We know things are weird right now, and you might not even be working with everything going on, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a chance to enjoy the weekend! Life goes on, and having a little fun and/or some relaxation is still necessary for your mental health. So check out these (safely social distanced) events you can participate in this weekend!
Click on any of the event titles for a link to the event.
Friday, November 13th
SF Jazz Center, San Francisco
5 PM, All Ages
Donation
SFJAZZ takes great pride in bringing joy to people's lives through live jazz performances and education events each week. Even though the SFJAZZ Center will be dark for the immediate future, our goal in bringing enjoyment to our Members and patrons through music will continue to be our focus.
Available free to current SFJAZZ Members or through a 1-month $5 Fridays at Five digital membership, this new weekly series will feature exclusive footage from some of the most memorable SFJAZZ concerts from the past few years. Each digital concert experience will get you closer than ever to the music, while providing an online platform that will help directly support artists. So grab your favorite beverage, maybe even some popcorn, and enjoy Fridays at Five!
UCSF Women's Health Center, San Francisco
All Day, All Ages
Free
McKinley Art Solutions and UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women's Health are pleased to present SERENITY: Better Days Ahead, featuring Valerie Corvin, Lynn Glenn, Katie Korotzer, Jan Lainoff, Pam McCauley, Dee Tivenan, Roberta Welburn-Milstead.
The theme of this exhibit is inspired by the events of 2020 and messages a positive mindset in the face of unrest, discord, and uncertainty. Paraphrasing a Stoic philosophy, when things get tough, keep going forward. We will get through this. There ARE better days ahead. Practice gratitude. Seek out things and people that uplift you. Look for beauty. Creativity leads to possibility - let art lead you there. The artists participating in this exhibit regularly meet and paint together, openly sharing every aspect of their creative journey. Although each artist has a unique style, they all share a love of creating and UCSF hopes their works inspire joy for staff and visitors and hope for better days ahead.
In-person viewing is restricted to patients (and staff) with appointments until further notice. Video preview of the show: mckinleyartsolutions.com/serenity.html
Saturday, November 14th
Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco
All Day, All Ages
Artists included in Monument: Zarhouie Abdalian, Wesaam Al-Badry, Judd Bergeron, Dawoud Bey, Sandow Birk, T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, Jacob Hashimoto, Mildred Howard, Bovey Lee, Daniel Li, Nick Makanna, Alicia McCarthy, John Patrick McKenzie, James Miles, Aida Muluneh, Vik Muniz, Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport, Gay Outlaw, Roland Record, Evelyn Reyes, Hung Kei Shu, James Shefik, Lava Thomas, and Zio Ziegler
Minnesota Street Project is thrilled to announce the opening of Monument, a new exhibition that explores the various ways artists reference literal and metaphorical monuments within their practice. The show, which features works from the galleries at Minnesota Street Project--with additional works from San Francisco's Catharine Clark Gallery, Guerrero Gallery, and Creativity Explored--is installed in the Project's atrium and can also be viewed online at Minnesota Street Project Adjacent.
The show takes inspiration from Elizabeth Bishop's poem "The Monument," in which the narrator, in conversation, describes a specific but unseen monument in detail, noting the shambolic, temporal nature of its construction, while revealing its aspirational qualities in more anthropomorphic terms.
The monument's an object, yet these decorations,
carelessly nailed, looking like nothing at all,
give it away as having life, and wishing;
Wanting to be a monument, to cherish something.
Bishop's poem inspired the galleries to consider the notion of a monument more abstractly, and how works of art and metaphorical concepts of monuments are interconnected. Their responses yielded works that draw ingenious and often irreverent references to traditional--and often problematic--notions of monument, as well as works that consider the structure of a monument using imaginary terms to examine formal possibilities.
On the entrance wall of the exhibition is Lava Thomas's "Freedom Song #2," an installation of pyrographic calligraphy on tambourines with leather, grosgrain ribbon, and mirrored acrylic surfaces (courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery). The wall opposite highlights the work of Creativity Explored artists Evelyn Reyes, Daniel Li, James Miles, John Patrick McKenzie, Hung Kei Shu, and Roland Record, installed so they overlay a site-specific painting by the artist Alicia McCarthy. James Shefik (represented by Jack Fischer Gallery) leverages playful humor--via an oversize "push puppet" sculpture of a toppled Robert E. Lee--to confront the enduring socio-political harm wrought by romantic confederate mythology, and Bovey Lee's "Power Plant - The Butterfly Dream," a large cut-out piece on Chinese rice paper, highlights the delicate tension between harnessed energy and the environment (courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery).
Also included on the ground floor of the atrium are "Rune XXXVI," a glazed ceramic architectural sculpture by Nick Makanna (courtesy of Guerrero Gallery); Joan Wulf's "Drift," made from carbon soot on paper (courtesy of Themes + Projects); "Surfaces: Gibi," a unique mixed-media collage piece by Vik Muniz (courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery); a pair of photographic prints by MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey (courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery), and a series of photographic compositions from Aida Muluneh's Memory of Hope series (courtesy of Jenkins Johnson Gallery).
Lining the second-floor walls of the atrium, Catharine Clark Gallery has provided a survey of drawings and gravures from the artist Sandow Birk's acclaimed series "Imaginary Monuments," depicting historical texts contextualized within proposed monuments, and conveying through words and images the complex and often fraught histories behind our most basic social contracts and the disparities between intent (justice, capitalism, trade, good governance) and reality (incarceration, slavery, inequality).
Catharine Clark Gallery has also lent "Oval O," a collaborative video by Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport that will be on view in the first-floor media gallery. The video features the American presidents of Oropallo's lifetime posing with the Frederic Remington sculpture of a bucking horse that has been a constant presence in the Oval Office since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Oropallo has layered hundreds of found images into a montage that reflects the difficulty of consuming and reflecting on visual information in a time when geopolitical events and crises occur with astonishing frequency, with Rappaport's complex sound design of original compositions, found sounds, and adapted versions of popular songs providing a critical analogue that is both familiar and unsettling.
KQED
7 PM, All Ages
Free
This year the San Francisco Symphony welcomes new Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and eight Collaborative Partners with a digital concert event that charts a new direction for the Orchestra.
The vibrant program includes music by Ellen Reid, John Adams, Kev Choice, and Ludwig van Beethoven, and is highlighted by the world premiere of Collaborative Partner Nico Muhly's Throughline, a San Francisco Symphony commission written specifically for a digital medium and filmed in locations around the world.
Throughline: San Francisco Symphony--From Hall to Home will broadcast locally in the Bay Area on November 14 at 7pm PST on KQED Public Television and simultaneously stream worldwide on this page, where it will remain for on-demand viewing.
Sunday, November 15th
Online
All Day, All Ages
Free
"We hope that you will enjoy the linguistic virtuosity, dry humor, and prescient genius that is Caryl Churchill -- a writer who has been innovating and exploding the theatrical form for five decades," said Sonia Fernandez, Interim Artistic Director. "When we planned the season, we were thrilled to bring Churchill's work to Magic for the first time and center four mature women on our stage -- we had no idea how timely this play would feel. ESCAPED ALONE conjures and represents the human need for connection, for storytelling, the yearning for and comfort in each other inside of a cataclysm. We are so pleased to offer ESCAPED ALONE as an audio play and share its message of resilience in the intimate space of our listening."
In ESCAPED ALONE, three old friends and a neighbor spend a summer of afternoons in their English backyard. Entwined histories, laughter, and song abound over tea and catastrophe.
The cast includes Anne Darragh*+ as " VI," Julia McNeal*+ as "MRS. JARRETT," Elizabeth Benedict*+ as "SALLY" and Anne Hallinan as " LENA."
37th between Ortega and Pacheco
9 AM, All Ages
Free
Come eat, drink, shop, play, connect and be local at the Outer Sunset Farmers Market & Mercantile, a festive open-air, year-round weekly market featuring local farmers, ranchers, food artisans, merchants, makers, artists, and organizations on a closed-to-traffic 37th Avenue between Ortega and Pacheco.
Outer Sunset Farmers Market & Mercantile Every Sunday at 9 am – 3 pm 37th Avenue at Ortega, SF
The Outer Sunset Farmers Market & Mercantile is a weekly market featuring farmers, ranchers, food artisans and vendors, makers, merchants, artists, and local organizations. OSFMM is proudly presented by Sunset Mercantile in collaboration with District 4 Supervisor Gordon Mar, Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and People of Parkside Sunset.
Our open-air market will launch with a thoughtful and comprehensive COVID-19 safety plan. The plan will include guidelines, protocols, and a modified program of activities that will evolve along with this situation but will reflect at all times the goal of helping to ensure the health, safety, and well-being of the community, vendors, and staff.