Bash Contemporary Art's Newest Stuff "Rough and Ready"

The Stump Sisters by Stefanie Vega Sisters love can't be undone when loosing hands or feet. They combine their limbs and act as one and learn to make ends meet. From the tales that left profound impressions in my earliest childhood memories, I began working not only with unwanted doll parts, but with skull & bones & birds. They spoke to me of wanting to tell the bigger story. The dolls we played with as children were the totems of our dreams. Upon them we laid our hopes & fears...upon them we projected our greatest selves. - Stefanie Vega Das Verbunden Fräuleins (The Connected Miss) Aunia Kahn is figurative artist, photographer, creative entrepreneur and inspirational speaker. She’s has created a hybrid art form combining many disciplines which she invariably designs, builds, and executes characters, non-existent places, dreams, illusions, fears and fables into creations melding elements of classical and contemporary art. Her art is often compared to movie-like stills hiding away long stories within their visuals. Browse our gallery: www.BashContemporary.com 210 Golden Gate Avenue San Francisco, CA 94102 415-926-8573   Gallery Hours Tues-Fri. 11AM-5PM Stay connected and get the latest news! Be sure to stop by our facebook: go ahead give us a "like".  Tweet us on twitter. You can also follow us on Tumblr and Instagram! Rough & Ready Sideshow Showing Oct. 10th - Nov. 8th! Group exhibition featuring Ransom & Mitchell, Alexandra Manukyan, Stefanie Vega and Aunia Kahn.   Spidora by Ransom & Mitchell   Ransom & Mitchell is the fine art nom de plume for the artistic collaborations of Jason Mitchell & Stacey Ransom. Director-photographer Jason Mitchell and set designer-photo illustrator Stacey Ransom create highly-detailed and visually-lush portraits & scenarios. Their work is narrative in nature and draws upon the darker undercurrent that exists within all aspects of society. They aim to create worlds that cannot exist, through a unique combination of cinematic lighting, theatrically designed sets, and an illustrative approach that is inspired by the Italian and Dutch Master painters. The resulting digital art blurs the lines between traditional photography and classical painting so the viewer is unsure as to what is “real” and what we created either as sets & props or as digital painting. Broken by Alexandra Manukyan   The central theme that unites all my paintings examines how seemingly separate and isolated life experiences actually disguise the extent of our individual and communal bonds. The "masks" and the accompanying identities we all assume depending on the life role we must play, obstructs the conscious mind from acknowledging what truly unites us through the isolation and chaos: our shared encounters of pain, loss, desire, and longing for serenity and acceptance. TALES OF THE UNCANNY Group exhibition featuring Sandra Yagi, Marc Burckhardt, Hannah Yata and introducing Mila Sketch Nov. 14th - Dec. 31st Artist Reception Nov. 15 6-9PM

210 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 926-8573 www.bashcontemporary.com

Some Animal Friendships

After spending a lot of time alone in the same room of the owner‘s house, they grew fond of each other The crow is almost always on the dog's back, the dog even barks when people try to touch his pal. The owner built a custom harness for more comfortable rides.

A black swan feeding fish at a public park.

After a devastating forest fire, fire rescue ran out of crates for the animals saved from the blazes.

This fawn and baby bobcat were placed together in the office. Hours later, firemen noticed

they'd taken a liking to one another and cuddled for the duration they were kept together.

A duck and house cat raised together by a family. Supposedly the duck hates water and hasn't figured out yet that it can fly.

A wild life park in China adopted two tiger cubs, which were soon adopted by a worker's dog that happened to be in the pen frequently.

The Fernandez family adopted a tiger cub after he lost his family. He's been raised with the family

dog since youth and they are inseparable.

A five week old boar plays with Candy, the jack Russell terrier in Ehringhausen , Germany .

Humphrey was a house pet that became too large and was moved to the Rhino and Lion Nature

Reserve in South Africa , where he was safe but lonely. Cameroon Pygmy Mountain Goat climbed

Humphrey's enclosure fence and befriended him.

Sobe the iguana and Johann the cat were both rescued by a woman in Brooklyn , NY . Every day

when the iguana is let out of her cage, she seeks out Johann for play time, along with a rabbit also

kept as a pet.

A baby hippo was swept away by a tsunami and rescued by a wild life reservation. A 130 year

old tortoise immediately befriended him.

Everyone knows who Koko the gorilla that speaks sign language is. For her birthday one year,

she signed to her teacher that she wanted a kitten. Koko's teacher wasn't surprised, as Koko's two

favorite books were about cats. They adopted one from an abandoned litter and Koko showed it

tender care and gentleness.

A lioness abandoned by her pack decides to adopted a baby impala after killing its mother. Several

times, she tried to leave the baby in the company of other impalas, but ended up having to take the

baby back under her wing after the adult impalas were frightened away by her

A giraffe and ostrich form an odd friendship at Busch Garden 's in Florida ..

A baby impala was left behind after the rest of its group ran away from the cheetahs. Instead of

preying on the impala, they played gently with it a bit before simply getting bored and leaving it.

Owls that hatched at a hawk conservatory were adopted by the park keeper and became friends

with his pet dog.

After a family took in this stray cat, she grew fond of their elderly dog. Realizing the dog was blind,

the cat took on the responsibility of leading the dog to his water, food, shade, and toys. She would

follow closely under his chin to guide him.

A stray cat wandered into this Asiatic bear's enclosure at the Berlin Zoo. It's been coming back

frequently for 10 years to visit its friend.

This pair have been seen together for over a year in Lake Van , Turkey . They were first spotted by local

fisherman who witnessed them sharing a fish and playing together.

At the TIGERS institute in South Carolina , a chimp raises tiger cubs after they were separated from

their mother.

A photographer witnessed a wild polar bear coming upon tethered sled dogs in the wilderness of

Canada 's Hudson Bay .. Instead of devouring the dogs, they played and cuddled. The polar bear returned

every night that week.

Other examples of strange and improbable animal friendships:

Hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did as they are priceless.  I try to figure out why adults and countries cannot get along like animals!    I AM SURE THAT YOU WONDERED ABOUT THIS ALSO !

REBLOG

At Home with Themselves: Sage Sohier’s Moving Portraits of Same-Sex Couples in the 1980s

by Maria Popova

A tender, thoughtful lens on life and love in the margins.

By the second half of the twentieth century, same-sex love had undergone a tumultuous journey — in the middle ages, widely held male bonding ceremonies condoned the same love that would become punishable by death just a couple of centuries later; and yet in the 19th century, America’s first gay bar appeared, while women engaged in “romantic friendships” and even married each other, all within society’s transparent closet; but by the early twentieth century, the closet had become increasingly opaque — even luminaries like Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, and Margaret Mead celebrated their same-sex love only in private and queer couples lived in secret; those who dared not to conceal their lives were persecuted and punished — public tragedies like the fate of computing pioneer Alan Turing were only the tip of a chilling iceberg of injustice.
And yet love being love, perhaps the most remarkably resilient phenomenon the human heart will ever know, it persevered. The 1970s brought the first pride parades and a new era of civil rights for the LGBT community commenced.
The mid-1980s were a time of particular upheaval for the plight of same-sex families — a time when kids were writing Judy Blume endearing and exasperated letters about being gay, a time when the world saw its first children’s book about a two-mom family, a time when today’s inclusive ideas about what makes a family, not to mention the prospect of marriage equality in the eyes of the law, seemed like a radical proposition yet defined the daily reality of those courageous queer families who withstood the bigotry of the mainstream and lived their lives, at once extraordinary and extraordinarily ordinary, with dignity and grace.

Stephanie and Monica, Boston, 1987
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

It was at this peculiar point in history that photographer Sage Sohier began her tenderly thoughtful project At Home with Themselves: Same-Sex Couples in 1980s America — a series of intimate photographs and interviews, documenting the simple human truths behind the cultural complexities of queer love.

Chuck and Jerry, Methuen, MA, 1986
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

Sheila and Dorothy, Santa Fe, 1988
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

The project sprang from a deeply personal place — a few years earlier, Sohier had found herself at once startled and unsurprised to learn that her father was gay. Her cousin had spotted him dancing with a young man in a New York City nightclub and the incident instantly made him make sense — Sohier parents had divorced when she and her sister were still toddlers, and despite being a handsome and eligible bachelor, her father had never remarried. Sohier writes in the introduction:

My sister and I began reinterpreting history and realized that somewhere in our teens the beautiful young women he brought out to dine with us were replaced by beautiful young men, each one introduced as “a colleague from my law office.”

Craig and Bob, Provincetown, MA, 1986
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

But despite the discovery, Sohier’s father didn’t come out to her and “it became increasingly clear that he didn’t intend to” — the wall between father and daughter may have suddenly become transparent, but it was still a wall and still a source of anguishing separation. The project became Sohier’s way of knowing her father, of offering him the implicit acceptance for which he was too timid or terrified to ask. She writes:

Some years later, a means of tackling this subject with some degree of indirection presented itself. In the spring of 1988, I was just finishing my same-sex couples project. It had taken me almost halfway into the project to realize that I had been inspired to a great extent by my lifelong curiosity about my father and more recent curiosity about his lifestyle. I was in New York showing the work to galleries and museums, and decided to call and see if my father was in town. He invited me over for lunch the next day; I had my portfolio with me, but figured I would never get up the nerve to show it to him. His partner, Lee, answered the door when I rang…. Lee made sandwiches for us while I chatted with my father. I mentioned my project and, after some urging from Lee, showed them my photographs. My father appeared to be interested, amused, and touched. As we kissed goodbye later, his eyes teared up. His emotion and relief at my coming out for him was palpable.

This compassionate curiosity for her father’s lifestyle and inner life is what Sohier brings to the many couples she photographs in the project — a kind of quiet humility before their love and unconditional celebration of its many dimensions, from the romantic to the sexual to the domestic.

Herb (38) and Dana (29), together almost 2 years. Quincy, MA, March 1988
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

DANA: I didn’t want to grow old and grab somebody out of desperation. I wanted to grow old with somebody.

Pinky (31) and Diane (39), together 8 years. Kenner, Louisiana, April 1988
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

DIANE: If I put on a dress I feel like a drag queen. There’s nothing feminine about me. I’ve given birth 8 times, I’m a good mother, I love my children dearly — I don’t want to be their father, I am their mother — but dresses aren’t my thing you know; make-up’s not my thing, even when I was married to my husband.

Steve (31) and Tom (29), together 4 years. Key West, Florida, March 1987
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

TOM: When I met Steve, I was very rebellious with the church, and it fascinated me that Steven was gay and involved with the church at the same time. I had a very fundamentalist background, so it was very hard for me to come out ’cause I had all these religious friends who told me I was going to hell. [I went to a] Bible college, so I didn’t have a pretty time at first. I was running around with friends that drank and took drugs, and Steven rarely drank, wasn’t into drugs, so that fascinated me. And he was very sweet and gentle.

What makes the project so wonderfully disorienting is that it reminds us, ever so subtly, that we are always a product of our era’s normative biases — cultural, social, political, even technological. It is hard to imagine today, in our age of selfies and the general compulsion to share every sliver of the self on social media, just how much courage it must have taken for these couples to face the camera with their most intimate, private, vulnerable selves as same-sex couples. And yet the act of doing so channels the simple, profound sentiment Andrew Sullivan would come to write in his pioneering essay on the subject a few years later: “Silence, if it does not equal death, equals the living equivalent.”
To see and be seen, I continue to believe, are the greatest gifts we can give one another. Sohier’s project is a masterwork of generosity.

Jean (37) and Elaine (67), together 4 months. Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 1988
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

Her choice of black-and-white film also adds an element of timelessness, as if to remind us that love, whatever its permutations, has always been the single most immutable presence in the human journey. Flowing from Sohier’s lens are what Isaac Asimov called “the soft bonds of love” — the same invisible threads of belonging that pulled our cave-dwelling ancestors toward one another and continue to bind every couple who ever lived.

Brian (68) and Hanns (65), together 28 years. Key West, Florida, January 1988
Photograph © Sage Sohier courtesy of the artist

Sohier reflects on the pioneering bravery of her subjects:

[In some photographs] there’s a tentativeness, in others a kind of not-to-be-taken-for-granted raw tenderness. People in my father’s generation had grown up feeling that being openly gay was just not an acceptable option. In my generation that began to change, and I was grateful to be witness to it.
It’s a wonderful step forward for the civil rights of this country and our collective humanity that same-sex relationships and marriages have become accepted and celebrated. It’s important, though, to recognize that these relationships have always existed, and, in many cases, thrived. They were often discreet, and many lived their lives in the margins. But the success of the same-sex marriage movement would not be possible without the efforts of all those couples who came before and who worked to achieve this goal. Their private love, and their persistence in going public with it, should never be forgotten.

Captivated by “the visual novelty yet total ordinariness of these same-sex relationships,” Sohier decided to complement the photographs with extensive interviews. Echoing Susan Sontag’s unforgettable insight into the “aesthetic consumerism” of photography — Sontag, appropriately, was busy subverting sexual stereotypes at that very moment — Sohier writes:

A photograph derives its strength from the singularity of its assertion, but people’s lives and beliefs are more complex than that.

At Home with Themselves is many layers of beautiful and thoughtful in its entirety. Complement it with The Invisibles, Sébastien Lifshitz’s spectacular portraits of same-sex couples in Europe in the early twentieth century, then revisit Edith Windsor, perhaps the single most important person in the modern marriage equality movement, on what equality really means.

Thanks, Wendy

A must see artist.

http://www.jenniferbalkan.net

This artist can paint her ass off!  Really nice color and paint quality as well as excellent anatomy and ideas.