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February's Art Murmur will feature the gritty and uplifting music from the Conspiracy of Beards, as well as two shows at Johansson Projects that explore how private compulsions become public and shared through transcendant works of art.

The Conspiracy of Beards are a San Francisco-based, 30 member male choir performing exclusively the songs of Leonard Cohen acapella. For their cult following and newcomers alike they will be singing at their first Art Murmur performance at 6:30PM on 23rd and Telegraph.

Johansson Projects presents two art exhibitions. Collective Compulsions: the winter group show and a solo exploration by Zach Houston in the back gallery. In connection with Houston’s exhibition he will be presenting The Poem Store in front of the gallery from 6 - 7pm. The Poem Store is an ongoing “a business/ performance/literature art piece”, a project that consists of selling spontaneous free verse poetry composed on a manual typewriter.

Laborious process and obsessive mark-making by the 13 artists co-mingle with a year and half of equally meticulous cultivation by the gallery. In addition to traditional forms such as painting and drawing, there is a play of unorthodox materials and methods such as medical tape and elaborate paper cuts. Artists include Jen Stark, Jill Gallenstein, Kristina Lewis, Amanda Hughen, Michael Meyers, Anna Fidler, Tadashi Moriyama, Andrew Benson, Yvette Molina, Katy Stone, Val Britton, and Misa Inaoka (Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery).

In Zach Houston's solo show, Sad Little Quiet Psychotopography, the obsessive aesthetic as a coping method is explored from a different, more intimate and linguistic orientation. Houston offers a selection from his vast archive of stream of consciousness diagrammatic investigations that concern themselves with the ancient past, thickest present and distant future.