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Posts Tagged: san francisco

artworks — No Comments
23
Feb 10

Brain implosion.

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I’m really liking this guy’s artwork. Lawrence Yang is a web geek by day, artist by night. He paints intricate, colorful pieces that mesh nature and technology, watercolor and ink, plus a whole lot of other stuff that simple words cannot articulate!

I also like his approach toward balancing work and art. He makes it sound so simple and enjoyable… as art (and work) ought to be.

A lot of the reason that I paint comes out of what I do during the day. Information architecture is this really cerebral, abstract thing so you have to think about information and how to organize and structure it for a website. I really enjoy it a lot but it really makes my head kind of implode. So usually by the time I get home my brain’s fried and I just need to relax so I’ll just sit down and paint the demons out of my head. That’s a lot of my inspiration.

What I do during the day really balances out what I do at night. I think I need to have both structure and chaos so the art is the chaos and the structure is my job and they sort of balance me out into being a normal functioning person. I think too much of one or the other would make me insane.

For more, check out his bloggy and look out for a group show coming up in March at Giant Robot SF.

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artworks — No Comments
26
Jan 10

Trash art.

ocean beach log dog

I went to Ocean Beach the other day and discovered this. You can’t tell from the pic, but the waves were ginormous that day, I swear!

Seeing this reminded me of my favorite outdoorsy, acid-trippy joint, the Albany Bulb. Originally a landfill, this place is a maze of trash art, graffiti, and architecture… like a library and a castle. Plus birds, fishies, old folks walking their dogs, and Jimbow the Hobow (who runs the library). The entire thing is actually very peaceful, in a chaotic sorta way… Nevertheless, a lot of the artwork has been dismantled throughout the years in favor of turning the area into a park.

The photos range from 2007 to 2009.

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That’s my friend Mei, kickin it with the wailing lady.

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My favorite.

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Fisherman, fish and doggie.

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The painters.

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Calm and contemplative.

artworks — No Comments
15
Jan 10

Chhom Nimol is a rock star.

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I experienced Dengue Fever on Tuesday night. It was TIGHT (literally… wall-to-wall people emanating the sweet stank of B.O. and ganj). But it was also tight in that it was like, really fuckin amazing.

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Here’s 2 tracks from their latest album, Venus on Earth.
Dengue Fever – Seeing Hands
Dengue Fever – Tiger Phone Card

The music is inspired by Cambodian rockers from the 60s, many of whom where murdered under the Khmer Rouge. Below is a track by Sin Sisamouth, a huge artist of the time.

Before I went to the show, I kinda sorta had the band members pegged as major Asian fetishizers… history stealers… Silver Lake goons who happen to make good music… etc. etc. Which, given the creepy and condescending media coverage of the music and its history (painting Zac Holtzman, bushy-bearded guy, as the creative genius of Cambodian music… and Chhom Nimol as his fairy bride) is not that unfair.

In fact, right up until they came on stage, I was plotting to write a disapproving blog essay (with PROOF) about the colonizing mentality of Dengue Fever… but I can’t anymore! I’ve been converted. It’s hard not to fall in love a tiny bit when a band’s getting down and ugly for their music. Even when they can eat you alive with their beards.

But in all seriousness, the music is important. The history — which, after all, isn’t just the past but the driving reality of the present — is important. Maybe the band’s privileges are less significant than the people it honors and reaches out to (and I’m not talking about the hipsters). I’m still trying to figure it out. I’m not Cambodian or Southeast Asian, and it’s not exactly my place to be the judge in all of this… but I was thinking about how I’d feel if say, some white guys from LA came out with music inspired by “North Korean funk from the 50s”… how would I feel? Would I see it differently? Would I be happy to connect with a part of my history that I never knew I lost? Would I be creeped out at how said white guys are becoming the keepers of that history? A little bit of both? Something else entirely?

Don’t really know the answer to those questions. I do know its hella powerful to see Chhom Nimol rocking out like it’s no one’s business, though. For now, that’ll have to do.

artworks / discussion — No Comments
15
Dec 09

Of oceanic proportions.

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Lately it’s been hella rainy.

This has gotten me thinking about water in general and the ocean in particular. I have enormous respect for it. It’s the most terrifying and humbling presence in my life… for several reasons which I will list.

I live 3 blocks from it and I’m a terrible swimmer
The recent tsunamis/typhoons that wiped out so many lives and livelihoods in the Asia Pacific.
That very real possibility of entire countries being swallowed up by it.
There’s a worldwide drinking water shortage and the ocean is the only growing body of water… yet drinking from it will kill you. Ah the terrible irony.

But I’m not even trying to be a downer. Cos as much as the ocean can destroy, it creates. Think about how much life there is down there that we haven’t even begun to grasp. We try though, and I always enjoy people who try.

So this post is dedicated to the ocean and the artwork it inspires.

The pics above and below are from Mexico’s Underwater Museum, lifted from the UK Telegraph. According to the BBC, the museum is intended to raise environmental awareness by serving as an artificial reef. Apparently tourists were trampling on and destroying the real coral reef.

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Shots from The Life Aquatic, directed by Wes Anderson. The scenery and animation are fantastic… the film itself is highly mediocre. In fact I’m only a fan cos I secretly dream of living at sea. But I digress.

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This is one of my favorite things to witness at Ocean Beach: older Asian men, fishing in rubber pants. It’s calming and reminds me of my dad, who also happens to fish. Photo minus said older Asian man.

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Isle of the Dead, made in 1883 by Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin. From Wikipedia:

Böcklin himself provided no public explanation as to the meaning of the painting, though he did describe it as “a dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door.”

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artworks / discussion — No Comments
11
Dec 09

I hate the city but I love the city.

If there’s one movie worth seeing while you’re holed up indoors for the holidays, this one’s it.

Medicine for Melancholy is directed by Barry Jenkins, who also brought us this lovely short. It’s the story of Micah and ‘Jo: 2 twenty-something black folks in SF. And I specify “black” cos in my humble opinion, this film offers complex, subtle, and truthful expressions of what it means to be a person of color in the Bay Area nowadays. Intonations of race and class, indie and gentrification, nostalgia and attraction– unfold along the steep chilly beauty of San Francisco.

I first heard about the film after stumbling upon Chinaka Hodge’s review (which is worth reading in it’s entirety, btw). Since I’m not a poet by any means, I’ll let her do some convincing:

Medicine for Melancholy is worth owning because you’re in it. I swear. Me too. This is the first time that I’ve seen an image of someone like me on film, and not in the simple representational TV One sort of way. Not like how my chest swells a bit when Jada takes a good role. And that feeling is nice, don’t get me wrong, satisfying. But what’s at work here is a different kind of sorcery. Micah and Jo are two of the most complex black characters I’ve seen on screen. I’m intentional about qualifying them as black characters because I think the genius of the film is the pronunciation of how spectacular and mundane it is to be a twenty something person of color, in our age and geographic area. Micah and Jo are the people I chills with: reserved and brooding, hilarious under our breath, telling jokes about Carter G. Woodson on the way to indy shows.

I mean, if you know me, you know that I’m all about my Saturday afternoon Blackbusters, but what a special, charmed thing to see a film bereft of absentee fathers, great debates, spelling bees, basketball teams and princely robes. Micah and Jo don’t do that much on screen — in a way that makes me feel vindicated, because if the routines of Jerry and Elaine and Vince and Turtle and Rachel and Ross are entertaining and important, why not the kinds of isht we go through? Aren’t our subtle tensions and conversations at the toll booth and clumsy mornings-after the types of human interactions that change audiences, even in the slightest?

Oh yea, and the cinematography is effin’ beautiful. Check it out.

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