Tango Gelato

I found a few paintings on the street the other day. It looks like someone who had artistic aspirations in the past got rid of some old paintings. Being free material, I took the canvas off of one and stretched my own on. I realized that I really like the old stretcher bars, these were probably from the 70s. The wood just seems to be sturdier and I like the hard angles.

This past weekend I've been working on a painting on the new, old canvas. Ironically, the subject matter is somewhat of the same as the original painting, but done in a totally different style.

I'm calling it Madame S. Sialis. It's 24 x 20 in. oil on canvas. I painted it to have a new piece to add to the older paintings that I just installed on the walls of Tango Gelato, a gelato/cafè in Pacific Heights. Kind of a last minute thing, I spent the weekend both enjoying the sunny weather and putting together some old and recent work to show at the cafè. This painting was also my effort to try to find some cohesion in the work I put up.

And here it is on the walls. I just put it up today and it was weird seeing people look at a piece that's still really new to me. I really dig the light fixture above the painting. It seems to all fit together.

I have 10 paintings up on the walls for the month of May. I still feel a bit weird about having such a mix of new and old work up, but its a great place to have some exposure. If you happen to be in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, check it out. Its on Fillmore, on the northwest corner of Pine. Two stores up.


Here's another picture of the cafè. Aren't we getting tired of that painting already? I'm going to be starting some city paintings shortly, so check back to see what that turns out like.

Two New

Last Tuesday, the day after I got back to San Francisco from Coachella, I started working on a painting for a scene in a movie my friend is making. The character is "Grannie," and old mobster, and the idea was to have a large painting of her behind her desk. Originally, it was supposed to be a velvet painting. But after trying to paint on velvet and knowing I would have less than a week to do the painting, I decided to stick to canvas. A bunch of ridiculous ideas were thrown into the air (ridiculousness being the main component of the painting) and I came up with this idea on Tuesday and started painting it on Wednesday.

Its 26x44 inches and after a long three day, I finished it on Friday with time to touch it up on Sunday. The shoot for the scene was yesterday and I'm pretty excited to see it. They all seemed to dig the painting and said it looked great in the shoot.

I've also just been playing with some ideas and images. Apparently I've been on an animal kick since I've moved to San Francisco, as every painting except a couple, has had an animal involved.

This one's called Two Stripes, 30x15 inches. It was a bit more composition and image driven than anything else.

Coachella

Last week I drove down to Indio, California with Casey and friend Dawson for another Coachella Music and Arts Festival. I've only been once before in 2006, and with such a great experience, my expectations were high. This year did not disappoint, and its hard to say, but it might have even surpassed my expectations. There were great performances, beautiful weather, awesome art installations, and it was a great weekend with new friends.

Here are some highlights, not to mention the "good" pictures I got, from Coachella...

Yeasayer pretty much started off the festival for us. They have been one of my favorite bands for a while now and Casey and I randomly met them a couple of hours before their set. We were walking around and I spotted them headed in our direction. Casey masterly intercepted them and we had a short chat. As for their show, I was a bit worried as their new album is a huge departure from their older music and that of which I became a fan. But the show was awesome and the crowd was insane. It's weird seeing one of your favorite bands become rock stars... at least indie rock stars.

The festival brings a lot of different types of people together. This woman, who you can't tell but is probably in her 40s, reminded me that your personality doesn't really change with age, just your body. It wasn't hard to picture her this way in the 80s and 90s. Plus, I was convinced that she was from Hawaii, because it seems like this is especially true at home.

It's always funny when you see men sitting on shoulders, trying to get a better view. Its even funnier to see s couple of them up there just for the fun of it. Better yet, at an electronic disco show.

Beach House. They were my underdogs that proved themselves. I wasn't a huge fan of them, but seeing them live showed me what they can do and what they are about. It was probably in my top 5 performances.

King Khan and the Shrines were up there too. It was just really high energy and they put on a great show. They had a lot of audience interactions, one of which was a call for a dollar. "Raise it in the air and LIGHT IT ON FIRE!"

With the explanation that it disn't matter because of where we were and what we were doing in that moment, people were open to the idea.

One of these folks was my new friend, and Coachella valley native, Damien. He's an awesome guy and friend of Dawson, who you can kind of see next to his face in the yellow shirt - basically the beard wearing aviators.

Coheed and Cambria. I didn't see much of this show, but it was by far the heaviest. Basically a good metal show. One of the stage effects was billowing black smoke. Some say that it was just a fire on the stage scaffolding, but it went so well with the videos that it seemed intentional.

One thing that happened throughout the festival was the construction of these long chains of balloons. By the end of the third day there were four, impossibly long strands, reminding me of fundamental principals of physics.

Another nightly thing was a synchronized light show. There were probably 10 spotlights that would converge in different spots in the sky, change colors, or randomly dance above the festival grounds. It creates kind of a barrier of light above our heads and really adds to the "event" of it all.

The Dead Weather. Jack White and Alison Mosshart collide to define rock. We got up close for their show and got to see what being a bad ass rocker was all about. Needless to say, it was a very good show with awesome stage presence.

THOM YORK! As if he wasn't a big enough legend of contemporary rock music, he was joined with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and a few other musicians that formed Thom York's band and gave it a new, funky dance personality. It was definitely a highlight of the festival, not just to see both of these extremely talented and influential musicians, but to see them interact to create a very unique experience.

At the end of the last night, Sunday, there were two of the five stages left with performances, one of which wasn't Yann Tiersen, the talented composer and performer we were planning on ending on. Without notice, at least to us, his set time got bumped to an earlier time slot and we ran to the tent to find disappointment.

In the end, Casey and I saw 33 bands in three days play amazing shows. We got a bit of a tan, had a lot of fun with newly found friends and paid way too much for food. We drank a bunch of water to stay hydrated and looked at our programs probably over 100 times. We experienced some amazing hospitality at friends homes and restaurants and even got to eat a grapefruit, freshly picked from the tree. And after more than a total of 16 hours on the road, we went down and back from San Francisco for another amazing Coachella. I'm already looking forward to next year.

Opening!

This past Friday was the opening reception of the group show I'm in, "Characters Welcome," at the Artist Xchange. It was a lot of fun, a bunch of people came out, and I got to see strangers look at my art, even chatting with a couple. The time flew by and I didn't get very many pictures, so pardon the lack of diversity.

Here's my wall! It was so cool to see them all together and nicely framed.

Mom, Casey and me- aka, Verizon, more bar wherever you are. Oh yeah, Mom came out for the week. A bit of a spontaneous trip and it was great getting to show her San Francisco and for her to see my first group show. Hope you got some good photos of the city!

And here are some kind people deep in thought over my art. Actually, they are all friends kind enough to give me a "candid."

The show is up until the end of the month, so check it out if you get a chance!

Group Show

I'm going to be part of a group show in April!!! I found out a few days ago that I'll be showing a few paintings at the Artist Xchange as part of their group show "Characters Welcome" for the month of April. Since then, I've been busy getting to work together and making it show worthy. Here's the details:

Opening reception: April 2, 2010 7-10PM
@ Artist Xchange, 3169 16th St (cross Gurrero St.)

I hope you all can make it to the opening. If you can't make it that night, the work will be up till the end of April. All the work should be on the website as well. Tell you friends too!

Yosemite

Last week Casey's parents, Brad and Carol, were in town for a visit. They spent a few days in the city before we all headed down (actually, a straight shot east) to Yosemite for some time in nature. Needless to say, it was down right beautiful there and refreshing to get out of the city. The trip was short, but we made the best of it and had a great time.

Deer!!! One of the first things we saw as we entered the park were deer, apparently eating dinner. They were on the side of the road, just posing for us! I took this shot with my 35 mm, which is why it's a bit grainy. Brad even backed up the car so we could get a better shot and they still didn't move. It was what I would imagine going on safari would be like, except with snow, coniferous trees and very tame animals.

We got to the park around dinner time, so we basically explored around the lodge a bit, ate dinner, and went to bed early to rest up for the following day.

And THIS is what I woke up to! Casey pulled the drapes open to reveal that it had snowed that morning and everything was covered in it! It was like the movies. Somehow the air seemed fresher and everything had a cool silence to it, even with the squawking birds.

After a quick breakfast, Casey and I started on a hike up to Upper Yosemite Falls. When I had read the trail description, it said it was 3.2 miles, 2-3 hours round trip. That sounded like a nice, slightly challenging day hike. BUT, as we approached the trail head, we learned that I was looking at a different hike and that this was actually 3.4 miles one way. Hmmm. Well, we went on!

This was the start of the trail. How beautiful is that?

As we got more into the hike, we cursed ourselves for wearing so many layers. Even though there was snow out, we were hiking pretty hard and it was such a sunny day. But the trail soon got colder and snowier.
Here's a shot at one of the points we thought about turning back, but persisted on the fact that we were close enough to continue and finish. The snowy top on the right is where we ended.

Here's a shot as we neared the stop. Gorgeous.

These pictures are a bit out of order, but along the way, before we got to all that snow, we saw signs hinting as to what was up ahead. Icicles on green leaves. Crazy right? It's such a cool juxtaposition and a nice shot encapsulating the changing of seasons.
This was about 1/3 of the way up. This was taken with my 35mm and somehow the film got overlapped and double exposed. Not sure how Casey did it, but I like the effect.

There was one point off the trail where you could hike down a bit and see all three tiers of Yosemite Falls, which we learned after hiking it that it is the tallest waterfall in North America! This is a monster of picture and we ended up at the top of the left crest of the waterfall.

Ok, back to ordered, chronological sense.
This was taken near the top as we took a break from hiking the trail, which at this point was completely snow. It did take some mental endurance to get up there. But we did and it was totally worth it to see this...

Untouched snow that was probably more than 6ft thick. We made it to the top, but probably not to the official end of the trail. We were walking on a lot of snow and after talking to a few folks that made it up as well, we decided it was best not to explore to much near the waterfall. But that was alright, because the view up there was amazing.

We took a few pictures of each other and of the landscape.


And then we headed back down. Luckily, we walked down with a guy who seemed pretty familiar with the hike. He gave us tips on how to get down - one of which was to just slide down the steep, snowy parts (which we did, happily!). He also gave us his trail mix. What a generous guys. It totally helped us out since we hadn't prepared for this lengthy of a hike.

So, in total, it took us 6.5 hours to climb the 60 switchbacks that make up the 6.8 miles of Yosemite Falls. I think climbing around SF prepared me for that since my legs didn't ache much the next day. Speaking of which, the next day turned out to be a beautiful sunny day. What luck with weather!

We spent our last day enjoying what we could and taking photos. I swear, Yosemite wanted us to see its good side. We couldn't have asked for better conditions.

Casey, Carol and I took a short walk through the woods and then through the meadows.

On the drive out, we stopped to take a look at El Capitan, the giant rock formation and a popular sight in Yosemite. Here's the Newlins, basking in the sun in front of the granite giant.

I want to thank Brad and Carol for this trip. It was really nice to spend some time with you both and see Casey with her family. I know you've been seeing snow for months now, but it was a real treat for me to see it again, especially like this. I had a great time and it was so generous of you two. THANKS!

JELLO

I wish I could blame February being a short month for my lack of posting, but there have been just as many days in this month as it would have any other. I have no idea where the days in this month have gone, but I do know a bunch of it went into this painting.


For now I'm calling it JELLO. Oil on canvas, 22 x 44 inches. It's a painting for my good friend Britt and I have no idea how I'm going to get it all the way over to Nashville unharmed. Being so big and so complicated, this one took me a bit more time than I had anticipated. But I learned a ton from painting it and now I reference jellyfish more than ever. There are a few things I'd like to tweak before I send it off, but those details probably wouldn't show up in a picture anyway.

Hope you all like it. I do! I can't really give you a heads up on whats next, but hopefully it will be posted sooner that it took me to post this one. Saluti!