Over the course of the last nine days, we have doubled
the amount of artwork we have in our display cache at
home. Not only have we been blessed with a lovely
three-years-late wedding gift from my lovely mom, but
there has been much photography going on here, as well
as it being the time for Open Studios in San
Francisco, where folks like us can get neat stuff on
the cheap!

Here are the stories….

1) Mom painted us a vibrant colorful swimming pool in
the AM scene. I don’t think she named it, so in that
case, I hereby decree that it is “Swimming Pool in the
AM”. Hopefully she has thought of something
more clever! [update 20041012 -- the official name is "Swimming in the Sunrise". Mom's name is definitely better!] It is the one up on the purple wall –
the only wall in the house that did not cower in fear
from her use of the brightest colors available to
Mankind. We really love it Ma!

2) Last weekend, we stopped by one “T. Ito”’s studio
space. His work in the Open Studios catalog was
compelling, hence the visit. Little did I know that
this was Trevor Ito — we went to high school
together, were in the same photo class, and he was
good buds with Em and Mark and went to their wedding.
Small world, great work.

3) Arti fell in love with these aspens silkscreened
onto 8×8 inch wood boxes painted different colors. I
like them too!

4) As I mentioned before, I’ve been inspired to take a
new direction in photos. This inspiration came from
some work we saw in SF Open Studios. The
possibilities are never-ending. Lots of photography
happening around here these days. I’ll have some cool
stuff to show off here in the next week or so.

5) This past weekend was a rollercoaster of Open
Studios. The beginning was awesome — our first stop
was to Kitty Wehrmeister’s house. She works in monoprint
(Paint is applied to an un-etched plate, paper laid on
top, then passed through a press. Repeat as many
times with as many colors as necessary.) Her work was
fabulous — and at $25-$35 per print, this really blew
out the Value Ratio scale. We got two of her prints. They are now awaiting frames.

[btw, after Kitty's place, we spent WAAAAAAY too long
at this bizarre "I doodle in sharpies on 3x5 cards and
sell my work for $500 and by the way have you looked
at this rainbow doodle in 3D glasses and by the way
this only cost me $0.05 to produce so I'm making over
$60 per hour with my art and by the way this is the
cosmic hearth where the space between you and I comes
from and by the way look at the little metallic stars
in this one and by the way there are only $0.01 worth
of glitter in this one so I could maintain my profit
margin and by the way....."
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!]

6) Saturday’s Open Studios viewing extravaganza ended
at Base Gallery –
BJ’s badass gallery/studio space where I spent many
nights DJing gallery openings and learning how to draw
people in their drop-in figure drawing class. We saw
Catherine St. Clair there (she used to help us out in
the figure drawing) and her cool work. We really
liked this one painting she had done 5 years ago, so
we got it. Had a great talk with her New Husband Beau
about photography. Too bad BJ wasn’t there!

So that’s it! We have had great fun re-arranging (and
seeing again) the stuff we had up before consuming
this cornucopia of art. That reminds me: Move the
stuff on your walls around at least every 6 months.
It’s amazing how we no longer see what is hanging up
when they’ve been there for so long.