director of OACCE. “It is important that Philadelphians engage in direct discussion with artists throughout each stage of the proposal period to ensure that the city’s public artwork reflects the diversity and values of the community.”
There will be multiple upcoming opportunities for the public to share their ideas and provide feedback on Philadelphia’s permanent Harriet Tubman statue. Those opportunities will be announced at a later date.
Detailed information about the Harriet Tubman statue commissioning process and a full timeline for the project are available online at creativephl.org
Spotlight: A New Exhibition of Andy Warhol’s Late-Career Drawings Reveals His Enduring Passions, From Fashion to the Animal Kingdom
Fifteen drawings dated from the 1980s highlight Warhol’s enduring fascination with the medium and how it informed his printmaking practice.
