About the women at Fog Art + Design

The Fog Art + Design fair was planned by Stanlee Gatti, and at its opening event on Wednesday, Jan. 11, plenty of men there seemed as elated as their sisters by both the art itself and the art-community camaraderie.

The event is for everyone, a party like a buffet, said Jennifer Biederbeck of Sotheby’s, “where you like everything on the table.” There’s an abundance of sculpture, paintings and photographs, of meeting and greeting, of food and drink (replenished constantly by the mighty McCall’s team).

And I thought it was all about the women.

In keeping with the theme — flowers — entering guests were greeted with a Gatti team masterpiece: four hanging tapestries of roses, 235,000 flowers arrayed in Persian-rug-like patterns according to color. Walking in was “like riding on a float surrounded by flowers,” said attendee O.J. Shansby.

Between the giant panels, which were suspended from the ceiling to the floor of the space, working flower artists, all women, created exquisite floral likenesses from paper and glass:

Anandamayi Arnold was presiding over a garden of bulbs and fronds, understatedly elegant versions of sticky stalked daisies, flowers she portrayed in sculpture as they grow in New Zealand, reaching up from beds of rocks.

You could just about see through Momoca’s lacy pink, blue and white flowers, sculptures with the silvery grace of wildflowers.

Aimée Baldwin refers to her art, framed flower sculptures as precise as they would be in antique botanical drawings, as “vegan taxidermy.”

Alexis Berger uses glass to make flowers for personal ornament, a headpiece, for example, that seemed to make a garden in her curly red hair.

And Bethany Carlson Mann was showing large flower masks, most dotted, somewhere or other, with a ladybug or butterfly; the attraction of flowers isn’t limited to humans.

If you stopped for a moment to speak with any one of these artists, she would direct you to one of the others. It felt sisterly, ethereal but warm, as though you’d been presented — whether you bought anything or not — with a bouquet.

Much of the talk among guests was about Wednesday morning’s pre-presidential news conference. “When something like this happens,” said art dealer and For-Site Foundation founder Cheryl Haines, who brought Ai Weiwei’s work to Alcatraz and “Home Land Security” to the Presidio, “we have to focus on building a community. There are talented and caring and empathetic people in this place we call home . ... I feel energized by the challenge.”

Art dealer Jessica Silverman’s booth was filled with friends and admirers; Amanda Michael’s Jane’s cafe and Shelley Lindgren’s A16 were serving refreshments.

And Carole Shorenstein Hays’ Curran, which was one of the sponsors of the event, hosted a bar-and-dessert lounge at which Machine Dazzle, Taylor Mac’s costume designer, sat at a sewing machine and created costumes in keeping with the Curran’s coming opener, “Fun Home.” Behind him, a kaleidoscopic video projected multicolored images; in front of him, embroidered, embossed and glittering fabrics lay twisted into dazzling knots, and costumes inspired by the colors of the renovated theater were draped on mannequins. (“And then the doughnuts,” said Shansby. “This is beyond.”)

Artist Amanda Weil was showing tall, slender wood boards on which were photographs of birch trees, simple silhouettes of trunks of the trees. Their roots are all interconnected, she said, which, as we left, pausing at the entrance to admire once more the floral panels, seemed particularly relevant.

In a corner of the mosaic of blooms closest to the entrance, written in yellow roses, was the name “Cathy,” a tribute to steering committee member Cathy Topham, who is gravely ill. The flowers in the display had been received several days before the event; Gatti described soaking them in water, cutting their stems and putting each bloom in a separate tube filled with water, to make them last.

But the beauty of flowers is ephemeral; they are treasured all the more because they won’t be here forever. This art fair was, yes, a fundraiser for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a chance for a variety of commercial enterprises to strut their professional stuff, but it was also an embrace of Cathy — and a nod to the fleeting nature of life — from a community that loves her.

Adult: “Did you see any movies over winter break?” Preadolescent child: “No, I saw a play. ‘Hamilton.’ ” Conversation overheard in Mill Valley by a wistful theater-lover