Politics colors new paintings by Marin artist
Tucker Nichols has no idea how his feelings of anger and trepidation about the current political climate gave rise to his color-popping paintings of vases and flowers and bowls of plenty. The artworks, made with simple shapes and patterns humming with kinetic energy, are on view at Gallery 16 in San Francisco.
“It’s a mystery to me,” says Nichols, sipping tea in his downtown San Rafael studio, which sits above a tuxedo shop in a modest building that looks south onto the street and up to Mount Tamalpais.
“Like many people, I’ve been watching what’s happening in this country and in politics with my mouth agape. I’ve been thinking a lot about that feeling of fear or powerlessness, and it’s very much fueling a lot of what I’ve been making,” he says. “But the outcome of what I’m making tends to be very cheerful-looking and colorful these days, almost riotous.”
An improvisatory artist who likes to confine himself to a limited set of materials, Nichols created these vital pictures on panels with flat house paint that people had rejected and returned to the hardware store. The colors range from tomato red to turquoise to “weird beiges and greens and grays, and occasionally a magenta I can’t figure out what someone would do with,” the artist says, with laugh.
“If I could use any color and texture, I don’t know where to begin. But if you only have these four things, and these two things, it forces you to get into it and not get in your own way,” he says.
With the flat paint, he adds, “I can paint over things really easily. Everything is sort of in the service of trying to be as free as possible.”
Nichols discards a lot of the stuff he makes. The pieces he does keep usually have that feeling of motion and “tend to express more than one thing at a time, sometimes a contradictory thing. These are bright colors and it’s a vase of flowers, but it looks like it’s about to fall over, or it looks sort of schlumpy. When you feel both those things at once, that’s more what life actually feels like.”
In other news: Nichols’ 2015 storybook about the Golden Gate Bridge with writer Dave Eggers ,“This Bridge Will Not Be Gray,” is being reissued by Chronicle Books this season.
For more information, go to http://gallery16.com.
Wax in the stacks
You vinyl-loving rock ’n’ rollers will be pleased to hear that the San Francisco Public Library has just acquired thousands of LPs by the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, the Zombies and other pop, rock and R&B artists — copies that will be spread among various city branches and reside at the Main Library’s first-floor Audio Visual Center.
Purchased for about $50,000 from Baker & Taylor (a distributor of books, video and music to libraries and other destinations) and Green Apple Books & Music on Clement Street (with curatorial help from Green Apple buyer Robb Grimes), the records swill be dispersed among the Marina, Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial and Park branches. You can also locate a record online and have it sent to your neighborhood library.
To celebrate the new cache of old records, the Main Library hosts a program Oct. 26 with record producer Michael Carney of local Lost Alley Records. He’s scheduled to demonstrate the record-making process, embossing LPs on the spot to the sounds of musicians from the Mix, the library’s teen program.
For more information, go to www.sfpl.org/AV.
Cole & Cole
George Cole, the stylish guitarist and singer who plays lead with the seamless David Grisman Quintet and does solo projects, brings “Cole Swings Cole,” his salute to silky-voiced singer and grooving jazz pianist Nat King Cole, to the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek on Nov. 4. He takes it to swanky Feinstein’s at the Nikko for Valentine’s Day.
For more information, go to www.lesherartscenter.org.
Glass and Co.
The San Francisco Girls Chorus gets its 39th season off the ground at the Herbst Theatre on Oct. 25 with an 80th birthday toast to Philip Glass that pairs his music with pieces by other composers of the class of ’37: Dietrich Buxtehude, born 1637; Johann Michael Haydn, 1737; and Mily Balakirev, 1837.
Philip Glass Ensemble musicians are set to join the esteemed chorus to perform the composer’s “Building and Knee Play 5” from “Einstein on the Beach ,” “Father Death Blues” from “Hydrogen Jukebox” and other works.
For more information, go to www.sfgirlschorus.org.