Open Studios starts next weekend! It will be open all over the East Bay, including Richmond, El Cerrito, Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, etc. it will be open two weekends in a row, June 2–3 and June 9–10 from 11am-6 pm. I will be at Jack London Square, in the old Barnes and Noble, now known as the “Pavilion Building”.
Hope to see you there!
Here’s the map http://g.co/maps/ygx9b
This is the third painting on this canvas – the charm? I might keep this one.
For the past 5 or so years, I’ve been using a small watercolor kit that fits <pretty well> in your pocket. It used to have a tiny brush that fit right inside, but that got left behind somewhere at Burning Man (oops – moop – sorry) and so now I carry a Chinese calligraphy brush with me. Not a big deal, it’s just that it doesn’t fit in the box. Anyway, I was looking at my colors, and just deleted the white (so useless), replacing it with a deep green from an old tube from 1995, then piled a bunch of turquoise in another pan – and then, wow! The colors are so intense! I’m going to have to replace most of my colors now that I know they were but pale representatives of the real thing. Here’s my sketch from the Hillside Club, where we saw Sheldon Brown (very technical, very good musicians!).
What was so inspiring about Steve Jobs was his dedication to quality, to inclusiveness, to integration of human efforts, be they mechanical, digital, or theoretical. He was such a genius at putting these things together, for art, for science, for everyday people, within the everyday world. He created a business model which superseded the normal, negative one that we see all around us every day. He created groups which worked together. He didn’t take no for an answer when he asked for something that worked—not just adequately, not just barely, not just within a budget, but really WORKED.
What do I mean by “worked”? I mean that it pulled from our emotional intelligence, from our knowledge, and also what is yet to be discovered. Without the acknowledging this large universe of potential his computers would have been just products.
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like, People think it’s this veneer, that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
—Steve Jobs
I regret his positive insight and pickiness will no longer inform our future direction.
face 43
The Tsunami reach to the northern coast of California. In Fort Bragg there is a harbor full of working fishing boats, which got knocked around a good bit, and two docks were wiped out. This town has had a lot of hard knocks in the last 15-20 years, with the end of the lumber industry, fishing much reduced or banned altogether, and gas-prices and the economy in general keeping tourists away. There are good reasons for all of these things, but you hate to see people’s livelihoods going away.
