Wax pattern for bronze casts by Randy Colosky, photo by Aimee Friberg

The balance between function and concept is rarely straightforward in the work of Bay Area artist Randy Colosky. He'll take the process of bronze manufacturing, usually concealed as the "behind the scenes" element left invisible and unsung in the finished creation, and bring it to the forefront. The industrial elements of bronze lost wax casting take on new aesthetic and conceptual weight, with gates and sprues (the pre-made wax forms utilized as melt-away shape holders that create passageways in the mold for the molten metal to flow through) visibly repurposed into the shape of the sculpture itself. Colosky also plays with trompe l'oeil, making convincing cinder blocks, bulging foam stuffing, books, and more out of bronze (and admits to enjoying a chuckle when people actually mistake one of his sculptures for some misplaced object of the more banal sort he modeled it after).

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"Sneak Peak!" by Sam Rodriguez

We often think of graffiti artists as shadowy figures who wear hoodies and practice their art on public property like walls, train cars, and traffic signs. It's a culture surrounded by breaking laws for the sake of artistic expression, after all.

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Franz Szony has the kinds of dreams usually seen only on screen -- in Hitchcock's Spellbound perhaps, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- with bleeding, anthropomorphic objects and monkeys in tasseled hats.More »

San Francisco's Asian Art Museum houses the largest collection of Asian art in the Western world. But once the sun goes down Thursday, the traditional art museum kicks off its amazing summer lineup with Phantoms Arise!, an after-hours art mash up of epic proportions. Poets, DJs, drag queen divas, and tattoo artists are on hand to celebrate "Phantoms of Asia," the museum's first large-scale contemporary art exhibit about spirituality and the supernatural in Asian culture.

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Owen Smith

Building the Iron Horse

On May 27, the Golden Gate Bridge turns 75. If you were one of the 300,000 who walked across the bridge when it turned 50, you remember the unsettling sway, and the later reports that the convex profile of the bridge had been flattened by our collective weight. And you remember that it didn't matter. Euphoria was high. Dianne Feinstein (who was mayor at the time) tossed the $800 Fedora of Willie Brown (who was speaker of the Assembly) into the sea like a Frisbee. Half a million people pushed together on the waterfront to see the bridge turned into a golden waterfall; even with advances in pyrotechnics, few fireworks displays have been as lovely. Why? Because the bridge is gorgeous.

That's the only reason an art exhibit titled "Artistic Visions of the Golden Gate Bridge" could be anything but cheesy crafts-fair death. That is the title of the exhibit at George Krevsky Gallery -- the show opened just this week and is one of 75 tributes to the bridge -- and it's in good hands. (Remember this is the same gallery that brought us "The Art of Baseball," which was far more than just a rah-rah for the hometown nine.)

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Kellen Breen

American Boys and Girls

Get past the miscellany of dogs and beer, and you'll find a surprisingly refreshing art gallery in the back of Place Pigalle, Hayes Valley's no-frills culture destination.

The exhibition "Paintings by Kellen Breen and Scott Inguito" opened Saturday night to a familiar crowd that was more mainstream than art geek, less tech and more street -- a rare blend of normalcy that was surprisingly more interested in the artwork than being seen. The large-scale oil paintings -- some measure five feet across -- are impressive and thought-provoking without being overwhelming. Breen and Inguito, who share a studio in the Mission, clearly work well together in close quarters, and their work exhibits harmoniously side by side. Where Breen's paintings are visually stimulating and complex, Inguito's focus and nuanced study on the El Camino -- the car, not the road -- is sublime.

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When it launched in 1952, there had been nothing like MAD -- a comics magazine dedicated to humor and satire aimed at a broad range of targets. In particular, MAD exposed the cultural fakery behind familiar and beloved images that originated on television, in the movies, and in sports and politics. Led by creators Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, MAD's cartoonists peeled back these images to expose calculated manipulation of the American populace by newly powerful postwar corporations. A retrospective exhibit on MAD opens this weekend at the Cartoon Art Museum.

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Clouds of crimson billow across one wall as if from an open wound. A length of stained gauze decays seemingly before your eyes. Jagged streaks of rusty-red fluid erupt into the ether. No, these aren't scenes from the set of Hollywood's latest vampire franchise. It's the new solo show "Haemoscuro" by artist Jordan Eagles that opens Thursday -- a First Thursday -- at Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art. Eagles uses a most unusual material in his work: animal blood. Vegans and those who are weak of stomach take heed. Sourced from slaughterhouses, Eagles' blood is the real deal and is certainly unsettling.

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The economy sucks, but we don't care -- the Bay Area is home to artists so talented they deserve to take over the world. That's why the Masterminds grants are given to three local and emerging artists who need that little push to become even more awesome.

SF Weekly has narrowed down the potential winners to 10 finalists, with the three winners being chosen Feb. 16. at Public Works during Artopia. Until then we're going to fall in love with their creative work all over again by featuring the profiles (written by our arts critic Jonathan Curiel) of two finalists each day right up until the event. Today, meet Dohee Lee and Michelle Tholen:

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Remedios Varo

Useless Science or the Alchemist

A woman sits in shadows, wrapped in a great checkered cowl. Behind her, golden light pours from a contraption of cogs, bells, tubes, and funnels that reach into the clouds. The conduits draw rainwater into small elixir bottles. It's Useless Science or the Alchemist, a painting by Remedios Varo. "Indelible Fables," the first exhibition of her work held in the Western U.S., is at Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern.

Her fanciful allegories -- rivers that flow out of wineglasses, troubadours who play music on strands of women's hair, men's coats that become boats -- are frequently inured by themes of isolation and confinement. Not surprising, given that the Spanish anarchist fled Europe before the start of World War II. Though it was not Varo's intention, Mexico City became her lifelong home. And while her strongest artistic influence remained her tutelage by French surrealists such as Andre Breton, it was in Mexico where she delved into studies of alchemy and sacred geometry, which set her work apart. At the time of her sudden death at age 54, Varo was tremendously popular within the exile community, but despite her inventive and inspired body of work, she is strangely absent from art histories.

"Indelible Fables" continues through Feb. 25 at Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern, 161 Jessie (New Montgomery), S.F. Admission is free.

Click through to see more of her work.

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