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Watch Out! The following menagerie of people, places and trends is expected to ripen to full maturity in the coming year. So don't say we didn't warn you Written by Katy Bell, Chris De Benedetti, Sullivan Bianco, Tracie Broom, Christian Bruno, Edward Crouse, Cory Feldman, Tobias Finch, Kerry Reid, Alexis Schneiderman and Michael Stabile Rocio Artega Multimedia Artist Opting for masking tape, Testor modeling paint, particle board and 2X4s over canvas and oil, Artega's artwork seethes with primal mess and practicality. Her recent mid-Mission exhibition shot angry sensitivity into mutilated, hanged or dismembered chicken or human bodies. These near-self-portraits are clothed usually in piercings and veined with an uneasy, horrific Steadman-Colley cartooniness. (EC) Rodney O'Neal Austin Columnist-for-Hire Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Wanted: column single and free! Austin, whose visual work (a dual portrait arrangement ripped off by Madonna in Harper's Bazaar) and musical (Minnie Pearl Necklace) credentials need no intro, is searching these days for a new home for his column, "Naked on My High Horse." The droll first installment--a hallucinogenic tale of two midgets--was printed in a recently defunct magazine. Who will sample his supply? (SB) Claire Bain Filmmaker With the grad-student skewering in her short video Jennifer!, Claire Bain pinched a raw nerve. Bain is a sublime presence, excessorizing her women to the point of pain and well beyond. Her 8mm short Vel and the Bus switched from Bain complaining of post-accident pain to chiropractic sessions that stretched her (dummy's) neck to three times its normal length. Her latest film, The Making of El Capistrano, will, strangely enough, efface her acting in favor of abstraction. (EC) Trent Berry Musical Director Trent Berry was recently named one of America's top 100 guitarists by Guitar Player magazine. A multidimensional musician and musical director of The Mantis Project, he and his entourage score music for independent films, organize events and serve as creative consultants. This "factory-style multimedia terrorist organization" is producing a brand-new, all-organic sound. "Ninety-nine percent of all dance music out right now is utter crap," Trent says. "We're striving for the 1 percent." In the upcoming year, The Mantis Project will refine its website, mantisproject.com, which serves an international music community. They are currently planning a multimedia event--light, music, sound, entirely interactive--for this spring. (CF) Geoffrey Blythe Chef It's always exciting when the old school is infused with new blood, but it's really thrilling when a San Francisco institution like Jack's makes a savvy, forward-thinking choice while preserving its link to antiquity. Twenty-nine-year-old Geoffrey Blythe is ripe for the challenge of pulling off not only Jack's traditional steak, rabbit and Celery Victor menu but also a beautiful array of his own creations, flavored with quince, salsify and Indian corn. (TB) Adam Bock Playwright I'm not exactly sure where Adam Bock has been all this time (his bio describes him as "a Canadian with a green card living in the Mission," and he spent time in Providence, R.I.), but I sure hope he stays a spell. Bock's charming, winsome and flat-out wonderful play Swimming in the Shallows, which received a sterling production--and across-the-board critical raves--under Kent Nicholson's direction with the Shotgun Players this fall, marked him as exactly the sort of voice that theater-lovers are crying for. Quirky without being self-conscious, hopeful without being Hallmark saccharine, Bock creates a universe where a hard-luck gay man can find love with an aquarium shark (who used to be a Tupperware salesman)--and where we can unabashedly cheer on these unlikely lovers. (KR) Gary Bossier Portraitist Gary Bossier started taking pictures at age 8. The prolific artist has amassed an impressive collection of hand-painted photographs. A native (fourth generation) San Franciscan, he chronicles the changing faces of the city. Bossier will be exhibiting highlights from the '70s, '80s and '90s at Place Pigalle on Jan. 13. Viewers can expect to stand face-to-portrait with the likes of Iggy Pop, Andy Warhol, Bill Graham, Debbie Harry and other icons. (CF) Jacques Boyreau Auteur The Whitesploitation maven is all but taking it easy. Fast on the heels of his raging, visionary 16mm feature Planet Manson, he will allow parts of his diary for his new opus, I Do, I Die, to be printed in our mag, but it's safe to say that as the film nears completion, he's unable to sit still. Though IDID seems to have prodded Boyreau into an introspective tone in person, his hedonistic, pleasure-plus-cinema side prevails. Particularly in his "Simul-vision" Werepad screenings--Corman's Machine Gun Kelly alongside Godard's Masculin-Feminin and the like--he is the pinnacle of Weird San Francisco. (EC) Ms. Laura Brody Fashion Designer After graduating from FIDM cum laude, Laura dove into design. Her command of pattern-making, technical drawing and draping is reflected in her made-to-measure fashions. "My style walks a fine line between technical sportswear and fetish," she says. This spring Ms. Laura B. will launch her new line at Eklectic. In the meantime look for her LB-426 line at Something Else (or by appointment: [email protected]). (CF) Chantal Buard 3-D Animator Still lassooing her first painstaking animation short, Buard uses a graphic concept both high and fast: a very obese woman performs an enviable series of gymnastics moves--on the horse, the vault, the parallel bars--as the camera looms large and awestruck around her. The effect is eerie and intense; the tests seen so far attest to the work being completely on the level. What Betty Boop did for sexually threatened flappers--befuddling expectations and supernaturally solving them--Buard will do for this large femme. (EC) The Cleveland Browns Football Team So they've only won two games this season. As the saying goes, that only leaves room for improvement. And after a four-year hiatus, those hideous brown-and-orange uniforms are back in a big way. Give it up. (TF) Martha Colburn Animator If the Slits suddenly started dining with Max Fleischer and Ralph Bakshi, perhaps something like Colburn's oeuvre would spurt out of the sessions. Her cutout style defies rational description and deifies anthropomorphic genital ballets, flitting free-associative punk panic, pithy grime-blood mini-movies. The last ATA showing of her most recent work, the sinuous Cats Amore, cemented her as a formidable local presence. (EC) Country Music Genre Shania Twain's "That Don't Impress Me Much" and LeAnn Rimes' novelty remixes aside, "Hot Country" for people in urban areas never really caught on. But with futurism already tired and electronica and hip-hop running low on sample sources, one can't help but wonder if its time has finally come. And with the number of (albeit gay) men sporting straw cowboy hats, it's nearly a given. The other night I found myself alone at a bar watching a Dixie Chicks concert and thought "Why not?" and bought the album the next day. Trust me on this one. I'm like Gramma's bunion and rain when it comes to sensing trends. (MS) Bill Daniel Photographer "Space Cowboy to Base, come in base ... ." Co-perfomer/curator with Margaret Kilagallaen on a painting-film collaboration, "Trespassing Sign" at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Daniel is continually immersed in neo-folk media practices. Always orbiting this city while he circumnavigates the U.S. in search of images, his next trek will take him through the Southwest, solo in 1965 Chevy Van save for an 8x10 still camera, a CB radio and a portable darkroom. And there's no telling what graphic reports he'll bring back from the hinterlands. (EC) Gary Danko Chef Earth temblors happen more frequently than the quakes of the culinary world, but when the latter happens San Franciscans are comparably jostled. When Gary Danko departed the Ritz-Carlton (where he had been fêted as the best chef in California) to open his own eponymous dining room this fall, he took suave maitre 'd Nick Peyton with him and opened the hottest and chicest restaurant in San Francisco. The new year crowns Danko with celebrity chef status. Look out, Wolfgang. (MS) The Devilettes Dance Troupe The brainchild of the hot-pink-haired Baby Doe, the Devilettes have danced--energetically and in step with yesteryear--into our scene: proms, pinups, pajama parties, even weddings. Expect to find this 18-member dance troupe tapping their way into a feature documentary, the Satanic Mechanics calendar, synchronized swimming pools and the Las Vegas Grind II this June. (KB) JC Didier Promoter JC has pushed promoting parties into creating experiences. Having integrated art, music and ambiance into the evening, he makes going out not just fun, but "a music museum at night." In addition to Electro-chic and his work with Visual Attack, JC is launching a monthly event, Bubble City. This free-spirit art contest and creation will be "a dream space for people to experience and feel what SF is all about ... people, art, music and dreams." (CF) DMX Krew Neo-Synthpop Doyen Local Brit emigre Ed DMX makes post-synth one-man music that is absolutely (De)void of Large Irony. His vocoder-ed tunes have a disturbing, angleless precision--from the robot-sung "Get Wit' You" to the flatulent, shwee-king laseria on "Good Time Girl" (and I quote, "Deep House/Electronic Music shocks!"). His breakthrough album, We Are DMX, is euphoric, dead on--a whiff of Electro-poppers that doesn't soon wear off. (EC) Julia D'Orazio Actor A fresh-faced young actress in San Francisco's newly thriving theater scene, the San Diego native has appeared in recent productions at Edinburgh Castle and Fort Mason's Magic Theatre as well as on Nash Bridges. D'Orazio is now at work writing a one-woman show for this coming spring. (CD) Camper English Founder, The Cocktail Clique It started as a small group of friends meeting at various bars every other Thursday, but soon turned into a e-based mass, loitering and honoring bars with their presence. Not quite club kids and not quite Rat Packers, Camper's electric followers use the early evening hours by mixing artists and writers with computer programmers and drag queens. Finishing up his first year of touring the city's pubs, Camper might wisely spend time as a promoter. Is it too early to crown him the Michael Alig of millennial San Francisco? Only the coming year will tell. Take a look at his site (www.cramper.com) and see for yourself. (MS) Christopher Fernandez Restaurateur Chef-partner of the newly overhauled Stars, Fernandez has been at the forefront of second-wave California cuisine since his start as Paul Bertolli's protégé at Olivetto's in Oakland. Fernandez has crafted a new kitchen with wood-burning grills and a giant rotisserie for his trademark farmstead cooking. Since its opening in October, Fernandez's Stars has received great acclaim. (MS) Fuzebox Musicians Fuzebox, a live drum 'n' bass jazz trio (now a quartet with the recent addition of DJ Taka), is in the midst of releasing its first full-length CD, A Touch in Dream, on its own independent label. After the release parties in January, Fuzebox will continue playing locally, integrating film, projections, vocals, spoken word, dance, instrumentalists and technology into a multisensory experience. As for their 2000 agenda, Fuzebox plans to "groove like no one has ever grooved before." (AS)   Next >> [ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]