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inside art the ancient past visual

Art / Robert Adams at SFMOMA

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I'd nev­er heard of Robert Adams before I saw his show at SFMOMA. Called "Turn­ing Back," the pho­tos doc­u­ment the destruc­tion of the old-growth forests that Lewis & Clark passed through on their jour­ney west­ward. The title refers to the impli­ca­tions and com­pli­ca­tions of west­ward advance­ment. When Lewis and Clark reached the West Coast, they turned back and head­ed east; the vast dev­as­ta­tion in Adams's pho­tos con­veys the sense that — these days — there's no turn­ing back."Turning Back" is bound to strike a chord with peo­ple. It evokes indeli­ble Amer­i­can ideals and icons — the nat­ur­al beau­ty of Amer­i­ca, the promise inher­ent in the West, the brav­ery of Lewis & Clark — and presents it in a for­mat and style eeri­ly reminscent to anoth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Adams — Ansel. Where­as Ansel's clas­sic pho­tos endeav­or to com­mu­ni­cate the vast­ness and beau­ty of Amer­i­ca, the best of Robert's man­age to con­vey an equal­ly vast devastation.While I walked through the show, I thought a lot about my hike on the PCT, which took me through a few of the same forests fea­tured in the show. As I approached the north­ern part of the west coast, I was pret­ty curi­ous about the clear cuts. Of course I knew that it would be depress­ing, but real­ly I had no idea what to expect. I imag­ined a sort of Lorax‑y land­scape of smooth hills dot­ted with lit­tle stumps.As I hiked through the vast clear cuts of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton, I was stunned *not* by the absence of trees, but the obvi­ous bru­tal­i­ty sur­round­ing their removal. In the new­er clear-cut areas, there was upturned earth every­where, huge mounds of soil, man­gled stumps — I've nev­er been on a bat­tle­field, but there's prob­a­bly more a few sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two. In some places, the dirt mounds and fall­en trees com­plete­ly oblit­er­at­ed the trail, and we had to do some pret­ty thor­ough route-find­ing before we made it through.In the areas that had been clear-cut years before, the trees grew in thick clumps. One didn't so much hike through them as swim, or claw, or climb. The small trees were them­selves fight­ing for space, and their branch­es were so dense­ly inter­wo­ven that the ground was invis­i­ble for hun­dreds of yards around. In the morn­ings, before the dew evap­o­rat­ed, one could eas­i­ly get soaked in the space of twen­ty yards while push­ing through the branches.Adams's pho­tos con­vey the bru­tal­i­ty and upheaval well, though I real­ly wished that con­text had been pro­vid­ed along with each pho­to — where was it tak­en? when? what used to be there? I want­ed to con­nect with specifics of geog­ra­phy and fit the pieces together.

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flickr minneapolis tip

Things to do in Minneapolis when you're cold

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The Twin Cities are still full of good times, espe­cial­ly when the mer­cury plunges. A cou­ple of week­ends ago, I enjoyed the chill with my friends Fish, Katie and Becky (pic­tured, in front of the new wing at the Walk­er). The highlights: 

  • Viet­namese sand­wich­es at the Jas­mine Deli on Nicol­let. Their sand­wich­es are fab­u­lous, espe­cial­ly the BBQ chicken.
  • The new and improved Walk­er. Twin Cities res­i­dents seem ambiva­lent — some love it, oth­ers are under­whelmed — but I was real­ly impressed with the way that the new wing blends into the old, and the man­ner in which they space itself still seems inti­mate and sur­pris­ing. Plus, it's open late on Fri­day nights; how great is that? The Walker's video instal­la­tions have always been great, and I was real­ly glad to catch a few moments of Jem Cohen's "Lost Book Found" and "Blood Orange Sky" as we walked through — worth read­ing: A long, detailed inter­view with Jem Cohen by Rhys Gra­ham. Also, an entire room ded­i­cat­ed to Sher­rie Levine, a cab­i­net full of Fluxus stuff (still cool after all these years of imi­ta­tors), and a great exhib­it of Huang Yong Ping that includ­ed some live spi­ders and scorpions.
  • Good, sol­id Mid­west­ern dish­es pre­pared Chez Panisse-style (local, organ­ic, a lit­tle French) at Auri­ga. They also serve Kona coffee.
  • Weird Nor­weigan snacks and crazy folk-art murals at Inge­bret­sons, a store that sells all sorts of Scan­dana­vian crafts and gifts. Even weird­er because it's in a some­what bombed-out part of Lake Street.
  • A lit­tle water­fall in the mid­dle of the city, Min­neha­ha Falls. Total­ly worth see­ing, espe­cial­ly in winter.
  • Fish and Katie's total­ly awe­some 60's‑style neigh­bor­hood movie the­ater, The Riverview, that shows fair­ly new movies for THREE DOLLARS. Are you kid­ding me? Plus, it has been total­ly restored, and total­ly reminds me of the hey­day of Kansas City's Glen­wood, which I think has recent­ly been gut­ted of all the 60's schmaltz.
Categories
reviews visual

Kansas / The best state quarter so far

It just hap­pens to be from my home state. Nice work, Kansans.

Categories
music reviews san francisco

Music / Konono #1 lights it up

Last night, Konono #1 played the Palace of Fine Arts. Before the show, I was a lit­tle wor­ried that their scruffy, off-kil­ter sound may get washed-out by the fan­cy sound-sys­tem of the PoFA, and that they may end up sound­ing like lame-ass Ashke­naz-style "world music."But from the first moment, they total­ly ruled, and their sig­na­ture sound — with home­made elec­tric pick-ups for their ikem­bes (thumb pianos), dent­ed met­al discs serv­ing as cym­bals, and MASH-style mega­phones as a PA — was faith­ful­ly recre­at­ed. The PoFA is a cham­ber-music-style venue with cushy seats and lit­tle room to boo­gie, but most of the crowd was stand­ing and danc­ing by the third song, and groups crowd­ed at the sides of the stage to impro­vise a lit­tle dance floor. Their final song was an epic, 45-min­utes trance-induc­ing jam that had every­one clap­ping and chant­i­ng along with the track-suit-clad front man.Most remark­able was the vital­i­ty of it all, the sense that there was some­thing essen­tial and healthy and real being cre­at­ed. Each band member's intense, insis­tent pres­ence was spell-bind­ing, espe­cial­ly the old­er guy in the blue base­ball hat who trad­ed off with Mingie­di (the leader, pic­tured) on the thumb piano and per­cus­sion. He was locked into a seri­ous groove the whole night, bang­ing out pre­cise rhythms, and belt­ing out crisp, deep monot­o­ne har­monies that were jar­ring but some­how per­fect. It's not often that San Fran­cis­co crowds get up and shake their ass­es, so it was espe­cial­ly impres­sive that Konono #1 made danc­ing in a con­cert hall on Sun­day night seem total­ly natural.

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flickr inside art street art visual

Art / LACMA garage RIP

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Soon, the garage out­side the LA Coun­ty Muse­um of Art is get­ting torn down to make way for some big new build­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it's got some real­ly excel­lent murals by Bar­ry McGee and Mar­garet Kil­gallen that I checked out when I was there a cou­ple of sum­mers ago.The LA Week­ly says:

Now's the time to check out the cel­e­bra­tion of street art it has become since Octo­ber 2000, when hus­band and wife team Bar­ry McGee and Mar­garet Kil­gallen were com­mis­sioned to bomb the sec­ond floor of the struc­ture in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the show "Made in California."Over the last five years, Kilgallen's smok­ing, trudg­ing, scowl­ing women and McGee's sig­na­ture sad-sack faces and metic­u­lous­ly drawn mes­sages have inspired unco­erced homages from sev­er­al local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly known artists: N.Y.-based graf­fi­ti trio FAILE's col­lage sten­cils; Span­ish tag­ger PEZ's bub­bly alien fig­ures, and Obey Giant guru Shep­ard Fairey's loom­ing wheat-paste policeman.

It wouldn't be as sad if Mar­garet K. was still around to bomb anoth­er garage, but the fact that she's not makes the dis­ap­pear­ance of this free and pub­lic place even hard­er to take. Sucks.The whole sto­ry: "Oil on Con­crete".UPDATE: An excel­lent cri­tique of LACMA's deci­sion to tear down the garage, writ­ten by art crit­ic and blog­ger Tyler Green.

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flickr inside art san francisco visual

Art / Muhammad Ali likes soul food

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One of my favorite neigh­bor­hood art spots is called Cre­ativ­i­ty Explored, "a non­prof­it visu­al arts cen­ter where artists with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties cre­ate, exhib­it, and sell art." Or so it says on its web­site.At first, I felt con­flict­ed about Cre­ativ­i­ty Explored. Much of the art is geni­une­ly impres­sive, and a few of the artists are quite tal­ent­ed and pro­duce tru­ly beau­ti­ful work. But the great­ness is com­pli­cat­ed by the artists' dis­abil­i­ties. So many works seem tru­ly unique, yet you can't shake the feel­ing that you're admir­ing the prod­uct of the very thing that pre­vents the artist from liv­ing a "nor­mal" life.The fact is that I real­ly like a lot of it, espe­cial­ly the handwriting/drawings of John Patrick McKen­zie. John's hand­writ­ing is bold and jaun­ty in a way that, at first, makes it look like a cross between graf­fi­ti and first-grade. But then beyond the ini­tial impres­sion, it becomes clear that the page is often orga­nized very pre­cise­ly. As he tends to col­or in the enclosed areas of each let­ter — the inte­ri­or of an R, D, P, etc — the page takes on a heav­ier graph­ic dimension.Content-wise, each work of John's works is the­mat­ic, though "the­mat­ic" may be too fan­cy a term for it. Each con­tains a set of words or phras­es that is shuf­fled in a vari­ety of ways through­out the work, though some oth­ers just con­tain seem­ing­ly ran­dom indi­vid­ual words writ­ten again and again. Humor (prob­a­bly unin­ten­tion­al) often aris­es from his selec­tion of the names of stars of the 60's and 70's in his work, as well as fel­low Cre­ativ­i­ty Explored artists.Generally, he'll pick a sub­ject — for instance, the 1964 Chevy Impala — and he'll write a series of state­ments about how cer­tain peo­ple feel about the sub­ject. "Bruce Lee likes the 1964 Chevy Impala. Doris Toku­da likes the 1964 Chevy Impala," etc. The work above has a slight­ly dif­fer­ent arrange­ment: "Sylvester Stal­lone likes Chef Boyardee … Muham­mad Ali likes soul food."Sometimes, the sub­ject of the work veers away from the lit­er­al. John has devel­oped a sort of code for refer­ring to all sorts of sub­jects, so you'll see phras­es like "red­neck piz­za sher­iff," "spring chick­en," "cold turkey," "avo­ca­do ice cream," and many oth­ers used in strange con­texts. Some­times they're code, some­times they're just what they are. Some­one once told me that "avo­ca­do ice cream" is code, but recent­ly a teacher at CE the­o­rized that John had recent­ly eat­en at Mitchell's.Like much out­sider art, John's work is exot­ic — the and it's hard to admire and dis­cuss it with­out fetishiz­ing the con­di­tion that con­tributes to it. But you could also say that John's work makes this less of an issue because it is so visu­al­ly appeal­ing, and often so poetic.The SF Week­ly wrote an arti­cle about John in 2002: "Osama bin Laden dis­likes kel­log­gs frost­ed mini wheats"

Categories
law & order san francisco

Good time on a California jury

For the last three days, I served on a jury in a civ­il tri­al in San Fran­cis­co Supe­ri­or Court. It was a per­son­al injury case stem­ming from an auto acci­dent on the Bay Bridge in 2002. The plain­tiff sought cash for phys­i­cal and men­tal suf­fer­ing, incon­ve­nience, loss of enjoy­ment of life, and about six oth­er things. I had some idea of how total­ly jacked Cal­i­for­nia per­son­al injury law is. After see­ing the way that this case played out, I am shocked and depressed by it.The facts. There was no ques­tion that the defen­dant (a round-ish kid from out­side Sacra­men­to) rear-end­ed the plain­tiff (an Asian lady from El Cer­ri­to). The ques­tion was: Was there enough evi­dence of actu­al harm to award some kind of mon­ey? The plaintiff's car was unharmed by the col­li­sion. She drove home imme­di­ate­ly after­ward. An expert wit­ness argued that the col­li­sion could not have been more than a slight bump. In my opin­ion, the plain­tiff offered no evi­dence to sup­port her argu­ment. She claimed var­i­ous types of harm: 18 months of back prob­lems, inabil­i­ty to have inti­mate rela­tions with her hus­band (ouch), gen­er­al fam­i­ly dis­so­lu­tion. But her tear­ful tes­ti­mo­ny was the only evi­dence of her suf­fer­ing. There was no tes­ti­mo­ny or depo­si­tion from her doc­tor, no med­ical records, no police report, no tes­ti­mo­ny from her hus­band or kids; more­over, she con­tin­ued to work imme­di­ate­ly after the acci­dent and admit­ted that she missed no work — includ­ing busi­ness trips to Chi­na and Seat­tle — as a result.Our task. We had a total of four ques­tions to answer; but if we ruled "no" on any of the first three, our work was done. Case closed. The first ques­tion: Was the defen­dant was neg­li­gent? If we agreed he was neg­li­gent, ques­tion two: Was the plain­tiff harmed? If so, ques­tion three: Was the defen­dant a sub­stan­tial fac­tor in the harm? Final­ly, if he was: How much mon­ey should be award­ed for the harm?1. Was the defen­dant neg­li­gent? Umm, yeah. The guy rear-end­ed her. Hard to say he wasn't. Still, you had to feel bad for him. He was work­ing at a piz­za place at the time of the acci­dent, and you had to know that he was fear­ing some kind of huge ver­dict. Nev­er­the­less, his tes­ti­mo­ny was uncon­vinc­ing. A "rea­son­ably care­ful" per­son would not rear-end a car in that sit­u­a­tion, even if he was sneez­ing, as he claimed. About half the jury ini­tial­ly want­ed to say that he was not neg­li­gent, but the rest of us had a hard time rul­ing that he wasn't. He wasn't pay­ing atten­tion. A rea­son­ably care­ful per­son would have been pay­ing atten­tion. After 10 min­utes of dis­cus­sion, we came to a deci­sion: 12 yes, 0 no.2. Was the plain­tiff harmed? This is where it got testy. I per­son­al­ly believed that if we said "yes" to this, we were going to have to award dam­ages. So I argued (at length) that she wasn't harmed, and at first 7 oth­er jurors agreed. We only need­ed one more to turn to our side to win — in Cal­i­for­nia, you only need 9 out of 12 jurors to agree on a point to come to a deci­sion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, one of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of harm was "incon­ve­nience." The minor­i­ty argued — per­sua­sive­ly enough, as it turned out — that the fact that she had to stop on the Bay Bridge dur­ing crazy week­end traf­fic was enough to say that she was harmed. Even­tu­al­ly, they had the required 9, includ­ing three oth­er young guys who I thought were going to be faith­ful allies (they were from the Mis­sion, Upper Haight, and Potrero Hill). Inter­est­ing­ly, the oth­er two who believed that she wasn't harmed were women: one was an old­er Asian lady (Sun­set), and anoth­er was a young woman from the Mari­na. Final score: 9 yes, 3 no.3. Was the defen­dant a sub­stan­tial cause of the harm? It was real­ly hard to say "no" to this if you said "yes" to the above ques­tion because of incon­ve­nience. I start­ed to get real­ly ner­vous that we were going down a path where we were going to award her some mon­ey because she got bumped on the Bay Bridge, and claimed to have incurred all sorts of hard­ship. Again: 9 yes, 3 no.Aside: It was pret­ty clear that the acci­dent was trau­mat­ic to the plain­tiff; she cried through­out the tri­al, and her ren­di­tion of the acci­dent made it sound pret­ty scary. It hap­pened over the week­end, so the traf­fic was crazy, and the defen­dant han­dled him­self bad­ly. BUT, she didn't file a suit until two years lat­er, didn't keep receipts for med­ical treat­ment, didn't have any tes­ti­mo­ny from doc­tors or fam­i­ly mem­bers. With­out any of this, it seemed insane, real­ly, to say with any cer­tain­ty that she was harmed. It's not like it's hard to pro­duce this evi­dence. C'mon!4. How much is the plain­tiff enti­tled to for her mental/physical suf­fer­ing? At this point, the fore­man used the white­board to write out each ele­ment of phys­i­cal and men­tal suf­fer­ing (loss of enjoy­ment of life, incon­ve­nience, etc), lay­ing out a frame­work where we would agree on a val­ue for each thing. In Cal­i­for­nia, juries are giv­en no guide­lines for deter­min­ing the award; we're left to our own devices.The fore­man said, "I'm just going to throw out a fig­ure. $5000." Upper Haight guy said, "$3000." Anoth­er two women chimed in with $3000. Imme­di­ate­ly, there were four peo­ple who want­ed to award mon­ey for her unsup­port­ed claims. Luck­i­ly, Potrero Hill and Mis­sion guys were even more pas­sion­ate than me about this, and they imme­di­ate­ly artic­u­lat­ed an argu­ment that I hadn't expect­ed: that incon­ve­nience on the Bay Bridge has a mon­e­tary val­ue of ZERO dol­lars. The three Asian ladies imme­di­ate­ly agreed, as did the Mari­na lady.The fore­man kept propos­ing fig­ures — "Okay, how about $2000?" — but Potrero Hill guy inter­ject­ed: "Hey, we've got 8 peo­ple who believe that she shouldn't get any­thing. You're in the minor­i­ty. You need to come to us." Even­tu­al­ly, we were argu­ing about whether or not to award $250. Final­ly, a lit­tle after 4pm, the fore­man cracked: "Okay, fine. Zero dol­lars." And jus­tice was served: 9 $0, 3 $250.But the depress­ing thing was how easy it was to assign mon­e­tary dam­ages, how much the log­ic of the law seemed des­tined to lead to it. Upper Haight guy was brain­washed by it. Even though he could nev­er artic­u­late a prag­mat­ic rea­son why she should get any mon­ey, he kept refer­ring to the jury instruc­tions and say­ing, "I'm just fol­low­ing these rules. She was incon­ve­nienced, and now we have to assign a val­ue to that." The fore­man was sym­pa­thet­ic — he had fam­i­ly mem­bers who had been in a much worse posi­tion and got no mon­ey — which he acknowl­edged was not a valid legal rea­son, but it took him an hour before he aban­doned this. As the ver­dict was read — neg­li­gent, harmed, sub­stan­tial cause of harm — the defen­dant looked scared, and his attor­ney looked depressed. Then, the big fat $0 of dam­ages, and every­thing changed. The plaintiff's attor­ney slumped, and the plain­tiff began cry­ing again. The defen­dant was relieved, and the judge actu­al­ly looked relieved as well. Jus­tice was served. Barely.

Categories
flickr mobile san francisco visual

Photos / Underwater buildings

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Some­times, the crap­py lens on my Motoro­la v220 pro­duces inter­est­ing effects. Recent­ly, it has start­ed com­press­ing the depth of field, and at the same time, arbi­trar­i­ly fuzzing out objects. When direct­ed at build­ings in full late-after­noon light, it actu­al­ly makes things look like they're in an aquarium.

Categories
street art visual

Art / Graphic design for public transit

Hong KongTokyoSF MuniParisIf you're like me, one of your favorite parts of see­ing new cities is check­ing out the logo(s) of their pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem. Nowa­days you don't even need to trav­el to these cities to appre­ci­ate their vari­ety; here's a site with an amaz­ing­ly thor­ough cat­a­log.

Categories
inside art tip visual

Fresh Air interview w/ Mike Mills

Mike Mills is a graph­ic design­er, direc­tor of many excel­lent music videos (among them: "Kel­ly Watch the Stars," by Air, the one with the 70's‑looking slow-motion ping-pong play­ers), and all-around aes­thet­ic bad-ass. Ter­ry Gross inter­viewed him on Fresh Air a cou­ple of weeks ago, and you can check out the archived ver­sion on the NPR web­site. It includes a fun­ny anec­dote about his expe­ri­ence as an appren­tice for a well-known Scot­tish artist — at the risk of giv­ing away the end­ing, Mills didn't assist in the cre­ation of the work as much as he cre­at­ed the work for the artist, who was too hun­gover to do it him­self. Here's a real­ly com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tion of his video work, includ­ing "Kel­ly Watch the Stars."Incidentally, when I was grow­ing up, a dif­fer­ent Mike Mills was the bassist for my favorite rock band c. 1985–88 — REM. You can hear his thin, poignant har­mo­niz­ing on Mur­mur, Reck­on­ing, Fables of the Recon­struc­tion, Life's Rich Pageant, Dead Let­ter Office, and Doc­u­ment. (Don't both­er with any­thing after Doc­u­ment; it's all down­hill from there). Let's hear it for all Mike Millses!