About

About

My name is ert o’hara. For much of the aughts I was an art journalist. I worked for multiple art magazines and wrote thousands of blog posts, and the only thing I loved more than writing about art was going to art shows.

A grinning woman in red glasses holds up a pink Yerba Buena Center for the Arts press photographer badge at a gallery opening.
Here’s me, filled with glee, showing off my first press pass at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Photo by the wonderful Alan Bamberger of ArtBusiness.com.
A crowded gallery opening under track lights; one person peeks around a white wall at the camera.
Robert Williams, artist and founder of Juxtapoz, giving me a listen at White Walls.
A woman with pink and blonde hair paints a pink collage on an easel.
Natalia Fabia at a live painting show at Shooting Gallery.
Men crouched on a gallery floor among beer cans, one in a Hawaii trucker cap with a cigarette, rolling dice.
Hamburger Eyes' Ray Potes and Dave Franklin playing threes at Low Gallery.
A man in a blazer dances with a drink in his hand in a packed gallery hung salon-style.
Artist Henry Lewis busting moves at 111 Minna, San Francisco.
A man lifts a baby up toward a giant orange winged figure and hanging orange figures on a gallery wall.
"The Night After Halloween" Neckface at New Image Art, LA.
Three friends pose at a crowded party: a man in a flat cap holding a drink, a smiling woman in a yellow T-shirt, and a man with bleached hair in a white lab coat, red lights on the wall behind.
Hi-Fructose's Attaboy & Annie Owens with KRK Ryden at 111 Minna.

Now we’re in a new era. We can stay home and scroll till our eyes fail. Or we can go out and see what’s weird. Art shows are usually free and populated by creative people and those who appreciate creativity. AI might come for your job, but it can’t roam a packed gallery on opening night for you, or run into an old friend in front of a painting that inspires you both, or carry home a flyer you’ll keep for twenty years because the graphic grabs you (have done).

I don’t want to miss shows by artists I love, or new ones to discover, no matter where I am. So I’m making this site for myself, but sharing it so others can find cool art events in their cities, all over the world.

Events can be submitted, but this is a curated site. I’m listing the shows I’d want to go to myself. I hope you’ll want to participate wherever you are, too.

This site is home to multiple projects by one person: me, ert 👋 Miasma is the art event listings. I'm also preparing to launch The Keep - a subscription service to a blind collection of art show ephemera: flyers, posters, post cards, possibly stickers, maybe a print or two, whatever's flat and fits and looks cool. It will cost money - primarily for shipping. My big capitalist plan is to ... break even. It's a passion project. Another project on the horizon is a series of profiles of musicians who are also visual artists. That project doesn't have a name yet, but it will. Naming a project is half the fun.

Oh, this is called Miasma because I've had the URL since the mid-90s, and it's easiest to build a site on a domain you already have, and well, laziness and impatience won this round.

My projects have common themes of art, music - especially the heavy and/or moody kind, subculture, resistance, feminism, punk, literature, illustration, comics, goths and their gardens, death, epistolary novels, and whatever else blows my skirt up.

More from the archive

Two people hug in front of windows hung with white cut-paper wolves and plants, one wearing feather wings.
Swoon and her installation at Luggage Store Gallery, SF.
A visitor looks at flat, brightly colored paintings of rooms and women hung on a blue wall.
Works by Clare Rojas at SFMOMA, 2010.
Two men talk face to face in a packed gallery under track lights; one has a big cloud of gray curly hair, the other wears a paint-splattered jacket.
The Melvins' Buzz Osborne and artist Anthony Ausgang at Gallery 1988, Minneapolis
A man with spiked blond hair and neck tattoos studies framed work on a gallery wall.
Rancid's Lars Frederiksen at 111 Minna, SF.
Two people hold up a Swindle magazine with Banksy on the cover.
Shepard Fairey and me at Banksy's "Barely Legal" show in Los Angeles.
An artist in headphones sits on a red bench drawing two faces on a wood panel.
Audrey Kawasaki at a White Walls live painting show.
A man in a Stan 153 Custom Airbrushing shirt holds up a glowing blue pendant.
Stan 153 at a custom Dunny group show at Giant Robot in the Upper Haight, SF.
A man signs a sketchbook at a table in a crowded gallery with a plywood floor.
Artists Greg "Craola" Simkins (signing) and NORM (RIP, right) at Fifty24SF.
A busy shop-and-gallery opening: people browse books and zines while a smiling man holding a camera looks toward the lens.
Alan Bamberger, the Bay Area's most intrepid art photographer.
A woman holds a finger to her lips beside a man with a long white beard.
Eve Ekman with Ron Turner of Last Gasp Publishing.
A young man with long bangs stands in a crowded white gallery.
Future Marvel artist Wesley Burt was with Massive Black in the 00s.
Three men holding beer cans pose by a gallery door, colorful geometric paintings on the wall behind them.
Gallerist Andres Guerrero, artist Shawn Barber and ... side burns.
At a gallery bar, a woman in a bandana waves at the camera with her mouth open in mock surprise while friends hug behind her.
Photographer Lindsey Byrnes at 111 Minna.
Visitors stand in a sunny storefront gallery beside an intricate white cut-paper carousel on a wrought-iron stand.
Paper carousel by Tahiti Pehrson.
A man in a suede jacket and a smiling woman with curly red hair pose in front of small paintings.
Artists Gary Baseman and Kelly Tunstall
An opening spills out of a gallery with red doors onto the sidewalk, people talking in small groups.
Thee Oh Sees' John Dwyer (left)
Two people stand in front of a huge mural of black horses, axes and arrows.
Andrew Schoultz and me in front of his mural.
A crowd fills a narrow white gallery hung salon-style, with hand-lettered script painted above the doorway.
Writers vs. Ryders at Fifty24SF
People look at paintings in a room washed with pink and orange light patterns.
Groovy light.
People lounge on long sofas at an opening, under a wall of big graffiti-style paintings.
People make art.

See you at the show.