Dia de los Treasureween

First off, sorry for the long stretch of un-posted time.  I got pretty sick for a couple of weeks, followed by a couple of weeks of unusually high hours at the restaurant and before I knew it, it's been a month.  But here's a catch up on October.  

Treasure Island Music Festival.  Casey has been interning for the cool people at Noise Pop, who are half of the reason why TIMF exists.  So naturally, she was at the event, coordinating the volunteers and managing the guest list, of which she got to contribute one name to.  ME!  I was so stoked to go to the festival, as a bunch of my favorite bands were playing. 

Casey was stoked too.  Actually, in this moment, she was way beyond stoked.  In the background (not the Foreground) is Chris Taylor, a key member of the band, Grizzly Bear.  I can confidently say that Casey is a fanatic for Grizzly Bear and literally freaked out in mid sentence when she saw Chris Taylor standing behind me.  Needless to say, it was a gratifying and validating moment for her to meet him. 

Treasure Island is a manmade island between SF and Oakland.  Being in this prime location, the views are nothing short but spectacular.  

At the festival, it was a celebration of both audio and visual arts.  Part of this was a performance group that grabbed everyones' attention at every "performance."
Here's the ring leader of the gang, using a remote control in his attempts to conquer the world!  Luckily he failed, but he did get a bunch of eyebrow raises, smiles and the occasional scream.  

The festival was filled with amazing performances.  
Here is headliner, The Flaming Lips, putting on an incredible live performance.  This might look like a big bands finale, but its actually one of their opening songs.  The festival was great.  A bit cold, but still great.  It rejazzed my appreciation and love of music and was also just a lot of fun to be a VIP for a weekend.  

Moving a bit forward in the month...Halloween!  Usually I'm awful at getting a costume together before hand, but this year, I put in the effort and made it out as Mordecai, the falcon from Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums.  We spent a fun evening at Lindsay (Casey's sister) and her boyfriend Michael's place.  

Here's a few of the gang enjoying the cool evening.  It was a really fun Halloween.

Dia de los Muertos - The day of the the dead.  It's a Mexican event to honor and celebrate the dead.  Of course, in San Francisco, it's more of a dress up, post halloween day, with non-Mexicans outnumbering Mexicans.  But, it was still a cool event to participate in and experience with the crowd. 

These's painted faces are common for Dia de los Muertos . . .  even in the BART station!

A bunch of our group found a giant skeleton man.  A pretty impressive costume!

Continuing with a bit of death, here is my latest painting.

It's a bit different than things I've done in the past, and that's kind of the point.  One day, after a light morning rain, I looked out to my fire escape and saw a potted plant with drops of water caught on its leafs.  It was beautiful and I needed to paint it.  I also had the image of this woman in my head, and put the two together.  This painting was more of a challenge for me to work with a different use of space (since I usually do very close up compositions)  I think it's somewhat successful.  I'm not entirely sure if it's done, but it was on my easel from before I got sick and I just needed to work on something else.  So, it's done for the time being.