Travel Day Included Modern Art In SF With Granddaughter

The northbound trains into San Francisco on weekends, don't go beyond Bayshore.  Then you switch to a bus that takes you the rest of the way to CalTrain Station.  (Not sure what the people going to the South San Francisco stop were supposed to do.)

From there we hoofed it to the Museum of Modern Art to meet our son and nieta.  The nieto wasn't feeling too good, so he stayed home with his mom.  But I do like this museum a lot.  We didn't stay too long - a 2year old's patience in a place full of things you can't touch is limited.  And we had to pick up our stuff and then get back down to BART and to SFO. 

But here are a couple of pictures from the museum.  

Ron Mueck is one of the more challenging artists.  I'd never seen his work in person, but somewhere on this blog I've linked to his super real giant sized human figures.  This was only a head, not even that much.  A face.  Three feet or so from chin to scalp.  The guy in the back with the ladder and the police officer on the far right are also sculptures.  They're both by Duane Hanson.  

This one, by Chuck Close, is interesting because when you step back it's something very different.  

       

 

Some other 'classic' modern artists:  Calder

And Warhol:

And here's a view of downtown SF from one of the museums great windows.

 I have to mention the joy of standing on the platform at the BART station and hearing a beautiful

soulful rendition of YellowBrick Road, followed by Sittin at the Dock of the Bay.

Our benefactor was the man behind the pillar at the right of the photo.  Thanks again.  A wonderful way to wait for the train.

Our flight left SFO about 35 minutes late. 

The pilot said he'd made up some time, but he also said we're going to land at some remote spot on the tarmac and be shuttled by bus to the terminal.  There were a few folks with tight connections and he asked that they be allowed to get off first.  Well, the few quickly became an endless line of people until those in front - we were in row 8 - had enough and started getting up.  We had a close ferry connection, but we waited.  It turned out not to matter.  We were among the last people on the first bus, which meant we were at the door and among the first to get off.  They dropped us off where you can either catch the trains to S or N, walk to B, C, or D, or go out to baggage.  With the delays, we got to the ferry at 8:09.  It left without us at 8:10pm.  I'm not a happy camper.  This winter I've been good at fighting off various bugs, but a cough has settled in my chest in the last few days.  So waiting 50 minutes in the chilly terminal for the next ferry wasn't a pleasure.  Anyway, I'm working on this as we ferry across and had some clam chowder to soothe my cough a bit.  

Miscellaneous Notes - Rams' Male Cheerleaders, Peter's "Nights At The Brazen Huskey" and Travel Shots

1.  Rams' Cheerleaders - An LA Times story this morning highlighted Quinten Peron  and Napoleon Jinnies, the NFL's first two male cheerleaders, and next Sunday, the first two male cheerleaders in the Super Bowl.

"Last March, during open cheerleading tryouts, Peron and Jinnies showed up out of nowhere.
Peron is a professional dancer and choreographer who got the idea while watching a Lakers game.
“I’m looking down at the Laker Girls and I thought, ‘Why can’t I do this?’ ” he said.
Jinnies is a professional dancer and makeup artist who got the idea from friends dancing alongside him during a Disneyland show.
“We were just casually talking about auditions and I thought, ‘Why not just show up?’ ” he said.
In the Rams’ two previous seasons since their return to Los Angeles, no males had tried to make the cheerleading team. But there has never been a rule against it.
“He came home one day and said he was trying out for the Rams cheerleaders and I’m like, ‘They’ll let you do that?’ ” said Peron’s mother, Sherry. “He said, ‘It doesn’t say I can’t.’ So I said, ‘Go for it!’ ”
The men drew long looks when they showed up among 300 or so hopefuls, but their dancing and interviewing skills quickly won over Rams officials and their future teammates.
'They’re not just incredible men, they’re incredible people,” said Sarah
Scheade, one of the team’s five captains. “We thought it would be so special if they could represent our city.'”

I tried to find video of them performing - this one seemed to have the most of that, though not enough.  Also, its ad can be skipped after 4 seconds.




The Rams cheerleaders is not a topic I ever thought I'd post about.  In the big scheme of things, this is not a that big a deal - say like climate change or the Mueller investigation - but it sounds like these two have already become role models for many young male dancers.


2.  Nights at the Brazen Huskey
You can read Chapter 1 of Peter Dunlap-Shohl's new graphic novel "Nights at the Brazen Huskey" at
this Frozen Grin website.  Peter's previous book was his incredible adventure story of dealing with the villain PD (Parkinson's Disease.)













3.  SF-Seattle Shots - Mt Rainer Still Stands And The Sun Still Sets




After taking our grandson to pre-school yesterday, we headed for BART and the SFO airport to get back to Seattle for more time with our granddaughter here.  We flew out over Oakland.

That's Lake Merritt (the upper body of water.





And Mt Rainier still towers over the Washington landscape.

Here are two shots of downtown Seattle - one from the plane as it circled around to land from the north - and one from the ferry.  If you look closely at the aerial view, you can see the dock with two ferries about the middle on the right, and the ferris wheel a little below it.  (You may have to double click to enlarge and sharpen the image.)


From the ferry, the ferris wheel is pretty obvious.  I'm not happy about the reflected lights in the ferry window, but couldn't angle my way around them.  But this picture shows more of downtown to compare to the aerial photo.
The long gray line along the waterfront is the Alaskan Way viaduct - a highway that is being torn down 'early 2019'.  It's being replaced by a tunnel which will be open for people to walk in this Saturday.  Tickets are available online for free for the two mile walk.  From Engineering News-Record (ENR) Northwest:

"Seattle residents will get the opportunity to celebrate their new tunnel Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 2-3, and get one last chance to check out the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which will be fully removed in the coming months.
Washington State Dept. of Transportation has spent years leading the effort to build the nearly 2-mile-long State Route 99 tunnel under downtown Seattle and erase the need for the viaduct, considered seismically vulnerable. Now, on the eve of the tunnel opening to vehicle traffic, WSDOT has an entire weekend of festivities planned.
Saturday includes an 8K fun run, tunnel walk, family-friendly STEM activities and a community celebration and art festival on the viaduct. Sunday features a bike ride through the tunnel. Some events require tickets."

From the air again, looking straight west, from the water's edge out toward the Olympic range, it was looking out any time in the last ten thousand years - no sign of modern life at all.

And at the end of the ferry ride, we were welcomed by a fiery red sunset.  I tried to catch it with my iPhone camera, but it came out pale compared to the real thing.  (I know how I could have gotten it more accurately on my little Canon Powershot, but not on the iPhone.)  But I got it back closer to what it really looked like using iPhoto, though it was more red than orange.

Venice Boardwalk - High Surf, Skateboarding, T-Shirts, Scooters, And A Macaw

It was a warmer, but hazier day and the recent rains seem to have stirred up the surf.

I'm not sure how high this surf was, but the people are closer (to the camera) and higher than the base of the wave, so it was a good size wave.

And then it crashed into the rocks.  There aren't a lot of rocks along this part of the beach, but they made for some dramatic splashing.

This was near the skateboard park.

We talked to this guy - Ryan.  He and three brothers, he said, had started their own clothing company.  He's the youngest.


You can see what they sell at Havet Clothing.





Back to the Boardwalk

Where to one side people were filming.  TV?  Movie?  Commercial?  Don't know.  It's a pretty busy shot, but if you look carefully, you can see a camera on the left.  There were also a couple of big screens for the lighting.  But they're not in the picture.  They seemed to be focused on the guy on the merry-go-round horse,

A guy was finger-painting, so to speak, high above us.  Is that going to be an accordion?

And on we walked  by a T-shirt shop.  If you click the image you can see the shirts better.

Those are scooters he's holding and was riding. They're ones he found that need to be recharged.  He collects them, takes them home, recharges them, and gets paid, I think he said $5 for each one.  We saw another guy riding about five scooters.  This is another piece of the scooter boom story.


And finally, before we headed home, we came across this magnificent blue macaw sitting on a railing with his caregiver.

Mar Vista Wall Art

I Biked over to the Mar Vista post office yesterday and there was a surprising number of murals on the way.  

@madsteez or his website

Philsantosart

Pink Riches

@Poetrylane

It's cool that artists can tag their work now and you can find them easily online.  Unfortunately I wasn't paying enough attention when I took the pictures and I didn't get all their links.

Hockney Pool Painting - One Of My Favorites - Sells For $90 Million

When I took a computer art class with Prof. Mariano Gonzales at the University of Alaska Anchorage years ago, I realized on the first day, that everyone else in the class was a real artist.  Mariano tried to reassure me.  He said that all the others began with a different medium - water colors, oils, etc. - and had to adapt it to the computer.  I was coming to this fresh, with the computer as my first medium.

At the end of the class, we had to copy a masterpiece.  Simply duplicate it completely digitally.  I started to panic.  First I thought of doing a Mondrian.  For example.  At first that seemed like a copout, but when I looked at some of his paintings closely, I understood that they were much more subtle than I first realized - lots of subtle shades blended.

So I picked out one of my very favorite pictures - David Hockney's “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures).”   It has the feel of the chaparral hills that I knew so well growing up in Los Angeles.  It has a sparkling swimming pool.  And a man in a salmon colored jacket by the side of the pool and another man swimming.  Except for the people and the vegetation on the hillside in the background, it's pretty angular.  Or so I thought.  

Image from larger LA Times photo

 I had to recreate it from scratch.  I think in that class we were using Corel Draw.  It's amazing how much of a picture you don't see until you really, really look at it.  

But I managed to get a reasonable copy of the picture - at least for someone who didn't know the picture well.  

It was good enough that Mariano has told me that he showed students in later classes - an example of what someone who is not an artist did.  I'd show you my version, but my copy is on an old disk that doesn't fit any current computer I have.  And I'd show the copy I have hanging in the garage.  Except we're with family for Thanksgiving out of state.  And our house sitter isn't technologically savvy enough to take a picture of it and send it.  

But here's a picture from the LA Times article from the auction the other day where it went for $90 million.  I don't think that's a particularly good thing - monetizing art like that.  But that is several more blog posts.  For now, it's important because this is a picture I love and know fairly well. There are some arrangements where the artist gets a percentage of future appreciation of their work.  But I don't think this one is likely to be covered.  It was sold long ago.  

Here's a link to the whole LA Times story.

Unsettled - A Baker's Right To Not Bake For A Gay Wedding

I've combined two topics in the title - but it seems to fit today's US Supreme Court decision.  But I did stop at the Anchorage Museum today and saw the Unsettled exhibit, which the Museum's website begins describing this way:

"Unsettled amasses 200 artworks by 80 artists living and/or working in a super-region we call the Greater West, a geographic area that stretches from Alaska to Patagonia, and from Australia to the American West. Though ranging across thousands of miles, this region shares many similarities: vast expanses of open land, rich natural resources, diverse indigenous peoples, colonialism, and the ongoing conflicts that inevitably arise when these factors coexist. . ."

The exhibit was POWERFUL with lots of interesting exhibits and I want to post about it more.  But I did want to give you a preview now as a way of showing the wide range of this show.  This first is from Sitka artist Nicholas Galinin, called THINGS ARE LOOKING NATIVE, NATIVE'S LOOKING WHITER.  This is merely a reproduction of it on the elephant sized elevator at the museum.  He had several other works that work striking that I'll put up later.

Below is Bolivian Sonia Falcone's Campo de Color

I don't ever recall an olfactory art piece in a museum before.  Here's Bruno Fazzolari's Unsettled scent.

As you can see, this was the only art piece in the exhibit that you were allowed to touch.  It wasn't bad.  You can buy it at the museum gift shop (the only art work in the exhibit you can buy) or for those of you not in Anchorage, at Fazzolari's website.

Did he name the scent for the exhibit, or did it get in because of the name?

Truly, there was something there to interest everyone.  Chris Burden's All The Submarines In The United States of America had model submarines suspended in the air.  There was a list of all their numbers and names on the wall, and notebook with a brief description of each.  It was opened to the page which included the USS Thresher.







Rodney Graham's Paradoxical Western Scene looked like a photograph (it wasn't) and the setting in Yosemite Valley with El Capitan in the background was definitely eye-catching.  And different from everything else.  You might even tempt the kids by telling them there's a chocolate room.

I'll add more from the exhibit in another post, but I wanted to get Anchorage folks' attention so they head down to the museum to catch this before it leaves in September.

The advantage for me of having an annual membership at the museum is when I'm downtown, I can take a break and spend time looking at one part of the museum without thinking about the $18 admission price each time.  Though it's only $15 for Alaskans, $12 for seniors, and $9 for kids.  Still that's steep for an hour visit to look at one section only.  And for members, there's a machine to scan your card and go in without having to stop at the front desk.  But remember to take a quarter for the lockers for you bulky stuff - but you get it back when you pick your stuff up.   So, with an annual membership, I can make many short trips to look at small portions of the museum without thinking about the cost.  For those who want to see this exhibit and not pay a big chunk of change - the museum is free on First Fridays (of the month) from 6-9 pm.

You can see more images from the exhibit at the link.



Well that doesn't leave much room for MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMM’N, which is ok, since I haven't had time to read the whole opinion.  Conflicts between two protected rights is always tricky.  While I have posted about the issue of artists (photographers and wedding cake makers) and same-sex marriages and sided with the couples in the past, I could also see the baker's point of not wanting to help make something as critical as the cake for a gay wedding, if his religious beliefs truly found such weddings sinful.   I also didn't think it likely that too many same-sex couples would want anti-gay marriage businesses involved in their weddings anyway.  That post, by the way, looked at an argument that was comparing those situations with whether a kosher baker could refuse to cater to serve ham.   The case was chosen, if I recall correctly, to make a point, but I never thought it was the best case and apparently and 7-2 majority of the court didn't either and from what I understand, the decision very narrowly is focused on this particular baker and the particular decision by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

So, it would seem, the issue is still unsettled, as I say in the title.

Moose's Teeth and Denali Patterns

I read in my cloud  spotter's guide yesterday that Alfred Stieglitz was the first professional photographer to take pictures of clouds, not just as part of a landscape, but as abstract art.  I guess that encouraged me to follow my druthers as we drove through the park today.  Today's clouds, for the most part, were one mass of grayish haze that the sun tried to burn through now and then, but that also included intermittent rain and snow.   This first one is the mountain above Savage River.

Another snowy landscape.

Snow/Ice on the side of the road.

More formations in ice and snow and dirt as the plowed snow on the side of the road melts and sublimates.

Rocks below the ripples of Sanctuary River from the bridge.

OK, time to get more representational.

A view from the road.

Another view from the road, in an area that had less snow cover.

A magpie flies across Sanctuary River.  At this point a car stopped and a woman asked if anything was moving.  I said, "Just a magpie and the water."  She said, "I love the magpies."  I said, "I see them at home everyday so they aren't that special."  She said she was from North Carolina so she never sees them."  "You're right," I said.  "They are really beautiful birds."  And they are with their striking black and white patterns and their dark colors that turn green and blue in the right light.

But here are much better magpie pics from  my front steps and here in my back yard.  The magpie made it across the river.  A number of years ago my daughter and I watched, at this same spot, a mother moose with a very young calf cross the river.  But the calf couldn't make it up the snow bank on the other side.  The mom tried to push it up, but after a while it got tired and the current carried if off down the river.  It was real life nature.  The mom climbed the bank and wandered off.  No one to to comfort her and I know she had to have feelings about this.  But someone down the river was in for a tasty treat.  The natural world is harsh, which  is why civilization, in its best meaning, is important and worth striving to keep alive and improving.


And while I was hoping to see some caribou today, again we only saw moose, which we can see in our on front yard.   But again, they are still magnificent and fascinating to watch.  Here's last year's calf (I think).

And her mom.  I've labeled this picture "Moose's Teeth" which has a little more meaning for Anchorage visitors.  Moose's Tooth is the most popular place for pizza and beer in Anchorage and also the name of a  peak in the Alaska Range.  She was with the calf eating on the side of the road just a mile or two from the visitor's center.  The elevation is lower here and there isn't as much snow and the vegetation is a little closer to greening.