Mark Your Calendar: Around the Bay This Weekend

Friday, April 17

* Olivia Park's Counting on Numbers at BellJar in San Francisco's Mission District. The opening reception runs from 6 to 9 p.m.

* Eli Geiser and Kelly Lynn Jones at San Francisco's Park Life. The opening reception runs from 7 to 10 p.m., and the show will be up through May 17.

Saturday, April 18

* Trunk Show from 2 to 5 p.m. featuring the magical terrariums of Kat Geiger, at Oakland's Urban Indigo.

* Tea Tasting & Reception from 4 to 6 p.m. at Two For Tea, a new tea-centric boutique in a charming garden cottage behind Sebastopol's FFT Antiques. Proceeds fund Food for Thought, a Sonoma County HIV/AIDS food bank.

* Devon Kelley-Yurdin at Berkeley's Expressions Gallery. The opening reception runs from 6 to 8 p.m., and the show will be up through June 5.

* Tree Show V, featuring tree-centric work from more than three dozen rising artists, at San Francisco's Giant Robot. The opening reception runs from 6:30 to 10 p.m., and the show will be up through May 13.

* And not brand-new, but definitely worth checking out if you're in the area is Daniel Danger and Dan McCarthy's The Watcher in the Woods show at San Francisco's Gallery 1988. It runs through April 25.

The Artful Home: Yellena James at Giant Robot

Her Etsy prints are universal faves, but here's a chance to get your hands on some original art from Yellena James: Yellena's show, Periphery, is currently up at San Francisco's Giant Robot, and the gallery just made a selection of the artist's otherworldly pen-and-ink and acrylic pieces -- like Rouge, above -- available in its webshop.

A few of my other picks from the show:

Sunday, $350

Rubious, $200

Fluster, $450

Drift, $450

Brink, $500

Stasis, $800

See all of Yellena's available originals from the show right here -- and check out more of her work here.

Pssst -- if you're in the Bay Area, Periphery will be up in the Giant Robot Gallery at 618 Shrader Street in San Francisco through July 16.

Mark Your Calendar: Printed Matter III at Giant Robot

Opening Saturday, February 16 at San Francisco's Giant Robot: Printed Matter III, "a group art show dedicated to prints, including woodcut, silk screen, lithography, relief, etching, and other techniques."

Here's your chance to pick up some affordable art from the likes of Yellena James (whose "Mint" is shown above), Katherine Guillen, Marci Washington, Catia Chien, Lizz Hickey, Hannah Stouffer, and more than three dozen others.

Just a few of the prints that will be available at the show:

Katherine Guillen, Zachary Rossman, and Brian Rush's "Overgrowth"

Marci Washington's "From the Depths," $50

Yellena James' "Allusion" and "Origami"

Hannah Stouffer's "Smoke Diamond"

Lizz Hickey's "Chickenhead"

The opening reception for Printed Matter III is on Saturday, February 16, from 6:30 to 10 p.m. The show will run at Giant Robot, 618 Shrader Street in San Francisco, until March 12.

Get more info right here.

Wanderlust: San Francisco's Hotel Tomo

Living just 15 minutes or so across the Bay, we don't have much need to stay in any of San Francisco's stately old hotels -- or, for that matter, any of its cool new ones. But if we did, the Hotel Tomo would definitely be a fun getaway.

This reimagined Best Western in San Francisco's Japantown is all about Japanese pop culture (aka "J-pop"): You can catch Godzilla going mano-a-mano (or would that be monster-a-monster?) with Mothra on the wall of plasma screens in the lobby; browse the merch in the Giant Robot vending machine; check out the anime-style murals by Heisuke Kitazawa throughout the hotel; and then retire to your suite to kick back in brightly hued beanbag chairs and show off your mad Wii and PlayStation 3 skills on a giant projection screen.

Because even we sophisticated, responsible adults need to act like kids sometimes.

See more of the Hotel Tomo here.