love, Oakland

Yesterday was a perfect, balmy day in Oakland, cerulean skies with nary a streak of cloud and a nearly full moon rising come twilight, natch. I took the opportunity to bike solo style through the Highland, Glenview, and Fruitvale districts, in search of cool gardens (it was part of an organized, free Bay-Friendly Garden Tour).

As I rode down Foothill, I must have passed a half dozen fleets of "paletas"- those pushcarts you see up and down the boulevard. If you want a cool and refreshing snack, slam on your brakes, pull over yonder, and order a bag of freshly cut-up watermelon, mangos, strawberries, cantalope, jicama, cucumbers, pineapple, papaya, cactus fruit, and coconut. They'll squeeze fresh limes on it, sprinkle salt, and as much chili powder as you want. They'll give you a bamboo skewer to poke the pieces out of the ziplock bag. Most carts also offer super delish steamed corn on a stick, rolled in mayo and then heavily flocked with grated cheese and another hit of the chili powder. But yesterday I wasn't about that. I just cruised in the sun, getting nutbrown and shining of face, riding up strangers' driveways to look at their backyards and to talk native plants, or listening to the corner gab about the MacArthur Maze collapse. (People were actually screeching up to the corner and marveling about the melted road phenomenon to folks just waiting at the taco truck for their burritos). I found a house not six blocks from here with a huge beautiful garden replete with artichokes, pineapple guava trees, and flock of beautiful chickens. Chickens! Buddyray asked how many eggs they got a day, and the host gardeners said five- one from each hen, which sent BR reeling.

Thus, in tribute, I went downstairs to the garage today and reprinted this linoblock, in loving tribute to my home for the past 19 years.

10th anniversary poster in progress

Ish not quite done yet, dearies...plus my scanner can only handle papers 8.5 x 11 (the poster is actually 8.5 x 17) so you're getting a mighty truncated view of the finished poster. Two color linoblocks, good old Panatone Yellow and something called Dutch Pepper (!) inks.

The poop on the actual Moekestra show is:

MOE!KESTRA! 10th Anniversary Show
10 years of orchestrated cacophony
THE LAB
2948 16th Street @ Capp Street
San Francisco, California
$10
May 25th, 2007, 8PM

tigers happen

Worked intensely over the weekend to do three new linoblocks— two of them as illustrations for a cd package.
everything is still a work-in-progress, but I sort of like these three pranksters, named after Vicky the Bassplayer's song, because sometimes it is true, tigers do happen. they just do.

I also have a sign language block (do re mi) and a decorative Ex Libris block coming up, as soon as I get onto the press.

the ear catches the eye

This Thursday, at the Luggage Store Gallery. My first time helping out with electronic arts. Please, God, don't let me trip and fall on the millions of cords and cables and break my neck. On a more cultural note, Buddyray's spinning disks are beautiful beyond belief.

On a somewhat related tangent, BR and I hustled over to Mills in the pouring down rain last Sunday to see the Partch Assemble performance and were treated to two sets of loopy, drunken compositions on the just intonation scale. Somehow magical, dreamy, sad, and very human all at the same time. The cloud chambers were great. The diamond marimba was great. The man standing on a stool to play the tall marimba which skewed all perception so he looked like a midget was totally totally great.