Modern Art/Makes Me/Want to ROCK OUT!

"So I'm in the Tate/And I'm looking at Hockney.
There's something about that blue/It touches me deep inside.
It makes me remove my tie/It makes me step outside/Sweet Jesus, my heart!"
- Modern Art, Art Brut


I went to the SF MOMA and the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco this weekend and OD-ed on the photographer Lee Friedlander. There were large shows of his work at both places, and the experience left me feeling renewed and awed.



His work is best viewed en masse, because it's not very striking when taken out of context. I remember seeing his shadow photos in college (below) and being indifferent to them. But when you see his whole body of work, you come to appreciate and marvel at the consistent and genius framing of every photo.



He has done many series over the years, but my favorite is his latest, "America By Car."



The title is pretty self-explanatory. The beauty of these photos is that he's working with two frames; the camera frame, and the frame of the car window/mirror. It's really subtle, and he makes it look easy.



I also love his self portraits and the photos of his family. A lot of his work is incredibly funny and sarcastic. Sometimes it seems that he took a picture simply because it amused him more than anything else.

I've been thoroughly inspired.

High Tea

Here's another art piece that my friend Ryan did this year, and that I got to be a part of. (of which I got to be a part?). It's a photo recreation of a performance piece he did last year called "High Tea," in which his guests drank tea while sitting on top of 10 ft. high stools.



We did ours in a corn field, so you can't really tell how high up we're sitting unless you notice the tops of the corn. It's totally surreal and I think it's strongly remniscent of Alice in Wonderland.

They call me MASTER CANNER!

Yesterday I went out for dinner with a few professors after a seminar and learned the most wonderful piece of information.



One of the professors is the current head of the UC Food Safety Program, and she did her PhD on sauerkraut fermentation. We had much to talk about. And apparently part of her job is to supply information on safe home food preservation.



So here's the big piece of info: There is a "Master Food Preserver" program in Sacramento, California! Seriously.



It's just like the Master Gardener program where you go through an intensive volunteer training program every Saturday for about 8 weeks and you spend a certain number of hours volunteering in the community, after which you become a "Master Food Preserver". I'm thinking I should do it.



Here are some good links for home canning that my professor uses herself:

UC Food Safety: Home Gardening, Preservation, and Storage

National Center for Home Food Preservation



The University of Georgia Factsheets
This is the ultimate source of info for canning instructions.

Ball Jar Home Canning Site

Sacramento County Master Food Preserver Program

Midnight at the Oasis

"Cuttings"

Sticks-in-a-drowse droop over sugary loam,
Their intricate stem-fur dries;
But still the delicate slips keep coaxing up water;
The small cells bulge;

One nub of growth
Nudges a sand crumb loose,
Pokes through a musty sheath
It's pale tendrilous horn

-Theodore Roethke

Cluebonic Plague

The best-kept secret in San Francisco? The Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt.

Every year, a guy named Jayson Wechter organizes a treasure hunt to take place the night of the Chinese New Year parade. It is completely unsponsored, all the proceeds go to charity, and it is the best bang-for-your-buck around.

Teams spend 4.5 hours running around the city solving clues and searching for "the 4 numbers next to the word 'Sydney'" or something similar, on some random plaque somewhere in the city. While this is happening, the parade begins. Lights, fireworks, costumes, crowds, it's mayhem!

My old housemates, G and Mike invited me to join them again this year for the hunt. It's the year of the rat, and all of the team names strive for a punny, cluey name. We were the Cluebonic Plague. Last year (year of the pig) we were Boar is Not the Answer. The winning name last year was I Never Sausage a Team. Oh man, I love it.

We didn't win, and we had no hope to. There are three categories, and the "Beginner" level is so hard, I can't even fathom the others. Last year we got about two-thirds of the clues, but this year we only missed 2 (out of 17). We were quite proud of ourselves, and we can't wait for next year.

Dirty Art

I love being photographed, I'll be the first to admit it. My inner six-year-old runs up to that camera with her cheese face on every time. And lately my six-year-old has been very pleased because my friend Ryan has photographed me for several of his art projects.



This one is called "Playing Nice With Others". Ryan took portraits of seven of his friends, and printed the images with white paint on white paper.



Then we each took a pigment-like substance and applied it to the image (which appeared as a blank page) in any way we wanted. As we applied the pigment, the image of our own faces appeared on the easel.









One person used clay slip, one used M&Ms. There was tea and Hershey's syrup, pastels, and blood oranges. Me? I used compost.





The performance was an exercise in self-expression and self-representation. The final pieces are informed by the way that each pigment was applied, and the way that each person chose to pose at the end, as their photo was taken with their revealed image. To me, my final photo says "look what I did!," which I find kind of fitting.



I rubbed compost on a blank piece of paper, and my own face appeared to me. Compost is the medium that I am represented by, and it's through my own actions that this is so. Why did I choose compost? Can one medium really represent all of my complexity? It's a simplification that seems necessary sometimes. This is me, I can be represented by a pile of decomposed vegetable waste. Hmmm.



All (truly amazing) photos courtesy of M.

Even More Sur

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!

Okay, it's a day late, but I can't be expected to post on V Day. Not when there are mushy things to do.

Here are some incredible pictures that my housemate Jaja took on our latest trip to Big Sur. The pictures are all from Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey. She took them with a manual camera and scanned them in, which I think gives them a really cool, old-fashioned, blue look.







Incredible. Can you believe that she just started taking photos this year? What an eye.

This last one was taken by my friend Lauren. It is documentation that I am officially a Californian: I did yoga on the beach. Twice. My parents will never let me live this one down.



I obviously have a bit of practicing to do (that's me on the left).

Amazing, I had to share

Yellow Oyster Mushrooms In My Mouth

Jaja and I made the oyster mushrooms with some rice that we seasoned with CA bay leaves (which are a little overwhelming). There's home-grown cilantro on top. A strange combo of tastes, and the verdict is still out on the mushrooms. But I have some shiitake and button mushrooms coming up, so we'll have to wait and see. Maybe I just don't really like oyster mushrooms.

Blooming Shrooms

My yellow oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus sp.) are "breaking!" Once the fungus colonized the straw completely, mushrooms started to form. The tiny mushrooms are called "pins" and once this happens the bag needs to be moved to a humid environment and cut open. We're using a humidity-controlled incubator. The mushrooms will get much bigger than this, so stay tuned.