Upcoming: Griffin McPartland

Easy on the I's
Griffin McPartland
Opening reception on Thursday, 30 April 2009 7 - 10pm
with live performance by Coconut

Oakland-based artist Griffin McPartland has been curating, publishing, and making art in the Bay Area since 1992. As half of the publishing team of the celebrated Hot and Cold project zine, Griffin has shown at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; The Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, Lump Gallery, North Carolina, and Cell Project Space, London.

In his first solo show at Adobe Books and the Backroom Gallery, McPartland uses balloons as a vehicle of communication. Collected through day to day observations, McPartland's writings
transform pop culture, mundane human occurrences and social trends into a satirical language. Fleeting thoughts are given residence in a series of balloons creating a visual banter between the artist and the observer.

Upcoming shows include Glen Horowitz, North Hampton, New York and Bear Ridgeway Exhibitions, San Francisco.

Curated by Maggie Otero

30 April to 30 May, 2009
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Everyday 11am to midnight

Works from The Mask of Civilization

Garth Thompson-Vieira
through April 25th
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
everyday 11am to midnight

Images Courtesy of ArtBusiness.com
www.artbusiness.com

THANK YOU!

Dear Friends of Adobe Books,

On behalf of Andrew McKinley, the staff of Adobe Books and myself, thank you for supporting Adobe Books' 20th Anniversary Auction. Everyone's participation was fundamentally an investment in Adobe Books for the future and we sincerely appreciate the help to guarantee the continuation of the store's role in the community. The event was a success and would not have been possible without all of the artists, install crew, auctioneers, volunteers and friends of the store.

With some of the funds raised we hope to clean up the store, make some repairs to the shop and gallery, and strengthen our ability to support artists, musicians and writers. In fact, we hope to incorporate more artist projects in the store such as limited edition bookmarks and making a shelf dedicated to books chosen by local artists and friends of the store.

Special thanks to Tartine, BiRite Grocery, Dori Latman, Four Barrel, Le Banh Mi and the lovely staff at SoEx. Thank you to Brianna and the very special volunteers who helped make the night a success!

Sincerely,
Devon Bella, Curator
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery

Adobe Books 20th Anniversary Art Auction

Adobe Books 20th Anniversary Art Auction
Saturday, March 28, 2009
at Southern Exposure 14th Street gallery
417 14th Street at Valencia
San Francisco, CA 94103
3:00 - 8:00 pm
One day only
Free Admission
Online Preview (in progress):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adobebooksauction09

Participating artists include Airyka Rockefeller, Ajit Chauhan, Alena Rudolph, Alicia McCarthy, Alissa Anderson, Amy Jo Diaz, Andrew Schoultz, Barry McGee, Brion Nuda Rosch, Bryson Gill, Chris Baird, Chris Corales, Chris Duncan, Christine Shields, Clare Rojas, Colter Jacobsen, Dave King, Dave Schubert, Devendra Banhart, Emily Prince, Future Farmers: Amy Franceschini & Michael Swaine, Jay Nelson, Jeff Canham, Jennie Smith, Joe Byrnes, Johanna St Clair, John Dwyer, Joshua Churchill, Jovi Schnell, Kal Spelletich, Kathryn Spence, Klea McKenna, Kyle Field, Kyle Knobel, Kyle Ranson, Leslie Shows, Liz Walsh, Matt Furie, Matt Gonzalez, Misa Inaoka, Naoki Onodera, Nathan Stapley, Orion Shepherd, Rachel Corry, Rachel Kaye, Ryan Coffey, Ryder Cooley, Sahar Khoury, Scott Williams, Shaun O'Dell, Sonya Derman, Tara Foley
Will Yackulic, Yukako Ezoe Onodera

Silent auction ends at 6pm
Live auction from 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Cash, check, Visa/MC accepted

Vietnamese sandwiches by Le Bahn Mi at 5:30pm
The Café by Dori Latman serving coffee and tea all day

Special Thanks to Southern Exposure, BiRite Grocery, Gregory Lind, and Triple Base Gallery for their support.

Check back for updates...

Garth Thompson-Vieira

The Mask of Civilization
Sutures Schisms and Decay

New work by Garth Thompson-Vieira

Steeped in the visual language of anarchist ideologies and the barbaric sound of the macabre, Garth Thompson-Vieira’s new work transforms the Backroom Gallery into a repository of nightmarish scenes from over 30 works of collage. Articulated by automatist techniques, Thompson-Vieira’s practice extracts representational forms from the cut-outs from early 20th-century French illustration books and the grisly patterns of overpainting. Military battalions transform into pillars of war, lurid portraits ooze with terror, and as a result, the haunting imagery reveals what lies beneath the mask of civilization.

Garth Thompson-Vieira is a 2005 graduate at the San Francisco Art Institute and currently lives and works in New York. Adobe Books is proud to present The Mask of Civilization: Sutures, Schisms and Decay as the body of work calls attention to the unseen surrenders of progress and innovation as well as the store’s own veiled mutations and traces of decay.

Music performance by SHREDDING at 9:00pm

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Opening Reception on Thursday, 26 March, 2009 8:00-10:00pm
Exhibition dates 26 March - 25 April, 2009

Upcoming Music at Adobe Books

Music at Adobe Books on Friday, 20 March
Hélène Renaut, Chloe Makes Music, and The Woodlands 8:00pm

Orion Shepherd in SFWeekly

I Was a Green Beret

Exhibition of new work by Orion Shepherd
19 February - 21 March, 2009

Opening Reception 19 February, 7 - 10pm
Music by Dimples and Golden West Service

I Was a Green Beret draws attention to the book world around us and painstakingly coaxes it into being through the miniature style of painting. Orion Shepherd’s paintings are an achievement of trompe l’oeil and the portrayal of dimension, yet his greatest output is the depiction of the 60s era at the peak of popular imagination. While his current study of books and magazines condense the cover onto the page, they also capture the magnitude and complexity of the media culture from which they originate.

Showing for the first time at Adobe Books, Orion Shepherd creates a focal point for the fascination and compulsion of the United States Army Special Forces and the clandestine operations of the Green Beret. Functioning as a provocation of the Green Beret, the exhibition pairs the dramatic device with other print media saturations through a pastiche of book cover designs. As a result, Shepherd’s new body of work not only rekindles the history the codex and its decorative uses, but more significantly, reveals miniaturization as both a mode of virtuosity and haunting social process of identity formation as demonstrated by the Orwellian dystopia in 1984, the guiding hand of National Geographic and The Right Stuff’s ethos of patriotism.

Orion Shepherd was born in 1984 and grew up in Martinez, California. He received his Bachelor degree in Fine Arts from California College of the Arts (CCA) in 2006. Shepherd currently lives and works in San Francisco. Adobe Books is pleased to present Orion Shepherd's solo exhibition alongside the gallery's history of showcasing local emerging artists. I Was a Green Beret is especially exciting for Adobe Books as many of its own paperbacks inspired Shepherd's new body of work.

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
3166 16th St. San Francisco, CA 94103
11am - midnight everyday

$free

Music at Adobe Books

boyz IV men
religious girls
tuesday, february 24, 2009
8:30 pm
$free

adobe books
3166 16th Street
san francisco, ca 94103

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Sam McPheeters, George Chen, Deana Uribe

An evening of readings and stand up comedy
Friday, February 20th, 2009
8-10 pm
$5 donation, all ages

Adobe Books
3166 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Sam McPheeters was born in Ohio in 1969, and raised in upstate New York. He is the former lead singer of Born Against and Wrangler Brutes, a founding member of Men's Recovery Project and the owner of the now defunct Vermiform Records. He lives in California with his wife, Tara, and their eleven cats.

George Chen is a freelance writer and musician based in Oakland. Music projects include Chen Santa Maria, KIT, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, and running the record label Zum. He has performed "stand up" "comedy" about "five" times, all since seeing the terrible, terrible "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

Deana Uribe is a poet, comedian, and student from Los Angeles California. She has performed stand up comedy twice, the first time at the Playhouse 7 Laemmle Theater in Pasadena and the second time at the Horsecow Gallery in West Sacramento. Her perfomances consits of elaborate long stories dashed with Satanic-stoner references. She lives in Felton, in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Upcoming: Orion Shepherd

exhibition in february
check back for details and announcement

Music at Adobe Books

unicorn basement
MC/VL
wednesday
21 january 2009
8pm
*free

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

bonnie banks in the COUNCIL OF THE ERRTH
super failures of the errth
featuring corpsemop colosi
ion clappers
music by
VSLS
Head Boggle
Bullshit Detector
incindental music by
Bonnie Banks Council / Errth selection.

thursday
22 january 2009
7-10pm
*free

Ex Libris

Opening reception at the twentieth hour with musical entertainment on
Wednesday, 14 January 2009

A formation out of the chaos and the clutter of Adobe Books, Ex Libris is an exhibition of books selected by a group of local artists, writers and creative thinkers. Beginning on the fourteenth of January, the Backroom Gallery transforms into a library as a glimpse into the literary influences on local creative and critical inquiry.

Participants include Courtney Fink, Vincent Fecteau, Colter Jacobsen, Julian Myers, Emily Prince, Jeannene Przyblyski, Kyle Ranson, Evan Rehill, Brion Nuda Rosch, Michael Swaine, Margaret Tedesco, and Meredith Tromble

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
3166 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
t: (415) 864-3936
e: adobebooksbackroom@gmail.com

The gallery is currently in transition. Check back for updates.

The Circus (in my mind) is in Town

New Art by Randolph Colosky. November 12 to December 18, 2008

Rachel Kaye: Under the Affluence

An exhibition of works by Rachel Kaye. August 28 to October 4, 2008.

With a revised sense of portraiture, the selection of paintings for the exhibition, Under the Affluence, culminates into a provocative cabinet of the figure and its domestic interior. Rachel Kaye’s process distills celebrity magazine clippings and photographs of high-profile women into careful recompositions reflecting the efficacy of portraits as affirmations of authority, beauty and power. These iconic depictions of desirable women, shimmering chandeliers and decadent living quarters position the viewer within a voyeuristic gaze in continuous anticipation of the figure. The elite playpens and staged realities are rendered temporal and ironic highlighting the interior as a constant projection of self-fashioning, wealth and opulence.

Rachel Kaye received her Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts (CCA) in 2004, where her studies were primarily concentrated in abstraction. Ultimately finding nonrepresentational painting lifeless and impersonal, Kaye made a momentous departure from abstraction and turned to the figure. Her previous focus in pure color and composition coupled with her current interest in the language of social status form the basis for this exceptional body of work.

Shown for the first time in the Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, Kaye’s work purposefully strikes a balance between severity and lightness addressing the absurdity of celebrity obsession while calling attention to systems of value. Adobe Books is delighted to host Rachel Kaye’s solo exhibition and honored to include her in the gallery’s longstanding history of showcasing local emerging artists. — Devon Bella, Curator

Rainen Knecht and Christopher Baird

New work by RAINEN KNECHT and CHRISTOPHER BAIRD

Christopher Baird lives and works in San Francisco. Raised in Portland, Oregon and graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002 he has shown in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego and Kyoto, Japan..

Rainen Knecht also lives and works in San Francisco and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005. Raised in Gig Harbor, Washington Rainen has shown in San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Kyoto, Japan.

Jen Smith

Opening reception February 28th 7-10 PM

With special live performance by The Quails

Curated by The Folks

Raised in Washington, DC where her ideas about the role of art were determined by experiences within the political oriented music community. Has been an active in San Francisco for the past decade, most noteably though her band the Quails. She has shown locally at places like Needles and Pens, the Yerba Beuna Center for the Arts and currently has work on view in the show "Small Things End, Great Things Endure" at New Langton Arts.


The Quails are gathering to sing rock songs from the psychedelic/punk songbook with the people, by artists such as the Clash, the Kinks and Pink Floyd. There will be song books and musical previews for people unfamiliar with the songs. Rock and Roll Choral Gestalt!

Barbra Garber

Show dates: October 11th - November 3rd
Opening reception: Thursday, October 11th - 7-10pm
Special live performace by Boner Ha-chachacha

Adobe Books and Backroom Gallery is pleased to present a new site-specific installationby San Francisco artist Barbara Garber, marking her first solo exhibition. The focalpoint of the installation will be functional, handcrafted sandals that are designedto disperse California poppy seeds collected from California State Parks as theyare worn. Complimenting the sandals will be a large-scale photographic proposal for a California Poppy crop in the Mission District’s Dolores Park.

Part of a larger body of action-based work addressing preservation and urbanization, “tread” creates an object that operates in the spaces between these two notions. Strategically selecting California poppy seeds for their relationship to statehood and naturalization, the shoes suggest a special opportunity for invasion. Seeds embedded in the soles of the shoes were meticulously collected and studied, and now have the potential to be dispersed, like an organic GPS system.

Barbara Garber is also a native of California. She has been included in group exhibitionsthroughout the United States and abroad, most recently at The Garage, Soap, and Red Ink galleries in San Francisco and at Gallery Y in Tartu, Estonia. She completedher BA in Studio Art at the University of California Santa Cruz.