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Shows Shows Shows Shows!

Hello friends,

This Friday and Saturday my apartment will be hosting an art show that I am impersonally inviting you to. Yeah even you, IP address 58.191.987, the Nigerian hacker that provides my website with 400 hits per month. It’s free and you can stop by casually.

I wouldn’t normally bother you in such a manner, but this particular show is sponsored by Southern Exposure and is even an SF Weekly pick of the week. (And if you can’t trust your local corporate alternative weekly subsidiary for reliable event information in this world, who can you trust?)

The theme of the show is the concept of “home,” and it’s therefore being curated (by my friend Adrienne) in three Mission District homes, including mine. The work is divided by room in themes such as domesticity, migration, and mapping.

Anyway if you were to come, it would personally make me feel cool. And if you need a reason that doesn’t involve my ego: there will be lots of beer. Oh, it would be nice to see you too.

Here’s the postcard:

—

And on September 3rd,“Spacecraft,” our first Thursday series at CELLspace is happening from 6-9pm.

On Thursday night I found myself holding hands with thirty-five tired educators in a circle, blessing each other.  This could only mean one thing: teaching in Berkeley is over.

There were two last days, actually.  That’s because there were two of everything this summer: two class sections, two talent shows, two Creative Geometry teachers, two closing ceremonies.  In our final hours, we treated our kids to a final exam, a field trip to the Berkeley Art Museum and individual awards that Adrienne and I sewed out of fancy paper and ribbon.  Awards like “Most likely to become the Warriors’ mascot and move in to Oracle Arena” were a cover for our secret that we really loved those kids.  They seemed amused.

We all reconvened for the closing ceremony, which featured us trying to sound intelligent in front of parents and accepting thank you cards we urged students to write for us.  Then there was a convocation featuring student speakers on the verge of shitting themselves with nervousness.  If that’s what one is going for, this is the pinnacle of cute high school assemblies.  You can’t manufacture that kind of earnestness, you can only force it.

Then I was suddenly at Triple Rock Brewery, drinking a microbrew that was all malt, shouting in someone’s ear about fathers.  Asian fathers like to gamble, apparently.  On some other level of consciousness, I was writing the last six weeks in the books as a success.  It was hard and frustrating and I usually wanted to be doing something else.  There were so many things I would have done differently.  In some ways we even failed.  But I got to do it with Adrienne, we noticed a glimmer of actualization in a few students’ eyes, and I’m reminded why I am a teacher: it is a thing that is impossible to do perfectly and in this way it is an honest human endeavor.

The Creative Geometry art show was a success. The gallery at the Museum of Children’s Art was the perfect size, the art looked great on the walls, and most importantly, people showed up. I think the students were in to it. It made me sorry that I did not extend personal invitations to my friends. Sorry everyone. As a consolation, I put together a really low quality three minute video from my digital camera clips. Behold as throughout the day I slowly drive Adrienne crazier. It’s just how we work together.

Check out the almost functional website I made for one of Adrienne’s projects!
http://www.thememoryincubator.com/

Adrienne and I brought in donut holes for our students. We purchased THIRTY-SIX of them and they cost THREE dollars. En route to deliver the FIVE uneaten donuts holes to our Tollman Hall sister class, Algebra TWO/Trig with Luong Troung, I found the shell of a Macintosh FIVE HUNDRED TWELVE-K computer. Released in NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR at a retail cost of $TWO THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED NINETY-FIVE plus applicable tax, this was the SECOND ever Mac. That makes it older than all of our TWENTY-EIGHT students, TWO tutors, and ONE teaching assistant combined.

I am not above web-logging about the weather. It was a real nice weekend. Nice enough to wear shorts to Adrienne‘s house on Sunday morning, where she made:

(a) breakfast.
(b) a laytex cast of my right ear.

Then, by the light of the rotting Cellspace skylights, I finished the principle printing involved with the first of my first large format panoramas. For reasons too boring for even a weather post, this has taken two months! That’s a long time for something so unremarkable. As I was cleaning it all up, I ripped one of my $40 screens. That’s a lot of money for something so unremarkable.

I biked to a bonfire at ocean beach with CW, where the air was much less wet than it was at my last ocean beach bonfire experience and where we witnessed a child double his body weight by eating marshmallows. Totally outdone, I drank merely 1/70th of my body weight in discount beer.

I could also mention bluegrass, thai noodles, and unhealthy amounts of time on craigslist, but I wouldn’t be telling you anything you didn’t already know.

Adrienne‘s living in the Mission now. It shouldn’t be, but it’s almost hard to believe that I have a friend in the neighborhood. But I know it’s true because I got a splinter and a framed map of North Carolina when I helped her move last week. Her place is sweet, too. Part of the excitement is the small room that she’s planning on converting into an art space. In fact, she’s got big plans for the entire 900 block of Shotwell street. Something involving stoops and skills, which would sound crazy if it were coming from anyone else. But Adrienne has no shortage of ideas. And no shortage of furniture made out of old wood. Lots of splintery fucking wood.

Just as I’m starting to feel totally unappreciated in my teaching career, good old Lisa R. shows up at my office with a rainbow roll in one hand and an orphaned dachshund puppy in the other.  Last year, I was compelled to graduate Lisa R., who seemed to miss a lot of April class but pass a lot of quizes.  It worked to my advantage.  According to rumor, she made a donation to the alumni fund on the condition that I was rehired this year.  At any rate it was a welcomed gesture for a down and out teacher and her pup had a really long tongue.

Raviv leaves tomorrow morning after a week or so in the Bay.  Saturday ended up being the perfect day.  We toured the Haight (“all this street is nice”), watched an unlikely throttling of the West Virginia University Mountaineers, stopped by a little art show (all my postcards sold out on opening night!), and met up with a Bud-drinking Adrienne at The Bottom of the Hill for the best show I’ve seen there in a while.  Raviv actually just got back tonight from a one day trip to LA.  As I sat at my desk, overlooking the yellow glow of 24th street, he appeared out of nowhere.  Without thinking about it, I suddenly felt happy he was back.

Joe’s gone. Before he left, Nowell, him, and I enjoyed a fancy civic center dude evening with the Kronos Quartet at the never comfortable Herbst Theater (has it always been hot as hell in there?). After checking in with the wives, we headed down to the bars south of Cesar Chavez, which are slowly becoming my favorite places to drink in the Mission: the courtyard at El Rio is downright charming, the photo booth at The Knockout is second to none, and for good measure there’s even a Taqueria Can-cun in the area. Even the Argus lounge makes up for an overall lack of inspiration with free shots of vodka gimlet and projected Kubrick films.

It was good to have a night out drinking. The moon was high and brilliant. Mission Street felt like a loving old relative with questionable hygiene. The city glowed. Joe is a believer in the well-timed sentiment and so we spilled lots of beer over locked-eye toasts as we made our way through the rounds. Each new drink comes with a small slug of intensity and that’s how drinking with Nowell and Joe is. Later, Joe learned that on this side of the Cascades, ordering a “carne asada” gets you a plate, not a buritto. Nowell successfully ordered a chorizo burrito (every time Nowell gets chorizo, it seems to generate a new inside joke) and I got my secret weapon: cheese quesadilla.

A few days later, I found myself south of Cesar Chavez again, with Adrienne to watch her boyfriend’s band play the Knockout on a Monday night. Spontaneity! Plus a chance to revisit the photo booth! Adrienne remind me of me. Since starting graduate school, she’s been constantly embattled, yet she’s full of plans for displaying our crafts to the world. Thank goodness somebody is.

In the continued spirit of me making shitty little things, Adrienne sent me pictures of our Castro Street Fair booth and I did a collage:

The Castro Street Fair was on Sunday and I was on hand in a custom-made booth to sell my postcards for the very first time. The whole thing involved quite a bit of anticipation because I have been working on this series for three weeks and I really didn’t know what to expect from the fair or the booth or my collaborators.

The booth exceeded my expectations. We somehow acquired an easy-prop tent with folding tables and the premises looked passably professional. Adrienne and Tent (Tent is a person, not a shelter) stenciled a nice looking sign and our whole show had a pleasantly homemade aesthetic to it. Adrienne sold pillows and stuffed monkeys, Lili sold dress-me-up felt people cards, Tent sold stenciled sundries, and of course I had my postcards. The fair was packed and, for the most part, flaming. This makes for pretty good street fair atmosphere and by around 3PM Castro Street between Market and 19th was absolutely packed, despite the huge free bluegrass show going on in Golden Gate Park.

I didn’t really sell that many postcard sets. It’s not so surprising: screen prints of ugly houses in southern San Francisco don’t get in your face quite as much as sandblasted cock sculptures. If my determination as a salesman was more robust, I would have considered the venue in my design. Luckily, I have a day job. And it wasn’t all disappointment. At one point a guy bought a set and then came back for three more. So that’s nice, right?

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: