Category: The Gallery

what many people think of when they dream of art — the opening, the wine, the women, the … crap

AM.noted: Apr30’25

Posted on Posted in econocaste, lost horizon, minimum daily requirement, overnight notes, The Gallery

The Good of others. Artists.
Ywahentetha’. “We put you before others in our spirits.” As curators, we believe our role is to bring artists and their works into dialogue with each other in such a way as to amplify their power, the love that resides in and emanates from them … VU, a place worth remembering ..

[ Since 1981, VU has foregrounded the diversity of artistic practices in photography, supported artists in the production of their work, and offered them the space and freedom to create. The centre contributes to current thinking about photography by encouraging the deepening of artistic experience through a program of varied activities. ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson

The Books of the past..https://coffeeandflapjacks.wordpress.com/2023/06/25/pattern-recognition-william-gibson-2003/

AND another bookmark: https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/03/william-gibson-new-book-podcast-event/

— past names: Group signing with

The Bad — warriors in need of more tat. 

PART …. UNIFORM OF THE DAY --ranger

The new test is completed wearing combat uniforms and boots. In 14 minutes, soldiers must complete:
* An 800-meter run.
* 30 dead-stop push-ups.
* a 100-meter sprint.
* 16 lifts of 40-pound sandbags onto a 68-inch platform.
* 50-meter “farmers’ carry” of two 40-pound water cans.
* A 25-meter high crawl, 25-meter three-to-five second rush.
* A final 800-meter run.
After that, soldiers will change into their physical fitness uniform and run four miles within 32 minutes followed by six chin-ups.
By illuminating the plantation dynamics that make college football a particularly racialized form of exploitation, the book makes legible the forms of physical sacrifice that are required, the ultimate cost in health and well-being, and the coercion that drives players into the sport and compels them to endure such abusive conditions.
https://uncpress.org/book/9781469683461/the-end-of-college-football/

The Ugly: chabad cowards
Cowards’ insurrection: the perfect example a group of people who create or commit violence against a US citizen while owing allegiance and fealty to a foreign state, or members of that foreign state. This is terrorist insurrection. On tape by the hundreds. They captured their crime pridefully. How many have turned themselves in for reward. How many have been rebuked by their Rabbi… rabid mitzvahs

IF YOU CAN’T RECOGNIZE FRIEND OR FOE, YOU MAKE ONLY ENEMIES. have Merry Mitzvah in your Heimat.

FOCUS: Todd Walker

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, alt photo, art biz, creativity, old bones, the arc, The Biz, The Gallery

gallery notes from 70s. origin story of photography entering the world of walls for the people.

San Francisco early years of photography into art gallery. the wall and the bins were filled with unknowns, and early risers. Todd Walker was making a transition and name. His work was an early pathway into the alt-photo world. When alt meant “not Kodak” and a precedent to Post-Industrial photography.

Focus Gallery was founded by Helen Head Johnson (1916-1989) in 1966 on Union Street in San Francisco. She had worked for the de Young Museum as public relations director. She decided to open a “people’s gallery.” Over the nineteen year span of Focus Gallery, she presented over 300 exhibitions, showing work of more than 500 photographers. She closed the gallery in 1985.

Grapestake gallery was functioning in the period 1970-1986.

I remember the bins for photographs. Bins had prices. Prints were in plastic, much like a record store.

Helen Johnston left her private photography collection to the de Saisset Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The show prior to Todd Walker’s was Eikoh Hosoe’s.

  • 1969, Aug :” enclosed is check for sale of portfolio at $9.00 less gallery commission of one third… Glad you are not dependent on our sales to keep the wolf from the door! I always say.. can promise no sales.. but certainly can promise exposure.

  • Sept 1969, from Todd: “Thank you for the check and most especially for the invitation to show in your gallery. Do you have a drawing or measurements of the gallery space so I can plan the number of prints and how they might fit?”

  • 1969, Nov 14: “dates for exhibition would be Feb 3-28. We instal over the weekend…. the other show will be by Tom Baird…we could use about 40 to 45 prints….. Am wondering what you plan to show? Would it be the same show as was “Camera Work?”

  • Dec 1969, from Todd: “I would also like to print the announcment and will get it to you two weeks ahead of time. I think the show should just be called Photographs by Todd Walker.

    FG: [announcement photos] if you have both abstract and representational probably representational would be better.. … printing enough copies of the announcement to send us copies for our mailing list of about 400 mostly poster sources and regular customers?

  • Jan 6, 1970: Received of Todd Walker. three portfolios and a sample to sell for $30 less gallery commission of one third and 450 announcements. [HJ]

    [HJ] We don’t have them (openings). However if there are photographers that you would want to see and might not have a chance to see them otherwise we could arrange one.

  • Feb, 1970: [HJ] … and I’m so glad we have the explanation for the techniques. There has already been much favorable commen on it. … Could you send us about two more press pictures? The one most representative of the show… The landscape is just too dark for newspaper reproduction and besides I’m afraid they would think it was not really representative of your show.

  • June 1970: [HJ] … I hear so many wonderful reports of what you are doing.. how exciting is your present work. We were fortunate to have had it at Focus. .. enlcosed is a check for the sale of the 16 print portfolio (30) less gallery commission and thank you!

    Aug, 1970: [HJ] Enclosed is check for sale of one of your portfolios … Your show at Focus was one of the best we ever had..

Todd Walker Focus Gallery layout with prices

Arts coverage in the 70s was printed in Travel sections of papers. It fell into foundation journalism, being somewhat enlarged form of a Press Release. Some reviews were only that, a re-write for space.

1970 Press clippings; Focus Gallery shows.

Todd Walker: “Reality to each of us consists of a succession of images which can be selectively recalled. These images provide the meaning, form and rhythm to our lives as they relate us to existence The camera is a most powerful means of expressing this relationship.”

Joan Murray (reviewing): ” Unfortunately, at the Focus Gallery he has hung 80 prints, far too many for this type of show. There is a great sense of duplication, almost confusion. It is a classic lesson to us all of the strength gained by each image when a show is kept smaller. … Walker is interested primarily in the process by which the image is presented. His women become altered, mutated by this process, subordinated to it; which makes for an arresting, illusionary aura in prints of great perfection.”