Sunday - Palo Alto Apple Store

THANK YOU

I bought my first Mac a few years after I graduated from my art school in Paris, when Photoshop and Illustrator - and at the time QuarkXPress - bloomed, with the amazing possibility to work on beautifully designed fonts which looked slick at any size, color charts that were accurate, vector files with endless possibilities of transformation. The Mac was THE computer for graphic designers. And it looked beautiful! I immediately loved the interface and the way everything was thought to create professional contemporary design. At the time there was simply no equivalent whatsoever.

There is a large tent in the living room

And I love it.
It's been there for two weeks.
It is a cave, a hut, a meeting room, a hiding spot, a camp, a nomad tent...
An important place.
It has pillows and books, lamps, blankets and stuffed animals.
It whispers and it laughs.
It's there.
I am watching.
I am lucky.
I will remember.

Photo du Jour

Table at a cafe in Oakland.

Photo du Jour

A few days

In the neighborhood, at the garage, Cafe Trieste in San Jose, Petco and the movie theater.

Since I moved From San Diego

"Defragmentation: Rearranging Bits and Pieces
of Memory" (detail) solo show @ Project X Art

Childhood, womanhood, memories, travels, signs...
Installation, paintings, drawings, video, jpegs, photos, digital prints...
Exploration, exploration - I am enjoying the path!
There are no frontier and no boxes.

Sometimes I miss San Diego - the good conversations. I can still have some on the phone! But of course seeing people is the best. And sometimes I am not missing it. Being here gives me another perspective and although the majority of the projects I worked on since I've left were San Diego based, I am working on developing a new network here. It takes time, I just have to be patient - which I am not very much!

I love working on my videos, I really started to do that here, when I was working on my exhibition "Defragmentation". Taking video classes (even if I was not on campus very often and I am doing almost everything online) is awesome!


The Billboard Art Project in Nashville
60 images for the series "Signs".


Using "Defragmentation"
60 images for the Billboard Art Project

I am trying to work on something new each time I participate in a show. Except for the series of paintings "Defragmentation" that I used a second time for the Billboard Art Project. The temptation was too big to reinterpret the images and to see them in another context, outdoor, in public, on large scale, and on top of it: lit!


Timeline (part of the installation "Defragmentation)




Celebrating Womanhood @ The Front


What Women Want @ The Lyceum Theatre


The Fort - Children building a Fort for Fairies


Behind The Glass - I just re-edited that video
(I removed a piece of music at the end)

Are My/Your Intentions Good?

There is a nasty thread of comments going on right now on the San Diego Union Tribune's blogs after an article was published by Joe Nalven about the show I am participating in, "What Women Want". I understand that one can disagree with Nalven's views. I am disappointed myself in not finding much writing about the art in the article. But the thread of comments is pretty saddening. Anyone trying to calm things down is shot immediately by harsh words. So, not wanting to be shot and not wanting to be part of the destructive game, I will not respond to it. The only thing the thread is doing is breeding hatred.

I cannot stand nasty threads of comments. And by the way, I cannot stand hidden identities either. Someone who has something to say should sign with her/his name - specially if the comment is negative.

This morning when I check my news feed in Facebook, the first post I read was this one:
Dalai Lama: "As human beings we possess determination and intelligence, the combination of which offers many opportunities. It is important to direct our intelligence with good intentions. Without intelligence, we cannot accomplish very much. Without good intentions, the way we exercise of our intelligence may have destructive results."

Something to really think about.

Waiting for my Car

Yesterday I went to a body shop in San Jose - where one of our cars is being repaired - to sign some papers. Oddly, when I left the place, my car's thermostat went suddenly to the maximum, the car got the hiccups, and some white smoke appeared from underneath the front hood. I drove very slowly to the closest car repair which, by chance, was a block away, and asked the person who was working there if he could do something (I really thought it was the end of my old car). He looked in the motor and told me that the thermostat had died and that he could replace it within a couple of hours. And it would not be more than $65 (that was the good news). He said the closest coffee place was 4 lights away, a 30 minutes walk. I was in a sort of industrial zone, body shops, furniture and tiles shops were abundant, but not much else (a few old motels). I decided to walk to the coffee place and back, and to take my time. As always I had my camera and my video with me, but I decided to take some pictures with my phone. Just notes. In the end it was interesting to be in a place where I would not have otherwise stopped and to just walk around.

A Week