OUT OUR WINDOWS

Cherry Blossom Season in the Bay Area

We can hear the crowds cheer, which makes us look up from our work to see the replay on the gigantic screen at one end of Oracle Park, two blocks away. We watch the seagulls sailing around like fireflies at night as the people exit and leave behind an enormous heap of discarded food for the seagulls to feast on. We can't see the actual game nor the score, but we get excited when we hear the recording of Tony Bennett singing, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," because we know then that the Giants won their game.

We walk often towards the ballpark to reach the N Judah line that runs on King Street. We frequent a grocery store, pharmacy, or post office nearby. Across from the Giants are brick buildings still showing old retail signs from long ago. One building has bas-relief sculptures attached to walls above the second floor. They remind me of the friezes in ancient Rome and Greece. I look closely at the figures and laugh. Each figure combines human forms with eagles, mermaids, or goats, but they all have catcher's mitts or baseball bats in their hands. Early Giants fans!

Gods and Goddesses of Baseball bas-relief sculptures by Alexei Kazantsev

Since our move to Mission Bay, sporting games have become our latest distraction. We live between the Giants ballpark and Chase Center, where the Warriors play. We've walked to several games at both sites. We cheer with the rest of the crowd as a ball flies into a basket from a great distance or sails through the air over the grandstands into McCovey Cove below.

Across from the ballpark, the newest SF park has opened with a Willie McCoy statue powering a homer toward the grandstands, reminding us of his achievements. The park winds around the Chase Center past Crane Cove, a tribute to the shipyards built after Mission Creek was filled in. The walkway connects one more part of the Bay Trail that continues its huge circle down around the edges of the Peninsula to the East Bay, where it separates to wander to Benicia as well as to cross over to Marin, finally to come back into the City across the Golden Gate Bridge.

We hear the bridge siren sounding again. We shuffle to the window because we know that one of the two drawbridges that connects Mission Bay to the rest of the City will rise soon. We look for a boat on the waterway. There are a dozen houseboats nestled together on our side of the creek. Almost all of them have a boat tied to their docks. They are the only boats that navigate the channel and need the bridges to rise. 

In earlier centuries, the creek was an active participant in the industrial side of San Francisco, and the bridges must have been much more active than they are today. Barges crept up and down the creek to lumberyards, shipyards, and manufacturing facilities, then back out under the bridges to the Bay. Now, the creek flows from the Bay just to Berry Street and to the train tracks that hold the trains coming from the south part of the Bay. Where the creek meets Berry Street, there is a water reclamation yard with effluent discharged from its pumps into the creek. On the city side of the creek, a park fills with walkers and runners, basketball and volleyball players. There is a storage shed filled with kayaks that can be taken out to McCovey Cove during ballgames. No need to raise the bridges for them as they slip beneath the steel bridge girders. The two bridges remind us of what Mission Bay used to be before the ballparks and UCSF arrived. We can see and hear all of the activity of this part of San Francisco from our windows. Looking out our windows, we continue to be surprised at how much we like the energy of a city.

CELEBRATE EARTH

CROW painted using acrylic paint

Last spring at our old house, a pair of doves built a nest in the same place as the year before right at the roofline on top of the gutters. Within an afternoon, the two birds laid down a few twigs and leaves -- not much of a nest by other birds' standards -- that had just enough shape to fit around the female. The waiting began.

We witnessed the female laying eggs. For a few days, the male and female alternated sitting on the nest. Like stepparents, we watched, drew, photographed, and waited.

One morning a crow landed on the roof. The female dove lifted off the nest to distract the crow, but the crow, menacing and cawing, swooped down on the nest, cracked open the eggs, and devoured them. Once again the doves didn't succeed; but year after year, they also didn't stop trying.

I think of the doves and how they and other birds struggle against huge odds to survive. Not only do they have natural predators, but so much of what human beings use and discard creates havoc in the world we share.

 An eco-printing which imprints the shapes of leaves onto paper or fabric

As I bag this week's collection of plastic bags, I cringe at my lackluster attempts to keep from polluting the environment. After all, I have marched on Earch Day in celebration of scientists and environmental movements that have made our planet a better place to live. I remember rivers that caught on fire from pollution but also I still see photos of beaches covered with plastic. At the march, I loved the clever signs people displayed on Earth Day: "I'm with PI," "Science is in our DNA," "Got Polio? No? Thank Science," "We are with HER (above a drawing of the Earth)."

I get overwhelmed with ideas on how to use or recycle every piece of paper, every piece of plastic. I try to do the best I can knowing there is still a lot more that I could do. I think many of us feel the way I do and want to be sure that we continue to lessen our environmental impact. I've never met an artist who doesn't pick up something and say, "I could use this somewhere someday." I make collages with scrap paper and other bits of ephemera. I often incorporate recycled materials in artwork, but I know that artists have contaminated our environment for a long time with toxic chemicals (think aerosol sprays and permanent non-refillable marking pens). A new generation of artists has become more aware of the footprint they leave as artists and choose to reuse and repurpose as much as possible.

HOLD TIGHT, LET GO,
Mixed Media piece using scrap paper,
corrugated cardboard, leftover Air-Dry Clay,
jewelry pieces

Until the 20th century, many artists -- perhaps our first scientists -- made their own materials using natural ingredients. Some, like milk and ochres, aren't toxic, but cadmium, arsenic, and lead, are not harmless. The lime green covers of books from the 19th century are now kept in special wraps in libraries because the green dye contains arsenic. I gave up oil paints a long time ago because of the solvents needed to clean brushes, hands, and canvases of spilled paint. Modern materials can also cause havoc. At the Art and Soul Art Retreat in Portland, each classroom and restroom had a dirty water bucket so that classes wouldn't overwhelm the hotel pipes with acrylic residue. Acrylic paint, an alternative to oils, is often formulated with small amounts of formaldehyde and ammonia. I can only use them in a well-ventilated room.

LIGHT, an Eco-print

With the advent of Earth Day in 1970, many people, including artists, became more aware of the need to be environmentally friendly in whatever work we do. We depend on the research of scientists and artists to develop better formulas for products that aren't as polluting as previous ones. Artists have returned to old ways of working such as experimenting with eco-printing, which uses the dyes that come from plants and fungi after soaking them in a vinegar and water bath. The results of the printing are a good reminder to tend to Mother Earth. As one Earth Day sign stated, "There is no Planet B."

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Check out:

https://sites.udel.edu/poisonbookproject/

https://naturalearthpaint.com 

 

FAVORITE NEW TOOLS

A while ago, I promised not to buy any more new art tools. That promise did make me stop and think when I was in an art store, but I didn't always succeed in getting out of the door without making a purchase. I already have a tray full of marking pens that I bought to determine which brand would be my favorite to use in my sketchbooks. Some, like Micron pens, are waterproof, while others, such as Staedtler and Pilot are not. Sometimes I like a pen that isn't waterproof because I like how it bleeds when it touches water. Sometimes waterproof pens are the right answer.

With a Staedtler pen

With a Micron pen

Eventually, the pens dry up and they become the next disposable waste product. That's why I am so intrigued with the refillable markers from Tom's Studio.

Tom has devised a refillable marking pen that can be taken apart to replace worn-out nibs and ink reservoirs. If you use Micron pens, they may be your favorite, but you know that they don't last long and are not refillable or recyclable. Tom's solution is elegant, with waterproof ink, and well worth the short time for delivery from England. All of the packaging is recyclable. If an item is fragile, Tom's Studio uses packing chips that can be dissolved in water. Clever.

I keep my dip pens in a cup at my drawing table to remind me to use them. The other day I reached over the cup for a spray bottle and stuck myself with the tips of the nibs. The nibs are sharp and sting. I moved them to another spot on my table, but I also turned to another ingenious tool from Japan, Hocoro's Sailing Compass dip pens. When we lived in Tokyo, we grew to appreciate the Japanese careful design of products and packaging that encourage the use of the product. 

Hocoro Sailing Compass pen set

The set from Hocoro comes with four different pen points. Three of the nibs have a flat edge of varying thicknesses and one has a bent tip that makes wonderful thick and thin lines. Each nib can be pulled out of the holder for cleaning and then turned around to be inserted back inside the holder out of sight. No more getting stuck accidentally by a very sharp pen point. Clever.

The nib fits right into the holder

Two tools that I use already:

The Japanese also make watercolors that are thick and creamy. Kuretake watercolors are sold in pans but they don't have the problems of other pan watercolors, which tend to get dry and become hard to mix to a good consistency. Kuretake paints somehow keep that creamy texture. Beautiful, dense colors too.

Viva towels are not a new tool for me. I learned about using them from Leslie Wilson, my watercolor instructor. I use the original Viva towel, not the ones with a pattern embossed into them. They provide me with a way to correct mistakes or to lift watercolor paint from areas that are not working well. And I always have places that are not working well. A really important tool for me. Mr. Clean sponge sheets work in the same way.

Practice painting of clouds

We have had a week or two of thunderheads in the sky. They gave me inspiration to practice painting clouds. I painted a lifeguard's station to start. The building was the center of the piece, but painting the clouds and varying the landscape was what I was practicing. I laid down a wash of cerulean blue in the sky area and then used a Viva towel to sponge up some of the blue paint that was still wet to the touch. That gave me some whiter areas. Then I reminded myself about negative painting and painted around the edges of the white areas using a mix of cerulean, violet, and Payne's grey. The clouds looked like the ones outside my window. I didn't have as much success with the landscape, but the towel gave me a chance to change mistakes in the sky and to keep practicing.

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Check out Jet Pens for Hocoro pens:

https://www.jetpens.com/Sailor-Compass-Hocoro-Dip-Pen-Gray-Fude-Nib/pd/40402 

and Tom's Studio for his Lumos pens:

https://tomsstudio.com

FUNNY PAGES

Yesterday a news article revealed that two Caltrain employees used $42,000 of taxpayers' money to construct a house inside the station where they worked. As I read the article, my questions spilled through a couple of options, "Are they taking advantage of the rest of us, or were they extremely dedicated to their jobs and routinely slept at the station anyway?" Both workers have been fired and charged with fraud. The money they spent didn't seep into my thoughts until I read a letter to the SF Chronicle. The writer posted the idea that the City ought to hire them and ask them, "How in the world did you build a living unit with a kitchen and bathroom for only $42,000? Maybe you could show the City how to repurpose all the empty office space in town into low- and middle-income housing." Now, why didn't I think of that?

I flew down to Upland recently. On the airplane seat pocket in front of me, I read the small sign: For Literature Only. I looked for some Shakespeare, but no luck. Instead, stuffed into the slim pocket were precise instructions in a dozen different languages to escape in an emergency. Between Sully's landing in the NYC river years ago and the door blowing off the latest Boeing model, I've decided to pay more attention to the instructions after all.

I bought my sister The Book Lover's Joke Book by Alex Johnson recently. My sister and I share a love of witty comments and puns. I am not so fond of the kind of comedy on shows such as SNL which seems to me to be trying too hard to be funny. I do like subtle humor and humor that makes me groan. My favorite joke is one for English teachers (and the only one I can remember):

What is another name for thesaurus?

I opened the joke book to page 57 and laughed out loud. Here is the first joke I read:

"An Oxford English Dictionary and a Roget's Thesaurus are put in the recycle bin by a school custodian. The thesaurus says to the dictionary, "I can see you're distressed by this." The dictionary replied, "You don't know the meaning of the word." The thesaurus said, "But I know what it is like." Pure groaner of a joke.

Johnson, the author-bibliophile, starts his first paragraph this way:

"When I asked the British Library if they'd like to publish a collection of book jokes, they actually suggested that I write a book on librarians. But I said no, because writing on paper is much easier!" Argggh, a jokester after my own heart.

The book is full of these kinds of good and the worst jokes you've ever heard about libraries and books. At the same time, the jokes give us a view of the construction of a book. Johnson has collected jokes about writers' first drafts, editing, proofreading, setting typefaces, and selecting the cover. Johnson even includes jokes he's unearthed from antiquity. I enjoy the ironies and subtle comparisons that leave me hanging in the air for a moment while I 'get' the joke. Johnson has given me a chance to laugh out loud at a time when we all need a good laugh to lift us up from the news of the day.

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Alex Johnson, The Book Lover's Joke Book, is available at:

https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=alex+johnson

and yes, it is available at Amazon too, but the Bookshop.org website donates to independent bookstores with each sale.

Check out three other books by Johnson:

Book Towns: Forty-Five Paradises of the Printed Word

Improbable Libraries: A Visual Journey to the World's Most Unusual Libraries

Rooms of Their Own: Where Writers Write

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This week's weather view from our San Francisco apartment

THE EIGHTH FLOOR

My small studio  Photos by Bill Slavin

The wind has been whistling around our building this past week. There are no trees tall enough to reach the eighth floor to shield us from the howling. The wind can be just as strong on the sidewalk and I have to catch myself from being knocked over when I stop at a corner,  I don't hear the wind like we do from our apartment. Weather is different up high. We cannot see rain slashing down from the sky when we've had rain. We can only tell that it is raining by looking at a dark building across the way to see the lines of rain or by watching the puddle splashes on the rooftops or the street. We can't tell whether it is hot or cold at ground level from our view. We check the weather report and find the temperature is almost always a moderate 50 to 60 degrees. Our concrete building holds the cold so we prepare for chilly weather below. Most of the time we are glad for the extra scarf or jacket, but sometimes we are fooled and find the warm sun outside the building's door. Since we've been in San Francisco, seasons have whispered by with little change in the landscape. Most of the street trees are perennials, and there are few flower beds to give away spring's secret arrival. It is different living up high.

Photo by Bill Slavin

We look down on roadways, see the streetcars turn at the next corner, and look towards the Giants ballpark in the distance whose lights flash on during the night even when it isn't baseball season. We hear music from a nearby outdoor hotel bar and sirens racing down the street. We can watch the full moon rise above the clouds at the horizon, something we couldn't see when we lived in Danville. The moon there would only appear above the hills and treetops. During rainy weather, we have gasped at the half-circle rainbows that appeared as the clouds drifted away.

Photo by Bill Slavin

When a fire alarm sounded in the building next to us, we realized that if we had to evacuate the building, we would have a long, slow trek down eight flights of stairs. Something we hadn't considered until the sirens called next door.

After a year spent selling our house and moving five times, we've purchased a condo in a nearby neighborhood in San Francisco. Our condo is on the fourth floor and a little easier to exit in an emergency. The stairs right next to us lead down to the second floor's broad expanse of common area and then another flight of stairs to ground level -- the kind of safe exits we didn't have to consider in a two-story home. 

The view from our window will be different from where we are now. We will miss the seagulls, the small park, and the channel that separates Mission Bay from the rest of the city.  We will have on one side a full view of the city's skyscrapers, and down below us, a quiet tree-lined street tucked close to the Bay Bridge. Instead of rooftops and the East Bay hills that we can see now, we will have a closer view to the left and right of us of other apartments and their residents than we have had in any other place we have lived. We have always liked to live without pulling window coverings down wherever we have been. With our coming move, we will need to adjust our ideas about privacy. 

Living up high in the City is different.

Photo by Bill Slavin

As the writer of this blog, I am lucky to have a creative partner who provides wonderful photos sometimes. Thank you, Bill.

IMAGINATION FACTORY

I walked into the Department of Make-Believe and wished I was a kid again. Large, colorful shapes covered every surface within the main rooms. Moss hung from the ceiling and bright pillows covered a small stage. Along one wall a bookcase displayed the published works of the kids who spent time after school within the home of Chapter 510, a non-profit group that provides outreach to school-aged youth in Oakland to encourage their imagination and writing skills. The Department of Make-Believe: a magical and creative place to enter.

In Oakland's Old Town, Chapter 510 flourishes right under the tall street trees and next to the well-preserved Victorian row houses. Swann's Market, a market hall where one can find food from all over the world, and Ratto's Deli are nearby.  Founded by two energetic women, Janet Heller and Tavia Stewart, Chapter 510 has provided a creative space for young people, especially brown, black, and queer, to learn writing skills, bookmaking, and publishing. In this space, they learn how to create stories as well as podcasts and present their work to live audiences.

As Chapter 510 states: "We believe that writing is an act of liberation. When young people write and get published, they transform themselves and their communities, succeeding in school, work, and life."

As a child, I was encouraged by my parents and teachers to develop my creative side, but I was lucky. Not every child has that support. Back then, I never found a place specifically geared to nurture creative writing and to connect with other young people with the same interests. In school, I was steeped in academic/business writing styles, but it wasn't until I was an adult that I started writing in a personal journal. My journal not only helped me develop my thinking about concerns and issues but opened up my creative writing practices too. I experimented with poetry and personal essays. In the process, I paid more attention to sentence structure, grammar, and the flow of an idea within a sentence, paragraph, or essay. As always, practice made a difference. I came out of my quiet shell through writing and found myself often in front of large groups as a leader.

I am delighted that Chapter 510 is extending the same kind of encouragement to young people as they say, "that every young person in Oakland can write with confidence and joy."

Here's the cover of I Have Wings/Yo Tengo Alas, a book by Chapter 510 fifth graders, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Like all non-profits, Chapter 510 could use our help. They need volunteers, mentors, donations, or the purchase of one of the books written by the youth who gather in Oakland Old Town every week.

Check out Chapter 510 here:

https://www.chapter510.org/our-story

 

PRIMARY BLUES

While waiting for Bill to get a shave at a barber shop, I wandered into the Cotton Patch, a fabric store nearby. The store, in an old bungalow, is filled with quilting fabric, sewing machines designed for quilters, and all the other accessories for that craft. When I did quilting, I frequently roamed through their huge collection of cotton fabrics ready to inspire.

A row of batik fabrics caught my eye. I couldn't resist the blues and purchased three 1/2 yards of beautiful fabric. The batiks took me back to Japan again where blue and white is a favorite color scheme. We arrived in Tokyo during the year of the rabbit, and rabbits proliferated in the blue and white designs of home furnishings.

At first, the abundance of rabbits and the blue and white pottery was overwhelming and I vowed to avoid their purchase. But eventually, I learned to appreciate the patterns. I frequented a shop in the Azabu Juban in Tokyo that sold items in that familiar color scheme. I also visited an indigo dye producer, bought an indigo jacket covered in embroidery, acquired pieces of blue and white china, and collected small samplings of blue and white fabric intending to make them into a quilt. At my Sayonara party at an onsen, we all wore blue and white yukata to commemorate our friendship.

Sayonara party at an onsen in Japan.  
We all wore blue and white yukata

Instead of a quilt, I am playing with small pieces of the batik fabric and paper that I've held onto while waiting for the right idea to come along. The pieces include several photos of textures that I've captured on my walks, ribbon from a gift, seeds from a tree at the Cal Poly Pomona campus, paper bags, a sheet from an old Japanese book, and a strip of orange, hand-made paper. Blue is the dominant color of most of the pieces, but I plan to insert orange, its complement on the color wheel, as a highlight. Collages, like quilts, give me a way to use personal items in a piece of art to bring back memories of places and people.

What works and what doesn't?

All the Worlds in One Place by Martha Slavin

Feathers & Brick by Martha Slavin

Though I haven't glued down anything yet on these two pieces,

 I think these two designs will be keepers.

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 So often when I write a post, I find other writers using the same topic during the same week or after I publish mine. This week Kevin Fisher Paulson wrote about language and grammar and the New Yorker published a wonderful cartoon about color theory:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/fisher-paulson/article/column-languages-english-europe-18716070.php

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/shouts-murmurs/color-theory-explained

Take a look at the offerings at the Blue and White store in Tokyo:

https://www.blueandwhitejapan.com