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Artist Leo Villareal created “The Bay Lights,” a public art light sculpture across the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which will shine for two years starting March 5, 2013. The artwork is made up of some 25,000 energy-efficient LEDs, mounted on vertical cables 30 feet apart. The LEDs are controlled individually by computer, with the light turning on or off some 60 times a second via a 1.8 mile fiber-optic cable, to create a variety of patterns that flow into one another. He states, “I’m interpreting all the kinetic activity around the bridge: the traffic, the motion of water, the sky — it’s such a rich environment to draw upon.” The artist told a reporter at Mashable that the computers controlling this are a “bunch of $500 Mac minis mounted inside the bridge” and that those Macs are running Windows via Apple’s Bootcamp. Wow!

I took this shot one afternoon, on route to the train station. From it, I created a bunch of variations using several different iPad/iPhone apps. (Yes, I know I’m missing a “w” from my signature brush!)

Here is the cutie, the 95 lb Bud-Z that can knock me on my butt in a single move (and he’s done it several times).  We got him after after our beloved Buddy died.  Buddy was a Rottie, Chow, Shepard, German Short Hair Pointer mix with a beautiful disposition.  After he died (two years ago, March 3rd, I wrote a post about him then), Rich tried to find a similar looking dog.  He did, in West Virginia (found him on PetFinder.com). Well, he may look the same, but his temperament is truly different. To say the least, the first year he was very difficult to the point we hired a trainer to help us with him.  Here’s the post I wrote after Buddy died. You can see how similar they looked, oh but how different they are!

As a present for Rich, I had Bud-Z’s DNA analyzed, and the results are in.  We thought he was Chow, Rottie, and Shepard, and then guessed other things.  Our vet though Ridgeback and Shepard, another vet thought Golden Lab.  Rich was sure Bullmastiff, and I feared Pit Bull.  But, nope!

The results are in … Bud-Z is a Chow-Chow mix and a Whippet Mix!!  Whippet????  We thought, no way!  However, Bud-z is incredibly fast off the line.  The other breeds in the mix, which all add up to the special dog that is Bud-Z are:
Catahoula Leopard Dog at 45.54%
Plott Hound at 21.07%
Cardigan Welsh Corgi at 10.16%
Newfoundland at 7.72%
Shih Tzu at 3.51%

The first is a sketch I did using an app called Pen & Ink (which is a basic drawing program, no layers — if you need recommendations on other programs with layers, I can give them) on an iPad along with a “Jot” stylus. I drew it from a fashion magazine ad photo. After it was finished, I took it into other apps to try some different effects on the image. I use Photosync to go from my iPad to the computer, as I can’t help but to also use Photoshop, and then use Photosync to take the image back to my iPad.  The one with the black background looks like it would translate well on black fabric with white perle cotton thread and heavy stitches.  I also like the bottom image and am thinking of making it in fabric. At the very least, it’s fun experimenting!

While at Macworld, I took some ipad/iphone sessions relating to artwork and photography, and I met some people doing very cool work.  That was fun.  Plus I came away feeling better about my own work, and that’s always a plus.   The buzz-phrase was “app-stacking,” which is just a catchy way to describe using multiple apps to get a final look.  The process of using more than one application (an app is simply a program) toward your final work is nothing new.  Some of us even giggled at the term as we noted anyone working in digital media has been doing it for years.

I did like some of the new pressure sensitive styluses.  Jot makes a new one that sells for $89.  It requires blue tooth and a charge (which they say will last up to a month).  I suspect if it was available at the show, I would have been swept up in the moment and bought it.  But now that I’m home and giving it more thought, I’m on the fence.  I like that you can rest your hand on the iPad and it doesn’t pick up any lines from it; the only lines are made from the stylus.  However, I like using a combination of fingers and stylus, so I’m vacillating on whether to get it (yes, you can toggle it on and off).   Another is called Hex3 from JaJa, which I tried during some sketching demonstrations.  That felt very good.  I’m on the fence about treating myself to one as I’ve gotten use to working in lower a lower opacity to build up color, but I suspect one is in my future.

I’ve been in San Francisco, primarily for Macworld, and I’m very behind on writing posts. To get moving, I’m posting a photograph I took while on the Land’s End trail. It was a treat seeing a raven swoop down in the area, especially a day prior to the Superbowl.  The first is the original photo, and I then processed it through various iPhone/iPad apps. The 5th down is my favorite.

After my trek to the Guggenheim, we headed to a few other places, including the Leslie Feely Fine Art Gallery to see an exhibit of collages and box constructions by Hannelore Baron, an artist Benedicte spoke very highly of.  The pieces on display were primarily from private collections and her estate. I found the work haunting.  The more I read about her, the more I found myself looking deeper into her pieces.  I learned Ms. Baron was born in 1926 in Dilligen, Germany to Jewish parents who were the owners of a small textile shop.  During “the Night of Broken Glass,” she witnessed Nazis horrors, including the destruction of the shop and her father beaten with a hammer. You can read more about her from this news release from Stanford News Service  and this Wikipedia page. Eventually she and some of her family managed to get out of Europe and settled in the Bronx where she studied costume design.  Sadly, she suffered from depression throughout her life, had the first of three nervous breakdowns after age 20.  She died in 1987.

– Michael Kimmelman, from a The New York Times, October 1, 1993 described the defining characteristic of her work as fragile, “both physical and spiritual-the sense of quiet, private anguish expressed through forlorn materials and cryptic, edgy scrawls.”  Here is another New York Times review on her work.

Photographs were allowed, and I share several images below.

From the catalog, ” Everything I’ve done is a statement on the, as they say, human condition…the way other people march to Washington, or set themselves on fire, or write protest letters, or go to assassinate someone. Well, I’ve had all the same feelings that these people had about various things, and my way out, because of my inability to do anything else for various reasons, has been to make the protest through my artwork…” H.B.

On Wednesday I joined Benedicte and some new friends — Teri, Shirley, and Pat — for a whirlwind day of art-related fun. We started at the Guggenheim where Picasso Black and White is on exhibit through January 23rd (photos were not allowed). The exhibit is the first to explore his his use of black and white (gray, cream) to create his 118 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. There’s good information about the exhibit on the Guggenheim website, and a gorgeous book that includes more than 150 reproductions. The book is a hefty 228 pages and is available from the website.  Pat also posted some wonderful sketches she did on her iPad while at the show which you can see on her blog.

We also visited the Kandinsky Gallery that was featuring pieces created during 1911–1913.  Again, no photos were allowed.

From any vantage point in the main lobby, where photos are allowed, you cannot see any of the artwork on the walls. However, on the seventh floor, photographs were allowed and even encouraged at Gabriel Orozco’s Asterisms exhibit, a “two-part sculptural and photographic installation” that includes “traces of erosion, poetic encounters with mundane materials, and the ever-present tension between nature and culture.”  The exhibit is made up of thousands of items that the artist collected from a playing field near his NY home and a protected coastal biosphere in Baja California Sur, Mexico, which also happens to collect industrial and commercial waste from across the Pacific.

Next up was lunch, then a visit to a gallery for what we hoped would be paintings by Bob Dylan, but that show had concluded, and then a visit to Leslie Feely Fine Art to see Hannelore Baron’s superb exhibit. More photos in the next few days.

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Some of the images I took while in NYC with Benedicte.  I love the contrasts, reflections, lines, and so on.  So many ideas for artwork, too!

Derry, Mike, me, Bob, MaryAnn, and Steven.

My brother Bob is visiting from San Diego.  After learning Bruce was playing at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ (which I still think of as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands, although those days are long gone), he quickly got tickets.  None of us have seen him play in a number of years, and we were excited!  Derry is here from the UK, and he was more than happy to come along.  It was a fantastic show! Wow!

I had my iPhone and was able to take some pictures and video.  The show started at 8:28, and he played:

1. “Living on the Edge of the World”
2. “Out in the Street”
3. “Night”
4. “Hungry Heart”
5. “No Surrender”
6. “Lost in the Flood”
7. “We Take Care of Our Own”
8. “Wrecking Ball”
9. “Death to My Hometown”
10. “My City of Ruins”
11. “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?”
12. “Jole Blon” (with Gary U.S. Bonds)
13. “This Little Girl” (with Gary U.S. Bonds)
14. “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)”
15. “Talk to Me”
16. “This Depression”
17. “Shackled and Drawn”
18. “Mary’s Place”
19. “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day”
20. “Incident on 57th Street”
21. “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” — which was fantastic, AND, I have about 2.5 minutes of it on a rocking video!
ENCORES
22. “Rocky Ground”
23. “Born to Run”
24. “Ramrod”
25. “Bobby Jean”
26. “Dancing in the Dark”
27. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out” (with Gary U.S. Bonds) — also incredible, and I loved the tribute to Clarence
28. “American Land” (with Gary U.S. Bonds)

The show was over 11:37.  I loved the new stadium and look forward to one of these days seeing the Giants play there.

I spent a couple hours for the past three afternoon taking butterfly picture. While  have many that are very pretty, this one was pure good timing!