May 14, 2012

I took a road trip this weekend to the Vajrapani Buddhist institute which is nestled deep in the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains. My friend Ben is the head chef there and he gave us a tour of the grounds. In the main meditation hall was this amazingly detailed Mandala sand painting created by Tibetan monks. As is traditional with these works, it will soon be destroyed as a gesture of the impermanent nature of all things in the world. Today, I’m conscious of the impermanence of my California surroundings because tomorrow, I return to New York.

May 3, 2012

I’m completely stuffed. Today, as my last day at CCA, I took my Experimentation class on a walk through the Mission district stopping at five different Mexican restaurants to compare and contrast tacos. The five restaurants we went to were El Metate, El Farolito, Vallarta, Guadalajara and Cancún. At the end of the crawl, we took a vote for the best taco in the Mission and El Metate won by a landslide. We ended the evening in style by having ice cream at Bi-rite. ¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

May 1, 2012

It’s May day today which means there are Occupy marches, strikes, teach-ins and walk-outs happening all over the country. In line with the day, I’m posting a couple of images that I took yesterday of student work from my last project in my identity class here at CCA. The project called for the students to design a global Occupy symbol and apply it to a flag, picket posters and a concept of a ‘graphic occuparion’. As of now, Occupy is still using the black panther fist as their symbol, which while always a classic, is kinda dated. Credits from top to bottom: Kaitlin Hooper, Jeff Hunt, Chris Griffin and Kelly Kusumoto.

April 28, 2012

Last night I went to Yoshi’s to see the great Havana D’Primera. They rocked the spot even with an unfortunate sound system. They’ll be in town through Sunday as part of their first time ever Miami, New York and San Francisco US tour. “Religioso no es aquel que le hace daño a la gente. Religioso es el que ayuda y dice verdad de frente…vengo mojao con agua de Yemaya!”

April 26, 2012

Pablo A. Medina, Nolan Jones and Chris McLean will be exhibiting recent work inspired by themes and aesthetics in and around the Mission district. This will be a one night only show on Wednesday, May 9th from 6-10 pm. Art, food, drinks and Brazilian beats will be in the house.

As a visiting artist at CCA, Pablo A. Medina has been documenting the many colorful hand painted signs in and around the Mission District. These signs have been the primary aesthetic influence for a project that he’s developed called “Ruminations,” which are a series of small paintings that use chosen Mission signage as templates for composition, color and lettering styles. As content for the paintings, Pablo pulls from his daily journals, sharing his emotional processes with the viewers.

April 24, 2012

About 15 minutes ago, I was riding to CCA from the 111 Minna gallery and bumped into this amazing mural created by Brian Barneclo. It’s a massive 24,000 square feet (approximately 40 feel tall by 1,000 feet wide) with a theme of communication and universal interconnectedness. On another note, I had just met with the folks at 111 Minna to discuss our three-man, one night only exhibition called “Mission on Minna” which will be on May 9th from 6-10 pm. The artists showing will be Nolan Jones, Chris McLean and myself. Art related to and inspired by the Mission district, sliders, drinks and a dj spinning brazilian beats will all be on the agenda for the night.

April 18, 2012

As a visiting artist at CCA, Pablo A. Medina has been documenting the many colorful hand painted signs in and around the Mission District. These signs have been the primary aesthetic influence for a project that he’s developed called “Ruminations,” which are a series of small paintings that use chosen Mission signage as templates for composition, color and lettering styles. As content for the paintings, Pablo pulls from his daily journals, exposing his sometimes painful and other times whimsical emotional processes to the viewer. During his lecture on Thursday, he will be discussing the paintings and the process of aligning internal emotional investigation with external art-making.

Culture is Design. Design is Culture.

Thursday, April 19th

6:30 pm, reception. 7pm, lecture.

Timken Auditorium

California College of the Arts.

April 16, 2012

I went to my first Giants game yesterday and midway through the fourth inning, it dawned on me that all of the players were wearing the same number 42. For a second I had a surreal moment, thinking I was in the midst of a René Magritte-esque baseball dream where all the players were the exact same person. Then it dawned on me that it was Jackie Robinson day and all the players and coaches for all MLB games were wearing Jackie’s number in honor of him. The game itself was a classic, low scoring, National League style pitcher’s duel. It couldn’t have been a sunnier day.

April 11, 2012

Just had breakfast at a café on Noe Street and fell upon this postcard for an exhibition at the SOMArts Cultural Center called I Am Crime: Art on the Edge of Law. The postcard uses my font Marquee that I designed back in 2001. A font sighting is always a nice way to start the day.

April 8, 2012

As promised, here’s the time-lapse video for the lettering installation that we worked on in my Experimentation class. Thanks, Ryan Luse for the editing.