Limantour…

Our copy of Bay Nature arrived recently and it included an article by Jon Carroll “In the Third Kind of Fog.” (He is our favorite columnist from the San Francisco Chronicle). Carroll’s article was about the types of fog at Point Reyes National Seashore and we set off today to experience it in all its goopy glory. Drat, it was the most beautiful, sun-shiny day in our history of visiting the shore. Not really drat…but still I do not think we have ever been there when there was sun and we hadn’t been to the Limantour spit of sand since Terry was in law school…what is that? forty years?.

We started at Point Reyes Station for a brunch at the Pine Cone Diner (“Good Food, Prickly Service”). Imagine if you were the waitress having to live up to that job description!

Unfortunately, Cowgirl Creamery was on vacation, but Bovine Bakery was open for sustenance for the evening’s meal. I love this bakery because of its ceramic bovine mosaics on the wall.

Off we went down the crooked road to Limantour. At the highest point of the road we could look out and see all the way to the Farallon Islands. So clear we could see forever.

We walked through marsh and sand, grass and seaweed, bird and wave.

 

Well, Hello, Dahlia…

When Joyce visited me last summer she told me stories of her Dahlias, a flower with which I was not very familiar. Then I started to notice them everywhere and last weekend I got to see them in place in her beautiful garden. And, yes, Dahlias do enjoy smiling for the camera! Very photogenic I’d say…

Joyce had a concrete bird bath she wanted to mosaic to go amongst the dahlias. She invited me to come visit and help with the process. I was glad to participate in the effort, such hospitality at their house! You should envision us in the kitchen applying tile and sparkly glitz to this concrete (as in heavy) shape with wafting piano music from the living room as John played his grand piano. Can’t get much better than that! We made quite a dent in the project. (The red area is all that is left to be covered with tile.) The surface is painted with RedGuard so moisture does not make the tile pop off from the back during use. Part of our time was spent trying to find bonderizer (as it is called in Northern California.) In Southern California all there is available is RedGuard. We had to visit multiple tile stores and backrooms filled with great deals to figure this out. As if that was a hardship! (My suitcase came home with more tile than I flew there with…who does that, anyway??) Soon this will be all covered and get grouted. We think we will do a video conference call on our iPhones so that I can walk them through the grouting process when it is time. I think the birdies there are going to like the bath and that the Dahlias are going to smile even more! Beautiful garden…

iPhone Photo Friday…

A San Francisco Thursday

It is hard for me to believe, but in my first year of retirement I may have been over to San Francisco more times than in the ten years previously. Something about freedom that makes you move…Yesterday was another excursion over to catch the Impressionist Exhibit at the deYoung Museum before it closes on Sept. 6. Woke up to the fact this week that I was going to miss it if I did not jump. I think half of San Francisco also realized that, because there were crowds everywhere.

Crowds to get on the bridge

Please note, this is an iPhone picture without post-processing, significant in the color of the sky. Big Note: no FOG!

Crowds to get off the freeway (construction on Fell St. backed everything up).

and crowds in the museum where you were not allowed to take pictures inside the Impressionist Exhibit…

So, I took what shots I could get a good vantage point of (with no one standing in front of me) and which thrilled me to see. There was Joan Brown’s Noel and Bob, 1964. Lush color and texture and great face on Noel (plus anything with a dog…)

and the other side of my psych that likes images that represent the simplicity of Asian Art was fed, too. (The murals by Piazzoni, The Sea, 1931, that were saved from the old library that is now the Asian Art Museum):

Then, as we waited for our appointed hour to get into the main show, I found a small gallery that swept me away—photos and grids, photos and grids, photos and grids, tra la…

Ed Ruscha and Los Angeles parking lots:

Even Dodger Stadium and Ruscha’s Every Building on The Sunset Strip, 1966, accordion book:

The only text is the street numbers of the buildings.

The grid of  forty-six photos on the wall taken in Iceland by Olafur Eliasson, The River-raft Series, 2000. Does repetition make it a mosaic?

and a collection of found everyday objects by Nigel Poor, “Found” Project, 1998.

A David Hockney photocollage of Luncheon at the British Embassy, Tokyo, February 16, 1983.

A panoramic view of San Francisco by Mark Klett and Michael Lundgren, 2004,

There was a lot in this small gallery to absorb. Note to self: try more black and whites and get into that panoramic mode!

After fighting the crowds, things took a definite up-swing when we found a new restaurant for a late, ravenous lunch that may have had the best pizza, evah…

Pizzette 211 at 211 23rd Street

The desert and frosting on the cake were the mosaic murals we passed on the facade of a school when we walked on 23rd Street from the restaurant back to our car.

“Art, art, I want you. Art you make it pretty hard not to.” (don’t miss this Youtube video)

A black and white using the RetroCamera app. Now all I have to do is find a large wall that is empty so that it can take twenty framed photos!

August/visit…

Great Friends

My old and dear friend, (we are not chronologically old, it is just that we have known each other since fourth grade-oops could that be more than fifty years??? Well, don’t tell anybody and do not use the word vintage in our ear shot) Joyce, and her husband, John, came to visit last week. We had a wonderful time catching up and laughing about times past. Two years ago we also had lunch together in Sausalito and spent the morning, that visit, in the Overstock room at Heath Ceramics choosing tile so I could make them a garden sphere. I finally finished it and they took it home with them this trip.

Here it is:

I made my own garden sphere a few years ago and had fun with the iPhone altering its image into a silver mirror ball…

and making an advertisement…

I must say that I am glad that my technique has evolved. If you look closely at the pieces of the mosaic, the early pieces are much more free-form because I had not discovered my new secret weapon. Through all the murals I did with my students, here, back when I was teaching, and the early pieces I did for my own garden, the tiles were whacked with a hammer very randomly. But, in between I did this

I helped my neighbor, Laurie, install a bathroom floor in her new construction. (Boots, her new kitty just thought he should be on display, he is not a mosaic cat.) This photo is before baseboards, but shows the absolutely beautiful 12″ x 24″ porcelain tile. My new tool of choice is a large score and snap tile cutter that I can also cut really small pieces with. Sometimes I don’t even score but just snap against the raised area and it is really quick and clean. Of course it is another tool to store (just ask the man I am married to) but I learned a long time ago from Norm on  “This Old House”, that you always need the right tool and this seems to be the right one. Only the times when my fingers slipped from around the end of the handle as I snapped did I doubt that this was the right tool.

Here are instructions for making the sphere and here is a source of supplies at the Institute of Mosaic Art.

In the canyon…

Saturday morning we were drawn to the area around the PGE building in San Francisco in hopes of peregrine falcon sightings. To be honest, if we had seen some aerial acrobatics, neither the iphone or our Canon would have caught them on camera, but we went over to the city with happy hearts because the fledglings seem to be doing so much better this year than they did last. On Saturday, only one was left to fledge (she finally did it Monday evening about 6:45. Here is the You Tube. It is about five minutes into the clip) and one had been returned to the nest box because she had landed on the ground. All we really saw was the tips of wings flapping on the thirty-third floor ledge and one parent perched at about the same level on a building a few blocks down. Just a dot even with the binocs. There I was looking up, and my interest quickly turned to the geometric shapes of the buildings, and the iphone came out of my pocket.

The canyon:

We walked around blocks looking for where the juvies might be perched. The parents will still be making sure they are fed over the next few weeks. So Terry kept his eye open for falcons and, typically, I started looking for art.

I liked this triangular-shaped building and the reflections of clouds in the buildings around it.

As we kept walking around blocks, we passed the Rincon Building. It is one of my favorite buildings in San Francisco. Historic preservation/adaptive reuse at its finest. We haven’t been to Yank Sing for dim sum in ten years, but at one time it was one of our favorite places to go with our kids for special occasions. It is an old post office building with the original WPA murals (frescos) depicting California history. Attached, now, is commercial space with many restaurants. The frescos:

Conquistadors

Gold!

Intercontinental railroad

And as we walked out the other side of the building, I found a mosaic in the shape of a spire.

I can prove that I was successful in finding art,

Store window

and leaving my heart…

(Chicago has its cows, New Mexico its ponies, and S.F. its hearts…) All the walking made us hungry just as we got near to the Ferry Building and the farmer’s market. This called for a break.

Ferry Building Plaza

Ferry Building

The place was packed. Long lines for Blue Bottle Coffee and restrooms. Could hardly see the wares at Heath Ceramics and The Gardener, so we grabbed a quick take out at Out The Door (the fast grab for The Slanted Door, a restaurant well worth the trip if you are ever in S.F.) We found a bench on the outside of the building and shared our cartons (chicken salad and pork buns/ arguably the best ever) with this as our view, looking toward Oakland.

It can’t get much better than that…

On his way to work Monday morning, Terry got off BART a couple of stops early to walk through the canyon again. From his email to me:

“I stopped by the PG&E building and saw the juvenile males on the roof of the PG&E building and two adults flying near the building. I did not connect with any fledge watchers but did talk to a guy who works in the building across the street from the PG&E building. He told me a story about going out on the roof of that building and standing within a few feet of one of the adult peregrines before beating a hasty retreat.” Peregrine watch is fun, and might be better than Facebook for social interaction, eh, eh…