Sight Unseen

Laguna vs. Dillon Texas, HERE, Thanks Monica!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Super lucky today to meet and chat with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and hear him read a poem recently published in The Nation. Truly moving. Felinghetti is the 2012 recipient of the MacAgy Distinguished Achievement Award from The San Francisco Art Institute. Click HERE to hear.

Howl

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom

Allen Ginsberg- Howl

In a small town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There’s a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there’s an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it’s thinking. . .

Stay Warm

Chipped from Gravel and Gold 
 BEECHWOOD fires are 

bright and clear

If the logs are kept a year.

CHESTNUT’S only good, they say,
If for long it’s laid away.

BIRCH and FIR logs burn too fast,
Blaze up bright and do not last.

ELM wood burns like a churchyard mould;
Even the very flames are cold.

POPLAR gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and make you choke.

APPLE wood will scent your room
With an incense like perfume.

OAK and MAPLE, if dry and old,
Keeps away the winter’s cold.

But ASH wood wet, and ash wood dry,
A king shall warm his slippers by.

Ode to a Woodburner
-Anonymous

AAPC

An Ambitious Project Collapsing finds it's way into the pages of ArtForum HERE

Howard Zinn 1922-2010

J.D. Salinger 1919-2010

Arts and Letters

Musings from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Sky Writer

Bruce Nauman skywrites over Los Angeles. Article HERE

The Sun

Some things haven't changed since the days when The Sun began: corruption and violence still dominate the news. It's still hard to find honest, courageous writing in the mainstream media. And a hunger for truth and a love of great writing still animate each issue of The Sun.

-from The Sun History

also, still advertisement free.

The Sun HERE

Toshiko Takaezu, Works and Letters

Todays post featuring letters from the Vice Presidents Office, and an invitation to the 21st Birthday of Brooke Shields. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Archive and Charles Cowles Gallery New York.

Smithsonian HERE

Charles Cowles HERE

Marguerite Wildenhain

Todays post on the multi-faceted Marguerite Wildenhain. Wildenhain was a potter, educator and writer for many years. She started her own school and pottery at Pond Farm just north of San Francisco from 1953 to roughly 1980. After her death, the farm was taken under the protection (or control) of the California Parks Service. Wildenhain also worked with Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus, sometimes having her school referred to as the "Bauhaus of California". The photos and letters are from the Smithsonian Archive, a great source of miscellaneous collected artist information.

Smithsonian HERE

Pond Farm HERE