February 5, 2006
a very veritatem weekend in San Francisco
I live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and I feel like I appreciate it, but it's amazing how infrequently I really go out and experience what San Francisco has to offer. This weekend, however, I somehow ended up bouncing all over town (and even to Marin) taking advantage of all sorts of wonderful things I have such easy access to!
Friday: MOMA, Medjool
Saturday: Golden Gate Park run
Sunday: SF --> Marin and back 'Tiburon Loop' bike ride, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharoah at the DeYoung
I usually try to reserve this journal for posts about what I'm working on, but I did so much neat stuff this weekend I couldn't resist sharing.
Lots of details..
Friday started out with a bus ride downtown, where I met a few of my art buddies for lunch at the MOMA cafe (salmon crepes with hazelnuts and pomegranate seeds, YUM!) and I finally got to check out the Chuck Close show upstairs.
It was amazing to see his incredibly photorealistic earlier drawings up close, but I was much more interested in his more abstract later works. His most recent full color paintings, when viewed at extremely close range, are just little squares and circles of pretty intensely bright colors, but when you back way up, these blobs resolve themselves into a very realistic portrait. There is still a strange quality to them, however -- it sort of looks like you are viewing them through water, or maybe glass bricks.
The subject of the show was Chuck Close's self-portraits, but I sure wanted to see his portraits of other people after going through rooms and rooms of it. I mean, it's not like the art wasn't amazing, but I found myself craving more variety...
After too long spent in the MOMA gift shop talking myself and my friend out of buying art books, I made my way home by way of Union Square, and finally checked out H&M. WANT... STUFF...
But I was on a mission for boots, and didn't find any, so I went home empty-handed. Missed my chance to meet up with a friend for a bike ride to the Marin headlands, so I did my own ride around the city: home --> GG park --> Ocean Beach --> Cliff House (smelled delicious! this hill SUCKS!) --> Legion of Honor parking lot --> Lincoln Blvd (INCREDIBLE views of just outside the Golden Gate bridge, and the bridge itself) --> Presidio --> USF campus --> home. ID'd a bird I've never seen before: white-crowned sparrow.
Then, even though I was ready to pass out in front of the TV with a cocktail, Todd and I cabbed it over to the Mission for drinks -- a friend's birthday at Medjool. This place is NUTS. I don't know what it used to be, but now it is three floors of indoor and outdoor tables, bars, music, and high ceilings. The top floor is the 'sky terrace', and is the whole roof of this vast building. From up here you get incredible views of the city, and if it's chillly there are sheltered areas and outdoor heaters. I had the best damn mojito! Very lime-y. They serve middle eastern/mediterranean food, and it smelled delicious even though we didn't get any. It got really crowded by the time we were leaving, and it felt like nothing so much as those old dot-com four story parties they used to have in places like the Organic building.. floors and floor of pounding music and people with drinks going up and down the stairs. Weird! Neat! Worth checking out!
Saturday, spent the whole day in the studio until it was time for a run. Ran through the panhandle to Golden Gate Park, past the Conservatory of Flowers, a beautiful sunset in the sky above me. Made a detour through the DeYoung parking lot to try and get a look at how they're doing with the Academy of Sciences construction project, and noticed that there was an Ancient Egyptian exhibit at the DeYoung (Hatshepsut: from Queen to Pharoah) closing on February 5th! Why didn't anyone TELL ME?! ;) Anyway, I decided this was obviously something I needed to make time for on Sunday, even though my day was already pretty full.
Sunday morning got up bright and early to meet a couple friends by the Golden Gate bridge for a bike ride through Marin and back. The weather was PERFECT -- sunny, incredible visibility, and NOT COLD OR WET! The ride across the bridge is always a little scary but I also just love the view. This ride goes past Marin Headlands, along the Sausalito waterfront and through town, and goes through various other trails and roads until it crosses over 101 and ends up on a road called Paradise Drive, which I believe starts by the Corte Madera shopping center and goes up into the hills, curves around through some forested areas, and then pops out on the other side in Tiburon with glorious views of the bay. We stopped for mochas at a cafe on the waterfront, the water sparkling, the SF skyline looking clear and all postcard-y. Special bird I've never seen before ID'd on the way there: northern pintail!
A note about bird ID from a bike: I'm looking these birds up when I get home. I'm getting pretty good at spotting a few noteable characteristics while racing by at like 18mph, because I just can't help myself!
So I got home, ate a bunch of eggs, and left for the DeYoung. This was my first time actually going inside, although I run/bike by it all the time. I really wanted to explore, but I was on a mission. Get in, see Hatshepsut, get to the art store before it closes.
It was totally worth it. I'm so glad I happened to see the sign yesterday, or I would have missed this show. I just can't get enough of the artifacts, the artwork, the animal-headed gods, and the incredible history of Ancient Egypt. I learned a lot about the reign of Hatshepsut, the only woman to ever call herself a Pharoah. Highlights included an incredibly well preserved papyrus from the Egyptian book of the dead, a tiny cosmetic spoon carved in the shape of a mouse with its little tail curled around its legs, and a sketch of a hippo on a piece of scrap limestone. The most beautiful and powerful piece of all, however, was a larger-than-life granite sculpture of Hatshepsut herself. Not only was it unusual in that it was more naturalistic than the typical Egyptian sculpture (it really looked like a portrait of a particular person, a beautiful woman at that) but she was wearing the absolutely scandalous combination of noble womens' dress clothing and a pharonic headress (DUDES ONLY!) You can be sure the Egyptians made sure THAT kind of shit never happened again!
Totally doesn't do it justice but here's a small image of the sculpture:
So afterwards I hauled ass over to the art store to buy a ton of supplies for the mural I'll be painting starting Thursday: a continuation of the Monterey Bay undersea mural I did for the Ellefsons last year. This mural will go in baby room #2, which adjoins the first room. An exciting twist for this room is that we'll be transitioning from the water OUT of the water into the intertidal zone, and up the beach...
I'll post pictures when it's done!