Cottage Art

Hanging on the walls of our cottage on Martha's Vineyard were three nautically themed pictures by unknown artists that I particularly liked. Here they are.

New Poem Series Poem #3

2000 or 2001

once when I was
living back home
with my mother
as a grad student I

reached in the fridge
around lunchtime
pulled out a bowl
covered in tinfoil

made myself
what I thought
was an egg salad
sandwich

only to realize when I
sat down to eat that I’d
accidentally made myself
a potato salad sandwich

image source is here

The San Francisco Art Book Fair

I went down to Minnesota Street Project over the weekend (along with thousands of astonishingly young, astonishingly hip people) to check out the first ever San Francisco Art Book Fair. New York and LA have had art book fairs for years, but somehow SF never did have one before--a omission which has now been rectified. Loads of cool independent artists, zine-makers, book-makers, book-sellers, museums, and publishers (including my fine employer Chronicle Books) were tabling their wares for an eager public. It did my heart good to see that there is so much love and enthusiasm for art books in this here town. People love to talk about how culture in San Francisco is going to hell in a hand basket, but this was a nice example of a instance where it's most certainly not.

A few of my favorite finds, below, included the books and prints of Victoria Reynolds at Ampersand and Tauba Auerbach's enormous pop-up book 2,3 (which I made some random dude stick his hand next to for scale) at Park Life.

Her Infinite Variety

There is nothing in this world that inspires me towards whole-hearted living and creative audacity a fraction as much as this kid. For instance: all four of these photos were taken in the space of a couple of hours.

Holiday Adventure

Mabel and the two darlings I probably photograph her with most often.

"Collected" at Pier 24 Photography

The current show, Collected, at Pier 24 Photography is pretty phenomenal. As a reminder, Pier 24 is a beautiful enormous gallery (more like a small museum, really) that "provides a quiet, contemplative environment for viewing photographic works"--I've found that, although it is always FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, most San Franciscans don't seem to know about it, or know it is for them. Perhaps the fact that you have to book a reservation ahead of time puts people off, though lord knows folks will happily do that for the privilege of slapping down cash at restaurants. Anyway. The show is rad. If you're local, check it out.

Above: William Eggleston

Irving Penn's portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe

Consuelo Kanaga's portraits of Annie Mae Merriweather

Diane Arbus

Rineke Dijkstra

Florent Mazzoleni

Elena Dorfman

Mickalene Thomas

Todd Hido

Todd Hido

Robert Mapplethorpe's portrait of Patti Smith

John Baldessari

John Baldessari

Joel Sternfeld

Erica Deeman

Garry Winogrand

Hiroshi Sugimoto

New Poetry Series, Poem #2

October 2010

sitting on the sofa
at two in the morning
nursing the baby and
watching the windows

of the buildings
across the street
noting lights left on
and speculating

who’s home
who’s awake
like a really boring
version of Rear Window

while the animal warmth
and weight of the baby
rests in my arms and
she contentedly feeds

her toasty skin
her hair like fluff
her eyebrows
and peony-bud fists

this sleep-bleared thing
that feels like tedium
will later reveal itself
to have been happiness

A Few More Highlights from ICON9

Here are just a few more fun things from the ICON Illustration Conference I attended the other week. Getting to hang out with loads of my favorite authors was a highlight for sure. How hot it was (99 degrees by lunchtime) was not. Like, seriously, even the sky in Austin looks hot.

The Lobster Rolls

One of the great wonderful things I did on Martha's Vineyard was eat lobster rolls. Seven of them, to be exact, in a three-week period. The mayonnaise-based cold lobster salad type is more common there, I found, and very delicious, but the hot version with drawn butter remains my favorite. Here they all are, in all their glory.

Legion of Honor

In this photo Mabel sits on the stone balustrade outside San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum. It is a loose recreation of a photo of me sitting on this same balustrade as child, although I was much smaller--even almost a baby--in mine.