Wandering Artist's Journal

It's still cold and foggy here in San Francisco. But we got out of our studios anyway. I met Betty and Virginia downtown in Yerba Buena Gardens for some sketching. We sat in the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf cafe, in front of a window facing Market Street, until the sun came out. Betty sketched with her iPad, I used watercolors. As soon as the sun started peeking through the fog, we headed over to the upper section of Yerba Buena Gardens - the granite benches were surprisingly warm. Betty, Virginia & I made ink sketches of the old St. Patrick's church before heading over to SFMOMA to join the rest of the gang. At SFMOMA, we spent some time in the 2nd floor 75th Anniversary show , as well as the 4th & 5th floors Fisher Collection show. After several visits, my feelings about these shows are shifting. At first I was very excited about the Fisher show and I'm still happy about the high quality of the work. (My favorite is the Hockney double portrait) but most of it d...

This week, during the coldest summer in 40 years (at least in San Francisco) We decided to stay in. We met at the Sunset home of painter/photographer Virginia Arana Greene & poet/photographer Tinker Greene. Some of us took advantage of their nice library and looked through the art books. But everyone spent time looking through Virginia's just-published photo book, " All At Once ." Besides the usual eating, drinking and confabulation, we brought work to share. Tinker showed us some of his favorite Degas pastels and read a poem he'd written about Degas' trip to the US. Then he offered us copies of some of his chapbooks. Ramona read a clever limerick she composed for the occasion - it was about Virgina's photo book. Betty & I showed off our new iPad sketch/paint programs. Most of the visual artists brought some work for a "show & tell." Steve Shapona- three small nudes David Steinhardt - small plain air and cartoon character study Ramo...

The afternoon started with a visit to Project Artuad and the studio of painter E. Dale Erickson . His latest painting is a realist image of a window at SFMOMA, inspired by Frank Stella's early minimalist paintings - the ones with a strong vertical rectangle and horizontal bars. (Sorry, I couldn't find a good example on the web.) Dale's painting is on the easel in the photo above. Video of him explaining his new palette lifter is here . Next we stopped off at the studio of Maude "Bones Are My Business, Baby" Kirk , to gift her with a baby bird corpse that she will undoubtedly turn into something beautifully gruesome. She's currently working on a series of Goya-homage commissions. In the hall we noticed this painting by resident artist, Bern Rauch : "afterimage in the eyes of the prey" (below) Onward to Philz Coffee at Folsom & 24th Street , were we waited for the rest of the gang to catch up with us. As always, Philz was comfortable, friendly, ...

About a year and a half ago, some friends in San Francisco started regular gatherings to see and talk about art. It began with sketching in the SFMOMA galleries, then branched out to include art galleries, life drawing sessions, cafe sitting, and studio visits. Plans are posted on Facebook and the group has expanded since the first handful to about 40 people. (The Facebook Group is by invitation only, but the events are open to all.) Most are visual artists, some are writers, others are art collectors and fans - the common thread is an interest and appreciation for the arts. Not everyone comes to every event, but usually 5 to 15 people show up on any given Friday. Sometimes it's hard to find a cafe or restaurant to hold us all. It's been enormously successful at getting people out to see shows they wouldn't have ordinarily have attended. And the conversation around the art forces us to think about what we're seeing - it helps us articulate what we think about it. And o...

"How To Cook A Wolf" by MFK Fisher ISBN 978-0-86547-336-2 "Since we must eat to live, we may as well do it with grace and gusto." - MFK Fisher The wolf in question is the one at your door. Some of you may have heard his "whuffs through the keyhole." This guide to luring, catching and cooking the wolf could be useful to many of you now and, in fact, will probably always be useful to most of us in the arts. It's not so much a how-to book, notwithstanding the inclusion of specific instructions and recipes. It's really more of a manifesto on living joyfully, creatively, with particular attention to the needs of the body and desires of the spirit. More than that, it's an easy and entertaining read. I read it straight through yesterday evening, with frequent pauses to read aloud to the rest of the household. Written in 1942 and revised in 1951, many of the specifics are dated - her enthusiasm for canned foods, for example. And her frequent referenc...