Ben Hill‘s toasted puns are coming in from our eight lettering artists. I toasted, shrink-wrapped, and tagged the first set yesterday and they are looking delicious.
Displayed artists: Amy Bryan and Astrid Kaemmerling
Character Profile opens July 10 2013 at Root Division. (Opening Reception: Saturday July 13 7-10PM)
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Check out this musical apple pie I made for Little Opera‘s annual build day. I didn’t actually take any pictures of the fantastic CandyLand sets we made, but if you want to see some cute kids perform an opera they wrote, designed, and composed you should clear some your schedule at one of these times:
Hello. I recently completed a small commission to develop this photo into a series of prints, using only nine planks of laminated pine and one slice of homemade Ranier cherry pie:
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The commissioner? My sister Michelle. The event? Her birthday in July. The final prints can be found in my objects section. Here is a small sample:
After sitting around the kitchen counter for the better part of a week developing a rind, my first homemade cheese is waxed.
My just-completed voyage to the US easternlands resulted in some interesting artifact finds at home, as well as the creation of some new ones. Now I am back.
Some pictures of note:
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And finally, a video of me and Danny dominating The Looper at Knoebels in Elysburg:
[flv:knoebels.flv 600 400]
Yesterday I rented a fancy telephoto camera lens to photograph my recent series of prints on old cardboard. The lens isn’t just fancy but incredible in its ability to make almost anything look good, shooting a razor thin depth of field that separates subject from a background that blurs into creamy oblivion. But could it make my art look good?
After bringing the lens home in a car that is only a few times more valuable, I did some testing with CW’s new camera. Just messing around without much idea of what I was doing opened up a new world of quality that I will probably never have access to again. I guess I can sort of understand how photographers get obsessed with gear, although the idea is pretty unappealing.
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Anyway my friend Michelle very generously donated her morning to hosting me and my cardboard at the City College SF Photo Lab, where there are two rules:
They must have been expecting me.
Michelle set up big, fake looking lights that made a pacifying sound when they flashed. She showed me how to light my work without harsh reflections, and she did it all with a smile. We shot all thirty-two pieces. Overall, much ado for a bunch of trashed cardboard: here’s Three Cones in the Park on my Objects page.
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As part of my foray into dry hopping, this is what $35 of hops looks like (after the beer went into the bottles):
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If that doesn’t get you smacking your lips, I don’t know what will.
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:
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.
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As your supreme leader, I order it illegal to complain that San Francisco doesn’t have seasons, enforced by a one hundred coconut fine. It’s okay if you don’t like the San Francisco seasons or find them different than what you might be used to, but people who say that San Francisco doesn’t have seasons either just got here or haven’t been outside yet. Amateur hour!
(In a fantasy world that I created in my head, I am supreme leader of San Francisco. Much like a clinical schizophrenic, I created this fantasy world because it is too difficult for me to live in reality, where lots of people know more about the city than I do. Oh, and I run my city in the model of the Kingdom of Jordan.)
My point is that Sunday was the typical SFs winter day: wet, beautiful, and teeming with life. Bernal Hill was bright green and there was a five pound rump roast on the BBQ.
Bernal Hill
South Van Ness Ave
A soggy pooch
This was really good.
Valentine Day Feast:
2 racks of ribs
1 chicken
2 lbs brisket
5 lbs of sides
8 pieces of cornbread
3 pitchers of beer
(Also–The look of this picture reminds me of the cover art to the Smashing Pumpkins “1979” single)
I ask you this: what is better than a good ol’ fashioned German restaurant? Answer: A good ol’ fashioned East German Restaurant! After my favorite schnitzel place shut its doors a few months ago with a truly sad and unexpected farewell, a void was left in the city’s breaded-meat and 2 liter beer dining options. Luckily, Walzwerk on South Van Ness not only stepped in quickly to fill the vacuum, but it also happened to be on my 2010 restaurant Bucket List. So me, CW, and Nowell checked it out on the Thursday night of my very first group show at my very first gallery.
We missed the show.
Our absence was on account of a terrible accident which required the paramedics and ambulance, but the food was damn good. In sum we sat at a long table with two San Francisco old timers who seemed tickled by us, all ingesting unhealthy quantities of food and drink. Enough so that I found myself waiting in agony outside the lone bathroom, crying “Mr Gorbachev tear down this stall!”
Sorry, that was stupid. (And why would I want the stall torn down if I needed to use it so badly?)
Anyway, Walzwerk was just as great as Schnizelhaus and later that week I went to new-to-me Chinese and Japanese places that were touted as the Sunset and Inner Richmond’s Dumpling King and Sushi Zone, respectively. They were fine.
I guess one of my new year resolutions is to try some new San Francisco restaurants. If I sound reluctant it is only because when it it comes to San Francisco restaurants, I am an arrogant motherfucker who believes his taste to be impeccable without even trying.
The truth is that I’ve been getting lazy. For that reason it was a rare treat to discover two new instant favorites in one weekend. The inspiration to crawl out of my comfort zone came in the form of the San Francisco Panorama‘s “Best of the Rest,” twenty short profiles of low key restaurants relatively unknown outside of their neighborhoods. As soon as I saw Cordon Bleu on this list—A Vietnamese restaurant in my old neighborhood specializing in dumping gallons of meat sauce over sticky rice—I knew what they had in mind. This sort of thing was supposed to be the promise of yelp.com, totally undelivered as far as I’m concerned (If I had the time to waste sifting for useful information amidst an endless roll call of losers looking for a place to validate their petty grievances, then I would just prefer to be reading the Craigslist casual encounters where the pictures are a lot clearer).
So I guess my resolution is to try every new place on this list. These first two selections did not disappoint.
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This list is also trustworthy.
