Culture Collective: December in SOMA was a rewarding time of year to be an art aficionado
by Taylor Snowberger aka RuthieDay
Between LETS GLOW SF’s neighborhood-wide projection installations, Saint Joseph’s Arts Society presenting a 32-year retrospective of La Pocha Nostra, and a new exhibition at Heron Arts, there was more than enough to write home about.
Saint Joseph’s Arts Society concluded their La Pocha Nostra retrospective with a four-hour performance event that reminded me of what art can be in its most platonically post-modern sense. With no discernible distance between artist, viewer, and documentarian, the boundary-blurring event culminated in live performance involving some fifteen artists enacting intuitive, symbolic actions between one another and the audience. A mixture of religiously symbolic pomposity, Indigenous and Mexican symbolism and ephemera, S&M leather accessories, and costume pieces, the artists snaked through the stately decor of the church-turned-art-temple. An air of dissolved meaning and relational presence lingered, leaving me wondering: what exactly is in this holy water? The event served as both a capstone to an ambitious retrospective and a bizarre, impactful statement as we barrel through a period punctuated by xenophobia, piercing the American psyche like a brick through a window.
On the flip side—remember that intense cold snap? Bundled in sweaters and buzzing with anticipation for the holidays, revelers took in LETS GLOW SF, a citywide projection festival that illuminated eight architectural delights across downtown. Doric columns transformed into gingerbread support beams as winter-themed and psychedelic visuals spanned the gamut of expected and unexpected. The projections drew eyes upward, emphasizing the heights and pleasures of architectural gusto that make San Francisco so beautifully dignified. In particular, I appreciated the Hobart Building’s Nutcracker animation, which I admired while stuck in a traffic jam after picking up a rental car from the Union Square Hertz. Not quite sipping hot chocolate at the Ferry Building—but I was grateful nonetheless. Here’s to a fifth year of time-honored lights celebrating the passage of another winter solstice, this time with even more computational know-how.
Lastly, Lucid Plane at Heron Arts brings together twelve artists at the top of their fields, mixing sculpture, sound, light, and interactive design to create experiential works that feel possible only today(how do they do it?). Heron Arts consistently outdoes itself, presenting pieces so super-human they appear rendered by miraculous events rather than by human hands. Though I haven’t yet made it to see the exhibition, I already know from the artist lineup that it will be no less of a stunner than Heron’s regular fare. Stop by before the show comes down on January 22—I might see you there.