Month: May 2008

Gilbert and George, and the End of the Heatwave

Two weekends ago, I had the opportunity to the Gilbert and George retrospective at the de Young Museum here in San Francisco. They started out as performance artists, including themselves in their work as “living sculptures,” usually well groomed and well dressed in business suits. In addition to their live performances, they also made films such as Gordon’s Makes Us Drunk (basically, the pair getting drunk on Gordon’s gin).

Their most well-known works are their photo-montages, and these made up most of the exhibition. These are large scale works (measured in meters), with photos and graphics. It seems they always include themselves somewhere within the piece, along with both Christian and sexual symbolism. Some more basic, with black-and-white photos or subtle colors, such as England, 1980, while others, such as Death, from Death Hope Life Fear, are quite garish in their colors and graphics. You can see some examples here.

Although in most of the photo-montages it is easy to pick out the pair, in a couple it was more subtle, and one can play a kind of “Where’s Waldo” game. Indeed, one of my favorites was a wall of London street names, I could not find them anywhere in it, but I know they must be there somewhere.

I actually heard about Gilbert and George first in 2004. I had begun a collaborative art project and my partner gave be a book to read about artistic collaborations, focusing on conceptual art and performance art in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was an era and style of art I often overlooked, and since then I’ve been more open to conceptual art, especially those based on words and text, but also in those that focus on the body. Needless to say, that collaborative art project never came to fruition.

The building in which the de Young Museum resides is itself a work of art. I have several pictures from past visits that will be subject of future “Wordless Wednesdays.” The architecture is characterized by grids of holes in the walls, some of which one can see through. There is also a tower with an observation deck, offering views of Golden Gate Park and the city. On this particular visit, one could see the fog rolling in from the west over the park and the outer districts:

The fog represented the end to the heatwave we experienced two weeks ago in San Francisco.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Alone in a sea

Alone in a sea of cardboard:

Another example of Luna's natural geometry set against hard artificial lines.

Vast expanses of fun…on what is otherwise a dreary Saturday for us here at CatSynth. But the extended weekend is a good excuse to complete the major projects remaining at CatSynth HQ.

The rain is actually good news this weekend for our former hometown of Santa Cruz – there has been a major wildfire in the mountains to the east. It's actually near Loma Prieta, for which the 1989 earthquake was named. Sadly, many people have lost homes in the mountains. It's a sparsely populated area, where people specifically chose to live and make their homes. Animal rescue has been a major and so far successful component of the effort, with horses and other animals being brought to the county fairgrounds near Watsonville.

We are also sad to hear about the passing of one of our Weekend Cat Blogging friends, Bonnie Underfoot. Please visit them and offer your thoughts.

Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Kate and Puddy at A Byootaful Life. It looks like our favorite Luna look-a-like is having a birthday this weekend!

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos and Carnival of the Cats, hosted by the Catboys Realm and the M-Cats club, respectively, are both dedicated this weekend to Bonnie Underfoot.

And as always, the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging: High

Luna is way up on the ledge:

How high is it?

Rather high indeed:

One might even say “we couldn’t get much higher.” Perhaps this will earn us a ban, as it did for someone else in 1967.

Weekend Cat Blogging #156 is being hosted by Megan and the Bad Kitty Cats. Sadly, they are one fewer with the passing of one of the new kittens, Skimbleshanks. You can see a very sweet photo of him with Zed Monster.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is elsewhere at Mind of Mog.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by the “cat boys” Kashim and Othello.

And of the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Primary Highways: Oregon

Our series returns to the west coast, and to a state I know from personal experience. I have traveled through the western part of Oregon multiple times. It is a state that at first glance has much in common with northern California, politically and geographically, but has its own unique characteristics.

Traveling north on I-5, one crosses an arbitrary line the separates the spectacular landscape of far-northern California from the spectacular landscape of southwestern Oregon. The highway weaves through the mountains and valleys of the Cascade Range, including numerous volcanic (or formerly volcanic) peaks.

At the town of Medford, one can continue north, or take a detour east on state highway 62 to Crater Lake. Crater Lake fills a caldera in the Cascade Range, and is the deepest lake the United States. It's circular shape is quite distinctive, as are its internal landmarks, including Wizard Island (the pointy island to one side of the lake), the “Old Man of the Lake“, and several volcanic formations. I had the opportunity to visit Crater Lake many years ago.

More recently, I traveled the other route from Medford, on I-5 north to Portland, while I was on tour last October.

We experienced Portland's famously variable weather. Fortunately, many of the city's attractions are indoors. This includes Powell's Books. I could have spent the whole day in the Pearl Room, which contained the art and architecture offerings, as well as their extensive rare book collection.

Portland also has abundant public art. Across from Powell's is this “brush,” a noted landmark:


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This building brings to mind the city's nickname, Rose City.


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These are only a few of the photos I took while on tour. Please visit the original article for more images, including the intriguing “recursive elephant” sculpture (and the hidden cat).

Portland is someplace I could see living, and indeed the idea crossed my mind during my period of unemployment last year. Ironically, it was en route to Portland that I took the fateful phone call that led to my current job and new life in San Francisco.

We also performed in the coastal town of Astoria, which can be reached by traversing the coast range or traveling along the Columbia River on US 30. This is actually the western end of US 30, which starts at a junction with our friend US 101.


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Astoria was cool and rainy and very green, as one would expect along the northern Pacific coast. The people we met there were also very welcoming to a group of Bay Area musicians playing weird experimental music. Again, you can read more about our visit at the original tour article.

I have never been to the eastern part of Oregon, which is a very different place altogether. I am quite intrigued by the descriptions of part of eastern Oregon as a desert landscape. But it seems like one has to be very motivated to visit, as it is far less populated and less accessible via major highways. The east-west divide also seems to extend to politics, with western Oregon being more liberal in the “northern California” sense, and eastern Oregon being more conservative. I wonder how this divide is going to play, at least in the media, given the patterns of this election…