Any time is a really, really good time for a gigantic batch of Jamaican Jerk Chicken, especially chilly summers in San Francisco. Here, your rude lesson.
Remember to go heavy on the gold of Jamaica.
Serve by taking a f’**k and try and be tender with them.
Nile is amazing.
For example, we’ve been talking about this stained glass window that she was to make for me for years and years, as it simmered and stewed in the backs of our minds, and just when the lady is full tilt ahead with nursing duties and shop duties and music projects and on and on, she goes and whips this business out in her free evening time over at Cradle of the Sun. It is so bright and juicy in real life, I can’t begin to show it off here. Plus the diamond center of the diamond center throws rainbows all over the room. R.I.P. Michael, girl. Y E S. It is.
Thanks so, so much to everyone who’s lent their hands, backs, and words of support to the new shop space. We’ve had such a great turn out each Saturday, in addition to nights, lunch breaks, and times between, which really makes all the difference.
It is such a thrill to be able to build a place with all our friends. I think we’re finally reaching the stage where the daily work is no longer so yucky and tedious, and is more significant and awesome. We’re getting there….
Thanks + Love!
I can totally see this drum circle in my mind now, and Wowsa, if ever there was a good reason for a perpetual drum circle in my mind, it would have to be lesbians in formation around fancy purple turbines, doing their part to preserve the well-being of flying creatures whilst infusing their special energy into the power grid.
Thank you, thank you Wendo. And thank you Salem who found this first. Now where is this farm, exactly?
Erin Elder is a super rad friend of mine who does archivist and activist work with commune building, land use, and art practice. She also gave me the best kitchen sink haircut I’ve ever received, which I’ve since lamentably butchered. Indeed my new tiny, tiny bangs that have been kind of bringing me down these past few days. That is, until Erin shared with me her excellent new blog project called Red Legacy. What a trove of information! And it’s only beginning….I’d like to offer up the new Gravel & Gold as the site of ALLOY 2009. Maybe the conference will serve as reason enough to bring her back to us after she’s through schooling Colorado.
The Perfect Rocker, crafted by Espenet aka Arthur Carpenter. Walnut, 1970. Oh Yeah.
Happy Birthday to my gorgeous mama Lee. She’s top right, looking satisfied, squirrelly, and sporty-on-the-go, surrounded by her parents, sister, and brothers in what looks to be my aunt’s kitchen sometime in the mid-eighties. I hope you have just such a day today, Mama.
The “Families” logotype was designed by Herb Lubalin, via Hi + Low, and it clearly served as some sort of stylistic inspiration for this Christmas card set up.
I’ve been researching tile lately, which generally leads me to Heath. I took a tour of their factory over in Sausalito recently—photos and terrific anecdotes to come.
But today I was led to Jan Vormann’s brilliant lego integration called Dispatchwork.
Would it be wrong to lay actual legos as tile? Rather like the old superglue a penny to the sidewalk, watch the greedy fellows try to pry it off gag.
Just what I’ve been trying to explain lately: Slightly wrong Egyptian, bombastic, rainbow, mama lion, geometry, Deco/Marimekko, chalice, rudimentary however complex, eyeball, imprudent, unjustifiable enthusiasm. All accomplished already by Augustin Lesage, long long ago.
The Egyptian Harvest, 1928
A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World, 1923
And I cannot believe their size! Why O why only the French Wikipedia? My near-constant Goog-411ing seems to be doing zilch toward improving automatic translation capabilities….
Images courtesy shawna-bo-bonna, and my tip-off came from 2 or 3 Things. For the record, I was not experienced and indeed blown away.
Sam Maloof has passed.
He was a rare specimen, admired by Ronald Reagan, Rene Russo & very much by me.
From the LA Times: “His business card always said ‘woodworker.’
‘I like the word,’ he once said, his eyes brightening behind large, owl-eyed glass frames. ‘It’s an honest word.’
Dearest Friends and Friendly Supporters of the shop,
We are very, very pleased to let you all know that Gravel & Gold has found a new home in the Mission. At the end of this month, we will be shutting our doors on Treat Street and dismantling our teeny-tiny space so that we can start moving to our new location on 21st Street @ Lexington.
We’ve taken over the storefront you may have visited in the guise of Minnie Wilde—it is much larger, light-filled, and just a half a block down from Valencia Street, right next door to Serrano’s Pizza (have mercy). We are so excited to have the opportunity to expand the goods in the shop, show more art, lounge more comfortably, try on vintage dresses in an actual trying on room, readily supply tea + snacks, and offer more workshops, more music, and community building exercises (aka parties), which are the best. But before we go, we’d like to wring one last, very excellent party out of the old spot. Therefore, come
We will be offering lots of items at a great discount, from furniture to fixtures, though you can rest assured that many of your favorite standbys will still be available in the next location. However this may be your one chance to find discontinued stripey shirts on sale.
All hail stripes, and The Weekend Starts Here, via RECTO + VERSO.
Thank you all so much for your support of the store this past year. It has been a terrific adventure. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible this Thursday and on down the line at the new spot.
Big Love to all,
Nile, Lisa & Cass
Quilts, of course, are composed of tiny parts that make a spectacular whole. And when you think about it, so are mathematical theorems. But it took Elaine Krajenke Ellison to figure out that tiny quilted parts could express rainbow-colored mathematical expressions while also being just plain awesome. Shown here are but a few of her Mathematical Quilts, and I’ve included her explanations beneath each one.
Clifford Torus – This work stems from work in the late 1800’s. The image of the torus results from projecting a sphere into the fourth dimension. Pioneering work on this topic was done by Thomas Banchoff at Brown University. His work, Beyond The Third Dimension was an inspiration to me, so I quilted his discovery!
Mascheroni’s Cardioid – Mascheroni constructions are compass only constructions. In 1797, Lorenzo Mascheroni proved that all constructions can be done with a moveable compass alone. (One must imagine that two points determine a straight line). Napoleon was so fascinated with Mascheroni’s work, that he had the mathematician teach his French mathematicians and generals.
Sierpinkskis Triangle – Waclaw Sierpinski, 1882-1969, was a Polish mathematician that was very interested in patterns, including Pythagorean triples. This triangle, a fractal, was found on the floor of a church in Anagni, Italy. This oldest fractal dates to 1104. It is said that this fractal, named after Sierpinski, is the first fractal in the fractal alphabet. The quilt is owned by the London Science Museum.
The Wheel of Theodorus* - Theodorus of Cyrene participated in the Cyrenaic school of moral philosophy. He tutored Plato and was a Pythagorean. His lifetime spans 465 to 398 B.C. During this time period the Greeks just started using written numerals. Further, the concept of the irrational number developed around this time. This quilt starts with an isosceles right triangle with sides 1, 1, and the square root of 2.
*Also note that the quilter/author appears to be wearing a sweatshirt quilted with her Sierpinkskis Triangle design.
Meet Judy. We met today at Discount Builders Supply, both of us after shelving.
Judy has eight one-color outfits in her wardrobe: pink, green, sage, blue, orchid, periwinkle, white, and this, the yellow. I do not know how the green differs from the sage, but I go with it, accepting the clarification that orchid is a form of orange, however the orange lipstick does not go with the orchid ensemble. Obviously.
Each morning, Judy wakes up and decides which color to go with, and then wears that one color head to toe, jewelry, socks, and all. What’s really amazing about her whole approach, visuals aside, is the emphasis on streamlining. When I first spied Judy, I right away assumed that she had an enormous clothing collection, that this incredible outfit was the result of a vast amassment, a tantalizing glimpse. But no. She explained that the eight monochromatic outfits were all the clothing she owned and that she rotated them one at a time. The reasoning being that, “Monochrome makes life simpler.” I admire this reasoning, so often found only among goths and icy city-folk of the black persuasion, and I’m so pleased that the day we met was a yellow one.
Stoke out. Sara’s final MFA show is tomorrow night at the Berkeley Art Museum. The opening reception will run from 5:30 to 8:30pm, with Kater Murch on bass, and the show will be up through June 21st.
I’m into the high-top moc these days.
On the right, the black one is from Quoddy, an incredible handmade moccasin outfit out of Maine. While not exactly custom—that is, they make them in standard sizes—each pair is made upon order. I chose the black Ring Boot with a crepe sole for urban adventuring and mine took about 6 weeks to reach my PO Box. You can check out a factory tour of their premises over at All Plaidout.
To the left, the tan one is from the Rose Bowl. It has a single bottom construction, but it’s made of stiff, hardy leather, made to last. I really love the tooling detail along the edges. I imagine choosing this pair for casual rural shuffling.
Back from my “research” trip to LA and its tremendous, sprawling Rose Bowl flea market.
I go down there and it’s super Santa Ana hot, tall palms, teenagers swimming at the beach in their full blue jeans, Maseratis valet parked at the outdoor Korean barbecue joint, toenails, Deco fonts, swimming pools, clean automobiles, crawdaddy boils in Silverlake with the fellas all slim preppy chic & groomed-smelling, all in the same pair of boat shoes, the ladies suspiciously hair-free—
and I think to myself this is California and I wear the appropriate T-shirt. Though I couldn’t help behaving, I suspect, a smidge on the side of inappropriate (nobody wants to see their delicious shellfish smile at them prior to consumption).
But then I make it back to San Francisco and I know that it’s not the California from the movies, nor even the one Joni’s singing about, but for me, it’s the place that makes me feel the feelings I first learned from her song and I’m happy to be home.
With apologies to Ms. Mitchell for the still photo that someone chose to represent this video clip. It wasn’t me, girl. And if it’s any consolation, your dress still looks awfully fetching and I’d like to have one just like it myself.
Tomorrow night, New Langton Arts will be hosting an opening for In Between the Outside-In, an installation by Pae White featuring the bombastic ceramics collection of our dear friend Joe Meade.
Last year, Pae did a residency at the For-Site Foundation up in Nevada City, where she made a three-dimensional scan of the landscape, including an 800 year-old massive oak tree, a wild raspberry bush, and the manzanita grove growing on the property. She also had the opportunity to meet and befriend lovely Joe, who helps to keep the place going.
For her show at New Langton, Pae will be examining the act of collecting and nature of collections. She has taken the scans she collected during her time at For-Site and worked them into a morphing animation that will be projected in a chamber along with reflected and refracted light, so that viewers are immersed in an environment that seems immediate and familiar, yet beyond their touch. Then also, Joe’s very tactile collection of functional studio ceramic—culled thrift stores, flea markets, and from well-known artist—will be there, with each piece telling its own story of value, aesthetic, lineage, and function, while, for the first time, the collection as a whole will make its statement.
I can’t wait to be there.
The opening will run from 7 to 10.
New Langton Arts is located at 1246 Folsom Street, between 8th and 9th Street.
