Deuce 7

When we think of California, we imagine beach towns and the weed, but for artists Joey Alone and Deuce 7, the real beauty of California hides in its deserts and mountains.

The duo make frequent trips inland to explore our state's less-traveled locales, where they seek out rare plants and rock formations. Their nature treks are a far cry from their roots as artists -- both initially had interest in graffiti -- but have shifted their focus to detail-rich landscapes, illustrations of plants and birds, and romantic tributes to the train culture of the American West. (Joey Alone works as a brakeman, while Deuce 7 is an avid railroad enthusiast, and so trains are often the only man-made form in their otherwise natural drawings.)

In Ask the Dust, an exhibition that opens at Needles and Pens this week, Joey Alone and Deuce 7 will debut a rich collection of pen-and-ink drawings that advocate the natural world over the human. As part of Art Beat, an ongoing interview series with local artists, SF Weekly spoke with the pair about their friendship, their botanical studies, and the undeniable lure of the desert.

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We at SF Weekly don't shy away from sexual subjects, so we occasionally get "fan mail" of an explicit nature -- propositions, overly personal e-mails, and the rare marriage proposal. We can only imagine what kind of fan mail a porn star might receive. Well, now we don't have to wonder. Porn darling and Bay Area native Nina Hartley offers up the words, art, and gifts her fans have given her throughout her extensive career in the exhibition "Letters to a Porn Star: Nina Hartley Fan Mail."

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Gallery owner Justin Giarla. Photo by Michael Cuffe.

There could probably be some kind of Party Monster/Peter Gatien type of profiling if someone ever made a documentary about Justin Giarla's scandalous career as a curator. Giarla ran nightclubs around the city for 10 years before opening up the Shooting Gallery in the Tenderloin in 2003, selling drugs to pay his rent and bills before being convicted in 2004.

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Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis

Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665)

Tracy Chevalier wrote a best-selling historical novel about her. Scarlett Johansson played her in a movie. Softly lit, looking over her shoulder with her lips slightly parted, she is sometimes called the "Dutch Mona Lisa." Who is she? Is she about to say something? And why, for God's sake, is a 17th century Dutch girl wearing a turban?

Johannes Vermeer's enigmatic Girl with a Pearl Earring, the most famous of his 36 paintings, comes the de Young Museum for its first stop on a tour of the United States. As befits its rock star status, Vermeer's small painting hangs in its own gallery in the exhibit, "Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis," which opens on Saturday, January 26, and includes 34 other paintings from the collection.

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Recent Acquisitions: New Exhibition Forever Alters the Chinese Culture Foundation

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Stephen Kelly Photography/Flickr

You can only Peter Pan your way through the most festive night of the year so many times before you realize there might be perks to actually making plans -- free champagne, for instance, or a place to finally wear that designer gown you scored at the thrift store. If one of your resolutions for 2013 is to start acting like a grown-up, there's no better place to start than NYE.

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Our calendar section for more events

Trends that need to die in 2013

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Repeated exposure and adoration from the masses have turned most popular music and art festivals into blown out, oversaturated, and commercialized trash -- vain attempts to recapture the aura and frenetic glory of Woodstock or Monterey Jazz. Today's festival scene is a post-breakdown Dave Chappelle -- broken, lost, and aimlessly wandering for an adequate sense of home (ahem, S.S. Coachella). Then, there's the Wintersalt Music and Arts Festival.

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Five Trends that Need to Die in 2013

Get Your Street Dance Fix with Groovmekanex Funky Mondays

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Found Footage Festival

A masked dancer performs for a group of confused senior citizens on the 1999 Los Angeles cable access show, Dancing with Frank Pacholski.

Without the wonders of obscure VHS tapes discovered in thrift stores, dumpsters, and abandoned houses, we wouldn't have the unique comic style of Tim and Eric, recent "found footage" films like Chronicle (pretty good) and V/H/S (pretty terrible) -- nor, more importantly, would we have the roving annual fantasticness of the Found Footage Festival. Without the FFF, we wouldn't have the stupendous 2011 documentary Winnebago Man, the story of Jack Rebney, RV pitchman, and the world's angriest flubber of lines. In that film, director Ben Steinbauer becomes obsessed with viral videos of Rebney sourced from VHS tapes that were widely circulated long before they were posted to YouTube.

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Video of the Day: The Claire Danes Epic Cry-Face Supercut

Video of the Day: Retro Sex Musicals

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Kate Conger

John Felix Arnold III in his studio.

John Felix Arnold III is a painter -- sort of. He's also an illustrator, a sculptor, a scavenger, and an installation artist. Mostly, he's just a guy with a story to tell. The story is called "Unstoppable Tomorrow," and it's a post-apocalyptic tale where humans are no longer at the top of the food chain, replaced by man-machine hybrids known as Astroknots. Originally created as implements of war, the Astroknots consume anything they touch -- buildings, people, weapons -- and incorporate these items into themselves. When humans lost control of the Astroknots, they ravaged the earth and left behind a motley bunch of nomadic survivors.

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Art Beat: Dita Von Teese's Corset Maker on Sculpting the Body and Ethical Underwear

The Write Stuff: Sam Sax, the first Bay Area Unified Grand Slam Champion

Femmepire Records: Can Straight Women Be "Femme?"

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Fabric8

Mission District gallery Fabric8 will emerge with a new identity next year.

Fabric8 started in 1995 as an online clothing store and became a physical business in 2006, a lovely space that encompasses clothing, art, a sculpture garden, a public parklet (which recently got a newly designed installation thanks to Kickstarter support), and an informal forum for fledgling food businesses to try out their ideas. The next group show, "A Plethora of Enchanted Delights," which runs from Dec. 8-Jan. 14, will be the last held under the Fabric 8 moniker.

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Best Parklet With Video Games -- Fabric8

Community Art Center CELLspace to Become For-Profit Entity Inner Mission

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Pollo Del Mar (Rose), Matthew Martin (Blanche), Cookie Dough (Sophia) and Heklina (Dorothy) both seated in The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes

Jose Guzman Colon

There are few things that can console us during the cold, dark malaise known as winter. We often resort to hunkering down in bed, drinking whiskey out of a measuring cup, and reading depressing Russian novels. This year, however, Santa has come early, and his name is not Jack Daniels.

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This Instagram Parody of Nickelback's "Photograph" Is Hilarious and True

The Faux Queen Pageant: For Drag Queens Trapped in Women's Bodies

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