Josephine Curates

Driving from Utah to Albuquerque, NM

2009-06-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

Driving in Nevada

2009-06-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

I have had a great love of Nevada ever since Mr. H took me across I-80 to Elko one summer. Today was a long hot stretch through the state on our way to southern Utah. Here are a few photos I took today and an essay I wrote about Elko awhile back.

Elko, Nevada is the largest city between Salt Lake City and Reno. With a population just under 17,000, it holds together the lunar landscape of Northern Nevada. Whorehouses sit on the edge of the city limits, where middle aged women perch on CB radios tempting truckers to come by for free coffee. The desert brings together a strange combination of people, with Basque ranchers, down on their luck gamblers, and off the grid homesteaders making up much of the local color. But the true lifeblood of Elko is the search and desire for gold.

Gold mining is the central industry, bringing in international mining operations, (mostly Australians—although if you have ever read about the tantalizing vastness of their own unexplored mineral potential you might wonder why) in the boom times, and crack pot inventors and desert rats in the bust times. All of these elements combine to make this part of world look like the future of America, another planet, and the 1960s, depending on the moment and the season.

The main motorway through Northern Nevada is Interstate 80. It is a surreal stretch of highway, connecting a line of small desert towns all fairly uninviting to outsiders and with names like Battle Mountain and Sparks. Hunter Thomson called it “A straight lonely run across nowhere, with not many dots on the map except ghost towns and truck stops … all of them empty, with no gas stations, withering away in the desert like a string of old Pony Express stations.”

We once stopped, on our way back to California, in a town called Winnemucca and slept in an old motel that was literally sinking into the ground, the floor of our room jutting at a steep angle. (It was only $20—cash) The old lima bean-shaped swimming pool in the front was drained and full of trash, its grey concrete cracking. There are a lot of these sort of things in the I-80 towns—these ghosts of happier times.

Bring in the Clowns

2009-06-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

Upon Further reflection I think the Clown Motel with its crazy saloon/circus hanging out next to some graves in the middle of nowhere vibe is very reminiscent of the bar in the movie from Dusk till Dawn. In that film the joint was really an ancient Mayan temple used for bloody sacrifice. It explained the vampires. In the case of the Clown Motel I decided not to check out the backside. Some things are better left unknown.

Tonopah, NV

2009-06-24T16:32:00.001-07:00

Grandma and I arrived in Tonopah Nevada around 8pm last night as the sun was setting. Wikipedia informs me:

"The community started about 1900 with the discovery of gold and silver rich ore by prospector Jim Butler when he went looking for a lost burro (donkey) he owned. The burro had wandered off during the night and had sought shelter near a rock outcropping. When Butler discovered the animal the next morning, he picked up a rock to throw at the beast, but instead noticed the rock was unusually heavy. He had stumbled upon the second-richest silver strike in Nevada history. The ore eventually played out, and abandoned mines can be found throughout the area."

We decided to stay in something called the Clown Motel overlooking the old graveyard. What? You think this is a bad idea? But there's free internet.

Yosemite

2009-06-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

My Grandma and I drove through Yosemite on our trek to Utah (then onto the New Mexico land art symposium) Look It's a bear!!!

A What?

Where?

Tada!

Northwesting it

2009-06-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

I spent a few days visiting my mother in Mukilteo Washington. I had big plans of going into Seattle and looking at art and other diligent activities, but in the end found that I was perfectly content to drink coffee, run up and down the hills around her house, look at the ferries that leave from the terminal all day from down town (a pleasant jog away) and sift through a few thrift stores. I found myself falling into the folly of all those that show up in the pretty summer months: "wow it's so beautiful I could live here." Forgetting how dark and brutal the winters are.

"Blackberries. Nothing, not mushrooms, not ferns, not moss, not melancholy, nothing grew more vigorously, more intractably in the Puget Sound rains than blackberries. Homeowners dug and chopped, and still they came. Park attendants with flame throwers held them off at the gates. In the wet months, blackberries spread so wildly, so rapidly that dogs and small children were sometimes engulfed and never heard from again. In the peak of the season, even adults dared not go berry picking without a military escort. Blackberry vines pushed up through solid concrete, forced their way into polite society, entwined the legs of virgins, and tried to loop themselves over passing clouds."--Tom Robbins,
Still Life with Woodpecker

2009-06-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

That tomato plant was not fooled at all by the way. It totally knows which direction is up and is doing it’s best to put things right. I hear that this is common and in time it will give up. I almost feel sorry for it. Like I’m being mean or something.

Mini garden

2009-05-27T18:02:00.001-07:00

I was unable to find the rennet I needed to make cheese last week (I will have to order it online.) So instead I moved on to another project I have wanted to get going: growing some cooking herbs in pots out on the porch.

oregano, basil, chives, fennel and lemon balm

Sweet basil

Also in their own pots lavender and more basil...

I also rather impulsively picked out a small Brandy Wine tomato plant with really nowhere to put it. The name may have been the culprit. Over the three day weekend I enlisted the help of Mr. H to try and find a suitable place to put it. Always looking to meet our needs within a four block radius of our house we settled on this wonderful thing from the corner Walgreens. Please forgive us for our bad taste.

Oh yes! No over watering, no support posts, no weeding...

Say CHEESE

2009-05-20T21:06:00.000-07:00

Project # 1: Tomorrow I will go to Berkeley Bowl and buy fresh local milk in glass bottles. I will pick up a little rennet and citric acid and then I will live the Dream:

2009-05-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Looking forward to catching up on some reading

The Summer Reading List (so far):

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction by Lee Gutkind

Exploits and Opinions of Dr Faustroll Pataphysician by Alfred Jarry

Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution by Alice Waters

History of Beauty by Umberto Eco

Still waiting for some QT with Mr H (it feels like ages) I wonder if we will be able to sneak away for a little road trip in the warmer weather?

Shaking it out

2009-05-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

It has been 13 days since my last paper for school was due and I'm still a bit out of it. Still purging the stress and not at all feeling like the happy home maker I thought I would be by now. The house is still real messy and I even missed the farmers market this week (Mr. H went without me so I have been eating some veggies at least.)

Things I have done with my time off:

Quick trip to Colorado to see a sick family member

Researched and ordered new computer (mine crashed 24hours after I turned in my paper whew!)

Running (I'm up to five miles a few times a week)

Wedding Planning (committed to buying the all the plates for our wedding next year from thrift stores--I have 8 so far 70 more to go)

Still interning and working

Listened to Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food on my ipod (good but scary)

I think I love Laurie Anderson!

2009-03-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Mr H took me to see Laurie Anderson at City Arts & Lectures "in conversation with" Michael Azerrad on April 27th. It was a little stressful because of how much I have to do right now, but it made me really really happy.

Miranda July

Logging Some History

2009-02-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

I found a bag of Lincoln logs on the curb. Rushing to catch the bus, I passed them by quickly, saying to myself something like, “That is a big bag of Lincoln logs next to that trash can.” It was not until I got a few steps beyond them that it really sunk in. I went back. I am not sure if I’d ever seen Lincoln Logs in person before, never having any as a child, but they are an American icon, a reactionary recognition. What is the word for a nostalgia that isn’t your own memory, but a collective one? Erin Cho states in her essay Lincoln Logs: toying with the frontier myth, “The log cabin came to be identified with democracy and the frontier spirit as Americans began to marvel at their own progress and to make a virtue of their early struggles with the wilderness.”

What drew my attention most about this bag was the odd jumble of plastic cowboys, Indians and horses rolling around with the 200 or so logs. The Indians had feathers and buffalo headdresses ready for the Great Plains or just headed to a particularly good party. The cowboys had a lot of flair too, sporting an array of Skittle colors. Both groups were armed to the teeth, ready to kill each other. At first I thought this was just some other less culturally sensitive toy set thrown in with the industrious and neutral Lincoln Logs, but when I got home that day, I was able to find someone selling a log set with my same Indians on eBay so they must have come together.

Invented by John Lloyd Wright in 1919, the son of the much more famous Frank Lloyd Wright, Lincoln Logs originally contained instructions for building the cabins of both Abraham Lincoln and Uncle Tom—an interesting and unexpected comparison. I am even more surprised when I discover that there is a long history of Lincoln Log characters (originally metal and hand painted). They are anything but neutral in their portrayal of race and gender. I dump the whole lot of it onto my living room floor and attempt to start reconstructing.

I don’t drive. I have had this fact pointed out as the reason I am not very good at giving directions. Never navigating my world at the speed of a car why would I remember the exact names of street signs, or exact exits off of freeways? I wonder if, experiencing the city I live in differently than many people around me, I am in some ways living in a different city. Matthew Coolidge, founder of The Center for Land Use Interpretation, told me yesterday that earth is inert and that place is altogether a psychological space, a human condition. If no one perceives its existence than a location does not exist. Louis and Clark did not only “discover” a stretch of land that extended all the way to the Pacific, but created it in the minds of the American people. Even more fascinating is the realization that we are not all living is the same psychological location. We agree there is a “South,” for example, but not where it is entirely. Sometimes, it is as far as Maryland and Missouri, while almost never Delaware. Oklahoma is in, sometimes, because of its Confederate history. According to a survey by the University of North Carolina, “perhaps surprisingly, 11 percent of people in Utah, 10 percent in Indiana and slightly fewer people in Illinois, Ohio, Arizona and Michigan claim to be Southerners.” We also feel differently about where our neighborhoods begin and end and how cities are divided. I am not alone in geography being a matter of taste.

Joanathan Richman

2009-01-26T18:44:00.000-08:00

I saw Jonathan Richman at The Starry Plow with Mr. H and some friends the other night. I have a record he signed at a show for me a few years ago. The man is amazing.

Dear Mr. H

2008-11-13T12:59:00.000-08:00

Well done Mr. H!

I am looking forward to some pictures! There is an on-site pub too? Our class-curated walking tour is tomorrow. (See image below) I am looking into incorporating sound into our stop (the old shoreline of Mission-Bay) Also, because it will be dark Jackie and I have been playing around with shining light through a jar of water with blue dye to make “water” on the ground. If it sounds strange it is because it is. (Jackie pickup some saltwater taffy to pass out too) So sad you are going to miss it! Good luck with your curatorial adventure. I look forward to your excited return.

Much Affection

Josephine

For immediate release:
NAIL 2: Surrounding Area
Friday, November 14, 2008
5-7 p.m.

California College of the Arts' curatorial collective, NAIL, is pleased to present a new mobile, site-specific exhibition, NAIL 2: Surrounding Area. This one-night only event will take the form of a guided walking tour through CCA's San Francisco campus and local neighborhood. The five brief stops along the tour will include local artistic and historical destinations of varying scale and structure - visible and invisible, past and present. Special guest speakers and members of NAIL will show hidden sites of cultural production in the neighborhood, from the former sandy shores of the San Francisco Bay to The Double Play, a pub near the site of the demolished Minor-League Seal Stadium.

The 5pm tour will commence at CCA's main building on 1111 8th Street and will continue for 1.5 miles ending at 16th and Bryant. Surrounding Area is designed to create a site- and time-specific interaction among the guides, audience, community and destinations. The tour will foster conversation and an exchange of information about overlooked and under-recognized places, themes, and projects of the CCA campus and surrounding neighborhood.

For more information please visit notalwaysinlocation.blogspot.com or email us at notalwaysinlocation@gmail.com

Keep in mind Surrounding Area is an outdoor walking tour lasting about two hours. Please dress accordingly.

Trade Secrets - Day One

2008-11-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

Hi Josephine (and blog,)

I am here in Banff, Canada attending the Symposium Trade Secrets: Education/Collection/History put on by the Banff International Curatorial Institute.

Despite some airport troubles that threatened to derail the entire trip, I arrived safely in Banff yesterday evening in time to attend the keynote speech given by Richard Flood, Chief Curator at the New Museum. Floods speech/lecture was quite good, albeit dense, and I'll talk about some of the points he made in a moment, but for now I'd like to jump back to the shuttle ride to the center where I tried to lay out for myself the goals I had on this trip.

GOALS:

1) Attend all panel discussions, take good notes, don't be afraid to ask questions during the question and answer period.

2) Think about Pro Arts' connection to these contemporary curatorial models; answer this question: "How can a community based gallery best provide programming that is relevant to our time and is adding to the critical discourse while still being accessible to its diverse audience? With little to no money?"

3) Identify organizations that may want to partner with. Who is doing interesting things? How can we be a part of that? Is there any opportunity to guest curate at other institutions?

4) Network before and after each panel. Exchange business cards. Identify key people and become friends.

KEYNOTE SPEECH:

Title: When the Electricity Blows, Light a Candle

Key points: The economy is tanked, arts in all sectors are taking a hit, we must learn how to adapt and survive. The key to this is to look at your mission statement and make sure everything you are doing is in service to that mission.

NETWORKING:

So far so good! In the ride to Banff I was in a shuttle with Rosemary Donegan, who just started a new curatorial practice program in Toronto. We spoke briefly about the scene in Toronto right now, which seems very interesting. Also in the shuttle, and also from Toronto was Leah, a reporter for Canadian Art, the big quarterly art publication up here. She is covering the conference for the magazine.

After the Keynote speech, I met up with Leah again and went to the on-site pub. There I met up with Leigh Markopoulos, chair of the Curatorial Practice Program at CCA, and Marcia Tanner, the Berkeley based independent curator behind the exhibition We Interrupt Your Program at Mills, which I remember liking a lot.

After the curators and journalists headed off to their rooms, I stayed at the pub for one more pint and fell in with a group of artists participating in a one month residency called "Reverse Pedagogy." They all seemed to be having a good time and making good work, reinforcing the idea that artist residencies can be more than a little like summer camp. And I think that's a good thing. One of the artists was Mitzi Pederson, a San Francisco artist represented over at Ratio 3. We talked a bit and I encouraged her to submit a proposal to Southern Exposure.

So so far I've done pretty well meeting people, but most of them seem to be from the Bay Area.

We will see what today brings.

I'll send an update tonight, and will try and type up some more of my notes from the Keynote Speech. Also, I didn't get a chance to take any pictures yesterday (because it was dark) but will take some today.

- Mr. H

2008-11-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

Mr. H and I have been trying to get away for a night once a month (this Grad School thing is hard on us) Last Month we went to Port Costa where there is a bar called the Warehouse Cafe and a hotel-hostel kind of a place next door called the Burlington Hotel. It used to be a port now it is just strange. Mr. H is so fun to go on trips with. Now I look forward to our get away day.

Wall Paper in our room

This Month we went to the Chancellor Hotel for a night in SF

I am crazy for this Duck!

And back home on the BART

Canning Dilly Beans

2008-11-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to try pickling. One of our favorite pubs always serves a side of pickled carrots with their dishes and I love them. The recipes from mennonite girls can cook (which is for a mix of carrots and dilly beans) sold me on the idea of doing it myself. You can read the super easy instructions here.

The images from mennonite girls can cook.
How Beautiful do these jar look?

I love these peaches as well. Lush.

A Zine From Ava A

2008-11-03T23:49:00.000-08:00

We are proud to present a zine from the first awardee of the Lionel Di Giacomo Residency Program. The residency is named after a friend of ours who stayed in our guest room for an extended amount of time to help us with an art show. It is in his honor that we've offered our guest room to friends from out of town to visit the Bay Area and "make new work." What A nice thing to get in the mail! Thanks Ava!

2008-11-03T22:40:00.000-08:00

Before My Grandfather met my Grandmother he dated the girl next door. Her name was Silvia, but people called her Via. I found an album he made of her in our family photo trunk (The trunk that was my grandfathers in WWII and survived a house fire) I love her clothes and I like that she grows up in the photos. Here are a few pictures. (My Grandfather is Bill in the first image.)

I am crazy about her belt and have been trying to find one like it

Via Inspired Fashion

Looking for a cool flash drive

2008-11-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

With all the writing and Power Point I've been up to for grad school these days I decided to buy a flash drive. I was looking for something with a little more design but with 2 gigs running around $20-$30 I didn't want to end up paying a ton of extra money for the little plastic toy wrapped around my drive.

1GB Strawberry Donut USB Flash Drive $24.99 1GB House USB Drive $24.99Tribeca FV00166 1GB Frog USB Drive $13.851GB Tuna Sushi USB Drive $79.99

Mimobot is the master of cool flash drives! These guys from the Friends with You Artist series will run you around $35 for 1 gig.

What I ended up with was this strange little "Panda" from Target (this means no shipping and I could have him NOW NOW NOW.) His head pops off to reveal the drive. 1 gig and he set me back $19.99. He makes a good keychain.

2008-11-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

It all got started during a winter day walk of Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in Helsinki. Perhaps it was due to the coldness of the day that they ended up discussing the possibility of transforming the huge energy people put into complaining into something else. Perhaps not directly into heat – but into something powerful anyway.

In the Finnish vocabulary there is an expression "Valituskuoro". It means "Complaints Choir" and it is used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously. Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen thought: "Wouldn´t it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir!" Read More

Learning is fun!

2008-10-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Mr. H will be going to beautiful Banff, Canada for the Banff International Curatorial Institute Symposium: Trade Secrets this November! I am so happy and I can't wait to hear about all of the things he learns there! (Maybe he can do a guest post or two for me)

Here is sneak preview from the Banff Centre Website:

The contemporary art world is undergoing a dramatic change. Against this backdrop, the latest in the ongoing series of the Banff International Curatorial Institute (BICI) conferences, Trade Secrets will re-focus the collective discussion about the curatorial profession by exploring specific issues regarding: the education of curators; the challenges facing collection-based curators; trends in curatorial research; and the writing of curatorial histories. It is commonly understood that the art market is leading the field and in turn legitimating what is significant with respect to the new, rather than the critics and curators who traditionally held sway. Paradoxically, while this power dynamic is widely acknowledged, there is a huge growth in the number of graduate curatorial programs {THAT'S ME} and the contemporary art community has come to put an increased emphasis on exhibitions, and curators.

At this significant juncture, Trade Secrets: Education/Collection/History will critically examine the state of curatorial practice today. By bringing influential museum professionals, independent curators, educators, critics, students, and visual artists into dialogue, Trade Secrets will illuminate and identify strategies for the future.

Mr H Turns 26 on Saturday!

2008-10-09T22:25:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to spending a little time with him

I Love Portland based artist Betsy Walton

2008-10-09T14:40:00.000-07:00

We can experience the sublime in the same room where we fold the laundry, and perhaps at the same time.-Betsy Walton

I am pretty crazy bout Walton's strange pink and teal world. It seems all at once lyrical, dreamy, a little bit dangerous, and achingly hip. I check her Etsy shop often to see what's new.

Image above From the artist's Blog

Hopeful

Lets Meet in the Forest

Angular Cloud

Paper House

Make it Rain

2008-10-08T23:22:00.000-07:00

I took this picture last Christmas. Mr. H's dad told me to be careful and not get the plane stuck in the tree and I said I wouldn't and then it went right up in the tree like I was trying or something.

Snail

Halloween is coming

2008-10-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

I wanna be a bat this year!

Mr. H says he will help me make this costume. You can read about it here

Possible costume for Mr. H?

Or we can do one together?

pictures from here

I got my State!

2008-09-27T12:44:00.001-07:00

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
—Walt Whitman

Americana: 50 States, 50 Months, 50 Exhibitions is a long-term presentation consisting of 50 displays, each approximately one month long, coorganized by Wattis Institute director Jens Hoffmann and CCA's Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice. (That's Me!)

Each month's display will examine an American state, in alphabetical order by state name.
Through artworks, historical artifacts, curiosities, and other elements, Americana will focus on overlooked and little-known aspects of each state. All presentations take place in the same exhibition space, which is configured in the shape of the continental United States.

Americana examines the states as they are today, looking at how America's social and political imperatives condition the production, presentation, and interpretation of art and exhibition making. The brisk pace of the 50 displays reflects the varied and constantly changing fabric of this relatively young country and its multilayered, shifting national identity.

The title is a reference to an exhibition of the same name that was curated by the artist collaborative Group Material at the 1985 biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Group Material also focused on art and elements of mass culture that they understood as overlooked, forgotten, and outside the mainstream in order to investigate critically how museums and exhibitions assist in the formation of American identity.

Founding support for CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts programs has been provided by Phyllis C. Wattis and Judy and Bill Timken. Generous support provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Ann Hatch and Paul Discoe, and the CCA Curator's Forum.

Georgia: Br'er Rabbit's Narrative Trap

And My State will be....(Drum roll please)

The Show Me State
Bluebird

Flowering Dogwood

Home of Mark Twain

Sunday Tea

2008-09-26T23:26:00.000-07:00

We have been having people for tea at our house from 2-4 on Sundays. If you know where that is you should come!
I found these guys at the thrift store and painted them white

Bingo Kings at the MG Gallery

2008-09-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

We enjoyed a crazy Bingo night at MG Gallery that opened up by our house. The MG gallery has a lot of potential. They already have a great group of artists lined up for exhibitions and they've focused some of their programming on residencies for artists interested in making permanent improvements to their space.
Very Smart.

Mr. H wins a Bake Sale Betty gift card!

Sweet!

2008-09-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

I am super excited about the first artist residency at SoEx with Brion Nuda Rosch!

The Portable Ice Cream Stand

Part art-object, part functioning ice cream stand, The Portable Ice Cream Stand is a nomadic food stand and social gathering serving sweet refreshments at local functions, playgrounds, campsites, laundry mats, and bookstores. During his residency at Southern Exposure, Rosch will work with a visiting cast of artists to build the stand along with an ongoing assemblage of objects. Interested in creating alternative economies, The Portable Ice Cream Stand will hold business hours and function as model for an alternative economy to support various artistic efforts. Stop by the gallery for some ice cream and a visit with the artist.

Visit the Artist: Thursday – Saturday, 12:00 – 6:00 pm

I put on my super rad Ice cream T-shirt to show my support and wore it home. I noticed I got a few more cat-calls than normal walking to the BART. That's weird I thought, I should check in with Mr. H and make sure this dress looks ok. "Hi Mr. H" I said. "Nice cones" said Mr. H.First thing. Whoa this shirt is dangerous.

I dyed my hair last night and then when I woke up this morning I said "Wow my hair is super red! I didn't know it would be so red." and Mr. H was like "Doesn't it look just like the box?" And I said "yeah it's so weird nothing ever looks like it does on the box."

2008-09-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Grandma,

It was so nice to see you last weekend! I had fun seeing the Frida Kahlo exhibit and making so much good food with you. Thank you for the fair trade chocolate. It is super tasty. I would just like to let you know I really really want a hand-made apron or two for my birthday (I know know that's not until December.) Here are a few from Anthropologie I thought you might enjoy looking at until then! (**wink wink**)

love always--Jo

Pretty things:

2008-09-20T14:27:00.001-07:00

Items I want for cooler weather

Images from Anthropologie

Yellow Tights

Obscene amounts of blush

We have been putting all the beautiful veggies and organic lamb we bought at the farmer's market into the crock pot in the morning and coming home to hot stew at night. What a nice way to start September!

I figured out how to load a high Rez copy

2008-09-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

2008-09-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Ilsa,

This is the coolest couch Ever. I love it sooo much, but I don't think Mr. H is going to go for it. I mean where would we put it in our teeny tiny apartment?! I think you should buy it ( I just know you could fit it somewhere.) Then, I will come visit it whenever I feel the urge. It is at the Clausen House thrift shop and will set you back about $75.

yours truly,

Josephine

Look what came in the mail today! Yay for ebay treats!

We got really lost yesterday looking for Ship Art for class and ended up in this really strange look South San Francisco suburbia. It looks so foreign when you are used to an urban landscape.

Do I look like a tired Grad Student yet?

We had some people over on Sunday for tea. Oh my God look what Rona brought! Beautiful.

Saturday Video!

2008-09-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

a little something I made music by one of my all time favorite bands: The Books

Getting all Salon on your Ass!

2008-09-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

Hanging work for an art show "Salon Style" always sounded romantic to me. Very Bohemian.

The Salon (French: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: Salon de Paris), beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the world. Since 1881 it was organized by the Société des Artistes Français.--wikipedia

The Salon, in its early formation, acted as an audit of what art was being made at one place at one time- in this case the Academy. Taken as a whole body-often from floor to ceiling-it is the attempt to create an overlapping impression of art in mass. Modern "Salon hung" art shows feel young, rebellious, low budget and much like their namesake attempting to survey some art makingin mass.

My first art show ever was in my house when I live in San Luis Obispo. The city had an art walk and we were near downtown, so we put up signs to lure people off the path and to our opening. We also made photo copied flyers and left them at the "real" galleries. It worked pretty well.

2006 Virus SHOW Lobot Gallery

This show is the result of releasing a constructed viru

s into Oakland.

---The action of this virus is simple:::: It infects only Oakland artists and causes them to infect other Oakland artists.

---The virus is intially within 6 people AND each of these people will infect 6 more people, this process will happen 4 times resulting in 1554 artis

ts being infected.

---EACH ARTIST IS RESPONSIBLE IN MAKING SURE THAT T

HEIR 6 CHOSEN ARTISTS CHOOSE ANOTHER 6 ARTISTS EACH. (except for the 4th and final tier)

Boontling Gallery Overhung Trilogy

(this Oakland gallery is now closed)

Lost Art Salon , San Francisco

Monster Drawing Rally 2008
Southern Exposure
images from: http://bunnywax.wordpress.com/

The art is drawn live and then goes onto the walls! You can see Mr. H helping out in the picture above. He's wearing a dark red shirt in the very middle.

I love Deth amd Marci!!

The Weekend

2008-09-08T14:12:00.001-07:00

UH OH
I was walking back from my internship on Friday in San Francisco's Mission District when, to the best of my knowledge, my foot caught on a particularly uneven patch of sidewalk and I really did a face plant. The beads of my necklace rolled across the pavement dramatically. The knee of my pants ripped taking a layer of skin with it. On the up side some nice people helped me up and wiped some of the dirt off my face. People are pretty nice in San Francisco.

I think I look a little like my silkscreen Poster by Jay Ryan with a band aid on my knee
(thats my Bunny Felipe)

In the living room

This is what my weekend looked like:

Reading Reading Reading for school
This is my Desk

Before it was a study area it was an art installation in
American Mythology Identity Through FantasySome other Desks I love
Nie's Desk I think I need this poster

Buffalo Burgers!

With an egg and spinach

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County!

2008-09-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

Almost a Year ago Mr. H and I went the the Natural History Museum during a trip to LA. I heard an interview with the band Matmos about a sound project they had worked on for the Museum. When I saw an image of them preforming live in the "Hall of North American Mammals"I knew I really really wanted to see the place for myself. Sonic Scenery, a assemblage of music in response to the Museum collection, had come and gone by the time we visited but I was able to find some information about it online. And it still lives on in the form of an Audio tour CD you can buy here!

The Sonic website explains: "The Natural History Museum has invited a spectrum of innovative musicians and composers to create music inspired by our collections.

Experience a different perspective as you don headphones and explore the Museum to new sounds by The Sun Ra Arkestra, Ozomatli, Autolux, Nels Cline, Matmos, Stephen Hartke, Nobody, Jon Hassell, Languis and David J. The exhibition is introduced by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

Each composition was commissioned expressly for one of the galleries on the Museum's Level 1. Like the recent Conversations exhibition, Sonic Scenery was developed to provide visitors with an opportunity to find new meaning and relevance in the Museum's collections."

See a little on the YOUTube

Sun Ra Arkestra "Pyramid of the Moon"

Languis "Mending Spear, Part II"

"Feeding peanut butter to a friend's dog, we built up a basic library of mammalian lip-smacking, huffing, barking, whining, sniffling, and breathing noises, and combined this with a percussive battery of antler noises made by smacking deer antlers against each other and some softer rustling textures harvested by stroking and rubbing the pelt of a wolf." -Matmos

"The work is divided into miniature 'cells,' which stand in for the seventeen distinct dioramas/environments and animal species represented in the room, and this is split down the middle by a central section that corresponds to the large bison display at the far end of the room. Our work is intended to be a sound map of a walk through this room and is paced to coincide with a five-to-seven-minute counterclockwise walk through its contents." - Matmos

Mr. H and I and a few bones

1st day of School

2008-09-02T22:59:00.001-07:00

First day of school shoes

Mr. H gave me this Kate Spade Planner for class

And wrote this in it

I took the CCA Bus from Oakland to SF today. It's a pretty posh kind of a ride--big seats and air conditioning. It's a little worrisome because the bus filled up before I could get on. But they double book the popular hours so a 2nd bus came right away.

I've been on the Bay Bridge many times but the view is real different from a tall tour-style bus.

It went well today. I'm ready for this. The Wattis had the Wizard of OZ opening today. Then someone was feeding paper into a "blowing machine" in the main entrance of the SF campus and it was raining down all over the place. I liked it.

What I did this Summer

2008-09-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Six things I did this summer before starting Grad School (in no real order):

1. Mr. H and I got Engaged! (Loving)

2. We plan on getting married in Summer of 2010 in the "Howdy" Church in Meredith Colorado, a small area that Mr. H has been going to since he was very little. We went to check it out in August and it is a lot smaller than I remember. It's going to be a bit of a tight fit. (funny)

3. We also visited the Diamond J Ranch where we want to have the reception (also in Meredith) They were really nice and the cabins were super cute. They said they could sleep about 70 people. We then attempted to be a bit more outdoorsy than normal. Please see pictures below. (neat)

Diamond J Ranch

inside a cabin at the Diamond J

Mr. H's Grandfather built this Cabin in the 50s with a friend (who owned it) and then his parents bought it when they were still in college. The church, Diamond J and the cabin are only a few miles apart! (Heritage)

4. My Grandmother had her 75th birthday ! (Party)

5. I worked at the ASUC Art Studio on the Berkley Campus

I will still be doing this a few days a week now that school has started (economic)

6. I am the Curatorial intern at the very awesome Southern Exposure in San francisco (Smart)

and will continue said duties into my Grad studies.

Keep Calm and Carry On

2008-09-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

This is my last weekend before starting Grad School at CCA for Curatorial Practice! MR. H and I went to the farmers market and then made fresh salsa and Margaritas. We like to doctor up the cheap stuff. I just read Barbara Kingsolver's new book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and as a result am trying to eat more locally.

Please note the super cool Pinocchio funnel hanging with the pots and pans (an engagement gift for Mr.H and I. I plan on posting pics of our possible wedding site soon) Also I bought a Cupboard at the thrift store up the street and painted it blue...I do a lot of projects when I'm stressed.

I found a little orange kitten in the bushes at the Jack in the Box by my house. I could hear him crying real loud. I kept him overnight and Mr.H took him the Shelter the next day where I hope he finds a great home because he was very cute and friendly. Good luck little dude!