12: !

I found a place in the Mission District!
Yeah, it's a pretty cool place, pre 1906.

The units are all clean and renovated, and the couple who owns the place live here too. They run an educational farm called Pie Ranch (because it's shaped like a piece of pie), which aims to transform inner city kids' relationship to their food, working with the community to build "healthier local food systems".

The storefront is going to be the new home of the artist run contemporary arts organisation Southern Exposure, and in a few years the intention is to open a small cafe adjacent--the Pie Shop, I believe it's tentatively called. There's an event on Saturday at 10am if anyone's interested in attending; it's about the future of the Pie Shop and its place in the community, and, yes, there will be pie to be had--

See you there!

11: Apartment Hunting

10: Thanks

Thanks everyone; things here are swell!
The first day of school was good.
Incredible people, incredible artwork.

I'm still trying to get my head straight--
it's all pretty overwhelming;
it's like I'm living in a DVD special feature.

9: Departure

Well, I'm moving.
This blog is now officially on hiatus; see you in San Fran!

8: Eames I

This evening at 7pm, DWR Potrero Hill, San Francisco screens a Ray and Charles Eames Film Festival, including a presentation by their grandson Eames Demetrios. The event is sold out, but click the logo above for a list of future Eames screenings across America, from Las Vegas to Milwaukee.

If you haven't seen the films of Ray and Charles, they're not to be missed. This travelling collection includes such classics as:

Design Q&A (1972, 6 minutes)
Powers of Ten (1977, 9 minutes)
House: After Five Years of Living (1955, 10 minutes)
and Goods (1981, 10 minutes)

Check it out!

7: Days Left

A lady at the Montreal Boulangerie Co., Yorkville

6: On Aquisition

A stash of my dad's stuff; stumbled upon Sunday, unseen since the 70's
top: a white enamel boby pin from my mother's nurses uniform
center: pins from brunei schools, the british red cross, Toronto swimming, etc.
bottom: a tiny Time Magazine pencil

I'm told that I'm like my father in that I'm a packrat and that I love collecting all sorts of junk. What do you do with it? Isn't it just garbage? Why would you want to keep that? Nick, throw it away. And I do eventually, or I don't, and I forget that I ever had it, and it moults in some box somewhere. What drives the desire to possess?

Aquisition is communion, the way I see it; a way of bridging time, memory, place, and person. Collecting is a celebration of human accomplishment; the mysteries of design; the mysteries of fate and happenstance. When you're in contact with stuff in this way, you're connecting with everyone and everything behind it; the world becomes alive with history, and you become a part of this throughline.

If you were to ask me what drives my interest in animation and film, I would tell you that it's an interest in life; Storytelling becomes a way to capture, explore, wrestle with, learn about and preserve the things of life. I think that when you start to personalize--to see the story that you connect to--projects can't help but feel worthwhile. Find the value in the work.

As Robert Henri exclaims:
"I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and exclaiming the things of one's own time."


My grandfather's cufflinks from Expo 70 in Japan

5:

4: On Lineage

I think it's pretty important to value the contributions of those who've come before. It has nothing to do with fashion or age or style--it has to do with having worked hard, pushed boundaries, taken risks and set standards; they earned respect. We should all be very grateful for the lineage we all get to be a part of. There's hundreds of years of big shoes to fill, every great artist a pal urging us to work a little harder, do a little better. Not long ago Jenny Lerew at the Blackwing Diaries posted about Mr Roy Mckie's terrific books and illustrations; well I happened upon this one in NY, and I think it's just amazing. Here's a sampling from it:








Thanks Mr Mckie!
Robert Henri writes:

"Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them."