February 21, 2012

A student recommended the beautifully designed book “Infinite City,” It’s a book of maps and stories relating to the culture and history of San Francisco. Above is an image of a map of the Mission District, the neighborhood where I’m staying. The Mission is primarily a Mexican neighborhood, so the cartographer took license and drew the southern border of the Mission to follow the border between the US and Mexico. “Communities are made by people who go through the same situations. They bond through the same struggles. It’s about the people you grow up with and the place in which you feel comfortable…I kinda want to be here forever, in the Mission. It’s sunny sometimes, the warmest place in the city…” –ESLA, age 19, City College student, born to Mexican nationals. Thanks for the tip Amy Compeau. On another note, this past weekend, I ventured outside of San Francisco for the first time and went to a Buddhist meditation retreat in the Los Altos Hills mountains. The abundance of beauty here is astounding.

February 16th, 2012

Just got back from a pleasant and relaxing afternoon of art viewing at SFMOMA. The museum is in downtown San Francisco and it’s called the MOMA, which both remind me of New York, so I couldn’t help missing my hometown a bit. I saw most of the work at the museum and was most attracted to an installation piece by the artist Mauricio Ancalmo. I’ll admit to being a bit of a sensationalist and what drew me to this piece was how quickly it grabbed my attention. The installation is composed of an old 16mm film projector attached to a record player that when turning, spins the projector so that the image sweeps around the dark room in circles around the viewers. As if the physical quality of the piece wasn’t sensational enough, it’s theme adds to the sensation. The title of the piece is ‘A Lover’s Discourse.’ The work’s hypnotic and dizzying whirling motion is supposed to be symbolic of the cyclical ‘push-pull’ dynamic of a romantic relationship. Here’s where I felt a bit of a disconnect. The meaning of the piece and the formal quality of the piece didn’t line up for me. The motion of the spinning projector was whimsical and playful. It brought smiles to people’s faces. The projector embodied personality since it would start and stop spinning seemingly when it felt like it. To get to the bottom of these symbols and theories it’s usually best to speak to the artist directly and have a first hand and down-to-earth explanation of it because the placard description just didn’t do it justice. Whether the piece made sense or not, it brought a smile to my face by flirting with my child-like subconscious. Well done Mauricio.

February 16, 2012

This is Man Ee Wong’s book design from my Experimentation class here at CCA. It’s a hand made, hard bound, vertically formatted book that documents the ‘making of’ her QR sculpture. The 40+ page book that uses a french fold binding technique is titled ‘one’ because the QR project was the first of the semester. It was also supposed to be the first in a series of three books, but the other two books were scrapped in favor of working on another experimental project.

February 15, 2012

I’ve been hearing a lot about this brand SanFranPsycho from my students and last night, I bumped into their truck. I especially liked the hand-painted, helvetica look and the black and orange color palette. SanFranPsycho is a t-shirt apparel and surf lifestyle brand. The truck drives around San Francisco and holds live t-shirt screen printing events. It’s like a taco truck but for t-shirts. I wonder if there is any way I can wrangle myself a golden gate tee?

February 12, 2012

Here’s another lettering painting that I did this weekend loosely based on the Grand Mission sign on…you guessed it…Mission St.

February 11, 2012

As I explore San Francisco, I periodically come across these urban artifacts and aesthetics that define the visual culture of neighborhoods. I literally tripped over this gem. It’s a ‘Day of the Dead’ tree covering that appears up and down Valencia St.

February 9, 2012

Here’s a quick sampling of sneakers of some kids at CCA. Cosmin, a graphic design student, told me that the Vans originals are a CCA favorite and Miwa loves her funked out Chuck Ts. My personal favorites are Carlos’ ‘Jordan Ones’ which have white pinstripes for when he was on the White Sox. I’ve been pretty busy gearing up for a bi-coastal assignment with my students here in SF and Parsons students from Aaron Brashear’s Print Design class in NYC. I’ll dedicate a post just for that next week. In the meantime, I’m gonna get back to designing a poster for my lecture here at CCA on April 19th.

February 5, 2012

I did a meditation this morning at the Saraha Buddhist Center. It’s a small temple in the Mission on 17th Street  about two blocks from my apartment. The people there were friendly  and the teacher Gen Kelsang Chöma, gave me a quick explanation of the difference between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism. Mahayana being the larger of the two traditions and Theravada being the older and more conservative. At Saraha, they practice the former.

February 4, 2012

This is predominantly an art and design blog, but from time to time, I will post about other forms of culture and since I’m blogging about my experiences here in San Francisco, I thought this was appropriate. Last night, I went to ODC, this great dance school about two blocks from my apartment. I spent four hours getting my rueda de casino (Cuban salsa) groove on. ¡Ahi na’ma!

February 3, 2012

Here’s the first lettering painting that I did today here in San Francisco. It’s loosely based on the above photo of signage on Mission Street. The words in the painting were randomly chosen from my journal. There will be many more to come. My plan is to do one every Friday for the next couple of months. I’d like to have ten done by May. Working at CCA during the sunset was a pleasure.