feather2pixels

This long image shall be my next screenprint.

It shall!

Perhaps you are thinking, pretty but not the most original image I’ve ever seen. My dear critical reader, how much I admire and respect you despite your near constant torments.  In principle I will concede your point.  However, the thought of screenprinting this image on a certain four foot long piece of wood is exciting to me, and since I have a day job that affords me if nothing else the luxury to screenprint things that excite me, screenprinting this exciting to me image is exactly what I plan to do. (I think I may have previously expelled some bullcrap about about experimenting with this four foot long piece of wood.)     Then there are the words on the sign.  They are not meant ironically.  In many ways they are the most sincere words that could ever be written.  When this is all through, it will be you conceding that to me.

Valencia to Vermont, my installation of 24th Street screenprints on wood, is now hanging in the office of Supervisor David Campos in City Hall.

It is an honor to see my work on the same hallowed walls that enclosed the likes of Harvey Milk, Dianne Feinstein and George Moscone, preventing them from falling out of the building and helping them determine where rooms ended.  This is all the more exciting for me because Mr. Campos does admirable work representing the Mission and Bernal Heights on the progressive wing of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors –these cityscapes document our mutual district by intersection.   What a cool opportunity!

Thanks to Sheila and David for making this possible.  Thanks to EB for helping with a tricky install and the camera work.

[flv:city-hall-and-lunch.flv 640 480]

This Friday, Bay Area collectors will do battle in a grueling game of wits that will leave only one standing.  Having slayed his or her opponents, a lucky and no doubt skilled individual will emerge as the new master of this shiny new screenprint on trash.

That’s right, it’s time for the America SCORES Inspired Art Poetry Party and Art Auction.

America SCORES is an after-school program that combines soccer and poetry like so many Ronaldo strikes from midfield.  The auction benefits their programming and in a twist I like, sees each art piece matched with a kid poem.

I got excited about my kid poem by Xitlaly Martinez, which offers a compelling new level of meaning to this particular image.  In the print, an unusually placed couple (on the right edge of the frame) is intently snapping photos of something they see in the SF Botanical Gardens.   I’m not sure exactly what this couple is seeing and I enjoy that sense of mystery.  Xitlaly’s poem fleshes out a back story and I very much like the way the juxtaposition offers the act of seeing as something personal, sacred, and unknowable.

I See You

by Xitlaly Martinez, E.R. Taylor Elementary
2010

I See You
Inside my heart I see you
Up in the sky I see you
Shining in the sunlight I see you
Sparking with the stars I see you.
In love I see you.
In happiness I see you.
In my beauty I see you.
So when I see you I see a school teacher helping me out.
When I see you I see a lion
ess and strong on the outside.
When I see you I see a loving and caring person on the inside.
Everywhere I am anywhere I am I see you.
Right now I see you

These are a few urban panoramas I have shot in the last week or so.  You may note that industrial construction equipment and freeway 280 have become the apples of my left and right eyes, respectively.  Anyway the best shot or two might become raw material for new work.  I think I know which ones I like but, hey,  if you feel like it let me know if any strike you. It would be most helpful.

Some recent signs:

This one is for Cat

From the Castro

Lost Weekend Video elevating their case against Netflix to the idealogical.

Sad things are happening every day. (From the Outer Sunset district)

Friends, family, Nigerian spam robots:  it is to you, my scarce and scattered and readership that I now make a confession.  While I have been busy in these pages attempting to seduce you with anodyne images of Northern California that you may or may not have noted in passing , I have also been secretly at work planning something big.

Let me first beg you to please not feel betrayed by the belated nature of this revelation, for it was only in the most pressing interests of self-respect that I kept this matter quiet even to you, my most devoted online readership.  (I hope you know who you are.)

What the hell am I talking about, you ask as usual?

Well, basically I recently came across my big chance in the art world.  This felt like the chance I have been waiting for, I think.  It all had something to do with a city fence, a big-time call for temporary art, and the changing Mission Bay community of San Francisco. Now not only have I been at work for the last four years doing things such as creating art about the changing Mission Bay community entitled Temporary Spaces, but I also took the time to put together and submit a bulletproof proposal for what I think is a truly exciting project.  This vague recap probably doesn’t explain anything, but I hope it at least it coveys a few good reasons why even up till Friday I felt enthusiastic and confident regarding this opportunity.

'Pieces are designed some months for passers-by to remove part of and take home. Other months, this area will be designed to contribute to:' not a popular idea.

I rallied my people, I did my absolute best, and without a doubt I put my strongest foot forward.  That felt great.  I am glad I did it.  It moved me forward.  Forward is my favorite direction.

Anyway, last Friday was supposed to be the big day and it turns out that the opportunity is not to be.

The bad part is that in the end my best wasn’t good enough.

Yeah… that part really sucks.

Oh well.

I’ll probably be over it after this weekend or this month or something.

I really don’t want to sound melodramatic or anything.  There are incredible things going on in the world right now affecting the lives of millions and this thing was only about me.  But as  inconsequential and selfish as it ultimately was, I guess I really wanted this particular thing.  Even though there will be other things this perfect. Some time in the future. Maybe.

Anyway, yes: I know this is how things go.  I just thought I should mention it here, since this is my art archive-website-thing.  Or something.  Immense thanks to my four invaluable advisers: Erin, Z-mom, Montreal, and Julia H.

This is where I spent the weekend. Thank god for Mile Rock Beach.

And thank god for this sandwich.

If you live in San Francisco and agree that a good sandwich is notoriously hard to find, then I strongly recommend making a trip to the nondescript corner store at 17th and South Van Ness for the purposes of ordering “The Triple Decker,” pictured here. Since the beginning of the year, this place has been under the watch of a kindly man who has recently retired from a storied career in high profile catering. Vegas. The movies. That kind of thing.  Needless to say, given some time to kill, a man like this will do the job right and for the right reasons. In addition to this beast, which, amazingly costs a mere six dollars, one can order “The Kitchen Sink,” which costs over five hundred dollars and requires some advance notice. For an additional fee that elevates the cost to well over one thousand, this sandwich will include a kitchen sink. Not really sure if that is a joke, but I kind of think it isn’t.

My next panels. Satisfyingly, my images are starting to take on a theme which is indicated by the billboard here. What word could better represent the city in flux? For this piece, I was excited to find a site in San Francisco where twin buildings were being constructed. After biding my time, I finally got a shot in which the first building was finished and the second was still under construction, just a skeleton of the structure to be. So I’m excited about this one. It’s going to be really hard to find an image that captures the transformation of the city in a better overall composition.

I might not even try:.The unfuckable-with perfectness of the billboard and the depressingly slim chances that such perfection will strike twice got me thinking that (when this series is done) maybe I will start constructing these scenes from scratch, so every part of them is perfect. Certainly sounds like something I’d do.

Almost-done panels! The color mixed out more blue than the green I planned for, but sometimes life gives you blue. Just have to roll with the punches.

Incidentally, I visited this site again today. It’s at the Pier 66 boatyard, down a small path from Illinois Street, next to The Ramp restaurant. Definitely one of my new favorite spots in the city.

Tomorrow: video from the first day of spring in the Mission.

I’m suddenly one those people with not enough time. That in itself wouldn’t be so strange if it weren’t for the fact that, just a few weeks ago, I was fully embedded in the opposite circumstance. Now, I’m writing to-do lists and falling asleep at nine thirty on Friday nights.

But no matter: the postcard (film) project is done!

Well, almost done. Nowell is going to comb through edit #26 on his own to fix the few shots that still bother him, which will probably resemble something like airbrushing out someone’s pimples from a satellite photo (another reason to love collaborating with him). Wow: when we started this project, Nowell was single, I was still in grad school, and nobody knew who John Edwards was. Now Nowell is a married homeowner, I teach the classes, and John Edwards has his own bus. Look at this soundtrack:

We will have all four glorious minutes in streaming Quicktime for your video iPods in no time.

In parallel, I am screen printing a set of postcards for the Castro Street Fair, which takes place at the world’s gayest intersection this October. My art friend, Adrienne, two of her art friends, and I are setting up a booth to sell stuff. This will be my first official set so I am going to try extra hard. My goal is to make fifty sets of twelve San Francisco postcards, all stuff south of Cesar Chavez St.—a continuation of the “anti-San Francisco postcard” theme. (Oh God, if I ever put an art idea in quotes again, please punish me with, um, a week of nothing but reading A.P. Democratic primary articles.) Here are two of the photos I’m printing from:

Oh, and letterpress: I began my first printing workshop a few weeks ago. You know, like Gutenberg-style. If my screen prints bored you, well, prepare for a whole new way to be underwhelmed that you didn’t realize existed. But this stuff is cool. It makes me think intently about words and, to a greater extent, letters. And not just semantics, but the physicality of letters: typefaces and spacing and the way you can turn commas into apostrophes or quotation marks.

Maybe you kind of have to be there. The first night we were pummeled with a comical barrage of 500 years worth of esoteric vocabulary (“hold your composing stick flush with the galley in order to avoid pied type and then tighten the quoin [with the quoin key, of course]”). There are even the letterpress-originating idioms (e.g.: because a “sort” is an individual piece of type, you are “out of sorts” when you run out of e’s). Anyway, it’s still all quick foxes and lazy dogs. Every person in the workshop contributed three lines to the first exercise. I had the Garamond 18: