Tribal Arts 2009 was heavenly!

Tribal & Textile Arts at Fort Mason Center this weekend, Feb. 13-15, 2009 is magnificent once again. Hundreds of collectors, artists and vendors have recreated micro-gallery spaces within one of Fort Mason's huge pier buildings. Thanks to those dear gallery owners, and the Kasky Lees production, I was able to stroll through hundreds of galleries in one afternoon, once again, pausing in the beautifully designed central plaza for some soup along the way. The chance to get glimpses into hundreds of tribal antique shops all at once always makes the show truly splendid. And the central cafe plaza designed into the show works very well too. I paused, reflected, rested and loved seeing all the gallery people, and the artists who did both-- sold some antiques and crafted new jewelry from antique components.

I can peek into tribal arts galleries from L.A., Brussels, Paris and New York, too, each little booth uniquely designed to showcase the treasures they'd collected over decades. Shelving, glass cabinets, tables and tribal furnishings were all used well, with considerate placement of charming objects reflecting the artistic and spiritual modes of their times-- the visual flow of those objects was imbued with art itself. They left just enough space around each item to give us a good look, but played up common elements, graphically and topically. I may have seemed a bit foolish gushing my thanks to the proprietors present, thanking them for the artful arrangements, and for bringing so many beautiful textiles to our town. It been a highlight of my years here for nearly a decade now. Tribal treasures filling a pier the size of an airplane hangar.

The prior weekend the giant pier becomes a glorious exhibition of The Arts of Pacific Asia, with hundreds of galleries sharing their collections again. This year I felt too sad to check that one out. But I returned to my early beloved Tribal Arts & Textiles show by myself and wandered around.

This time, Tribal Arts showcased sculpture, with lots of masks and human forms in very abstract images, from a large span of time, in human terms. I was rather blue at first, having reminisced again recently, but this year's focus was on sculpture, and there were enough of those wildly amusing objects and masks to shake me out of the doldrums. I gained a new appreciation for those sculptural treasures like little statuettes and big masks.

The masks have an abstract representation that I found very freeing. They seemed like direct renderings of emotion. And I loved the ones with dizzy expressions-- designed to elicit a chuckle. There were so many objects whose minimalist design, while hundreds of years old, captured such an essense of a mood, that they drew me in and away from my daily concerns. I found myself calling some of them operatic-- human emotion in all its glory, for better or for worse. For some seemed like embodiments of angst, so seeing the shared feeling was freeing. This guy sure gets it-- across the centuries, and continents, I've got friends.

And as in other museum visits, some of the tiniest items can speak most intimately of a shared sensibility. Moments in their time, now in mine.