Mapping the San Francisco Bay Area’s Art Scene

Wood Line by Andy Goldsworthy, an underrated piece of public art in the Presidio, San Francisco. Goldsworthy is a British artist well-known for site-specific land art, photography, and ephemeral art.

The practice of mapping and interpreting signs and data is imbedded in the concept of Charting Transcendence, the name I give to my personal superpower, by which I connect everyday experiences with the transcendent. This is just one reason why I pay extra special attention to art involving maps. 

Cartographic art, at least in my experience, is not such a prominent category unto itself. Some contemporary artists have been rather prolific with maps — especially Saul Steinberg and Grayson Perry — even as they are increasingly prevalent in our daily lives, perhaps less so on paper these days than on digital screens.

Lordy Rodriguez, Pangea Five; Most Air Polluted Countries, Source: World Population Review, 2023, ink on paper, 60 x 42 1/2 in, a hand-drawn map of an imaginary Pangea-like megacontinent formed out of the borders of the countries with the worst air pollution today; here water is represented by negative space (the borders of Indonesia are overlaid as lakes) and land is represented by a worm-like pattern of lines resembling traffic-intensity indicators on Google Maps.

One year ago I encountered the work of cartographic artist and master draftsman Lordy Rodriguez (b. 1976, Phillipines, lives and works in Benicia, CA), and it struck me on several levels.  Over nine months later, I returned to looking at Lordy’s work and realized its significance to me as a psychocartographer and art advisor, and realized that it was an extraordinary body of work.

This past week in San Francisco, I met Lordy at Hosfelt Gallery, which has represented him for over 15 years, in order to learn more about his practice and see some of his latest work up close.

According to Hosfelt Gallery, for more than a quarter of a century, Lordy Rodriguez has utilized an ever-developing visual language inspired by map-making to generate drawings that direct our attention to complex social and cultural issues — an excellent summary, but just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the complexity and appeal of his beautiful maps.

Two 10 x 14 in. drawings by Lordy Rodriguez. Collectors are encouraged to purchase three at a time (in various bright colors with varying patterns and forms) in order to form a triptych, or assembly of three images.

This drawing incorporates elements of both paper and digital maps but also resembles something biologically organic.

Venice, 2022, ink on paper, 30 x 21 1/2 in, the city made famous for global trade and the world’s oldest art biennial, with waterways and canals represented by negative space and the land covered in colorful geometric patterns.

Pangea Seven; Top Ten Contributors to Marine Plastic Pollution, Source: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 2023, ink on paper 60 x 42 1/2 in. Here Lordy has overlaid the borders of ten countries, creating a Pangea-like continent represented by negative space, with meticulously-drawn, colorful lines (reminiscent of ocean currents or perhaps fishing lines) covering the area representing water. The continent also vaguely resembles a sea-monster.

Inherently political, maps have generally been drawn, often by explorers, and with the implicit approval of those in power. No wonder then that Lordy’s practice almost exclusively involves drawing with ink and high-quality markers — both primarily Japanese in origin — on paper. 

Since completing his MFA at Stanford, he has created nearly 1000 drawings, all of which he has numbered in sequence. Many of these are held by museums and corporate art collections, and his private collectors tend to be from the Bay Area or Texas, where Lordy grew up and completed the presitigious Artpace residency in San Antonio.

Artforum covered Lordy’s work more than 20 years ago, writing, Rodriguez takes the inherent formlessness of cartographic practices to an extreme.  This rings true, for often his maps are of imaginary places, with transposed borders borrowed from actual maps that include signifiers removed from their original context. Together with his copious use of negative space, these works raise interesting questions about politics, signs and signifiers, and the meaning behind maps.

Visually stunning and deeply engaging to gaze upon, Lordy’s drawings are the best in their category — in fact they are some of my favorite contemporary drawings of all time. They are available at reasonable prices, considering the artist’s prominence in museum collections and the relative rarity of these beautiful, hand-drawn objects.

Please contact Charting Transcendence for details about works available through Hosfelt Gallery.

Recent Sales Activity:
Vintage Miami Photographs

Modern color-corrected limited edition print Matching Suits #2 shot on South Beach in the late 1970s by Andy Sweet (1953-1982). Available for purchase via Charting Transcendence and The Andy Sweet Project.

Charting Transcendence recently marked an important professional achievement through the placement of an assortment of vintage prints by Miami Beach photographer Andy Sweet (1953-1982) with a distinguished New York collector of contemporary art.

Overlooked for many years following his untimely death at the age of 28, Andy Sweet was the preeminent photographer of South Beach in the late 1970s, a far shabbier era in the history of Miami, decades before the city’s revival into the international tourism and art mecca it is today. Thus he captured the vibrant life of locals and retirees (many of them Jewish and some of those Holocaust survivors) who occupied the neighborhood’s Art Deco hotels and boarding houses.

Precocious and with an eye far wiser and more perceptive than his peers, Andy left behind a body of work of more than 8,000 images, most of them color, shot in an era when color photography was on the cusp of becoming accepted as a “fine art” practice. (For decades before that, even though the technology existed, it was simply considered too garish or too commercial for artists to employ.)

Sadly Andy’s legacy was neglected in the decades after his death, and nearly all of his negatives were lost, rendering the vintage prints Andy created by hand unique objects and portals into the past.

Andy’s work has been the subject of museum shows in Miami, throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe, with more museum shows planned to further burnish his legacy. Several books of his images have been published, including Shtetl in the Sun, as well as a full-length feature documentary The Last Resort (available to stream on Amazon Prime).

Two men sitting on a bench looking at photographs. South Beach, Miami. Unique vintage print.

Woman in a fur coat in the lobby of a Miami Beach hotel, with a sign in the background reading “Minaret Lounge.” Unique vintage print.

Formally strong shot of a South Beach resort, late 1970s. Unique vintage print.

Woman with nose covering (a substitute for sunscreen, which wasn’t widely available at the time), South Beach, late 1970s. Unique vintage print.

Working directly with the archivist of The Andy Sweet Project, Charting Transcendence is able to offer the remaining vintage, as well as some beautiful modern, limited edition prints.

All of Andy’s images shared here are still available for prices quite reasonable, given their historical significance, and there are dozens more that offer a fascinating glimpse in living color into the past.  Please contact Charting Transcendence for a list of available prints. 

Additionally, Charting Transcendence is offering a selection of vintage photographic prints shot by Bunny Yeager (1929-2014). Originally the tantalizing subject of the camera’s gaze as a prominent model in late 1940s, Miami-native Linnea Eleanor Yeager, nicknamed “Bunny,” had become a prominent photographer in her own right by the early 1950s. 

Bunny shot for Playboy Magazine prior to Hugh Hefner’s requiring photographers to sign over all their artist’s rights, allowing for her archive to be meticulously preserved by her estate. She produced over 1000 images of model Bettie Page, including the famous January 1955 pin-up of the model wearing a Santa Claus hat. 

In addition to Playboy, her photography appeared in magazine such as Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Pageant, Redbook, and Women’s Wear Daily. 

Bunny also shot African American models at a time when Miami was still heavily segregated and such images were not printed in mainstream publications.  A skilled seamstress, she designed and sewed many of the outfits that she wore for her shoots, including newly fashionable two-piece swimsuits, and thus is partially credited with popularizing the bikini. 

Her technical mastery of the camera was exceptional. It is even more notable that she was a woman in a heavily male-dominated field who excelled at relating to both ends of the camera lens, capturing graceful and iconic images that are hard to image producing by today’s standards.

What follows are a selection of images – vintage prints as well as some printed later – by the legendary Bunny Yeager. 

A model shot by Bunny Yeager, who pioneered photographic techniques involving fill-flash and posing her models in bright sunlight, in South Florida in the mid-1950s.

Bettie Page, “The Queen of Curves” was one of Bunny Yeager’s most notable and iconic subjects. Many of these prints are available for purchase directly from her estate & archive.

Bunny Yeager photographs Bettie Page with two large cats, 1950s. Prolifically talented, Bunny Yeager also designed clothing for many of her photo shoots.

Hand-colored print of Bettie Page, appearing in the January 1955 edition of Playboy, by Bunny Yeager.

San Francisco Galleries and Museums

This painting by Japanese artist Shinpei Kusanagi (b. 1973) straddles the space between figuration and abstraction and invites deeper looking; could the brushstrokes be depicting a landscape with birds? Seen in a solo show at San Francisco’s Altman Siegel, one of the best galleries in town and a highlight of the Minnesota Street Project arts district.

Lastly, on my recent visit to San Francisco, I disabused myself of the notion, held by many in New York and elsewhere, that there are only one or two good contemporary art galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Although it is true that most galleries with West Coast ambitions these days are seeking to put down roots in Los Angeles, with its surfeit of sunshine and warehouse spaces ideal for galleries, I’ve been noticing some interesting approaches among Bay Area galleries, and on this trip was impressed by the warm welcome I received as an art advisor from Miami.

Rena Bransten Gallery, part of the Minnesota Street Project space, presenting figurative painting of two cowboys by John Bankston (b. 1963) in his signature coloring-book style.

A large painting by Rebecca Ness (b. 1992), seen at the Chinatown location of Jessica Silverman, consistently regarded as one of the best galleries in San Francisco.

A nice surprise was encountering the black and white photography of Michael Kenna (b. 1953), known for taking long exposures in nature as well as numerous series shot in Japan, at Dolby Chadwick Gallery downtown.

This work of art is not a painting but an intricately-carved and painted woodblock, on view at Hosfelt Gallery, by German artist Stefan Kuerten (b. 1963). Interested in the concept of “home,” the artist both paints and carves images of imaginary houses, inspired by images in magazines, which none the less give strong clues through their architecture and setting as to the place they might be located, if not only in a dream.

Unusually I did not visit many museums on this trip, as I chose to prioritize a deeper exploration of local galleries.

San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), which I skipped on this occasion, is a powerhouse of an institution that typically enthralls me for up to four or five hours. I did manage to drop by the de Young Museum (San Francisco’s city museum for modern and contemporary art), the Asian Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, as well as the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.

To conclude this newsletter, below are a few works of art I found particularly striking from my Bay Area museum visits:

Japanese woodblock ukiyo-e print (mid-1850s) showing a view of Mt. Fugi from Suruga-cho near Nihonbashi, Edo (now Tokyo), by one of the greatest masters of his time, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), from his series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, in the collection of the Asian Art Museum.

Casey Gray (b. 1983), Recipe for Survival (2020), a beautiful contemporary vanitas and still life with objects vaguely recalling the skills needed to survive the year of its creation, marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, in the collection of the de Young Museum. Grey is represented by San Francisco’s Hashimoto Contemporary.

Delicate painting on flax by Iraqi-Kurdish artist Hayv Kahraman (b. 1981) in her show Look Me in the Eyes at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco.

A partciularly fascinating painting on platinum leaf, Your Move (2022) by Nepalese American artist Tsherin Sherpa (b. 1968), who trained alongside his father as a traditional Thangka painter, plays with the ideas of signs, symbols and meaning. It is on display in his solo show at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. (Note that the swastika is a prevalent symbol in Buddhism, as well as other ancient cultures.)