Tonight! Outerlands

Tonight at Mollusk Surf Shop out by Ocean Beach, there's going to be a special art auction. A wonderful pair named Dave and Lana have been working hard to open the doors to their ocean side soup and bread restaurant called Outerlands, and they need a little help to push things through the gate. Come out and support their vision and maybe you'll go home with a new piece by Barry McGee, or Kyle Field, or Nut Russell, or Johanna St Clair, or Thomas Campbell, or someother talented young person.

I gave them a couple drawings too, and I'm totally excited to be on board. I love Dave and Lana, I love Mollusk, and I love soup. Here's a sneak preview, get your bids ready...

Max is Smart

friends over at the blog NewFlags just posted a rather long interview with Bay Area maverick and nextdoor bedroom dweller Max Goldberg...it's nice to have someone besides myself gush over that guy. read it and start weeping.

and you can read the maverick's own writing at Text of Light. He just interviewed M83, and is gearing up to interview Harmony Korine, so keep your peepers peeping.

I See Darkness

this past weekend I had the pleasure of doing some nighttime drawing by the campfire down in big sur. A little crew of us headed down for the Cluster show at the Henry Miller and ducked out just before midnight to hike up a mountain 5 miles to get to a campsite, half way to Sykes hot springs. We made it to the warm water the next day and ate franks and beans cooked in the fire at night. Can't ask for much more than that. Except for a jacuzzi in the backyard perhaps.

Hannah Weiss passed along these photos (another hotsprings photo shoot for the blog....if you missed the last one, go back in time to June 9th 2007, you'll see some sweaty dudes in a misty spring).

The Cult of Loewenthal-Libsch

Here's why people join cults...it's fun! thank you terri and jason for an inspiring wedding celebration; I will do whatever you tell me to do.

mother yod.





open the umbrella, open your heart.

secret suburb

Last weekend I visited my family in central massachusetts and had an odd experience. After getting back from eating sushi one night with my parents, I decided to walk around my little suburb as it got dark. This is always interesting because somehow it seems creepy to be out in the suburbs when it's getting to be nighttime. It's very quiet, just a bunch of sleepy houses with their little worlds all happening next door to each other. I walked up the street (my street is called Hundreds Rd, and our house is #1...I always took a lot of pride in how confusing my address was), and at the top of the hill I noticed a little wooden fence that marked a path in between two houses. I have totally walked by this spot a thousand times growing up (this is actually the spot where me and my brother would start butt-boarding down our street before we were brave enough to take the hill standing up on our skateboards), but have never gone in. Well, after all this time in California, there's one thing I can say I have truly learned, which is to go in and go deep...sooo, I stepped the fence and walked into the woods that pad all the backyards of the houses in my neighborhood. It was so funny to me to be in the woods all of a sudden, just a few steps from the block.

After a little while walking, I saw a clearing ahead. I approached with a curious step, and I came to the end of the path. I walked out of the woods, stepped over a little wooden fence and was on the sidewalk of a street in a suburban neighborhood that I had never seen before and had never even knew existed. It was like in Mario Brothers when you go through a little tunnel, the music changes, and you come out in a parallel world. Just like that. I past from the backyard of one suburb and ended up in the backyard of another, back to back, in full suburban symmetry. I broke on through to the other side, and I made the above drawing of the secret suburb, as all the bizarro houses got sleepy and quiet.

This drawing is actually in a series of drawings that I'm making called "walking drawing." Last time I was in MA I found this amazing old scrap book at a thrift store in Worcester. It was the collection of a woman named Lorraine McGuire's final secretarial projects from her time at the Katherine Gibbs School in Boston, dated 1904. It is a time capsule and I love it. I especially love the scrapbook's paper, it's my favorite drawing paper ever, so I carefully removed and set aside all the secretary projects (addressed envelopes, sales slips, letter heads...lots of amazing type), and now I have a journal that I can bring around with me for when I go for walks and have moments to pause over and make drawing snapshots. Thanks Lorraine, I think of you all the time.
here's a few older ones:

Love the Love

today, jason and terri are making the love that was already official, legal...it's a wedding! i love weddings, and this one is incredibly inspiring. Jason and Terri are going to recreate the circumstance in which they met, and get pronounced matrimoneyed on the transbay bus (filled with cooing friends) while crossing the bay bridge to the rose garden in oakland where their love buds first took root. i'm cooing already.

This celebration is quite in the spirit of their relationship, always bringing friends together in elated ways. These are some pictures I took at Terri's birthday hike last spring. amazing.





(this is a drawing I made of Frank by the rocks...I am pretty happy with the troll quality it brings out in our dear bearded frank of that time. In the photo of Frank and Nat above my little drawing, Frank is actually writing on the drawing a phrase he was singing while being drawn..."A Cardinal, Does Not Believe, That it's Heart Sinks, at the Sight of Brown Leaves" think about it.)

Peter Gabriel is an Artist

That's the first thought I had after I woke up from my few hours of red-eye sleep on the plane ride from CA to MA yesterday morning. Out the window was the first light of day, and on the little tv screen seen through the chairs in front of me was Peter G, thanks to VH1 Classic. I watched the whole Sledgehammer video soundless, between those two seats. We had a moment. And now I remember what I always knew...Peter Gabriel is an artist. Try watching this video on mute, he really tried to make something. Dear Peter, thank you for introducing me to world music in middle school, and for making woodstock '99 so heavy with your performance of Biko, love dave.

hackers

there's a new hacker in town...hannah has taught herself how to be a website maker, and she made her first website. check it out:

www.hannahhannahhannah.com

if you or anyone you know is looking to make a webplace get in touch with her, she's a new gun for hire.

Snowblink at the Fillmore: a photo essay by Hannah Barr-DiChiara

the FILLMORE

tonight, it's a big night for Snowblink, we're playing the Fillmore. It's bizarre and charming, but it's our last show for quite a little while, and we're going to be taking the big stage opening for Rogue Wave. This makes me all the more excited to be a granddad and tell my grandlittleones about the time when I held hands with the ghost of Jerry and played the tambourine.

check out some more memorabilia: