South First Fridays in San Jose

This event takes place every first Friday of each month. I went there last Friday for the first time. Here are the new places I will get familiar too.


participating in "Cheek to Cheek", part of "Conservation of Intimacy"
visit the photo gallery here

Bernie Lubell: Conservation of Intimacy
Exposed: Today’s Photography / Yesterday’s Technology
@ICA - San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art
560 South First Street
Conservation of Intimacy is definitely a "Please touch" exhibition. Very playful and poetic.
Photos of the whole installation here.



Fernando Chamarelli: Pangea @ Anno Domini
366 South First Street


Fernando Chamarelli







The Art of Politics @ MACLA - Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana
510 South First Street




Melanie Cervantes: Brown and Proud
5-color screenprint 2010


Jesus Barraza: Las Flores
5-color screenprint, 2008

Works / San Jose - community art and performance center
451 South First Street




Ben Alexy: Salvation for the Modern World
(Now you can have your troubles and be happy too)












And a light dinner pause @ Caffe Trieste!

Canyon Shadow Play: an installation by Lori Lipsman @ Art Produce Gallery

Friday, July 23, just before leaving San Diego, I visited Lori Lipsman's installation at Art Produce Gallery. The installation was not completely finished yet (the show opened July 25) so I missed a few elements - like the bouquets of flowers collected in different canyons by Lori.
I was really pleased with the installation and I took my time to enjoy the big scale of the work and to explore the details.
I am participating in the bulletin board (see the flyer below). It is a very interesting, dynamic and generous idea about including artists in a project.


















The bulletin board - artists were invited to participate


My silk-screened print is based on a photo
of my son I took last March in Canyonlands.

Here's the link to Lori Lipman's photo album of the show.

Lori Lipsman: Canyon Shadow Play
July 25 - Aug. 30, 2010
Opening Reception Saturday, August 14, 6-9pm

Art Produce Gallery
3139 University Ave.
San Diego, CA 92104
619-584-4448

The Map

Two days ago one of my sons told me he found a map of Sunnyvale. He showed me a green circuit board and started to explain to me where the different places are. I asked him if I could videotape his explanation.

When he was done, he flipped the map and talked about the other side, much darker, full of bad guys and such.

Morning Talk

Kid #1 - last night I had a nightmare. I was buried under pepperoni and I had to eat my way out!
Kid #2 - That's not a nightmare!
Kid #1 - Why?
Kid #2 - Because nightmares are scary! Eating your way out is funny!

(As we were walking to the San Jose Museum of Art yesterday)

Gringos Living in Tijuana by Katherine Sweetman

Very interesting 15 minutes, I cannot wait to see the feature-length version. What a great idea! A very much needed fresh look at Tijuana.


This is a 15 minute version of a feature-length documentary

"Gringos Living in Tijuana" provides a glimpse into the lives of seven, very unusual inhabitants of the city of Tijuana, Mexico. Derrik, Gerda, Jodi, Jason, Michael, Iana, and Jenny are not Hispanic, and they don't exactly appear as though they would "blend in" in the Mexican border town that has been called one the most dirty and dangerous cities of North America. Yet this film follows these gringos, in their daily activities, while they show and explain why they chose to live in the city they love-- Tijuana.
Katherine Sweetman

Screening at La Casa delTunel, Tijuana - coming soon

In San Fransisco

Week One in Sunnyvale

At the park

I unpacked lots of boxes. But not all of them.

Saw an inspiring movie about the Space Telescope Hubble at the Imax (The Tech Museum in San Jose). Unbelievable pictures of nebulae... Learned that Hubble was constructed in Sunnyvale.




At the Tech Museum

Got lost driving in a maze of highways.

Watched the squirrels make the pears fall in the back yard.

Saw "Toy Story 3", the best of the 3 in my opinion, but I love them all. This one is as funny as it is sad, an amazing tale about childhood, end of childhood and loss. Really rich and surprising, visually extremely enjoyable. Rated 99% fresh by Rotten Tomatoes, my favorite site about movies' reviews! It is a pleasure to go see that kind of movies with the boys, we can talk about them, they have questions and they have the answers too!

Read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (in French - hope the translation is good), after I found it in a box of books. I remembered that my mom left it on the shelf in my bedroom in San Diego a month ago, saying "I leave it here for you, you'll see, it is beautiful but very very hard to read." I did not find it hard to read - I could not stop reading it - but it is very very dark. A savage odyssey.
Watched the boys sleep that night.
McCarthy says in an interview that all the dialogues in the book between the father and his young son are real. They are dialogues he and his son had when his son was the boy's age in the book. And they sound like the dialogues about life and death I have with my sons too.

Questions the kids often ask, things they want to know. But in the book, in a post-Apocalypse world, they resonate in a heartbreaking way. This is a tragic and beautiful book, there is not a lot of hope but this relationship between a father and a son taking place when there is nothing left around them but desolation, is one of the most moving I've ever read.




Barry McGee / Untitled (1996-2009)


Felix Gonzalez-Torres / "Untitled" (1992/1993)
offset print on paper

Very First time in San Fransisco. Visited the SFMOMA (as a member!), ate in Chinatown, in a very small place on the second floor. Lots of walking. Marine layer, wind, sun. Sparkling sidewalks. Way too many people around Pier 39 - it reminded me of some days in Paris with the crowd everywhere. Excellent bread - the kind which is not so easy to find in France!

Eager to start working. Spent Sunday organizing the garage to have a place to work. Will have to put up some dry walls. All the paintings have been boxed so everything takes much more space.

I live here now.