THE BOVIOUS : Fear not reader, tomorrow night (and a month of days posthaste) your face has an opportunity to view Alexis Mackenzie's new solo show, "Never Be Sad" at Parklife in San Francisco. For the familiar (and from the example attached), there is a clear movement from the fantastique one-acts of melded menagerie that have become the signature of her aesthetic. But, this is not a molting to worry over as her phantasmagoric touch is not lost it has just risen, sprouted, mutated....you get the idea. She is doing the thing that all artists hope for but often miss in their narrative arches : actual growth. And in "Never Be Sad", Alexis has deftly lined her bastion with a cryptic libretto of multiple movements, all expertly tightened across her collection of spectral pulp and pages. It's exciting, energetic work and you would best be served by seeing it in person if you can.

TOTALLY EERIOUS : A piece of the the press release from Parklife, verbatim, just in case my above was a little over the realm - Alexis Mackenzie’s dreamlike collages intertwine the style of early 1900’s Dadaist Max Ernst with a strong botanical element to create strangely powerful scenarios. Benign elements such as flowers, human and animal figures, and other assorted Victoriana graft together symbiotically in tableaux which seem to deal simultaneously with both evolution and entropy. The resulting images pay homage to the Surrealist importance of the subconscious, where the meaning is left deliberately ambiguous.

WORMS : And so, the heavy handed boyfriend acts like an adjective acquaintance, dually writing double barreled, demanding you buckle to the truth and suckle from it's run-off. The opening is from 7 to 10 and Parklife is at 220 Clement Street in the shrouded city of San Francisco.