Yvonne made this before our very eyes!
Yvonne treated us to a marvelous afternoon of knitting on her analog machine that uses punch cards. We were given blank cards to create our own design and a special hole puncher that the machine uses to knit the design.
The art on the walls was not created with this machine. She used another machine and computer program to knit her photographs.
For "Sunset Shangri-La" Yvonne and Kevin each have a wall. Their work looks fantastic across from each other’s.
Yvonne’s wall
Kevin’s wall
Kevin’s window
Yvonne Martinez in front of her knitted show sign
Our 2nd Open Invitation:
closed last weekend.
120 artists participated.
Artist Lori Murphy
Zachariah Spellman, SF Opera tuba player, looking and listening
Mary Margaret aka Ems on right
Carlo Grunfeld near his painting, Kit Cameron, Paul Kensinger
photo by Michelle Mongan
One entry per person. The show will be hung salon style in the order received. Various mediums and sizes welcomed.*
Artists may choose to sell or not. FOG will receive a 30% commission on all art sold.
We will continue to receive art throughout the exhibition during regular hours: Friday-Sunday, 12-6pm.
* No video or film screens will be provided.
* Wall sizes must not exceed 4 feet.
* Wall art must be ready to hang.
The gallery was full for Graciela's book reading. Thank you, friends and supporters of Graciela and Lisa who came out and bought books.
Anna Muravitskaya graced FOG on Mother’s Day with her exquisite mezzo soprano voice singing Ukrainian folk songs. The songs were filled with tenderness of budding love, nature, devotion to family and land. Thank you Anna for transporting us to your Ukrainian origin.
Nataliya Pryzant in red waving, her husband Eugene, guest, Gabriella on left.
West Wall from left: Elvira Dayel, SA Kushinka, Sonia Melnikova-Raich
East wall from left: 4 paintings by Natalyia Pryzant Center: Vitaliy Pryzant Right: Ganna Prymakova
Anne Herbst: Hearts for Ukraine
Flowers for Ukraine
contributing artists:
Elvira Dayel
That’s Nataliya Pryzant in green above, and her husband, below. Tania Pashkevich unpacks art by the window.
contributing artists:
Elvira Dayel
Welcome to FOG’s fundraising exhibition supporting Ukrainian refugees. Margarita Soyfertis, a San Francisco mosaic artist, approached FOG with this idea and we are sympathetic to the cause. Margarita is from Kiev and wants to help her former country and fellow artists Vitaliy Pryzant and Ganna Prymakova, who recently fled Ukraine. She invited Ukrainian American artists Elvira Dayel, Nataliya Pryzant, and Gregory Vernitsky. All contributing artists are donating sales of their art to Hearts For Ukraine US, a non-profit humanitarian organization. The devastation and destruction of this war has touched most of the world and its horrors have no end. Please consider assisting Ukrainian refugees by purchasing art or donating directly to www.heartsforukraine.us
contributing artists:
Elvira Dayel
Anne Herbst Pink Blossoms
The gallery was packed for the Artist’s Talk on Saturday. Thank you all for supporting Michelle and Connie. Above, Michelle shows us a slice of the Boundary Oak Tree that she used for her print series.
Connie in front of her paintings with her knitted steel and copper Sprouts.
Connie Harris
Michelle Mongan
by Jonah Raskin
Herbst brought Downing and Craig together in her gallery for the first time in the summer of 2022. Then, in January 2023 she arranged their work on opposite walls so they feed into and bounce off one another. They show how different and how similar two San Francisco artists can be. "There's a dialogue between the two," Herbst said. Craig painted images of the ocean at Ocean Beach for an international conference about water held in Germany in the summer of 2022. Ken Downing leaned forward, gazed at Craig’s work and said, "She muscles out the paint. Unlike me, she's not afraid to sling it." Born and raised in San Diego, right on the water, Craig lives in the Marina District in San Francisco, though she has also spent considerable time on the Atlantic Ocean. "Every ocean has its own personality," she said. "I think of the Pacific as passionate and engaging. The Atlantic is docile until a storm comes in and then it's fierce." Her Ocean Beach paintings, which she created at different times of the day, and from dawn to dusk, capture the feel of the surf, the churning of the water and the beauty of the sand and the shore. “Each work is a meditation on a moment in the day,” Craig said. “My expressionistic images are meant to capture my sensitivity to the ocean’s beauty which can be tame, treacherous, and wild.” In 2020, Craig published her sketches and photographs in Caminando, Walking. She made the sketches with pen and ink brush in Spain, France, Romania, Scotland and San Francisco. Art has taken her around the world. Once a year, Herbst takes all the wall spaces in the gallery and shows her own work. For now, it's in a small room behind the large front room that features Downing’s and Craig's paintings. "At FOG we're not trying to compete with the big commercial galleries," Herbst said. "I show artists whose work moves me and that isn’t in the regular art world." She has put the stamp of her own warm and engaging personality on FOG and made it a sanctuary for edgy work where neighborhood folks, who are often hesitant to come in, learn to understand and appreciate art. While it's often foggy on Taraval Street, it's always crystal clear inside the walls of 3004, that art really matters. When you're in The City take a look.
Art and art galleries are two wonders of The City, my friends North of the Golden Gate tell me. That observation has been true for me over the course of the last two years, ever since I moved to San Francisco. When Anne Marguerite Herbst founded Far Out Gallery, aka FOG, on Taraval Street seven years ago with her partner Peter Munks, a singer, she wanted it to be, she said, “a sanctuary, a place to go in the mind and the imagination." It has been all that and more. "Art saved my life," she added. "It has gotten me through traumas." San Francisco gallery owners such as Collier Gwin, at Foster Gwin in the Financial District, complain that art isn't selling. "COVID really did us in," Gwin said. The same works by well-known Bay Area artists like Wally Hendrick, who painted the American flag long before anyone else, hang on the walls of his gallery month after month.
Anne Herbst tells a different story about art and artists, including the two painters, Natalie Craig and Ken Downing, whose work is currently at FOG. The show opened in mid- January and ends February 26.
Natalie Craig's canvases explore the Pacific Ocean at Ocean Beach where she often walks, sketches and enjoys the sand, surf, wind and sun if it happens to be sunny. At the edge of The City, Ocean Beach isn't for everyone. For years, Ken Downing wouldn't go near it. “I was a snob,” he told me. Born in Napa, he served in the US military in Germany and in the 1970s settled in San Francisco where he says that he fell among artists, and refused to go west of Twin Peaks, a City landmark. After a while, he explains he "started fiddling around with oil paint and got the bug."
Natalie Craig Sunset, Low Tide mixed media on yupo paper, 48 x 30 in. 2022, unframed $1000
Ken Downing Nasturtiums watercolor, ink on rice paper, 57 x 17 in. 2012 Scrolled (sold)
Ken Downing still has the art bug. His paintings at FOG tend to be long and narrow with Asian influences and with nods toward the surreal and the whimsical. For decades, he made Japanese-style woodblocks. Five years ago he switched to acrylic on paper. One of his canvases on exhibit at FOG featured white bananas; in others raccoons peek out at viewers and invite them into their fugitive world.
His watercolors on rice paper offer fantastic shapes and spectacular colors and they match Craig’s shapes and colors, though that wasn’t his intention.
Seventy-six-years-old and with hearing aids to help him follow conversations, Downing can be self-deprecating. "I'd rather look at Craig's work than my own," he said. When asked what he'd like art lovers, as well as the cautious and the curious, to take away from his paintings he said, "I want them to take them home. I don't want them back." His prices are as low as can be, perhaps because this is his first gallery show. By the start of February, he'd already sold three of his canvases: he was a happy camper at Ocean Beach.
Herbst brought Downing and Craig together in her gallery for the first time in the summer of 2022. Then, in January 2023 she arranged their work on opposite walls so they feed into and bounce off one another. They show how different and how similar two San Francisco artists can be. "There's a dialogue between the two," Herbst said.
Craig painted images of the ocean at Ocean Beach for an international conference about water held in Germany in the summer of 2022. Ken Downing leaned forward, gazed at Craig’s work and said, "She muscles out the paint. Unlike me, she's not afraid to sling it."
Born and raised in San Diego, right on the water, Craig lives in the Marina District in San Francisco, though she has also spent considerable time on the Atlantic Ocean. "Every ocean has its own personality," she said. "I think of the Pacific as passionate and engaging. The Atlantic is docile until a storm comes in and then it's fierce."
Her Ocean Beach paintings, which she created at different times of the day, and from dawn to dusk, capture the feel of the surf, the churning of the water and the beauty of the sand and the shore. “Each work is a meditation on a moment in the day,” Craig said. “My expressionistic images are meant to capture my sensitivity to the ocean’s beauty which can be tame, treacherous, and wild.”
In 2020, Craig published her sketches and photographs in Caminando, Walking. She made the sketches with pen and ink brush in Spain, France, Romania, Scotland and San Francisco. Art has taken her around the world.
Once a year, Herbst takes all the wall spaces in the gallery and shows her own work. For now, it's in a small room behind the large front room that features Downing’s and Craig's paintings.
"At FOG we're not trying to compete with the big commercial galleries," Herbst said. "I show artists whose work moves me and that isn’t in the regular art world."
She has put the stamp of her own warm and engaging personality on FOG and made it a sanctuary for edgy work where neighborhood folks, who are often hesitant to come in, learn to understand and appreciate art. While it's often foggy on Taraval Street, it's always crystal clear inside the walls of 3004, that art really matters. When you're in The City take a look.
Our little circle of music has developed nicely and we now have a lovely gathering every Sunday starting at 3. We invite any newcomers who enjoy folk music and good company, and who might wish to sing along and introduce some new songs. I am also starting a “Happy Hour” on Fridays at 5 – so drop on in for a relaxing, leisurely start to your weekend. ––Peter
Natalie Craig
Ken Downing
Ready for the reception, today from 1-4pm. Artists’ Talk at 2pm. Natalie Craig’s work is on the left; Ken Downing’s work is on the right.
photo by Natalie Craig
An exciting day! Natalie Craig and Ken Downing deliver their art for New Year Premier. The reception is this Saturday from 1-4pm. Artists’ talks at 2pm.
Peace 1 oil on birchwood panel, 8 x 8 in. 2022 $425
Peace & Love-Primary Colors oil on birchwood panel, 8 x 8 in. 2922 $425
I am a child of the ’60’s when Peace and Love signs were introduced by the hippie movement. Both symbols are as powerful as our actions.
All sales from my Peace & Love series will be donated to humanitarian causes. -Anne
