Public Art: take it or leave it?

I stumbled upon this article in the Sunday Times this past weekend, asking the questions about what purpose public art serves. Of course it brought to mind the much loved and much hated (pick a side) Flamenco Dancer sculpture by Luis Jimenez on the University of New Mexico Campus, cited by some as being "ugly" and praised by others for being "real."

Outside Lands

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a free and available ticket to the final day of the Outside Lands Music Festival held in Golden Gate Park. This was the first year for the music festival--boasting over 130,000 attendees and 65 bands including names such as Radiohead, Ben Harper, and Manu Chao.


Sunday's lineup wasn't as enticing as the previous days, but there were still many performances to see. Vienna Teng was among them. She plays with a quartet consisting of violin, cello, percussion, and herself on piano. With the full backing of the quartet, the sound was full and rich, but throughout the short set (the music festival only allowed for 45 minutes) Teng performed alone on the piano or simply acapella. For me, the true sign of a great musician and performer is commanding an entire stage and audience with only your voice and your instrument. This is, in part, why I fell in love with Patty Griffin and why (don't judge) I respect Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas who can move an entire audience when he sends the rest of the band offstage and sits down behind the piano.

Teng is a talented pianist, but also possesses a great vocal and stylistic range. She performed some of my wistful favorites like country-inspired "City Hall" (a sweet song centering around the brief legalization of gay marriage in San Francisco two years ago) and "Harbor." They also played the eclectic, beat-driven "1br/1ba" as well as a new song from the album she's working on about what happens when you listen (or not, in her case) to the advice of your elders in forging your own path. The synthesis of jazz piano, country twang, and complex beats creates an unmistakable depth in the music and a sound that you haven't heard before.

The two friends I dragged to the performance were converts by the end of the set. We even stood in line to meet Teng and ask her to sign the albums we purchased. So, go. Listen to a song on Rhapsody. Plug her into Pandora. Buy an album!

Arby's 5 for $5.95 deal

I've recently begun watching cable television again after a long absence; thus, I am once more subjected to the television advertisement, a noxious little invention I've lived happily without for three years. One commercial, especially, keeps catching my eye: an Arby's spot advertising their 5 for $5.95 deal.

What the deal entails is a limited list of menu items that are available 5 at a time for the low price of $5.95. I decided to participate in this to the extent that is possible: as a lactose-intolerant mostly vegetarian eater who does not eat fast food. So I made a let's-pretend menu. For my 5 for $5.95 meal, I ordered an Arby's Melt, a small Diet Pepsi, a small curly fry, an apple turnover, and an order of mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. My meal, in total, costs only $5.95, but consists of an enormous 1,444 calories. That's a lot of bang for your buck.

In comparison: I bought asparagus the other day at the market, attempting to buy the wide range of green vegetables that are recommended for a balanced vegan diet. Asparagus cost $3.99 per pound and holds 91.4 calories. (Bear with me now as we venture into the scary proposition of me doing math). Asparagus then costs $4 per 100 calories (or so). The Arby's value meal costs $.41 per 100 calories.

I'm not going to go into a complicated breakdown of nutrition or anything like that because it seems a moot point. Given the fact that calories are the measurement of energy in a food source, who would choose to buy the asparagus when the 5 for $5.95 offer is clearly a better value? Read: more energy for your dollar? Well, fortunately, we have a basic understanding of nutrition and so for those of us who hold that understanding and have the means available to us,we purchase the asparagus. But for so many, the knowledge and the means are simply not there.

This is one of the points that Michael Pollen raises, among many others, in The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin, 2006). The book is an in-depth study of the origins of our food. Pollen traces the origins of four meals: a McDonald's meal consumed in a car, an all-organic meal from Whole Foods, a local meal prepared of ingredients raised on a single, sustainable farm, and a mostly-foraged meal of wild boar and mushrooms. The food chain, something that was once such a constant, immediate presence in humans' lives, has become a distant concept for modern Americans, used to buying shiny red apples all year round, preparing microwaveable meals in disposable containers, and comparing wines from around the world under fluorescent lights. Our food chain is immediate nor local, something that has, up until recent history, been a constant.

Pollen traces what has become of our food chain and how it evolved into the industrial beast that it is. One example is the history of corn, which Pollen follows in its evolution from a simple grain cultivated in Central and South America, to a monolithic American crop (with a bit of help from the government), cultivated so that it might be a part of almost everything we eat. (If you don't believe me, check out how many labels include high fructose corn syrup, only one of the many corn derivatives used regularly in the United States). Sometimes the details are a bit dense--overly scientific discussion of the genetics of corn, for example--but they're sections worth pushing through for the vast amount of knowledge packed into the prose about a topic that is so pertinent to everyone's life.

Eating is one thing that brings us together as humans: we all eat, across cultures, continents, and classes. Our food supply is something with which we are all connected and everyone should be concerned. If you're a person who ever spends $3.99 to buy a pound of asparagus, this book is a must-read.

Face of Jamaica Plain

Check out this documentary project I participated in, put together by Margaux Joffe.

work in progress

I started this blog a couple weeks ago for two reasons: to have a body of work to show to prospective freelance jobs and to (maybe) get paid by PNN. However, I dislike the format of the PNN system (see the original blog here, if you're interested), I was confined to a very limited subject matter, and I wasn't nearly diligent enough to support a salaried blog. Also, I lost my digital camera, which set the whole thing back.

The short version of this is that I'm now blogging here, with similar focus to the original, but with more freedom. Soon, if I ever get a real job, I'll buy a new digital camera and then--watch out! Art and art-ish news from San Francisco. More than you could ever want.

The Dark Knight

On opening weekend, I saw The Dark Knight (the newest Batman film for any of you who, by some miraculous act, have no idea what I'm talking about). I stood in a disconcertingly long line outside the theatre only to find that our late-arriving friends had caused us to miss out on any seating opportunity that would not put a permanent crick in my neck. We switched theatres, and finally—finally!—got to see the film.

There was something worrying about watching the film for me, recognizing that part of the film's hype must have at least a bit to do with the recent death of Heath Ledger (Ledger played the Joker in the film, for the hopelessly unaware). Ledger was a method actor--an actor who actually becomes a character while filming, incorporating that character's attitude, outlook, and actions into their everyday life as much as possible. One thing is certain: this worked for Ledger. The performance, as everyone says, is amazing. It's the kind of performance that makes you remember that acting is tough work, especially when you're playing a sociopath.

On a roundabout way to my point. The problem for me, then, is that while I sat there watching Ledger's convincing performance (it's hard even to discern that it's him), I couldn't help but think that his role as the Joker in part contributed to his death. Did he not try to embody the life of a crazy person? A killer who toys with people's emotions, who has no compassion or empathy for anyone? And if so, wasn't that a likely contributor to his spiraling psychological issues, to his drug abuse that ultimately killed him?

I'm not trying to point fingers here, or make a judgment call about Hollywood or what is sacrificed in our adamant demand for entertainment. What Ledger accomplished in the film is legendary, but at what cost? All I know is that while I sat there watching the last role that Ledger filmed, I felt a little guilty. A little like a conspirator. A little sad.

art in the park

There is something quite decadent about hearing live music outdoors: sun on your face, feet reaching for grass, perhaps a picnic, and all accompanied by music. I had nearly forgotten these delights, but my memory was refreshed this past Sunday at a free concert given by the San Francisco Symphony in Dolores Park.

It had been a long time since I'd listened to a symphony--perhaps five years or more, truth be told. I attend many musical performances, but lately I've been more inclined to see bands that feature a lead singer sporting a ripped t-shirt than one in which the musicians wear tuxedos. This is not always the way things were. As a child, music was intermingled with almost everything I did. My father was a band director at a small high school in Montana and I attended every performance, whether it was a classical concert or the pep band playing snippets of songs during time-outs at a basketball game. As I grew, I played the piano under the tutelage of my father, learned the trombone and the euphonium, and eventually played in the symphony orchestra in my hometown. But as childhood loves tend to do, these fell away as life crowded in.

Here I was listening to a trumpet soloist (Alison Balsom--check her out here)--the instrument my father and sister both played--backed by a symphony, for the first time in my recent memory. I had been away from this world for so long, but the orchestra's affect on me, however, was familiar: I got lost in the music. The orchestra started in on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and even the picnicking groups chatting around me failed to distract from the music. What I began to think about was the way a person can lose themselves in art--in music, a painting, a poem, performance, or even a finely-prepared meal--and what value that holds.

At the end of the concert, people stood on their blankets and while the conductor bowed and then swept his hand back to the orchestra, people clapped. And clapped. And while some concert-goers corked their leftover wine and slipped on shoes, many of us simply stood and clapped. The applause lasted for so long that I was sure there must be an encore around the corner, but the conductor only came back and bowed a last time before leaving the stage. This was the longest-running applause I have ever experienced at a symphony orchestra concert, the length perhaps only rivaled by the applause of a crowd after an especially raucous rock show. These people were appreciative. And moved.

I'm not planning to get into the age-old question of what value is art. I'm not nearly academically minded enough to attempt that. But it's something I like to think about and it's something that has certainly been written about since we started calling art, art. What does it all mean?

It made me think of something Susan Sontag wrote about art in her essay, "Against Interpretation." She says that the best critics of art are those who "reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking it up." And that's exactly what this concert did for me: it let me experience the sensuality of a piccolo running through a string of high notes, french horns' regal sound, the bounce of a violin's string when it's plucked. I need to slow down more, to look at the sensuousness of art, to really experience it. In a world where life is accelerating at a frightening pace, where people work more than they play--this call for slowing down and paying heed to those things we pass is apt. This blog, then, is my attempt to do just that: to take Sontag's advice and "learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more."