Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

Mia san mia: can you identify 10 soccer immortals?

Rose B. Simpson: Behold

January 17, 2026–ongoing 

Floor 4

Behold, the latest work by mixed-media artist Rose B. Simpson, is a colossal outdoor sculpture commissioned by SFMOMA for its Floor 4 terrace. Simpson, who resides in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, is one of our moment’s most important sculptors, working with clay and mixed materials in a matrilineal tradition that bridges past, present and future. At over 24 feet tall, the honey-colored bronze Behold will be visible from various locations in and around the museum, including Yerba Buena Gardens across the street.

The mother and child figures depicted in the sculpture are connected by beaded necklaces strung from their shoulders and a bending, ornamental ladder that arcs between their heads, illuminating a mental and emotional connection that flows between them. In the artist’s words, “Like branches of a tree, a child grows from the hip of a monumental parent.” The figures’ steady outward gazes also connect the sculpture, visitors and the museum itself to its surroundings.

Behold is a profoundly hopeful and vulnerable artwork. As Simpson says, “It asks us to be human with each other, to change our narrative through wonder, witness and a foundation in the soft warmth of our humanity.”

Rose has an installation featuring two art cars and a mural LEXICON at the DeYoung and is installing a sculpture at SF MOMA on January 17, three months from today.

Congratulations to Rose.

Rose is from Santa Clara pueblo but i met her in sf. Her mother is Roxanne Swentzell who made a bronze sculpture owned by my parents. Her cousin is Jody Naranjo who sold me a pot called The Pueblo Girls which depicts a rock band. Actually I tried to recruit Rose to be in that band. It doesn’t really exist beyond that pot, this blog and maybe the text thread.

O.N.I.B v. G.L.O.R.I.A

I’ve been a cultural broker for 30 years, but I had no idea until I read today’s times the impact of a play from 30 years ago and a album from 50 years ago.

bw we are 45 days from our pow wow with Janus:

coda

Tuesday:

12:30 pm Bennett Paster Trio

4 pm Adam Moezinia Trio

Wednesday:

6 pm Mads Tolling Quartet

Friday:

11:30 Caroline Davis Camila Meza acoustic duo

Presented by Earthwise

Beyond the music, concerts are produced to somehow change the world?

Delbert Anderson a Navajo trumpet player from New Mexico called me on my 60th birthday to say he was stranded at the airport in San Francisco and then both came to my celebration at Chef Chu’s and more to the point hit at Lytton Plaza the next day with Rabiah Kabir and Jonathan Lagunta, for Earthwise

EWP 2Q24 RECAP

1. Doox of Yale, Christian Beck; January 10, 2024, Palo Alto Art Center
2. Band of Brothers Levin & La Barbera, Rabia Kabir Trio; January 12, 2024, Palo Alto Art Center.
3. Delbert Anderson, Rabiah Kabir & Jonathan Bautista Lagunte, January 29, 2024, Lytton Plaza.
4. Nefesh Mountain, TK, February 9, 2024, Palo Alto Art Center.
5. Lizzie No, The Sink Head featuring Fumi Okiji, Ben Davis, Ben Goldberg & Jordan Glenn; Beti Masenqo, February 14, 2024, Palo Alto Art Center.
6. Matt The Electrician, March 24, 2024, Lytton Plaza.
7. Ethan Iverson, Marta Sanchez, April 1, 2024, Mitchell Park Community Center.
8. Ethan Iverson, Marta Sanchez, April 2, 2024, Mitchell Park Community Center.
9. Marta Sanchez, Motoko Honda Simple Excesses Quartet featuring Cory Wright, Matt Small & Jordan Glenn, April 3, 2024,  Mitchell Park Community Center.
10. Marta Sanchez, Dick Fregulia Trio, Dick Conte Trio (w Steve Webber & Jimmy Hobson), April 4, 2024, Mitchell Park Community Center.
11. Myra Melford Ben Goldberg Duo, Marta Sanchez,  April 5, 2024, Mitchell Park Community Center.
12. Tammy Hall, Adam Klipple Josh Thurston Milgrom Duo. April 6, 2024,  Mitchell Park Community Center.
13. Edward Simon, Tammy Hall (f Leberta Loral), April 7, 2024,  Mitchell Park Community Center.
14. Freelance Subversives featuring Will Bernard, Ben Stivers, Eric Kalb, Victor Little & Vicki Randle; Murray Low Rabiah Kabir Duo, April 8, 2024,  Mitchell Park Community Center.
15. Earthwise “Latin O Loco “ Showcase at 3rd Thursdays featuring Cien Mil Mangos, Harvey Wainapel ALEGRITUDE, Jack Tuttle and Friends Sullivan Tuttle, Scott Gates, Chad Bowen & Al Mireault; Roberta Donnay Rainforest Trio, Los Panaderos, Midtown Dreamers, April 18, 2024, 3rd Thursdays on California Avenue. 
16. DJ Sep “Dub Mission at Lytton Plaza”, May 4, 2024, Lytton Plaza.
17. Spaghetti (Jim Campilongo, Scott Amendola, Sam Reider & Matt Muntz), May 10, 2024, Lytton Plaza.
18. Cien Mil Mangos, May 17, 2024, Johnson Park.
19. Mark Lettieri Group (featuring Jason JT Thomas, Daniel Porter & Wes Stephenson, Mitchell Park Bowl, May 24, 2024.
20. Nels Cline Trio featuring Scott Amendola & Phillip Greenlief, May 30, 2024,  Mitchell Park Community Center.
21. Eddie 9V, Jimmy Dewrance Group (f Marvin Greene, Jimmy Mulleniux, Gary Rosen), June 2, 2024, Mitchell Park Bowl. 

I have assorted holds and offers pending for summer fall 2024 and project about 40 shows for the year, down from 61 in 2023, an all time mark. Although I also say that having started Earthwise in fall, 1994 that this is my 31st season that’s not quite right since some years I focused on management of acts and artists to the exclusion of producing shows here, and did virtually no work in music the year my mother died and the year before my mother died (0 and 1 shows respectively in 2017 and 2018, which is a very Silicon Valley set of digits, dig it?)

bw STAN vs MLG Rules: the Times reported something about quantitative social media based mass obsession for music — based on an Eminem song but also maybe an acronym — which I compare to the fact that Mark Lettieri I hosted last night at Mitch Bowl has 192K followers on social media platform and then 192 fans turn out for his (homecoming show), a 1::1000 ratio. So I would say the Lettieri Rule is that artists generally have 1 fan in the real world for every 1,000 fans on the internet. (and if you are reading this in the future the internet was a thing that accompanied the massive proliferation of semiconductors, computer devices, handheld computer devices and so-called social media, which created billionaires out of certain millionaires and then nearly killed off Democracy based on disinformation by Fascists and autocrats in foreign lands.