Tuesday, November 30, 2010

bounty

Awhile back I walked to my neighborhood bank to do my banking and noticed an amazing collection of humble buds all across the safeway parking lot. I cupped my hand and filled my cup, and I've been drawing this collection of flowers in their fading for the past two months. It's a nice morning activity. Some of these will be for an album design project I'm doing for my friend Eli, and one will be a gift to my friend Joyce.




Wednesday, November 24, 2010

News from the Ranch

here's a drawing I made the morning of my friends drew and sarah's wedding at Walker Creek Ranch. it was a wild few nights...some of their friends are really good at partying, I did my best to keep up.

and also, today Vicky Gannon (of Art Practical and other fine publications), put up her first part of a two articles on the Art21 blog about a person named david wilson who I happen to be. I discovered Art21 (a PBS art documentary series) in high school and it was my earliest awareness of Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen, so it holds a special place in my heart and I'm honored to have Vicky write such thoughtful things for their audience. part two comes out in the next few days or so. happy thanksgiving buddies.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Sumi Ink Children

I thought I'd take the opportunity of this nice rainy saturday evening to look through and share some photographs of a wild day at school a couple weeks back....I teach an art class at an elementary school and I'm always looking for new ways to freak kids out (and inevitably get one-upped by the true freak masters). This time it came from an offer from a parent who works in printing to create a blow up print of any image I might be interested in using for a class. I thought about what would be cool to do with this proposition and the first thing that came to mind was the drawings that come out of the drawing sessions that are held by my dear friends Luke and Sarah and the SUMI INK CLUB. They offer brushes and ink and a very generous spirit and create collaborative drawings on paper and walls and windows and and ceilings and buildings and everywhere. It's amazing and I love them. I got this idea that if I had a large print of one of their collaborative drawings (which tend to be all black and white), me and the little ones could spend a whole day just cruising on color and responding to all the secrets and hidden faces and shapes and stories that exist inside one of their pictures.

It was rad, the kids went hard. this is what it looked like:












ps, this is the 300th blog post of this here ribbons blog. here's the first one 3 1/2 years ago (a post that has never been topped...). hmm, maybe it's best to not associate projects with kids with nudey self portraits. hmm.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Water Time

I've been scouting out the waterways of Alameda lately...I'm learning about how boats get around while looking for docking options for a bit of a sailing outing I'm organizing with Elias Reitz as part of the big OPENWATER event going on this weekend.

what's the OPENWATER event? it's the newest brain child of the chefs and artists of OpenRestaurant. There's going to be a temporary restaurant conceptually oriented around issues of WATER with panel discussions, video and sound installations, and contributions from some truly inspired individuals. The full schedule is here, the dinners are going to be amazing, but you can also just come by and visit this space. (check out the photos below of a series of walks I've taken around the area...it's a special part of our bay area.)