The SF Moma blog has taken to publishing a series of Positive Signs, which is described as, “a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism*, and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June. (*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.)”

Original post here.

#25, #26, and #27, created by Christine Wong Yap with glitter pen on gridded vellum, utilizes careful precision with a finicky medium on a finicky material (trust me; glitter pens are indeed finicky, as is vellum!) to create pieces that are refreshingly big picture. These images speak abstractly about “universal truths,” giving equal weight to feeling and thought in literary and graphical manners. The quotes are from the book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience by Yi-Fu Tuan… which apparently I need to read, with immediacy.

San Francisco-based artist Justin Lovato creates geometrically-driven works stemming from any number of esoteric influences and symbolism pulled from mathematical, pattern-based sources. Though Lovato says that his art is framed by “open-ended” symbolism, he describes his personal mythology and conceptual inspiration, saying, “I think [my artwork] represents big questions or ideas emerging from the surface of everyday materialistic existence (this may change slightly from piece to piece).”

Below, we asked Lovato to give quick summaries of certain pieces of his artwork, which are linked by a trend of geometric objets emerging from contorted figures.

Sacred house of a thousand asses (above) may seem a bit vile, but in its foundation lies a homage to the building blocks of nature, if you believe in the importance of sacred geometries. Lovato describes that the piece is, “supposed to be a humorous and sexual piece that represents the overall trippyness of reproduction and making new conscious beings. I made a big flower of life (a basic sacred geometric form) motif with overlapping circles via my compass, and all of the sudden i realized that I could turn it into a big pile of fat butts. I thought it was funny because “flower of life” and of course a bunch of lady asses and one with her legs spread showing her “flower” of life. Ha. The objects emerging from these figures are pyramids — cubes and spheres which are the basic ingredients for platonic geometric solids, or 3-dimensional sacred geometrical forms which follow a sort of fractal pattern as the shapes get more complicated. They would be squares, triangles, and circles if they where 2-D patterns.”

primordial Bubble gum (above) is also steeped in nature. About this piece, Lovato says, “… [The] defined shapes are emerging from out of the pink sludge and represent earth animal’s ascension from the primordial sludge of early evolutionary life. This amazing fact is now a background thought in our busy modern lives, but I find it amazing that we seperate ourselves mentally from the anarchistic reality of natures chaos and beauty, but we are merely Gaia bacterial children scurrying accross the face of a planet.”

The use of type and lettering in art is getting mad attention, and I’m not complaining. On March 5th, from 6:00pm to 10:00pm, Gallery Hijinks (2309 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA) is showing off its interpretation of this, with The Letter Collector. This group show will feature work from 50+ North American artists of alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll different persuasions. We have some exclusive images here for you to scope out.

Oh, and here’s a teaser video!

The Letter Collector Teaser Trailer from Gallery Hijinks on Vimeo.

Jack Fischer Gallery does it again for their next art opening — which is TONIGHT — by bringing in Richard Bassett and Chris Crites to present new paintings. Entitled Cold Comfort, the show seems centered around a general idea of violence and crime, with guns playing a central role.

Chris Crites brings his intricately-detailed illustrations of convicts and deviants. This time, though, he also contributes “stick-up” notes he pulled from an L.A. crime photo book. And because Crites does no over-painting or under-painting, you can bet the precision seen in the “stick-up” notes is damn near perfection.

READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS CRITES, IN WHICH HE TALKS ABOUT HIS PROCESS.

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Meanwhile, Bassett’s works are painstakingly-sewn needlepoint pillows which, from afar, look like snapshots or scenes from hidden cameras. Their framing, in particular, gives them the appearance of being works of medium-format photography, each of their sewn blocks resembling pixels.

Opening December 8th at Gallery Hijinks (2309 Bryant St.) in San Francisco: works by Martin Machado and Todd Freeman. The show is entitled, As It Was Before, and has a focus on artists that “use nature and science to reinterpret memories, fables and story telling.”

Evidently, Machado will be sharing works of “an Alaskan salmon fishing season,” but let’s take a look at some of his older pieces to get a sense of what just what he does. His paintings, which utilize gouache, oil, and watercolor, are often comprised of layers of fiberglass cloth and epoxy, which give the pieces a ghostly quality of transience.

As for Todd Freeman, hand-colored copper etchings and drawings recall illustrations from old science textbooks and children’s books. Set against cream and earth-colored paper, these brand new works feel like relics that one might find in an abandoned house that’s falling apart at the seams.

Sometimes when the sunshine hits things just right, you see rainbows, and sometimes, leaves in autumn glow with an otherworldly quality.

If Nicholas Bohac‘s depictions of landscapes are any indicator, the world he lives in is full of these moments. In his art, cobblestone walkways look more like gem-encrusted or candy-strewn paths, and electrical towers blend in nonchalantly with bare trees and rainbow highways. A piece of Bohac’s personal collection, entitled Trippin’ Off the Land about sums up the general feeling I get from these pieces; they are hypercolored and radiating with beyond-reality energy.

I should also mention that these pieces are huge; they’re also mixed media pieces utilizing just about everything, including acrylics, fabric, copper leaf, ink, photographs, collage, and silkscreen. Ace.