Magnificent morsels…that add up to a feast—Taste of Petaluma is this Saturday, August 24, 2013
If you blink, you’ll miss tiny SPEAKEASY, a new bistro-style tapas restaurant located in Helen Putnam Plaza, which is new to Taste of Petaluma. Once you try Chef Patrick Tafoya’s simple but perfectly satisfying dishes, like his heirloom tomato gazpacho shooter garnished with a grilled marinated tiger prawn or his heirloom melon soup topped with basil crema and crisp prosciutto crumbles, you’ll be in for more. But do make a reservation—SPEAKEASY can accommodate just 12 indoor diners at a time but it is open for dinner from 5 PM til 2 AM seven days a week. Photo: Geneva Anderson
The 8th annual Taste of Petaluma is this Saturday, August 24, and it’s all about eating your way—bite by bite—across Petaluma and connecting with its small-city charm and rich sense of community. Taste is a benefit for Cinnabar Theater’s youth repertory programs and, this year, the event has over 50 Petaluma restaurants and food, wine and beverage purveyors participating and is expected to draw people from all over the Bay Area. Enjoy everything from “A” (Artisan Angus Beef gluten free meatballs with Arrabbiata Tomato Sauce at Wild Goat Bistro in the historic Petaluma Mill) to “V” (Vegetable Tikka Kabobs at Everest Indian Restaurant in River Plaza) and along the way stop to take in the live musical entertainment from 17 Bay Area solo and group performers offering just as promising a musical menu (full performance schedule here).
“Everyone wins with Taste,” explained the event’s founder Laura Sunday who estimates that 1,000 people will turn out. “This is the only tasting event I know of where people actually get to go into a restaurant and check out the environment and sample so generously. Most of these things are held in tents and operate like food fairs. Our restaurants do this year after year because they enjoy giving back to Petaluma and to Cinnabar Theater and it’s the best advertising around.”
Stay-tuned to ARThound for more on Taste of Petaluma.
More About Cinnabar Theater: Cinnabar Theater, located in the 1908 Cinnabar Schoolhouse on Petaluma Blvd and Skillman Lane, is a 501(c)(3) California non-profit. It opens its 41st season with Craig Wright’s The Pavilion, a tender story of two former lovers who encounter each other at a high-school reunion. Against the backdrop of old tunes Peter and Kari dance around big questions. Is happily ever after still possible… or is that just in fairy tales? A terrific cast takes the stage for this enthralling and lyrical play about the mysteries of forgiveness. Runs: Sept 6-22, 2013; tickets $25.
Cinnabar’s Young Repertory Theater opens its season the musical Annie, based on the Little Orphan Annie comic strip created by Harold Gray. This charming adaptation of Thomas Meehan’s beloved children’s book Annie, with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Martin Charnin is the perfect family-friendly musical.
Ciabatta Muffaletta Sandwich with made in-house Spicy Coppa, Fennel Salami & Olive Tapenade. Sugo Trattoria’s owners and chefs, Peter and Annette White, are passionate about handcrafting their gourmet offerings. From Peter’s cured meats to their whole grain mustards and hand-formed pastas, everything is artfully presented. Sugo is located at 5 Petaluma Blvd. South, in Town Center. Photo: Geneva Anderson
With equal measures of pluck and positivity, little orphan ANNIE charms everyone’s hearts, despite a next-to-nothing start in 1930s New York City. She is determined to find her parents, who abandoned her years ago on the doorstep of a New York City Orphanage run by the cruel, embittered Miss Hannigan. With the help of the other girls in the Orphanage, ANNIE escapes to the wondrous and magical world of NYC. In adventure after fun-filled adventure, ANNIE foils Miss Hannigan’s evil machinations and befriends President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She finds a new home and family in billionaire Oliver Warbucks, his personal secretary Grace Farrell, and a lovable mutt named Sandy. Runs: November 29-December 15, 2013. Tickets: $15 ages 22 and over; $10 ages 21 and under.
Details: Taste of Petaluma is Saturday, August 24, 2013 from 11:30 AM to 4 PM. Advance tickets are discounted at $35 through Friday, August 23, the day before the event. Tickets are $40 at the event. Ticket packages consist of 10 tasting tickets, good for 1 taste each. Additional tickers can be purchased for $4 each on the day of the event. Buy advance tickets from Cinnabar Theater between 10-2 weekdays (707) 763-8920, online here (with fee), or in person at the following venues—
Gallery One – 209 Western Ave., Petaluma
Velvet Ice Collections – 140 2nd Street, Theater Square,
Blush Collections – 117 Kentucky Street
Advance tickets can be picked up at WILL CALL at Helen Putnam Plaza (129 Petaluma Blvd. North) after 10:30 AM on the day of the event.
The first 1,000 guest to purchase tickets will receive a free Taste of Petaluma tote bag. All participants receive a plastic wine glass.
Laura Sunday, Taste of Petaluma’s organizer, enjoys a luscious heirloom melon cocktail outdoors at Social Club. GM Damion Wallace runs a notoriously well-stocked bar and scours the local farmer’s markets for the freshest ingredients with a breadth of rich colors and tastes for his extraordinary cocktail concoctions. Social club will sample its Applewood Smoked Pork Shoulder and Heirloom Tomato Salad with Basil and Mint. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Forget-Me-Not Cakes, owned by Petaluma baker and cake artist Sally Ann Mcgrath, creates uniquely delicious cakes that are all made from scratch with the finest ingredients. Elizabeth (L) and Mary-Frances Miller (R) (sisters and co-workers) will serve a selection of cupcakes at Blush at 133 Kentucky Street. Surprisingly, these treats look rich but they are not too sweet or heavy. Each packs a special mouthwatering surprise—the interior is filled with dollop of scrumptious creamy homemade fruit conserve, caramel or dark chocolate. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Forget-Me-Not Cakes will offer a gorgeous edible palette of cupcakes at Taste of Petaluma. Left: Blackberry cupcake—the cake is a special vanilla buttermilk recipe passed down through baker Sally Ann Mcgrath’s family. The filling is a homemade blackberry conserve. The topping is a light vanilla buttercream and blackberry conserve frosting. Right: Tropical chocolate cupcake—dark chocolate cake with passion-fruit curd filling and coconut buttercream frosting. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Top and center in perfect sync—Petaluma baker Sally Ann McGrath uses a special tool to hull out a portion of each cupcake’s center after it’s been baked and then pipes in a small bite of homemade filling. A gorgeous fresh raspberry conserve (fresh fruit and raw sugar reduction) combines perfectly with her delectable whipped raspberry buttercream frosting. McGrath is one of a handful of gourmet bakers and purveyors who do not have a storefront presence in Petaluma, so this is your chance to see and sample her artful cakes. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Pie Powered Petaluma Couple—Angelo Sacerdote and Lina Hoshino. Petaluma Pie Company keeps them hopping but Lina Hoshino is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose films have screened at festivals all over the world. Her latest doc, “Living Along the Fenceline” (Best Documentary Feature at Female Eye Festival 2013) focuses on women grassroots activists living in communities that have been adversely impacted by military bases they host. Photo: Geneva Anderson
In just two years, pie enthusiasts, Angelo Sacerdote and Lina Hoshino have turned Petaluma Pie Company into a Petaluma icon. Noted for their sweet and savory pies made from the freshest local ingredients and their commitment to supporting the community, Petaluma Pie will serve juicy slow cooked Pastured Pork paired with Rhubarb and Chutney enclosed in their outta-this-world buttery Pie Crust and a taste of Cold Beer. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Tim Bush, Corkscrew Wine Bar’s manager, grabbed the bar faucet for support when he calculated the number of chocolate truffles and pulled pork sliders that hundreds of guests will sample this Saturday’s Taste. Bush pinch-hits with all sorts of duties for the elegant new establishment, including organizing and participating in Junk Parlor, a music exclusive featuring Gypsy jazz improv on Corkscrew’s Tuesday music nights. (100 Petaluma Blvd. North near Western Ave) Photo: Geneva Anderson
Gopal Gauchan, owner/chef at Everest Indian Restaurant, 56 East Washington in “River Plaza,” will be serving his delectible kabobs. Choose the Chicken Tikka Kabob – Chicken Breast, Red Onion, Broccoli, Sweet Pepper or the Vegetable Tikka Kabob – Red Onion, Scallion, Brussel Sprout, Carrot, Sweet Pepper. Gopal’s menu offers a fusion of Indian, Nepalese and Tibetan foods. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Chef/owner Andy Ma of Andy’s Kitchen & Sushi Bar, at 212 Western Avenue, is a new to Taste of Petaluma and will serve his signature Samurai Roll (Crab, Avocado, Unagi; deep fried; topped with spicy mayo and unagi sauce) and (not pictured) Mini Corn Sticks w/ Thai Sweet Chili Dip. Don’t miss his walls, which are always packed with interesting local art. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Two chances to meet and hear Chinese artist and filmmaker Yang Fudong this week at BAM/PFA in Berkeley
Yang Fudong, born 1971, who lives and works in Shanghai, is one of the China’s leading contemporary artists and independent filmmakers. The first mid-career survey of his works is at Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) August 21-December 8, 2013 and he is co-curating a film series at Pacific Film Archive (PFA). Image: BAM/PFA
Yang Fudong, a leading figure in China’s contemporary art and independent film worlds for the past decade, will be in conversation twice this week in Berkeley—6 PM Tuesday (Aug 20) at Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) and 7 PM Thursday (Aug 22) at Pacific Film Archive (PFA).
Yang is the focus of Yang Fudong: Estranged Paradise, Works 1993–2013, the first midcareer survey of his work, which opens Wednesday at BAM, and of PFA’s film series, Yang Fudong’s Cinematic Influences (August 22-October 6, 2013). The Tuesday evening conversation with BAM/PFA Adjunct Senior Curator and art historian Philippe Pirotte (also director of Kunsthalle Bern) is free and so is BAM entrance. The exhibition, fresh from its debut at Kunsthalle Zürich, fills four galleries, and can be viewed from 5 to 9 PM and the conversation will begin at 6 PM. This is expected to be a more substantive conversation about Yang’s work and background than Thursday’s conversation, also with Pirotte, which will take place after PFA’s 7 PM screening of Estranged Paradise 1997-2002 (Mosheng tiantang, 2002, 74 min), Yang’s first film, a beautifully-shot reflection on life in China, circa 1997.
Yang’s work explores the ideals, anxieties, and contradictions of the generation born during and after the Cultural Revolution. These individuals are now struggling to find their place in a rapidly transitioning China. While Yang draws much of his subject matter from the consumerist contexts of contemporary urban China, many of his images recall the literati paintings of the seventeenth century. The exhibition presents film, installation and photography from the late 1990s until today, highlighting his cinematic works and their engagement with Film Noir aesthetics
Yang was born in Beijing in 1971 and first trained in painting at the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou before switching to photography and filmmaking. In 1998, he moved to Shanghai where, like many artists of his generation, he taught himself both photography and film. He became widely-known in China when his photograph The First Intellectual was removed by the Cultural Inspection Bureau from the controversial 2000 exhibition of experimental art designed to coincide with the first international exhibition of the Shanghai Biennial. This photograph explored the tensions between the traditional role of the intellectual and China’s urban transformation, an idea that he has continued to explore in subsequent artworks.
Yang Fudong: Mrs. Huang at M Last Night, 2006; black-and-white C-print; 47¼ × 70⅞ in.; courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New York, and ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai.
Yang captured the attention of the Western art world in 2002, when he premiered his film An Estranged Paradise (1997–2002) at Documenta XI. Beginning with a meditation on the composition of space in Chinese painting, the film traces the spiritual instability of Zhuzi, a young intellectual in the legendary city of Hangzhou. The film reflects the artist’s fascination with international cinema, referencing such works as Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Àbout de souffle (1960), as well as Shanghai films from the 1920s and 1930s, a place and time in which China was strongly influenced by the West. “Yang’s films have an atemporal and dreamlike quality, marked by long and suspended sequences, divided narratives, and multiple relationships and storylines,” writes PFA’s Jason Sanders, Film Note Writer. In Yang’s more recent installations, he reflects on the process of filmmaking itself, creating spatially open-ended multichannel films that he likens to traditional Chinese hand scrolls.
BAM’s presentation of Yang’s work includes twenty years of photographs and video installations in four galleries and a continuous loop of Yang’s single-channel films daily at midday in the Museum Theater. In addition, Gazing into Nature, an exhibition of twelfth- to fifteenth-century Chinese artworks from BAM’s collection, highlights the influence of traditional painting on Yang’s work.
Yang’s contemporaries, young people between the ages of twenty and forty, who have spent most of their lives in a society in transformation, are the protagonists in his works. In an ARTforum (Sept 2003) interview, Yang discussed his five-part film The Seven Intellectuals (completed in 2007) and described a dissonance that applies to this new generation that we can all relate to—
One wants to accomplish big things, but in the end it doesn’t happen. Every educated Chinese person is very ambitious, and obviously there are obstacles-obstacles coming either from “out there,” meaning society or history, or from “inside,” from within oneself. In this work you could see that “the first intellectual” has been wounded. He has blood running down his face and wants to respond, but he doesn’t know at whom he should throw his brick; he doesn’t know if the problem stems from himself or society. Ideals and the way they distinguish people, but also the way that they can unite people and encourage them to form bands, partnerships, brotherhoods-this was something I wanted to investigate in more depth, taking my time to do so. When I eventually completed “An Estranged Paradise,” I started defining this new, vast project, which will unfold as five different films. Because I feel that this topic is extremely important to an understanding of China, both past and present, I wanted to articulate several temporalities together: one that is really ancient, the stories of “The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove”; another set during the `50s and `60s, when there was a profound questioning of the status and role of intellectuals (and so the films will have a clear `50s, `60s kind of New Cinema flavor); and, ultimately, one dealing with the concerns and ideals of today.
Yang Fudong: An Estranged Paradise (mo sheng tian tang), 1997-2002 (digital still); 35mm digital film transferred to DVD; black and white, sound; 76 min; courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New York, and ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
BAM/PFA’s film series Yang Fudong’s Cinematic Influences (August 22-October 6, 2013), co-curated by the artist, features two of his own films and films that have influenced him.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
7:00 PM An Estranged Paradise
Yang Fudong (China, 2002). Yang Fudong and Philippe Pirotte in conversation. Yang Fudong’s first film is a poignant psychological drama shot in lustrous black and white. (74 mins)
Thursday, September 5, 2013
7:00 PM Sacrificed Youth
Zhang Nuanxin (China, 1985). (Qingchunji). A young Beijing woman is “sent down” to live among the Dai minority of Yunnan Province during the Cultural Revolution in this key work from one of China’s few Fifth Generation female filmmakers. With Yang Fudong’s 2011 short, The Nightman Cometh. (90 mins)
Saturday, September 7, 2013
6:30 PM. Yellow Earth
Chen Kaige (China, 1984). (Huang Tudi). Sound, landscape, and political history are transformed into blistering poetry in the film that launched China’s Fifth Generation and introduced two major voices to world cinema, director Chen Kaige and cinematographer Zhang Yimou. (89 mins)
Saturday, September 14, 2013
6:30 PM Spring in a Small Town
Fei Mu (China, 1948). (Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun). Imported Print! With a visual panache often compared to Ophuls, Antonioni, and Welles, Fei Mu’s 1948 gem possesses a melancholy beauty all its own. Voted the Best Chinese Film of All Time in a poll of Chinese critics. (85 mins)
Sunday, September 29, 2013
5:30 PM Street Angel
Yuan Muzhi (China, 1937). (Malu Tianshi). Arguably the finest example of Shanghai’s Golden Age, Street Angel is an intoxicating blend of Chinese leftist populism, Hollywood pizzazz, song numbers, French poetic-realist doom, comedic slapstick, and city symphony. (94 mins)
Sunday, October 6, 2013
5:30 PM Suzhou River
Lou Ye (China, 2000). (Suzhou He). In this atmospheric noir thriller, which doubles as a city symphony to Shanghai’s eternal mysteries, a videographer searches for work, and for a lost love. (83 mins)
Philippe Pirotte on Yang Fudong at BAM/PFA
Details: Berkley Art Museum (BAM) has gallery entrances at 2626 Bancroft Way and 2621 Durant Avenue (both between College and Telegraph Avenues) in Berkeley. Hours: Wed-Sun 11 AM to 5 PM. General Admission: $10. Yang and Pirotte in conversation is free and so is BAM entrance. Special exhibition viewing is Tuesday, August 20, 5 to 9 PM; conversation starts at 6 PM.
Pacific Film Archive Theatre (PFA) is located at 2575 Bancroft Way, (between College and Telegraph Avenues) in Berkeley. The PFA box office theatre opens one hour before the showtime of the day. Advance tickets for Yang Fudong’s Cinematic Influences (August 22-October 6, 2013)—both the series and individual screenings—are available online here. General Admission tickets are $9.50 and are available for online purchase up to two hours before the first program of the day. There is a $1 fee for online purchases. Pick-up advance purchase tickets at the Will Call at the PFA Box Office before the show. Arrive early to select a good seat.
Parking: TELEGRAPH / CHANNING GARAGE with entrances on Durant and Channing just below Telegraph. BAM/PFA Offers Parking Validation. With validation, parking is half-price for up to 5 hours.
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