A lot hap­pened this year… much of which you, dear read­ers, and my loved ones missed out on.. so here’s what every­one missed:

Jan­u­ary

New Year’s road trip

View from work­shop on Alameda where I worked on and off through­out the year

A new hair­cut after sport­ing the same ‘do for the bet­ter part of three decades

Feb­ru­ary

Walk­ing back to the loft

March

My hands stained red from shop work

April

Up at 5am and work­ing four tens

May

A new car

William Kentridge’s Five Themes at SFMoMA

June

A few months ago, I blogged about the William Ken­tridge show, Five Themes, at SFMoMA. In that post, I described my intro­duc­tion to Kentridge’s work ten years ago at the Carnegie Inter­na­tional Show. Since that first encounter with his work, I have been a fan. This evening, I thought I’d post a copy of the orig­i­nal film that caught my attention:

The film has a sound­track, but I was unable to find a full-length copy of it with the sound. Here is an abridged sam­ple fea­tur­ing the sound:

I love the raw qual­ity of line and ges­ture; this piece still cap­ti­vates me. What do you think, dear read­ers? Seen any great ani­ma­tions or art exhibits lately that you just can’t get out of your mind?

Recently, I vis­ited the SF Museum of Mod­ern Art to see the William Ken­tridge show, Five Themes before it closed. I dis­cov­ered his work at the Carnegie Inter­na­tional show in 1999 when his piece, Stere­o­scope caught my atten­tion; I’ve been a fan ever since. The show beau­ti­fully rep­re­sented the breadth of Mr. Kentridge’s work. I could’ve spent a week­end just in that exhibit alone:

Upon fur­ther explo­ration, this piece by Mario Merz caught my eye too:

The Lens of Rot­ter­dam


What was so great about this piece wasn’t just its scale, but its ele­gant sim­plic­ity— glass plates clamped to a min­i­mal steel frame, shel­ter­ing or focus­ing over rough hewn stones.


After a few weeks of cre­ative stag­na­tion, explor­ing the museum was just the spark I needed to shift my brain back into focus. After a wan­der among the exhibits, even the tex­tures of the walls excited me:



The effect in the last two pho­tos above was achieved by paint­ing the pat­tern with vary­ing lev­els of gloss and matte fin­ish. A cool effect to remem­ber once I’ve found a home to purchse…