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Making material connections; Useful objects from the West can be considered art.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Zahid Sardar

Curator Ted Cohen will start laying out a show called "New West Coast Design: Contemporary Objects," which will start Jan. 18 in San Francisco, only after he returns from a two-week vacation lounging by the beach in Cabo San Lucas.

That's because some of the 60 designs that were culled in the past few months from more than 100 that he and his co-curator discovered have not yet been completed. Cohen and co-curator Kathleen Hanna traveled up and down the West Coast visiting student workshops, design studios and artist ateliers looking for the new, the unsung and, in some cases, the unfinished. In that sense, this show is a first of its kind - a freeze-frame of West Coast design in action.

One piece they discovered is set to be placed outside the gallery just hours before the show opens. The "Solar Terrain" front garden will have glowing electro-luminescent wires (like glow-in-the-dark sticks) powered by solar panels. The wire installation, which will cascade down the facade and blanket the garden, was created by San Francisco landscape designer Marcel Wilson, who is also on the exhibition committee at the museum.

"It's risky," says Cohen of the last-minute additions, "but I am hoping that such an exhibition will bring an awareness of what's being made in this region right now and will...

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