Bay Area Art Linx

My heart belongs to the oceanside (especially on my first hot day in Davis):

Art from there:
Amazing and nostalgic mixed media on found surfaces by Oakland artst Monica Canilao. I love the color she uses: sleet grey, cream, powder blue, ochre, black, red......I really like painting light on a dark surface. It's a technique I've been using as I paint the walls of my rooms, and want to use it more in actual paintings.

The muralist who painted all of the amazing and weird murals in SF (birdhouses! elephants!)that I admired so much has been found (through fecal face.com Don't be afraid to look at it.)Andrew Schoultz

Art show news!

I am in this show. I'm pretty excited about it. My contribution is a "The Girls" style series- very small, ink and brush and gold paint. I'm not sure if I am going to the opening. It's in LA, and I don't know anyone in LA, so have no OTHER reason to go there. I would like to meet the guy that is putting it on; Kevin Willis ( His website). He seems very cool (and he knows my Antarctica friend Richard, which is where the whole connection comes from).

Further Investigation

they live their life and their art, originally uploaded by benignpxl.

My friend Pxl is a great collage artist. In opposition to his name, his art is all done by hand. With sewing scissors, and found ephemera. He just bike toured through Mexico for a long long time. Sort of a rocker!

Pxl's art


A quote on craft, from my "bits" journal*

"And it may be that certain forms of play are an escape hatch for us from technology; a theraputic hope, a little more methexis mixed into our memesis. That is, participation, as well as imitation.....
If all of us had more movie cameras and tape recorders and silkscreens; if we designed our own furniture, shaped our own glassware, wove our own tapestries, set our own type, we might knit up the unraveled sleeve of self.
The rush of esthetic theories upon us, while we lie numb under the machines, has divided us from our experience, has stylized our responces. We do not understand but attitudinize. Craftmanship, the self-shaping of privacy, the healthgiving labor, could be our way out."

I wrote this in pencil on the back of some flyer and glued it in the journal in Summer 2006.......so it is, as Pau Davisl says; content without context. But oh well. It's from John Leonard, in 1968.
If I find out anything else about it I'll let you know.


* I keep actual physical paper journals as well as a blog. Jeez Louise, right?!
1."The bits" journal, for things that inspire me, but that I did not write. 2. The tattoo sketch journal. 3. The Kai's own writing journal which no one will ever see! 4. Various travel journals, for painting or drawing while I go through the world. 5. A Moleskine notbook for random stuff I need to remember, lists of things I want to do, train schedules, phone numbers and adresses, etc.

Home Again

1880s Deep Sea Diver Engraving, originally uploaded by nyctreeman.

After 2 full days of travel we are home again in windy Davis CA. Our day in Germany (waiting for the plane home the next morning) was spent in a silent suburb of Frankfurt, in the dim strange basement pool-room of our hotel, swimming and using the sauna, hoping to not get elecrocuted in the very warm lap pool. Abandoned airport hotels, so strange, so shabbily faux elegant. Rooms that smell of old-man cigarette and clean sheets.
We bought groceries at the supermarket and had a picnic in our room. We seem to be plagued by strange bits of waiting-around during travel. Hours to kill (a horrible expression), no where to go, and an aversion to spending money.
Anyway, it's good to be back. What is this strange place America?

Titolo; blogging in Italian

Whew.
Hello.


Things to see in the mountains of Liguria:

1. Goats. Baby goats, which are called kids but that's confusing to write.
2. Stone terraces deep in the middle of chesnut forests. Mossy and tumbling, they are remnants from when every square inch of mountain was sculpted to grow grapes. Very poetic. I want to find a tiny door between the stones which holds a dusty bell jar filled with...i don't know...magical stuff. Gnome hats. Old iron keys...whatever.

3. Arthur Rackham trees. Since it is barely spring there are no leaves on the braches and all the twisted sculptural beauty of the trees is revealed. SWOON!
4. Honest-to-goodness wild violets!
5. Falling apart houses. Also made of stone. Sometimes there are horses and mules hanging out around them. SOmetimes cherry trees in blossom fall dramatically into the former living room, since the roof has tumbled or rotted away.
6. Churches with Skeletons in the eves, a la The Last Unicorn



Books I have read, since getting here on the 27th of March:


1. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. His new short story collection. Worth reading for the story "Keepsakes and Treasures" and the American Gods novella at the end.

2. King Rat by China Mieville. Steam punk? Sort of ike Neverwhere? Unfortunatey has a lot to do with jungle music, but still good for this amazing author's first try. He probably wrote it when he was 24 or something.

3. Wild Swans by Chang Jung. Amazing and unputdownable. A true story of three generations of Chinese women spanning from warlord governments right on through early Communism and then through the Cultural Revolution. I missed a lot of sleep with this one.

4. I Loved You for Your Voice by Selim Nassib. An imagined history of the real life of Egyptian singer Om Kalthoum. Beautifuly written and, I think, beautifully translated. The descriptions of her concerts are really amazing, and now I want to hear her. It is also about an unconsumated life-long love affair. Bummer.

5. Stiff by Mary Roach. The funniest most laugh out loud (and I am a pro at laughing out loud while reading) books about dead bodies you will ever read. Filled with interesting and disgusting facts and speculations and history. ALSO: Kai read a non-fiction book! Holy Shit!

6. While I was Gone by Sue Miller. Also engrossing and well written. Sometimes I despise books about aging baby boomers in New England (haha) but this was good. Also embarass your friends in public because it's an Oprah book! Yay!

7.Fugitive Peices by Anne Michaels. This was reccomended by Evelyn, Mykle's wonderful mom. It is sumptuous, sad, beautiful so far. I love the way it is written...poetry that has plot. Awesome.

( A lot of the books I has been reading are about war, and the effect war has on pesonal lives and the civilian population. I feel that this is a good thing to do HERE, especially...the whole of this land has actually passed through wars and has been shaped and changed by so much death in the last century. As we drive through French and Italian villages I can't help but marvel at the buildings that survive that are SO OLD, and wonder about what would be standinga and who would be living there an area were it not for bombs and humanitys' thirst for power)

To the right is a view of the road leading up from the forest to the farmhouse. The last part of the house is a ruin, still connected to the house of the neighbors and Mykle's parents.


We leave here on Saturday, and I will be glad to be going home (again). Before this we will see
Niki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden outside of Rome and a Medival Medical museum in Florence (we are both very excited). Hopefully I will get to jump in the Meditteranean again like I did yesterday. It made life suddenly clear and soft and beautiful. I mean, life was pretty good already, but cold salt water scrubbed my eyes and skin clean.