This is not a politics blog...

los boletas oficiales

For good reason, I am a wretched Citizen. I often make my decisions at the polling place based on the sound of people's names (last year, I only voted for female school board members). My absentee ballot arrived today with not one, but FOUR rainbow colored ballots. The guilt just washes over me as I think of the people who have fought and died so I could cast my measly votes. Then my cynic steps in and says it doesn't matter because who ever gets elected will get bought off regardless. Then my really super cynic starts kicking me in the shins because now that I registered, I'll probably get called up for jury duty (does anyone actually like jury duty?). The word on the street is that all registered voters get called at least once a year in this town. Dutch has lots of opinions, and I know if I am lazy, I'll just adopt his wholecloth. The thing is, I do care about certain issues an awful lot, but it takes work to sift through all the fuzz and noise to get to the core of the issues.

Things I do have opinions on...

a classic movie poster from Saul Bass

Right now, I am putting together a lesson for the junior high kids about movie poster design. I plan on showing the usual posters from the golden age of design (the 50s and 60s) and I have put together a lot of material for them to look at and read (maybe stuff for another entry) and so now I have design on the brain. And what is even worse, I have been obsessing over how to explain it to 11-13 year olds. Because they are young, I can cheat a little and make simple, illustrated rules that they could theoretically follow without completely understanding (a real issue, considering that I speak English, and most of them speak something else at home). I am struggling with the fun challenge of creating a foolproof schema.

an unbearably beautiful tea label

I was at the grocery store looking for tea and I bought this brick of pu-ehr, and as I was considering which one to buy, it struck me that this tea label is almost unbearably beautiful. One of the things I am considering limiting is the children's palette. We will be using photoshop, so they have potentially millions of colors to chose from. This is a wonderful example of a limited palette (there are only three colors). They also, left to their own devices, tend to cluttered compositions, and random things they find from the web. I will be giving them a list of limitations, and hopefully it will be enough to get their minds going, but not so much that they give up.

::

The tea label is so inspiring because in addition to its limited palette, it has some fine patterns (repeated motifs) and I love the whimsical junk (sailing vessel) included in the seal. The composition is very straightforward, but it works, both in a utilitarian, and an aesthetic way. I don't read Chinese, so the meaning of the characters is completely lost to me, so I can't rate how effective the communication is, but they are always purty (am I betraying my love for exoticism here?). I tore a tiny corner and smelled the tea and looked at it, and I knows pu-ehr when I sees it, and the price couldn't be beat ($3.69) so I bought it. The really gratifying moment came when I was at the Ferry Building today (home of the most overpriced, pretentious, upperclass little specialty groceries in the city) and I found the exact same thing, with an English translation (Yunnan Province Green Pu-Ehr) and an equally English price, $12.50. That works out to $2.00 an English word.

Gazetteer Entry, E-Squared

The Gazetteer has been overstimulated for the last few months. The city is turning out to be bigger, badder and larger than I ever imagined. More raw data has been thrown at my senses than my pineal gland can possibly be expected to process. Like a mammalian brain, the City's folds and twists increase its surface area, until the relatively small area it occupies turns it into an endless and unknowable universe.

The neighborhood of E-Squared, as I'll call it for now, is not a tourist destination. While it technically lies within City Limits, it has very little to recommend it. In fact, its Wiki page is very short. For the last month, I held my breath and shut my eyes when I passed through it. The auto painting shop, the vomit on the street, the intense smell of urine all combined to turn my senses off to further investigations. I don't enjoy writing whole places off, so last week I decided to breathe deep and look.

What She Saw


the less said about a certain school of muralists, the better

This mural graces the Northeast corner of Mission and Excelsior. I am starting here because its the loudest thing on the neighborhood's namesake corner. According to the wiki article, this street used to be called "Japan", and there also was a "Germany", and during the last World War, Japan and Germany fell out of favor, and consequently, lost their streets. You can still transverse Brazil, Persia, Lisbon, Madrid and a number of other countries and capitals. By far, the most charming part of this neighborhood is that I can call Dutch and say something like this, "Hey, the keys are locked in the car and its on the corner of Moscow and Russia." I wonder how the Russia and Moscow streets survived the Cold War.


Spelling, not a strong soot

This sign arches over a private yard. I don't know if the misspelling is intentional or not.



The same yard. I don't know who lives here, or what the story is. It looks like it belongs to an artist. I love the title, though. Do the learned need shelter? What will they be sheltered from?

Free The Victorians



E-Squared lacks the stereotypical City Victorians, but I found a wee Painted Lady in the Shelter. The Great E didn't disappoint, as soon as I got over my bad attitude, interesting things started popping up. The architecture of the E will have to wait for future entries, until then, I'll be holding my breath and stepping carefully.

TMI

Mr Eleven's beach scene, with film

I keep trying to find reasons to keep my panties bunched up over digital cameras. Maybe I just hate change.

I was talking to Mr Eleven last night and he had his new digi and he was taking pictures while Eleven and I chatted over chips and tacos. On our evening walk up The Mall to coffee, he showed me what he had been doing. "Doodling" he called it. Now that he was no longer constrained by the cost of film he could shoot as much as he wanted. He showed me pictures of the chip baskets that looked like sci-fi sets, the night lights of the streets and some masterfully composed beach scenes.

"You see too much [with digital]," was his terse critique.

Yup.

But his pictures were fantastic.

NB I swear, when the man goes web, I'll post the link.

peelingpaint1, originally uploaded by camille94019.

I have spent a few more hours staring at my digital pictures. I found a good example of lens distortion, which is endearing.



Time seems to be slipping forward quickly, and normally I'd be all for whatever gizmos the future brings and I feel a little defensive and ludditish for stubbornly holding to the film cameras, even though my inner accountant is perpetually irritated by film/processing costs.

Supposedly the Impressionists are popular because they mimic the way normal people see. I guess we are all myopic. We see things through St Paul's dark mirror. We see things fleetingly and incompletely, it gives our imaginations something to do, our intelligence something to connect. The Impressionists present a point of view that is unashamedly human.

Digital presents a mechanical world entirely devoid of ambiguity. Every detail, every crack, every mote of dust is is dutifully rendered on a screen that is stridently two-dimensional. A surface that holds no secrets, no room for interpretation under its flashing, LED-illuminated face.

Film has mechanical aspects too. The camera's single lens and flat celluloid is at odds with our two eyes, concave retinas and fatty brain. Even then, the film itself has layers. Depending on the quality of light, different emulsions react. Even when negatives are scanned, some of that layered, nuanced quality is preserved. This is especially true of the primitive cameras, that somehow miss rendering every hair but present a rich gestalt.

Missing the blades of grass, but capturing the desolation, the $30 Holga

NB I had originally started this post to explore the idea of embracing digital as an art medium, which I abandoned as soon as I started thinking about painting. While that is still a possibility, I currently don't have the skills or inclination to pursue it. I'd have to reinvent what I expect and how I relate to cameras, which may be a future thesis.

NB I hadn't wanted to use the word "gestalt" because it sounds like I am an academic-wannabe, but when I looked up possibly synonyms on Thesaurus.com, it thought I meant "coastal." So it has to stay.