Sights & Sounds is your weekly guide to the Bay Area arts scene through the eyes and ears of local artists. Our guest is Zarouhie Abdalian: current artist-in-residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
Abdalian told KALW’s Jen Chien about three cool arts events happening this week around the Bay.

On Sunday 12/6, Small Press Traffic presents a reading and conversation with writers, Claudia Rankine and Karen Green at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Rankine is a poet and author of Citizen: An American Lyric, a volume of prose based on a series of encounters between black and white people. Green, is author of Bough Down, a book that features her own art collages and writings about grief.
ABDALIAN: The poetry and imagery that [Rankine] uses is very viscerally affecting.

Interwoven: Indigenous Contemporary is at University of San Francisco’s Thatcher Gallery now until February 14, 2016. In this exhibit, 15 artists from over 20 Native cultures reframe Indigenous culture. The show includes work by Dugan Aguilar, Linda Aguilar, Erick Andino, Spencer Keeton Cunningham, Mercedes Dorame, L. Frank, and James Luna among others.
ABDALIAN: It’s an amazing show of contemporary fine art, where artists are finding expressive means to wrestle with and honor their Native identity.
The monthly improv music event, Doors That Only Open in Silence, has its 12th installment on Sunday 12/6, at the Temescal Art Center. Attendees can watch and listen or bring instruments to play. Improv trio groups are put together by names drawn from a hat. The evening also features a set by oboist and electronic musician Kyle Bruckmann.
ABDALIAN: What’s interesting for me, as a viewer, is seeing musicians stretch and challenge each other.