feather2pixels

There were eight people at my house not too long ago and we all fit around the kitchen table for breakfast.   That day a reoccurring thought was there have never been eight people in this apartment before.  And there have definitely never been eight people around this particular kitchen table.  I have had the apartment for three years and the table for ten.   So it was with no shred of hesitation that I blew half the strategic reserves of Polaroid peel-apart film (now made by Fuji).  These three snaps seemed compelling enough to archive via scanning machine.  EB took the best one, I thought, on top here.  It’s from the autoimmune death trail that is north Bernal Hill.

OK, because the gallery that was to show my ambitious new series (24 new pieces in 24 days) has dissolved before it even got started, there remains no reason to pursue the imaginary sense of suspense I was previously attempting.  I shall heretofore reveal all.  This new project is another series of prints on trash, but even more legitimate trash.  Imagine me diving into an absurdly deep dumpster at work wearing my fancy dress shoes and you will have imagined the back story of this series.

The image is three traffic cones sitting in one of my favorite Golden Gate Park glens, and the neat thing about the series is that each piece is unique.  Not only is each rectangle of cardboard disgusting in its own special way, but the base layer of every piece is printed in a different color that blends into the same white light that illuminates the cones throughout.  The different colors span the entire visible spectrum and the net effect is a gradual journey from twilight to dusk and back again.

I am not sure if that makes such sense, but the idea was to hang a six-by-four matrix of all twenty-four pieces by color.  Kind of like this mockup.  The idea was to price them so low that people would be idiots to not buy them, and as they did the installation would dissolve and I would be rich.

Here’s the sequence of a few of the pieces:

Layer 1
Layer 3
Layer 5

Next: A small oak tree becomes thirty frames.

It’s time to get this shit off my chest: The Vietnamese salad at Kim Sơn restuarant in the Outer Richmond is fantastic.  You know, a lot of people didn’t want me to say this, but the Vietnamese salad at Kim Sơn restuarant in the Outer Richmond is actually a new favorite SF dish of mine. The last time I ordered it I was so inspired that I promised myself I would articulate my love in this very post.  So what you see here is the sweet dressing getting soaked up by a bed of snappy vegetables while the perfectly fried tofu ensures that I don’t miss the meat.  A small mountain of peanuts adds some booming bass notes to the crunch, and the deep fried garlic slivers just push the whole goddamned pile over the edge. Seven bucks.

Click at your own risk:

Another winter, another drawn out slog though ever shortening days.

This year, in addition to the usual pattern of increasingly diminishing daylight,  I have for whatever reason also been paying attention to the actual path of that low December sun.

And until recently I was doing a good job of keeping this new routine rooted in tangible, real life experience.  Then the internet seized hold.

Did you know that in these parts, the sun goes from reaching a maximum angle of elevation in the sky of almost a 70°  in June to less than 25° now.  Not only that, but the total travel of the east to west path from sunrise to sunset goes from well over 240° in the summer to 150° now.  (The sunset doesn’t even make it past due west after September).  All the details can be interpolated on this chart:

The positive trade off is the angular, more horizontal moving light.  The sunset lasts a lot longer and the golden hour is like an hour long, even if the hour in question starts at 4:30.  And of course one of the best things about the west coast is that the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean, the biggest thing in the world.  It’s been pretty striking to watch this year and I have collected some photos.  I suppose that’s the point here.

Cue the clickable content:

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:

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.

Hi.  I have returned from a long satisfying voyage, visiting friends and family in Israel, Berlin, France, Slovenia, and Scotland.  I  have a lot of work to do on feather2pixels, but for now here are some pictures waiting for your tender mousecliks.

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?

I guess this might be the last of the February Light, since forecasts are calling for the first SF snow in twenty years.

Cherry Blossom Corpses--they were fleeting this year

The mighty Pacific as a storm clears.

My personal favorite. I tip my hat to the person who wheatpasted this to a wall.

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.

My second panorama is just about done! It’s an abandoned cruise ship in the old SF shipyard. Exciting stuff for me. It will look something like this.

Saturday was good. Me and CW started the day at The Grubsteak, the old rail-car restaurant where dining options fall into two distinct categories: diner food and fine Portuguese cuisine. We got the greasy breakfast. Recently, CW has been revaluating how much of me she wants to see around. It is a complicated question and many factors, such as her new rescue dog who wants to devour my leg, are working against me. For the moment, though, I had the undevoured leg up on the little bastard for long enough for a waterfront ride along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building farmers’ market, where the determined cheapskate can fill up on locally grown organic miscellany, one quarter of an ounce at a time. And Pier 39. A more determined version of myself would have the energy to explain why the dude who jumps on glass reminds me of myself. Needless to say, there are some good things about Fisherman’s Wharf:

[flv:http://www.feather2pixels.com/blog/post_video/pier_39.flv 640 480]

And later, alone, I rode to the ocean, where it turned out to be one of those days you have to be kind of crazy to be there. I couldn’t keep my eyes open because the entire beach was engulfed in a small sandstorm and later in the shower I was rubbing the California Coast out of my hair for at least ten minutes. I needed it, though, and that’s what I love about cold, slightly disgusting and dangerous Ocean Beach–I haven’t done anything that deliberate in weeks. Plus, there were driftwood sculptures.

I’ll cut to the chase: the most important thing that happened on Saturday was Pitt’s dominating Big East Tournament championship. They were simply unstoppable. It was totally unexpected. Why, it was just two weeks ago that I was sitting alone in the Pinole Valley Applebee’s parking lot, sobbing to myself after a fourteen point spanking by West Virginia in what must be the most pathetic snapshot from the last couple of years of my life.

I’m happy now, though.

Rachel was in town recently. As I was giving my mouse pad a much needed cleaning, the doorbell rang and she was suddenly standing on my stoop, unmistakably her. After a tour of the premises, we took off in her brother’s hard-clutched Subaru for my San Francisco Highlights tour on a blustery Thursday afternoon. Even though those events were more or less planned, it was one of the more notable visits of my time in Mission.

There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to describe exactly who Rachel is. My first girlfriend, who I met in the summer of eighth grade at YMCA camp in South Jersey has too many prepositional phrases. At the top of Twin Peaks, where she treaded close to the inner curb (“I don’t do well with heights”), the air tasted thin and the still bay in front of us felt like a memory of something that never happened to me. Really, she was my first great penpal and my first great obsession in a life that has basically been a series of penpals and obsessions. But the idea of a patterned existence seemed reassuring up there. For a year or two, her letters were the only things that made me happy. Today they are among my most treasured possessions. This summer I re-read them and they blew me away. Somehow, they are at once intelligent and well-written, hopeful and heartbreaking. They teem with what it is to be young. Somehow, they remind me of who I am today. And that is fucking crazy.

At one point at Land’s End, she stopped to sit on a rock. Here, the refuge of the bay gives way to the open ocean and today it looked cold and patient. I excused myself to take a piss on an old gnarled tree and then we sat around for a bit until the wind became unbearable. She’s been through a lot since then, Rachel. It was in her eyes. Is it in my eyes, too? Things feel fucked up with me and I can’t even explain to people why.

These days, Rachel is a writer (in the sense of being a writer that I truly respect: she writes). It’s deeply satisfying for me to recognize the passion of her old letters to me in the words she writes today. It’s deeply satisfying to stand on a rock and know something about the essence of someone I don’t really know anymore. I don’t explain much to her on the rock.