sculpture

Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt: Electric

This weekend we at CatSynth sing the body electric (with apologies to Walt Whitman) and present another combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt.

Electricity and electronics are a central part of our existence:

Luna poses with an electric guitar, cables and our Mr. Echo delay pedal. Below we see Luna posing with another of our electronic devices, a Korg Kaos Pad:

Electricity permeates not only our music but art as well. Here we see a piece entitled Reflective by artist Roy Forest. It contains a red neon light running the length of bamboo tube.

For WCB, note the Suzhou cat and maneki neko on the shelf about the sculpture.

It’s interesting how there is a black and red theme throughout the images in this post. I only noticed that after completing it. It has a suggestion of fire to it, and fire and electricity have a strong connection.

More electricity. This morning, we were awakened by a large electrical storm with loud thunder and flashes of lightening. It’s a remarkable coincidence, as thunderstorms are quite rare in San Francisco. They lasted most of the morning, and some neighborhoods lost electricity. Our area was not affected by the outages, and in the end things just got a little damp.

Weekend Cat Blogging is hosted by our friends LB and Breadchick at The Sour Dough. We know they will appreciate the audio and music gear featured in this article.

Photo Hunt #178 at tnchick features the theme of electric, with the prototype image being an electric guitar.

Kashim, Othello and Salome are hosting the Carnival of the Cats this Sunday.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Enjoying the outdoors.

Our weather continues to be unusually warm and sunny (considering the reputation of San Francisco summers from Mark Twain’s apocryphal comment). And Luna continues to enjoy time out in our little urban garden.

Here we see her strolling:

And stopping to pose in front a metal screen sculpture:

Right now, we have two sculptures outdoors: the black metal screen, and the rusted metal work Pierced Screen by J. Michael Smiley.

This weekend is looking to be exceptionally warm again (well into the 90s in this neighborhood), so Luna has wisely retreated indoors.

Weekend Cat Blogging #221 is being hosted by Mr. Tigger at the M-Cats Club.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at When Cats Attack.

And of course the Friday Ark is the modulator. But it looks like they are moving to a new “Modulator Manor”. Recalling the chaos but subsequent rewards when we moved to the new CatSynth HQ, we wish them well!

Portland

I am reporting on Portland after Astoria, even though we visted and played a day earlier. That’s just how things sometimes work.

We did have some time to spend in the Rose City before our show at Rotture:


Click to enlarge

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:

And this “recursive elephant” was quite intriguing:

This sculpture includes other animals besides the elephants. I think I see a cat on the trunk:

It always comes back to cats, doesn’t it.

The show that evening was at Rotture, a club on the waterfront, conveniently located next to a construction zone. Although our audience was small, the show went well; and I did like the space, a converted early-20th century industrial brick building.


Click here to enlarge

They also had an interesting mural in the main audience area, and a nice large stage. We shared the bill with Emily Hay, who also does improvisation with flute and voice (although with a very contrasting sound and style from Polly); as well as Tim DuRoche and Resolution 51 (free jazz improvisation). So it was definitely worth sticking around after our performance to hear everyone else – although the entire evening was probably branded as “experimental night” or “improvisation night”, there was a great variety among the three groups, and I think the ordering worked well with us first, both musically and energy-wise.

More on Portland, our show at Rotture, and the trip up from the Bay Area can be found here.

Wine country

Sitting outside this fine summer evening with a glass of wine reminds me that I haven't written about my trip to the wine country from Memorial Day weekend.

The “wine country” to which I am referring is the Napa Valley, north of San Francisco. (This is not to be confused with the Santa Barbara wine country in Sideways). The heart of the wine country is corridor along highway 29 north of the town of Napa:

I'm not sure why I thought that weekend would be a good time to go. Highway 29 was a parking lot the entire way from its start in Vallejo through at least the town of St. Helena. It is a pretty undersized highway for such a heavy tourist destination, but one can understand why they may not want to expand it too much. It is, however, an expressway and freeway in area in and around the town of Napa (within the city limits, it was a full-on freeway). The reason this photo taken just south of Napa is so clear is because I wasn't moving.

It seems like they should consider upgrading the remainder to a freeway at least through Yountville, which is considered the start of the main wine country. At this point, 29 becomes a two-lane road amongst vinyards, eventually meeting up with highway 128 around St. Helena, which pretty much lives entirely off the wine and wine-tourism industry. 29 and 128 continue north through some of the most upscale vinyards before splitting at the resort town of Calistoga.

One of the main wineries I visited was in fact just a bit south of Calistoga. Clos Pegase was of particular interest not because of the wine per se (though the wine was quite good), but the owner's extensive art collection, mostly 20th century works. Among them are this monumental mobile by George Rickey:

George Rickey's work was familiar, having seen at least one other example at the New Orleans Museum of Art scupture garden during my trip last year.

This linear-geometric piece by Tony Smith really works with the rows of grape vines:

I often try to find just the perfect perspective when confronted with such strong lines. You can see another example (one of my favorite among my “art photos”) from the Getty Center in Los Angeles, one of several on my photography page (which I really need to update one of these days).

Another interesting geomtric metal piece, this one by Joel Shapiro:

Of course, the collection is not just abstract work. There were several figurative pieces as well, including this sculpture by Henry Moore, which appeared to have gotten the “John Ashcroft Treatment”:

Of course, they had wine, too. Of particular note was the cabernet franc. Most American winedrinkers will be familiar with cabernet sauvignon, which are often my favorite wines. “Cab franc” is another grape that is often used in blends, but Clos Pegase's solo version was a great discovery.

The town of Calistoga is perhapsa better known for water than for wine. Calistoga gives its name to brand of mineral water popular here at CatSynth (though they were not offering tours despite the “come visit us sometime” suggestion on the label). It is also known for its many hot springs and spas. But beer? Well, it did try a very distinctive beer from the Russian River (in neighboring Sonoma County), with a rather sweet taste. Ironically, this was at wine bar that I stopped into while spending time until a spa appointment. This particular bar called out to me with its metalic modernist trendy urban look and vibe, compared to the general rustic charm of Calistoga – there is a definite “look” that most resort towns in northern California have that looks like a hybrid of Gold Rush and New Age. Nonetheless, I think I picked the right alternative for myself, and also enjoyed this little pasta-and-goat-cheese nibble.

I definitely recommend a wine-country trip for anyone in the extended Bay Area, though maybe not on the busiest travel weekend of the year. Maybe not a good trip for those who dislike wine, art and spa treatments. We at CatSynth refer to such people as “strange and weird.”

Dorian Grey's Box: Art Installation at Pajaro Valley Arts Council

My sound art installation described in previous posts is now on display at the Pajaro Valley Arts Council as part of the current exhibition “The Human Condition: The Artists’ Response.” The exhibition is “an artistic articulation of the connection between
the individual and world challenges, the exhibit
brings together artists responding to political and social tensions in today?s world”, and features 22 artists (according to my best count). The pieces in the exhibi are all of great quality when compared to recent gallery exhibits I have visited. Many are overtly political or social, dealing with many of darker subjects in current events and recent history. Some are quite realistic, others more abstract.

Dorian Grey’s Box, the piece on which I collaborated with local artist Michael Carson, is one of the more abstract in the exhibition. The main element is a large black cube with newspaper clippings in various patterns and sections of redder coloring. Surrounding the main cube are several small wooden “alphabet blocks”, some of which have also been painted black.


The sound (my contribution to the piece) is on a continuous loop that visitors can hear via headphones. The material is primarily ambient noise, gitches, percussive effects and sounds that only “hint” at speaking voices, arranged in a collage inspired by the sculptural part of the piece.

]The exhibition continues through March 4, and I strongly encourage anyone in the greater Bay Area during this time to check it out. It’s great to see such quality contemporary art locally (Santa Cruz-Watsonville-Monterey area).

I have posted an excerpt from the sound installation on the podcast for those who are interested in the piece but unable to visit in person.










Weekend Cat Blogging #79: from the archives

For this weekend, we go back to the archives for this artistic sepia-toned closup of Luna:

The poster behind Luna is of a stabile by Alexander Calder, among my favorite artists. Calder is famous not only for his monumental abstract stabile sculptures, but also his abstract mobiles – his mobiles were influenced in part by the paintings of Mondrian, another of my favorite artists.

I think Luna's profile and sculpture complement one another quite nicely.

Check out more WCB fun over at belly timber Angry Cat Blog. I figure it's best not to ask…