Check out these knives!

From an MIT-educated steel furniture designer who in 2003 decided to go the way of the blade, MKS handcrafts serious kitchen knives finished off with perfectly balanced handles originally manufactured for bikes. Precisely tuned for weight and control, each blade is made from one of four steel alloys chosen to suit its unique purpose, all tempered to be softer (i.e., less delicate) than their German/Japanese counterparts; the welded-on, shock-absorbing handles come in two basic types, red/green/blue injection-molded stainless steel numbers that are naturally bacteria resistant, or an uber-grippy, BMX-style rubber job for people too hardcore to fear salmonella. The cutlery lineup includes a range of chef's knives, including a 10" job with weight distributed for a centered balance point, resulting in "remarkably quick and deft" action; an 8" wide-spine boning blade "aggressively tapered" to dispatch bone and connective tissue with ease; the 8oz Mezzaluna, with a rounded blade for chopping "herbs or anything else one might throw in a bowl"; and a Deep Paring piece perfect for eviscerating garlic and de-veining shrimp, essential for avoiding the culinary faux pas of Popcorn Shrimp.

For a more personal rig, MKS'll hand make a knife to your exact specifications, including type of steel, handle, hardness, edge shape/angle, and body profile.

"Mezzaluna"

What the heck is this?

Seeing Sounds!

What a great music video! The aesthetics remind me of Arthur Dove's "Foghorn" series - perhaps it's a knock-off? (there is even a little lighthouse in the video)

Arthur Dove, Foghorns, oil on canvas, 54.6x72.4 cm., Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, anonymous gift, c. The estate of Arthur G. Dove.

The lyrics of this song also merit attention. They follow a boyfriend (I think) watching his girlfriend die of cancer. Heartbreaking but exact:

In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up,
when a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough."

He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted),
and told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear:
That there was nothing that I could do to save you,
the choir's gonna sing, and this thing is gonna kill you.
Something in my throat made my next words shake,
and something in the wires made the lightbulbs break.
There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling,
it opened up the scars that had just finished healing.
It tore apart the canyon running down your femur,
(I thougth that it was beautiful, it made me a believer.)
And as it opened I could hear you howling from your room,
but I hid out in the hall until the hurricane blew.
When I reappered and tried to give you something for the pain,
you came to hating me again and just sang your refreain:

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare.
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair,
then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying.
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying.
Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up, built the gears in your head,
now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. "Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating.

Tell me when you think that we became so unhappy,
wearing silver rings with nobody clapping.
When we moved here togehter we were so dissappointed,
sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed.
It killed me to see you getting always rejected,
but I didn't mind the things you threw, the phones I deflected.
I didn't mind you blaming me for your mistakes,
I just held you in the doorframe through all of the earthquakes.
But you packed up your clothes in that bag every night,
and I would try to grab your ankles (what a pitiful sight.)
But after over a year, I stopped trying to stop you from stomping out that door,
coming back like you always do. Well no one's gonna fix it for us, no one can.
You say that, 'No one's gonna listen, and no one understands.'

So there's no open doors and there's no way to get through,
there's no other witnesses, just us two.

There's two people living in one small room,
from your two half-families tearing at you,
two ways to tell the story (no one worries),
two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry,
two people talking inside your brain,
two people believing that I'm the one to blame,
two different voices coming out of your mouth,
while I'm too cold to care and too sick to shout.

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare.
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair,
then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying.
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying.
Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up, built the gears in your head,
now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. "Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating.

MP3: The Antlers "Two"

Sinbad

Sinbad and International Terrorism (10 Heroic Deeds), 2006

I came across these photos on an art blog that I check out from time to time. They made me bust up laughing. The photos were taken by a Russian collective called Blue Noses. Sadly, I couldn't find very much background information on their website so I'm left to wonder where were they shot? Russia? Who are the subjects? (are those white dudes?) Why cardboard?

After some pense-ing on the subject, here's what I think. Form and composition don't seem particularly important in these photographs. They seem to focus more on the drama/irony of the scene than the composition. My first instinct was, why not make this into a performance piece? It would be GREAT (I'd go).

But, perhaps it all ties together somehow...The cardboard (oh so artificial), the white people dressed as "Sinbad" the terrorist, and the snow-covered woods of Russia (?) standing in for the Middle East. All these things hint at falsehood and deception. I hope this isn't a cliché analysis, but Isee the photos as a comment on contemporary orientalism in western media which misrepresents and dramatizes the realities of the middle east.

Does that work? Anything missing?

Treasures!

Today I discovered an incredible thing in an unlikely place. Above this text is my discovery - a map of recent earthquakes in California and Nevada. "Recent" in this case means quakes that occurred anywhere from last week (yellow squares) to THE PAST HOUR (red squares). The map above has a total of 578 earthquakes on it, most of the following the infamous San Andreas Faultline which I bike over quite frequently near Stanford.

I found this handy map on craigslist's home page under "quakes" (see below). I commend them for being so quirky!

Argentine Street Art

"My hunger is your fashion. The reality is in the streets." I think the wallpaper in the back is of ex-President Carlos Menem

Ever walked the streets of Buenos Aires? Amongst imposing Parisian-styled buildings & splotches of dog poop you'll encounter stencils and graffiti all over the city's walls. "Palais de Glace" held an exhibition of that focused on Argentine street art, and you can see all the works here. The exhibition was titled "Ficus Repens" which is a "creeping/climbing fig" plant that Argentines usually refer to as "the wall lover," hence the relationship to mural/graffiti art. I've posted my favorites below...

"Bolche & Gabbana" (Bolche being a local nickname for bolsheviks)

The following are photographs of street art existing publicly and interacting with their environments as they are designed to do. This photographer literally makes the act of observation, or in many cases dismissal, of everyday art his focus and really highlights how alive, accessible and dynamic such works are.

Note the dog - they are everywhere in BA!

My town

Below is a map of Los Gatos - LG if you will. (there's a road bike route marked out on there...just ignore it). It's amazing how hard it is to decipher maps, even of the place I've lived my whole life. The spaces and images that define LG to me are replaced with a dry, lifeless grid. I suppose that explains those cartoony maps you find at diners and tourist spots (I'm sure serious cartographers despise them).

I own this

The company I Heart Guts created this faux patent leather black heart stuffy. It's a limited edition, so it was all but made just for me. The website claims he's a sad chap ("Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow with one of these sad little fellows. He’s even crying a little tear of blood"), but I find him offly quixotic. The best part - he fits so nicely in the palm of my hand.

Next time a friend winds up with a faulty pituitary gland, an irritable pineal gland or even a testy testis gland, I'm going present shopping at their website.

I served Supreme Court Justice Kennedy In-N-Out at my graduation

you can't see....but my hand is on his bum

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke at my graduation in mid June. As you can see, a group of us were lucky enough to get a picture with him. I spotted him as he stepped out of his secret service caravan and I got all worked up - I totally idolize the SC Justices. After some egging on from my friends, I walked over to him (it's amazing where adrenaline will take you) and abruptly asked for a photo. He welcomed the whole group of us into the frame, and after asking a secret service guy to take a photo for us (no way in hell) we finally got a passerby to take the pic. As we walked away, we all blurted out thank you ( I even snuck in a "good luck with your speech today" - I was getting bold and kiss-assy) and he replied, "God I miss California."

Chief Justice Earl Warren

Justice Kennedy grew up in Sacramento, CA, and as a young law clerk he ran into big time judges like Earl Warren ( Warren became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953. His Warren Court is praised by liberals *that's me!* for their progressive work regarding the legal status of racial segregation, civil rights, separation of church and state, and police arrest procedure in the United States.) After attending Stanford, the London School of Economics and Harvard Law, Kennedy practiced privately and worked as a professor at U. of the Pacific before making his way to the nation's greatest court.

He was nominated to the position by the Conservative messiah, Liberal nitwit Ronald Reagan who anticipated Kennedy's rulings to be conservative leaning. In a delicious twist not unlike that of Earl Warren, Kennedy turned out to be quite liberal in his rulings, voting to uphold abortion, expand gay rights, restrict capital punishment and erase the legality of the Guantanamo Bay detention center. He is more conservative than I make him sound (hello gun control!), but generally I think he's a strong justice working from within the rule of law.


Anyway, back to me. Justice Kennedy's speech at Stanford came just in time for me to realize that the free sunglasses that had been handed out to all of us for free (*how nice!*) had been coated with ink on the inside that left us all looking like raccoons. Despite this tragedy, the speech went on.

Kennedy encouraged the expansion of law in relatively lawless areas of the world as it can be used as a tool for freedom. Great idea, but it was pretty poorly delivered and I think a lot of the student body (ie med school students, engineers) felt excluded by the message. There were some good parts, and the following is a particularly interesting anecdote about Legally Blonde and and the first Chinese law school students:

This last fall China opened its first law school on the American model, a three year graduate program. The problem was how to select the entering class of about one hundred students from thousands of applicants. For those one hundred or so places there were thousands of highly qualified applicants, scientists and engineers, artists and humanities majors. The list was trimmed again, and then the committee decided to have interviews. One of the questions was: what inspired you to go to law school? Any number of students answered that it was a movie. Chinese students like to build their language skills by watching movies from England and the United States. So I thought, well, the movie that inspired them was "12 Angry Men," or "To Kill a Mockingbird," or "Witness for the Prosecution." Wrong answer. The movie was: "Legally Blonde."

After watching the movie and then talking to the students at the new school, we found an explanation. The movie, after graduating from a college in California, depicts a young woman who decides to go to a famed, rigorous law school in the East. She is, or so it seems at first, the very caricature of some one so frivolous and naïve that the audience cannot take her seriously. So when she goes to the law school she takes a serious risk. She must enter a new, unfamiliar, unfriendly, threatening, small universe, one formerly closed to her. These Chinese students were taking a risk like that.

The two Dakotas, and I ain't talking North and South

Who knew there were two somewhat creepy and overly-serious child stars named Dakota? We all know Dakota Fanning (if you don't, watch the Amy Poehler video below that parodies her), but I just discovered her English name-twin Dakota Blue Richards who stars as Lyra in the Golden Compass, a film based on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials book series that I've been reading. So, who's creepier? The American or the English(young)woman? Judging by the photos below, I'd go with the Yankee. What could be scarier than a 5 year-old with a sexy pout and a shoulder-baring silk toga?

Dakota Blue Richards as "Lyra" in New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass - 2007

Dakota Fanning

Duchampion

Marcel Duchamp, with rotoreliefs, a still from Hans Richter's film Dreams That Money Can Buy, 1947. Photo Arnold Eagle.

The creative act is not formed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. --Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp Fountain, 1916-17

Marcel Duchamp - "L.H.O.O.Q." - (1919) - Phonetically: "elle a chaud au cul" or "She's got a hot ass." © Museum of art Philadelphia, PA, USA - Image Copyright © 2006 Estate of Marcel Duchamp - Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

San Francisco becomes Candyland

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Candy Land (coincidentally my favorite childhood game *DING*), San Francisco's famous Lombard St was converted today into a giant boardgame. Here's the gist:

According to the Examiner, "Kids will draw from a deck of color-coated cards as big as six square feet while eco-friendly confetti and balloons drape the background." Also, "purple, yellow, blue, orange, green and red blocks" will be placed along Lombard's 575-foot-long path. "Each block will be about 14 feet long and 12 feet wide, matching the same color sequence as the usual game," Ex goes on to report.
Remember, you and your kids can watch the action go down at 10 a.m. today, but only children from UC San Francisco Children’s Hospital and the nonprofit Friends of the Children will compete. Also, at the end of the game, where Queen Princess Frostine awaits, there will be delicious cake for all. Mm. - SFist

I gotta go by this after work today...Check it out! (For more photos click here)

Today I spell checked the names of famous Bay Area artists as a task for me boss. Here are some of the neat things I came across:

Kota Ezawa "Image from History of Photography Remix," 2005, 35mm slide show (40 slides)edition of 6

Rigo 23, Sculpture on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. portraying 1968 U.S. Olympics athletes Tommie Smith (gold, #1) and John Carlos (Bronze, #3) on the Olympics winners podium delivering a Black Power salute during the playing of the US National Anthem at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. The space for #2, which was occupied by Australian sprinter (and protest supporter) Peter Norman, was left empty so that viewers could also "take a stand."

Rupert Garcia "1975, 2002" (2002) woodcut. h: 42 x w: 31.5 in / h: 106.7 x w: 80 cm

Robert Bechtle on the racks

"Watsonville Olympia," 1977. Painting by Robert Bechtle

Robert Bechtle is a photorealist born and raised in San Francisco. Although I love all of his work, this one is my favorite. I saw it first in the Tate Modern I think and was absolutely captivated. The woman is just so real (and so '70s) - there is no other way to put it. I was lucky enough to see the work again at the SFMOMA, this time in its storage racks located in the basement. It hung on a crowded, pull-out shelf next to a Jasper Johns and a Phillip Guston and seeing it in that setting was more enchanting, more special than seeing it on the museum floor. I also recently found out that Bechtle exhibited at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery, where I now work!

Check out this great video of Bechtle doing his thang: http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/videos/229

A life-size booger (and an elegant one at that!)

Marcel Wanders Dutch (Boxtel, Netherlands, 1963), Cappellini, Manufacturer(Arosio, Italy, Established 1946), Airborne Snotty Vase: Pollinosis, 2001 design object plastic

Here is a bit more on this boney-looking booger:

The piece is one of a series of five snotastic vases that can really store flowers! (check out the utilitarian sculptures here ; and a video about the making of the pieces here).

From what I can tell, each of the vases was made from an actual 3D scan of a single globule of a booger. Each of the five works were created from "models" or "patients" with one of the following diseases: coryza, influenza, ozaena, pollinosis (SFMOMA's got pollinosis!) and sinusitis.

Reactions?

I think its a killer idea - quirky yet techy. Wanders really highlights the aesthetics of science, something I have never properly considered. All in all, I never thought I'd be able to analyze the architecture of a booger and, I must say, those little buggers are pretty damn elegant. The pure white, the windswept movement - it reminds me of a ballet dancer or the petrified wood my grandparents have in their backyard or something Frank Lloyd Wright would have crafted for his living room... Cheers to the curators for this selection. It seems to fit with the theme of the exhibition (Sensate: Bodies and Design) really nicely.

The ocean sunfish, Mola mola, or common mola, is the heaviest known bony fish in the world. It has an average adult weight of 1,000 kg (2,200 lb). The species is native to tropical and temperate waters around the globe. It resembles a fish head with a tail, and its main body is flattened laterally. Sunfish can be as tall as they are long when their dorsal and ventral fins are extended.

Sunfish live on a diet that consists mainly of jellyfish, but because this diet is nutritionally poor, they consume large amounts in order to develop and maintain their great bulk. Females of the species can produce more eggs than any other known vertebrate.

Adult sunfish are vulnerable to few natural predators, but sea lions, orcas and sharks will consume them. Among humans, sunfish are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world, including Japan, the Korean peninsula and Taiwan, but sale of their flesh is banned in the European Union.

Everybody jump. jump.

Although my only roommate has moved out, there are now approximately 5-7 inhabitants of my inner sunset dungeon flat. X has been replaced by a handful of mexican jumping beans that fill the silence with incessant tick, tick....ticktickticks as they smack the walls of their clear plastic cage. I've grown quite fond of them over the past few days and decided I had to get to the bottom of their mysterious ways. The flier that accompanied their purchase was chock-full of hilarious but sadly indecipherable spanglish so I tapped into a different source - wikipedia. Below are my findings:

From Wikipedia:

A Mexican jumping bean is a phenomenon native to Mexico, where it is known as a brincador ("hopper"). Physically, Mexican jumping beans resemble small tan to brown beans. They are a type of seed in which the egg of a small moth has been laid. It is the moth's larva which makes them "jump". The beans themselves are from a shrub of the genus Sebastiania (S. palmeri or S. pavoniana), itself often referred to as the jumping bean, while the moth is a member of the genus Cydia, called a jumping bean moth.

After the egg hatches, the larva eats away the inside of the bean, making a hollow for itself. It attaches itself to the bean with many silk threads.
The larva may live for months inside the bean with varying periods of dormancy. If the larva has adequate conditions of moisture and temperature, it will live long enough to go into a pupal stage. Normally, in the spring, the moth will force its way out of the bean through a round "trap door", leaving behind the pupal casing. The small, silver and gray-colored moth will live for only a few days.
The larvae jump as a survival measure in order to protect themselves from the heat, which can cause them to dry out. The ultraviolet rays from the sun stimulate them to jump, even in cool temperatures, but leaving the beans in the sun for extended periods will dehydrate and kill them.

Maintenance — "watering" and storage of the beans
To rehydrate the beans, they need to be soaked for a three-hour period in chlorine-free water once or twice a month. The chlorine found in tap water in some locales will kill them. Alternatively, one may let chlorinated tap water stand in an uncovered glass for about six hours before using, to let the chlorine dissipate. Just spraying the beans with a little water is ineffective in maintaining the larvae's lifespan. Beans should be stored in a cool dry place, but freezing will kill them.

Source of the beans
The Mexican jumping bean (Laspeyresia Saltitans) comes from the mountains in the states of Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua; indeed, Álamos, Sonora styles itself the "Jumping Bean Capital of the World". They can be found in an area approximately 30 by 100 miles where the Sebastiana pavoniana host tree grows. During the spring, moths emerge from last year's beans and deposit their eggs on the flower of the host tree.

1847 map of Mexico

New Exhibition Faves

From September 12 through December 20, 2009, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present two exhibitions: The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography and Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea. The exhibitions give SFMOMA a chance to brag a bit about their photography collection which is coincidentally one of the best in the country. Plus, the photo curator is just so darned kind! Although I did meet her in the elevator and promptly made an ass out of myself (I got off on the wrong floor, guffawed my way back into the elevator, made small chat, proceeded to insult photography (ok just photo shoots), sheepishly exited the 'vator...)
ANYWAY The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography is all about Japan in the wake of their defeat in World War II as the Japanese sought to both forget and transcend the past:

"Plagued by extreme poverty in the 1950s, the country not only accepted the presence of their American occupiers, but admired western values such as capitalism, democracy, pop culture, and jazz. This complicated and ambiguous atmosphere transformed the traditional social structure into a new egalitarian society. This collision of worlds also provided fertile emotional ground and political material for the burgeoning photographic community. Photography was ideally suited to record and respond to this complex atmosphere. During the postwar period a culture of photography, previously addressed to amateurs, saw the evolution of an important avant-garde.

"The exhibition title is derived from a small-press photography magazine, Provoke: shiso no tame no chohatsuteki shiryo (Provoke: Provocative Resources for Thought), founded by a group of photographers and writers united in their quest for a new visual language—one with a fresh way of seeing and experiencing the world. The works on view provide a context for this incendiary movement, including work from the immediate postwar period, the Provoke movement itself, and later generations who felt the impact of it."

Here are a few of the works:

Moriyama, Daido, Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori, 1971; gelatin silver print; 7 9/16 x 11 11/16 in.; Collection SFMOMA, gift of Van Deren Coke; © Daido Moriyama

Hosoe, Eikoh, Kamaitachi #31 [Caped Kamaitachi running through field], 1968; gelatin silver print; 10 ¾ x 16 5/8 in.; Promised gift of Paul Sack to the Sack Photographic Trust; © Eikoh Hosoe

The second exhibit, Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea, features some 65 pictures, many newly acquired and on view for the first time. Enhancing the Japanese photography collection, in 2007 and 2008, SFMOMA acquired a diverse group of 50 pictures from 13 emerging photographers in China and has also added a selection of photographs from Korea.

The works in the exhibition examine the diversity of photographers working in China, Japan, and Korea. Although the photographic community in Japan blossomed in the postwar period, China, and Korea experienced this growth later and are now experiencing a renaissance in cultural expression.

A new generation of Korean photographers is beginning to make a mark on the international photography scene. With the first wave of students leaving Korea in the mid 1980s, photography reached a turning point that awakened and renewed their own cultural expression.

In China, a country whose artist population was long dormant during the Cultural Revolution, which smothered artistic production, a new interest in documentary work has revealed a passion for recording the changing face of the rapidly developing nation. After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China opened its borders to the West and outside influences rushed in. Artists, such as Zhang Huan who formed an experimental art community outside Beijing called The East Village, sought to stage a confrontation between human expression and social and political criticism, resulting in arrests for their performances. One of the fathers of the performance art movement in the 1990s, Zhang Huan’s Foam (1), 1998 refers to the memory of the performance. Photographs become the primary means of documentation for these historic and ephemeral acts .

As has been true in Japan, photography is well suited to record the rapid changes transforming the modernizing nation. Amateurs and professionals alike contrast the collision of age-old traditions and modern western culture, resulting often in remarkable, occasionally, unsettling pictures.

Here are some pickies. The foam one I have held in my very hands. I scanned it for the marketing department. All that exists of it in our records is a slide that we own the rights to (or that's how I understand it at least):

Zhang Huan, Foam (1), 1998; chromogenic print; 41 x 27 in.; Collection SFMOMA, gift of Vicki and Kent Logan; © Zhang Huan

Yan Changjiang, Outang, from the series The Three Gorges, 2006; inkjet print; 19 11/16 x 19 11/16 in.; Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund; © Yan Changjiang

Hatakeyam Naoya, Untitled, Osaka, 1998-1999; two chromographic prints on aluminum; each 35 x 71 in.; Collection SFMOMA, fractional and promised gift of anonymous donors; © Naoya Hatakeyama

Le Sandwich

I promise this whole artsy sandwich thing won't become a pattern. Actually, it might. They are so friggin cool! More at http://www.funkylunch.com/

An evening at the de Young

Here are some highlights from a late night visit to Golden Gate Park's de Young museum:

A nearly private visit to the observation deck:

Ruth Asawa - what craftsmanship! what mastery of light! what stunning forms!

Jack Levine Birmingham '63 (1963):


Andy Goldsworthy Faultline:

Kehinde Wiley

The colors duke! the colors! Ever since I first saw Kehinde Wiley's art, I've been in love. He started out working in painting but recently switched to photography (I'm quite partial to his new stuff - the contrasts really pop). Both his paintings and photographs present young African-American men in the freshest new styles amidst vibrant, antiquated patterns (check out that turquoise tie! that rubiks cube belt!). The men assume theatrical poses reminiscent of famous western paintings from the 17th-19th century. Wiley thus rewrites history by inserting his contemporary black subjects into visual positions of power that they were previously denied. At the same time, the portraits, however aesthetically pleasing, seem absurd. The models appear to be mocking the effete, flowery motions of old and reminding us that "postures of power can sometimes be seen as just that, a pose” (Art in America). Beyond merely mocking the postures and the power of old white men that haunted these scenes, I think the models do something more bold. With a perspicacious look in their eye, they cooly inform the viewer that our cultural landscape has shifted. No longer do elite white men drive society; these men, with their extravagant of-the-moment clothing, posses their own power to define our cultural trends and, to an extent, our moment in history.

Kehinde Le Roi à la Chasse (2006)

Anthony van Dyck Le Roi à la Chasse (1635 - portrait of Charles I of England)