Engineer's Daughter

chicago 2008

Wednesday:
-mental soundtrack ---> Nick Cave
-My love for the El never ceases. 
-Chicago: even more Obama-crazy than the Bay Area.  Suited me just fine.
-Wicker Park window shopping.
-A very minor mix-up at the fabulous Wicker Park Inn landed me in my own suite complete with kitchen and fully-stocked fridge.  Super-handy!
-Cheddar melt on pumpernickel and shaved Granny Smith apple salad + Apple Ephemere ale + blackberry and blueberry crostata with sweet corn ice cream + wild berry mead at Hot Chocolate.
-Low's unspeakably gorgeous music echoing through the rafters of the Epiphany Episcopal Church, courtesy of the Empty Bottle.  Religious experience indeed.

Thursday:
-mental soundtrack ---> Vampire Weekend
-Sunrise over Lake Michigan.
-The drive from Chicago to Holland, Michigan, where I spent many many childhood summers.
-Cousin Kristy and sons Sean and Tim, Aunt Tedda, Grandma on her 94th birthday (perking right along!), Uncle Dave, Chuck the supercat.
-Standing with my feet in Lake Michigan pretty much in exactly the same place I stood 30 years ago.
-A Snickering Sailor at Captain Sundae.
-Riding that sugar rush all the way back to Chicago.
-Raw squash salad + yellow curry rice noodles + rice and mushroom slider + lemon tart + coconut water and lime sake cocktail at Mana Food Bar.
-Epic psych-rock in Czech from Plastic People of the Universe at the Hideout.
-Stumbling across 826 Chicago on the walk home.

Friday:
-mental soundtrack ---> Tom Waits
-Hardcore space nerd geekout at the Adler Planetarium's "Shoot for the Moon" exhibit which had the actual Gemini XII on display along with a ton of stuff from Jim Lovell's personal collection, including mission flight manuals, patches, letters and the Omega watch he wore in space.  So freakin' awesome.
-Chilling out at 12th Street Beach afterward on a lovely late summer/early fall day.
-Eggs Florentine at Yolk.
-A wander around Wrigleyville on a game day afternoon, admiring the architecture in general and especially the straight-out-of-London block of Alta Vista Terrace.
-A pile of 45s from Reckless Records.
-Puff pastry filled with mushrooms, seasonal vegetables and cream on a bed of lentils + rose water and pear cocktail + creme brulee + 2 glasses of complimentary dessert wine at Cafe Matou.
-Beautiful Losers at the Gene Siskel Film Center with a great conversation with director Aaron Rose afterward.  The film has its flaws, but overall I was tremendously inspired by it and got all weepy during the Margaret Kilgallen parts.  I'm newly motivated to get one of her trees tattooed on my back, as well as some of her leaves on my wrist if the tree goes well.
-Neil Hamburger telling the worst jokes in the world to hilarious effect and singing a few terrible country tunes for good measure at Schubas.

Saturday:
-mental soundtrack ---> LCD Soundsystem
-Getting all weak in the knees in the "Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Art and Photography of Paris" exhibit at the Art Institute.  Brassaï and André Kertész too, oh my.  Also spectacular: 500 years of cultural artifacts (most of them looted by the British) in "Benin: Royal Arts of a West African Kingdom", and turn-of-the-century architectural illustrations galore in "Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago".
-Fish and chips + Bloody Mary at The Gage.
-West Loop art crawl:
*Silkscreens on copper by Cristina Iglesias and a model for an underground light spa by Josiah McElheny at Donald Young.
*Conrad Freiburg's playful interactive installations (part Joseph Cornell, part Rube Goldberg) at Linda Warren.
*Black history, alchemy and astronomy come together in Rashid Johnson's installations at moniquemeloche.
*My favorite: The "Angles in America" show at Rhona Hoffman featuring geometry-inspired art from the likes of Gordon Matta-Clark (his Tree Dance is featured) and others.
*Robert Colescott crosses Toulouse-Lautrec with the African-American experience in his paintings at G.R. N'Namdi.
-Elderberry and grapefruit cocktail + five-course tasting menu at Green Zebra: carmelized onion (yes I ate it and didn't die from allergies) stuffed with wild rice, cheddar and mushrooms on mesclun salad + smoked tomato soup + grilled abalone mushroom with a cornbread madeleine and berries + homemade fettucine with mushrooms, acorn squash and brussel sprouts in a cider reduction + apple-stuffed beignets with a scoop of vanilla malt ice cream. 
-Political theater succeeds in being both topical and a surprisingly good time in TimeLine's production of Gore Vidal's 1968 play Weekend.
-Oh how I love walking home through a warm night with a huge half-moon hanging low on the horizon.

Sunday:
-mental soundtrack ---> Andrew Bird
-Just this quote from the first page of Saša Stanišić's incredible How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, which was the book I carried with me this week and might well be my novel of the year this year:

On the morning of the day when he was to die in the evening, Grandpa Slavko made me a magic wand from a stick and said: there's magic in that hat and wand.  If you wear the hat and wave the wand you'll be the most powerful magician in the non-aligned states.  You'll be able to revolutionize all sorts of things, just as long as they're in line with Tito's ideas and the Statutes of the Communist League of Yugoslavia.
    I doubted the magic, but I never doubted my grandpa.  The most valuable gift of all is invention, imagination is your greatest wealth.  Remember that, Aleksandar, said Grandpa very gravely as he put the hat on my head, you remember that and imagine the world better than it is.  He handed me the magic wand, and I doubted nothing anymore.

attack of the scouse spider

I should be composing public service announcements and/or packing right at this very moment, but instead I'm writing about a giant mechanical spider named La Princesse that appeared in Liverpool earlier this month as part of the programs for the city's year as European Capital of Culture.  Manufactured by François Delarozière and the mad French geniuses at La Machine, La Princesse thoroughly enchanted Lyn Gardner during the creature's short weekend in town:

The charity Anxiety UK, representing arachnophobics, expressed concerns about the wisdom of exposing the people of Liverpool to such a terrifying spectacle, and some others got shirty about the cost, but what is impossible to measure is the contribution to the national index of happiness created by this giddy piece of free street theatre, which for many Liverpudlians will be their only exposure to the Capital of Culture programme.

I adore the idea of the huge arachnid interacting with Liverpool's architecture and inviting residents to imagine their city in a new way.  And of course I'm dying to know how Delarozière made it work:

This is his first spider, and its appearance is part of the city's capital of culture celebrations. Even on this dreary, rain-soaked Friday evening, many more will have seen the spider than the nearby Playhouse will be able to accommodate for the entire run of Pete Postlewaite's upcoming King Lear. La Princesse is a big girl, weighing 37 tonnes, and a marvel of engineering. She has 50 hydraulic axes of movement, took a year to build, and trundles along the road at two miles an hour.

It seriously sounds like Survival Research Labs crossed with Jules Verne.  Phil Hogan went to La Machine's workshop in Nantes, France, to get a preview of La Princesse before she was unveiled to Liverpool:

I go and watch the spider from a distance, the better to marvel at its finely graded movements - the product of Delarozière's forensic study of the way spiders express themselves, translated into God knows how many permutations of hand-worked hydraulics. Through half-closed eyes the spider seems besieged by little people. If this were a movie, they'd be trying to subdue it with pitchforks.

Liverpool still has a number of Capital of Culture events on the horizon before 2008 is up, including the aforementioned production of King Lear as well as an exhibition of work by Chinese art and architecture superstar Ai Weiwei, and you can find full coverage here.  They're going to have a hard time beating the spider though.

figurehead

Winold Reiss, Harlem at Night, c.1924 (USA).  I love this image, with its haphazardly leaning buildings and cool young things out for a night on the town.  And of course that cat at the top really sells it for me too.  Reiss was actually as white as white could be but throughout his life was committed to portraying in his art the broad range of ethnic diversity in America.  You can see more of his work here, and I recommend checking it out for his gorgeous Art Deco pieces alone.

As for me, I'm off to Chicago to go live it up myself for a few days, and I'll have a full report when I get back.  I'm also taking a day to drive over to Holland, Michigan, to see my grandmother on her 94th birthday.  She's recovering from some recent heart trouble, so any extra good energy you have to spare for her would be very much appreciated.

goldsmiths art at dius

I was already aware of Goldsmiths, the well-known creative college of the University of London whose alumni include Vivienne Westwood, Sam Taylor-Wood, Lucian Freud, Steven McQueen and Damien Hirst.  However, I just learned today that the British government possesses a relatively new branch called the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, or DIUS, which is responsible for pretty much what it sounds like it would be.  The two organizations were recently brought together when Goldsmiths students were invited to display "contemporary and challenging artwork" like Seth Pick's painting Trunk at right in the DIUS offices.  Anthea Lipsett talked to DIUS for the Guardian:

Delyth Morgan, the students' minister, said: "It's not because we are the department for universities, we asked because we want to have in our space and working environment, some work that will challenge us and help to make us think.
    "Governments aren't always seen as particularly creative but we do believe we have a role to play in creating the right kind of environment for artists to thrive."

Former San Francisco supervisor Matt Gonzalez was famous for letting his office in City Hall double as an art gallery, and even though I'm not in government it's been scientifically proven that I work more creatively and happily when I have every available inch of my surrounding wall space plastered with reproductions.  The Goldsmiths art better work its magic on the DIUS ministers quick though; it's coming down next Monday already after only having been up for three weeks.

show 96

playlist

duality of humanity

I remember losing patience with Shepard Fairey for a little while, just about the time when the first issue of his magazine Swindle came out back in 2004.  Hipster irony had swallowed up the cleverness of his early street art, and even though his design sense was still killing me it felt like he was just dialing it in.  But then came the Make Art Not War poster as well as all the overtly political work he's been pumping out recently (like that iconic image of Obama I so adore), and I am firmly back on the bus.  I was not surprised when I walked up to White Walls tonight for the opening of his new show Duality of Humanity to find a line around the block, as this particular collection of work seems tailor-made for the Bay Area.  Inside the Obama posters and copies of Fairey's new book E Pluribus Venom were selling like hotcakes, attendees were taking turns having their picture taken in front of the giant painting that gives the show its title, and the artist himself was manning the DJ decks, playing party favorites like Fugazi and Public Enemy and (to my delight) gleefully singing along.  The art totally hits my sweet spot too.  Appropriating images and design from pop culture and propaganda posters alike and using a strong palette that often remains restricted to black and shades of red, Fairey has recently been printing and painting directly over collaged backgrounds that give his pieces an incredible texture reminiscent of Middle-Eastern tilework.  By making art equal parts beautiful and brittle it is as if he wants to remind us the fight is nowhere near over yet.  But hope is in the air, as is the smell of wheat paste.

And I almost forgot!  I'm DJing tomorrow:
3 - 6pm PST, Sunday, September 14
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

welcome all

I figured there was no way I was going to blag my way into the sold out Hanif Kureishi reading tonight, so instead I hobbled from work up to Hackett-Freedman Gallery for the opening of Frank Lobdell's show The Dance Series 1969–1972.  The large-format paintings on display are absolutely breathtaking, created by Lobdell at a time when he was still trying to exorcise the experience of fighting in World War II and simultaneously making a strong anti-war statement against Vietnam.  Abstracted (but still recognizably human) figures stamp and flail against color-field backgrounds that sometimes seem to be tinged with blood, and I saw the references to Picasso's Guernica and the ecstatic "dance of death" that Lobdell has cited as among his influences.  The reception itself was quite a swanky affair, complete with attendance by vice presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez.  I can't help it, I still have a major crush on him.

From Union Square it was a mere short BART ride to the Mission and the opening of the Welcome All show at Needles & Pens, featuring photographs by Andrew Martin Scott and Geoffrey Ellis.  One wall of the gallery is covered in a beautifully-composed grid of half-frame images, each of which has been partnered with a corresponding photo.  The pictures themselves nicely capture the melancholy ephemera of slightly-run-down modern urban life, with all of its peeling signs, bicycle bumpers and spray-painted sidewalk stencils.  Inspiring stuff for a girl who always has her digital camera in her back pocket.

behind the last closed door

The first dead human body I ever encountered was that of my classmate Don, who collapsed while playing basketball from a previously undetected heart ailment when we were both in 8th grade.  At his service his open coffin was situated directly inside the front door of the chapel, so there was no way not to walk right past it.  I still remember the trauma of being confronted with his waxy-looking face and hands, and I sure didn't look for long.  Death has never been something I've been particularly good at dealing with, but societal evidence points to the fact that I'm not the only one.  The burial and cremation industries have a host of techniques to keep our minds off the natural process of decay, and I've always found most of the set dressing unspeakably tacky.  But photographer Laura Rhiannon Peters, who currently has a show of pictures taken behind-the-scenes at funeral parlors and mortuaries up at the Light House Gallery in Wolverhampton, England, spoke to Chris Arnot about her appreciation for the people who work with our dead:

"No matter how many bodies they deal with, undertakers always show respect, blending into the background at funerals," Peters maintains. As if to emphasise their lack of obtrusiveness, one of her shots is of two almost ghostly figures reflected in the gleaming rear window of a hearse – almost the last closed door.

One of the most striking images to me is a close-up of the scratches left by coffins being slid onto a crematorium's altar, a seemingly mundane detail that carries real emotional weight.  Just for the record, when I die I want to be cremated and placed in a niche at Oakland's Chapel of the Chimes.  Then every solstice people will come and play music for me.

a single moment

My toe is definitely on the mend, but it was a good night nonetheless to pile the kitties on top of me and pop in a DVD, in this case my first-ever viewing of Monster's Ball.  I had completely forgotten Heath Ledger is in it, and actually his and Mos Def's relatively minor characters were my favorites.  But the center story of the relationship that develops between Billy Bob Thornton's corrections officer and Halle Berry's waitress is pretty sweet as well, and to me was less a message about overcoming racism than about working through the damage we carry.  Sure there was some trite dialogue, but director Marc Forster (who also has done Stranger Than Fiction, Finding Neverland and mmm hmmm Quantum of Solace) skillfully emphasizes the subtle moments in which everything can change.  I also appreciated the humanity granted to the death row inmate played by Sean Combs, a man punished for his worst moment.  A meditation on our prison system's policy of judgment and incarceration instead of rehabilitation could have been a whole movie all on its own.

queens of egypt at monaco's grimaldi forum

This morning I point you to some tantalizing images from the (expensive) exhibition Queens of Egypt that just closed at Monaco's Grimaldi Forum.  The show focused on a topic near to my heart, the role of women in ancient Egypt, especially those who held positions of power.  Grégoire Allix talked with curator Christine Ziegler, formerly of the Louvre's Egyptian antiquities department, who attempted to balance scholarship with accessibility in the exhibition to highlight what we know about these intriguing women:

She believes that women enjoyed an unusual position in ancient Egypt. "Monogamy was the rule for ordinary subjects. Women... were allowed to work, own property and bequeath it, and they could be priestesses." But royalty was a masculine preserve. Only a very few, like Hatshepsut or Cleopatra, succeeded in rising to the rank of pharaoh and ruling in their own name.

I was obsessed with Hatshepsut when I was a little girl, and of course Cleopatra has fascinated authors and artists alike for centuries with her famous sensuality, so awesomely portrayed recently by Lyndsey Marshal in HBO's Rome.  I love the queens' depictions in the ancient art as well, so powerfully serene.  I think I might need to pop into the Art Institute's Egyptian galleries when I'm in Chicago next week...