San Jose Artwalk: For the Birds

What fun have you been getting into lately?? I hope you'll tell me about it! If you're not having fun, be sure to dig some up, ok? 

Me?? Well, I went to South First Fridays Artwalk in San Jose earlier this month, and spotted some fun art. I like that sort of thing. Open studios, live music, lots of open galleries, and spontaneous public collaborative art. What is "spontaneous public collaborative art?" you ask. For example, Jane Q. and John Doe Public can walk right up and create 5' x 2' pieces by dripping paint on butcher paper. Working together, they laugh and spill and when done, the pieces become the decoration for a blank wall. Another time everyone made small block prints, with repetitive shapes but differing in color and arrangement. Kinda interesting I suppose, but I liked the Ephemeral Art better (read on).

I love going to Higher Fire Clayspace Studio and Gallery, and for the first Friday of the month, they run an open studio which really makes me want to get back into ceramics! I toured the studio and watched as the studio members gave demonstrations and talked about techniques.   

Linda Mau

I also found out that my former ceramics instructor at DeAnza College, Linda Mau, will be teaching sculptural handbuilding classes at Higher Fire's studio. Linda is an accomplished ceramicist, and an absolutely wonderful person; I loved taking her classes. This is a great photo of Linda grinning while working with her PaperClay medium--that's the spirit she brings to most everything she does.

I also visited the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles--I try to get out there once a month because they have an awesome collection of historic quilts as well as textile work from around the world. Recently, I was impressed with the variety and quality of some unusual pieces from the Folk Indian Textiles Exhibition. One piece of 100+ year old embroidery was incredible in the detail of the delicate hand work--showing tiny horses, a prince and princess, blue gods and dancing figures so flawlessly embroidered, not by machine, but by hand. I used the magnifier and found the stitching to be impeccable. (Can't get my photo to work! Arrgh!)

And finally, this piece of Ephemeral Art, collaged bird seeds in the form of birds. I couldn't help but be reminded of kindergarten days when we made early art by gluing pinto and kidney beans, peas and lentils onto construction paper. These weren't glued and would disappear by wind, attrition and nibbling in the coming days. 

I think it's kinda cool...temporary and eco-friendly.

Altered Books

It's a hard call -- is it ok to write in a book? dog-ear the pages? even worse, alter them  beyond readable recognition? Here are some examples of books in the 'altered' genre. 

Literary Landscapes: Carved Books by Guy Laramee

Topographic Tomes, More Carved Books by Guy Laramee

Gripping Book Art: 31 Sculptures Worth Reading About 

Thomas Allen 

Alex Queral

The Mind Blowing Book Carvings of Alexander Korzer Robinson

Skulls Carved out of Books Maskull Laserre
Incarnate Three Degrees of Certainty

Artist Cuts Encyclopedias to Create Storybook Art

Brian Dettmer

Su Blackwell

Maker Faire 2012!

This year, I volunteered at the Maker Faire...and it was a BLAST! Here are a just a few of the photos from this fun event. My daughter loved the mechanical Giraffe, who later toured the fairgrounds, lit up with LEDs.
 











Frankly, the Maker Faire is a bit overwhelming,with 900 or so exhibitors/Makers, sponsor booths and hand-on engineering tents. Given enough time, I might have attended the Learn to Solder training and skipped sauerkraut making.  Instead, I frequented the Exploratorium, Scrap, RAFT and ... well tons of other exhibits, too numerous to list or even remember! I turned batteries and LEDS into lit up jewelry, and made beautiful music by playing the electronic banana keyboard (with Real Bananas)! The South San Francisco Patch site has a few more photos, and I'll be adding more in the next few days.

My daughter liked climbing into the belly of the fire breathing dragon sculpture, but after a turn through the SteamPunk area, I found this lovely Dandelion Sculpture

This is a working solar powered timepiece. There's a large solar panel on the ground below the clock (just out of the picture).  Comprised of a series of frames, wheels, chains and sprockets, this timepiece is nothing if not unique.

Solar Bike Clockwork

Seattle: Gay Pride Day

Unbeknownst to me, I'd arrived in Seattle on Gay Pride Day. At first, I'd noticed a lot of really tall women in Seattle. The closer I walked, the closer I looked: Those aren't Women! Big laugh! I need glasses, and to turn my gay-dar back on. For years, I'd marched in, attended or watched the Gay Pride Parade  in SF--and here I'd blundered into Seattle's version.  Waiting in long lines at the bathrooms proved entertaining at least, as a variety of lewd and no-so lewd tongue-in-cheek comments were bandied about. These  signs for the restrooms are tiled on the floor, and yielded a funny banter:

Seattle's Pike's Place Market. File under
"Don't forget to look down!"

Take That! Ronald!

Somewhere in Italy, my friend jcRiver stumbled across this delightful statue.

Ketchikan: Public Transit

From the late 80's til about 2001, I rode public transit as I commuted from Oakland to SF day in and day out. At one point  the trans-bay and local buses became bus-sized advertising billboards, plastered in their entirety with giant ads. Horrible! It became impossible to see out the windows, which diminished the whole "riding the bus" experience tremendously. It is with relief that I show you an alternative in Ketchikan, AK, where they have beautiful buses whisking tourists off to "historic" "red-light" districts. Well, never mind that, the buses are pretty.

As it had turned out to be such a fine rainy day, I chose to walk and hike instead, arriving early and exploring areas a bit beyond the touristy jewelry - trinket - t-shirt shops. Everything was lush and green, as a rain forest should be.

Ketchikan: Pier Art

 

Beaver

Industrious, Beaver typically displays his large teeth and trademark flattened tail.

Both of these modern art pieces feel a little bit "theatrical" in their brightly overdone colors (shimmering purple?, really?). Older totems, or totems made in a more traditional style use natural dyes, such as berries, mosses, tree bark and clay. Natural dyes are generally more muted than modern paints, and lack preservatives, consequently, they appear to age over time. (I'm still wondering if these two examples are made from fiberglass, but couldn't get close enough to find out.)

Raven

Raven is distinguished from Eagle by its straight beak, whereas Eagle  has the tell-tale bird of prey hooked beak. Raven is also known as one who stole the Sun, and is often pictured with a sun disc in its beak, hidden under a wing, or clutched in its claws. Note the high tide marks on the pole.

Ketchikan: Stained Glass

Along the walkway from the pier are these fine stained glass banners.

SF Murals - Monkey Cycles

Monkey Cycles

SF Murals - Lower Haight #2

They have record stores and murals in Lower Haight too. But with a different flavor from murals in other parts of the City. I was muddled after a dr's appt., so I found these by being a little lost, one street over from my usual route outta town. I was distracted enough to allow a stop and snap these photos.

Edo Salon

603 Haight Street @ Steiner

 And across Steiner, you have these:

Black Pancake Records "Hot stacks of Wax"

593 Haight @ Steiner

and
Lower Haters Gallery @ 597 Haight,
which installed a new mural series on the walls of its building.
Of them, this is my favorite:

by Michael Kershnar


This guy and his friend are weird adornments by muralists 'Skinner' and '2501' that express the element of dark horror lingering below the surface of the lower Haight.

 

Crabby urbanites courtesy of Galo, an Italian artist:

Don't Forget to Look Down!

These guys look like they're part of a dark kids' book,

with adventures in grey places:

SF Mosaics: Haight Street

This is the exterior of the Cold Steel America shop.  Tattoos & Piercings. Nope, I haven't been inside, *yet*. Its nice on the outside. I'm thinking  if the next round of surgery doesn't go well, I might just stop in for some incision jewelry.

The clear/white tiles are mirrors and shine nicely.

SF Murals - Lower Haight #1

As seen on a small wall on Haight Street.

Buckets O' Rain... Reinspired

I posted a while back with a preliminary attempt at key art. It was fun, one of those very very late night art projects inspired initially by my own inability to keep track of my keys. I won't delve into the deeper meanings presented by locks and keys as symbols in my own life, but I did want to share this key art mosaic that adorns the front of the Greenwich Safe & Locksmith shop in NYC.

There are great photos at Scouting NY: The Coolest Locksmith Shop in NYC, which show the shop before and after the installation of thousands of discarded keys.

There's another article on Oddity Central: Incredible Key Art at the Coolest Locksmith Shop in New York February 10th, 2011

SF Murals - Hampshire Street Paper Lace

I'm disinclined to write anything about this at all. Cut paper. Deteriorating.  Ephemeral, you could say. Hampshire @ 24th Street. You can see it on Google Maps. Swoon-Wiki.

Swoon's Mission?

The Flying Saucer of 1970s Sound Systems

You can file this under the heading of  

Things I WISH I still owned from the 1970s...

My grandfather was a whiz at fixing things, electronics in particular, and when he retired, he opened a repair shop. One of the great things that came out of that Las Vegas repair shop was an early 1970s Electrohome Stereo Turntable. Is this cool OR WHAT?? I had this all through my childhood, but it disappeared when I went to college. Argh! I've missed it and the record collection my dad had, notably, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Smokey Robinson, even Neil Diamond.

Space Ship Listening Center

I have a hodge-podge of records, and the slap-happiest entertainment center. That is, it works in spite of the fact that no one device is fully functional unless plugged into one or more partially functioning devices. My current sound system has a component list that reads like Grandpa's nightmares:  

a non-functioning 3-CD changer; non-functioning dual-cassette deck, a working tuner (no antenna), non-functioning volume control, a secondary device with non functioning cassettes, working AUX input, a second working tuner (no lcd to see the station numbers)...

 Frankly, it shouldn't work at all. Not only does it work (more or less), but it  has  a working turntable. Patched into a bunch of other devices. Audiophile? Uh, no, not the high-end kind anyway.

I won't begin to explain the intricacies of getting pictures and sound out of the television-like device, or how many components wire together. 

Today, I'm all about the TURNTABLE. I've been listening to vinyl, reminiscing about warm days next to the stereo from outer space.

Now I'm just wishing I'd used those old Mary Poppins records as frisbees back in college. Because now, I'm cursed with having to listen to that after a side of Genesis or the Beach Boys.

In honor of the upcoming "RECORD STORE DAY" on April 16th, Amoeba Music (formerly Amoeba RECORDS), is hosting a contest giveaway:
 

You can win 1 of 3 Pro-Ject Debut III Turntables and A Ton of Cool Vinyl!

Contest ends 4/30/2011. I make no endorsements, just passing along the link to those who still enjoy vinyl.

SF Murals - 24th & Florida

This image above is shown on Google.Maps for the intersection of 24th & Florida Streets in SF. But if you were at this very intersection just last Thursday, in the pouring rain, you would have seen  this cool thunderbird.

Detail:

SF Murals - 24th & Bryant

It seemed surreal to discover this during a wet-out in SF. It's new and the group Galleria de la Raza takes credit.

Hydroplaning, drifting, buffeted by winds

Walls of water, freeways flooded, puddles wide & deep 

An ornery spring squall

Makes a trip to SF worth it all.