feather2pixels

October was so busy, I didn’t get to put much here.  As a cheap substitute  here are some pictures from my life from this month:

I found an exciting new place to display my work.  Coyote Counter Collective is what we in the industry call a re-tail space and those who have ever seen a coyote know that motherfucker has one serious tail.  Upon reflection I guess it’s a little hard to imagine a coyote ever needing to re-tail so I am not exactly sure if we quite have that right yet.  Or perhaps that’s the Counter part.

Anyway it’s a co-op storefront in Oak-land, where the trees are green but the Occupiers are not,  and my first official duty as a member was to screenprint a fistful of signs for some to-be-determined guerrilla advertising.  They came out well I think–a rehash of my go-to sign in one afternoon design–featuring glyphs from my beloved Remington 333 (eternal thanks for that, Kristin Roeder):

And here’s what my inaugural hanging looks like in situ.

Here is a big fat shout out to my main man, Frank Fernandez, who not only backs me up in the classroom on teaching days but gives me a second chance to raise one of his prizewinning orchids from the bulb. It can’t possibly die faster than the last one.

I am starting a bold new project.  I’ll explain more later, but it has something to do with motion, antique motion pictures, separation and reconfiguration, why birds sing, and wordplay.

For now, the Mark Bradford exhibition at SFMoMA among other things got me thinking more about surfaces and materials.  He collected fragments of his urban environment (South Central LA) and spend a decade reassembling them into monumental canvases that deserve to be in a museum.  And there they are.

For the purposes of large quantities of materials and surfaces, I like to start at stores that sell hardware, fabric, and junk.  After some test pieces, I began my first new surface by adhering some deliciously textured burlap to plywood, flattening, and working the nooks and crannies with acrylic medium and sandpaper.

Sighted last weekend: my first California wild Tarantula.  Heather tells us all about it.

[flv:tarantula.flv 640 480]

Did I mention Erin is starting a kid opera company?

By company I of course mean a struggling non-profit, and by starting I of course mean spending every weekday in a foul mood over municipal tax codes or something.

When she decided Little Opera needed a logo, I referred her to a few colleagues.  When she decided she needed a free logo, I referred her to myself.   Anyway I thought it would be fun to document the process, since I’ve never made a logo.

The idea was to build something around the image of a feather, which holds some kind of significance in opera that I forget.   We found some beautiful gull feathers at Ocean Beach but they ended up being too detailed to make a good logo:

This failure made me realize how conspicuous a good logo really is, the perfect example one of those things that everyone else already knows about the world but I learn the hard way.  (However I will add that this was much easier than the way I learned how to correctly pronounce the word spatula, by getting beat up in the sixth grade for standing up for my mom’s invented enunciation.  “Spatoola.”  Thanks, mom.)

My next idea involved experimenting with a fat brush and black ink.  Over the last few years  I have begun to understand the supreme power of a well made mark and my new instincts led me to believe that bold brush strokes would translate into a successful logo.

By the end, a few graceful gestures proved most effective and I was left in appreciation of how the process of making a logo was in essence a series of simplifications.  It was a most enlightening lesson.

The final, vaguely featherlike logo:

Recent Ocean Beach finds:

Oh shit, check this out!!!!

From Lincoln Park at Lands' End

See that??

Let’s zoom in:

…And clean up the picture:

That’s right: it’s the fucking Golden Coyote, sunning itself on the Lincoln Park golf course not 300 yards in front of me!

The only question now is what are the spirits trying to communicate with me?

Recently, I picked up a girl at a play and we went on a road trip through our country’s northern territories. These are the three things I learned in our attempt to connect with the land:

1 Hens can lay an egg every day.
2. Sea cucumbers breathe out of their assholes.
3. Honey is the only foodstuff that doesn’t spoil.

Should I be embarrassed that the highlights of our twenty-five day quest for enlightenment are essentially the results of a one minute Google session?

Probably.

Is there a point in clicking the link to check out some post cards that we sent from the road, made with found materials and Mod Podge?

Probably not.

But if you notice that one is addressed to you, then you really should come and get it–for reasons too boring to get in to, they are all at my house in San Francisco.

This is a Polaroid taken during last weekend’s backpacking trip to Henry Coe State Park: land of endless wildflowers, land of eternal allergies.  What I will remember about this trip is that the days were hot, we were constantly surrounded by wild turkeys and there was a lot of mating going on.

I am starting a new online journal. Let’s get a few things squared away:

A. Motivation
The only way that the stupid shit happening to me makes any sense whatsoever is allegorically. Trust me, I have been trying to deal at face value with the basic structure of my life for a few months now and it’s been a minor disaster. That shit is for the birds. And I am no bird. I have hair all over my body, give birth to live young and nourish them with my milk. The life of the mammal is shrouded in metaphor.

B. Fuck You
Just like you, I believe that publishing a personal journal on the internet means that, at best, you are a narcissistic loser and, at worst…well, there really is no lower limit is there? Anyways, fuck you I don’t care what you think about me. Don’t get me wrong, if you find me creative and charming that’s exactly what I am going for. If not, though, go dot-com your asshole to a tree.

A lot of stuff has happened to me in the last few months. After living together for 3+ years, me and The Rascal broke up and I moved to a 4br in the Mission district. I got a full time job teaching electrical engineering to college seniors on the shores of San Pablo Bay. Lastly, I spent the summer back in Berkeley, doting on a mysterious woman who let me down. Maybe some sort of chaos is a better characterization than “minor disaster.” I prefer the one that makes me appear more victimized.

The mysterious woman was alluring from a distance. Here is a list of things we did and didn’t have in common:

In Common:

• Both honest more in writing than in person.
• Both took French.
• Both twenty-seven and on the verge.
• Both work well with people professionally.

Not in Common:

• I project what I feel, she feels what she projects.
• The word “hella.”
• I let people in, she ins people let.

We had an amazing elixir summer but in the end she broke things off with me hella quick after a Friday night in the Marina. Was it Al Green who had his baby change the lock to her heart on a Tuesday while he was at work? I know how that guy feels. Actually, that’s bullshit–nevermind her heart, I didn’t even have the key to her front porch. And I constantly wonder how I ever felt so close to someone so opaque. Because I wasn’t. OK, since my new online journal is already at risk of boring my one reader back to craigslist’s casual encounters, I will just say that my biggest problem for now is that I am confused about what it means to touch someone. I don’t even know if I want anyone touching me for a while. In other words, nothing good ever happens when you go out in the Marina.

The job is as ridiculous as it sounds. If you return to feather2pixels.com, you will understand.

My bedroom still resembles the storage unit that preceded it as the place I keep my stuff, but you could make a decent argument that my house is sitting on the best block in the entire city. It’s right off the BART station and there is a lot of foot traffic. That’s what makes the Mission awesome–people’s lives here are happening on the streets. It seems like the type of place where you get into a band because your neighbor had a CD on the other night, not beacue you read a review online. As for the hipsters, they are harmless really. I actually think it’s quite charming how so many of them are mediocre, making up for it with some kind of creative energy. I can deny it all I want but I fit right in.