Oaxaca Part One

Ok. I took over 200 photos. Now that I am berthed in Los Angeles and looking through the massive file on our laptop, I'm a little overwhelmed. So, for now, I picked out a selection of my very favorite pictures in the city.

More later. A lot more.

MPK

Random Stuff

Some shots I've had in my camera forever. I'm cleaning off the chip for Oaxaca.

First: The shadow of a cat who decided to rest its tuchis on our skylight last week. The photo has a "great modern art" quality to it! #2 rythmn with cat butt

Next: a photo of the finished product of an incredibly tedious conceptual project I've been working on for years. I finally made myself finish it while I was working on the camera project.

Next: Photo of the towers of St. Elizabeth's Church on 34th off of E. 14th.

Next: Photo of Alex in a really inane pose in his new suit. He got it for my bro's wedding. He got it on one of the little hole in the wall clothing shops on E. 14th. I was initially sceptical, but the guy was really cool and fitted Alex out personally and picked out the shirt color and tie. He even tossed in the little pocket frou.

MPK

Pink Week Highlights

Pictured top: My piece
Next: a piece I really loved by a guy named Rob, who is a buddy of Eric and Gioia's
Next: Brian's
Next: Shalene's

The other pieces were really great too...it just got really crowded. Go see the show. It's up until the 20th.

MPK

Pink Week reception

Here are some candid shots of artists and supporters at the Pink Week reception at Cricket Engine Last night. Pictured first is the Impresaria of Pink herself, Gioia. Next photo, on the left is artist and husband of Gioia, Eric Wood. On the right is Andy Phares, who has been mentioned in this blog before. (I think he's one of 3 people who keeps up on it regularly, not including my parents.) (Also, Andy recently had a spotlight on his bad self in the Contra Costa Times. Yes he is all that and a bag of chips.)

Next is an artistically clumped group that includes Gioia's parents, Eric's mom, and Alex in the foreground.

Next, on the right is Brian Gangelhoff, a fellow Richmond Art Center staff escapee and artist in the show. On the left is the guy I only know as John, and in feathers and wig is Vinny. (or is it Vinnie?)

Next, another portrait of Andy pictured with Shalene Valenzuela, Cricket Engine gallery proprietoress. There were lots of other people there, but after a couple cups of wine, my photo taking becomes strikingly worse.

Pop-Up book

Since I didn't post much last month, I'm making up for lost time. A couple more posts and then I have to pack.

Last month I posted about friend Stephanie Juno doing a performance, Swallowed Whole, in Illinois. I created a couple of props for her and she said that they were a big hit! I'm stoked. I took some pics of the pop-up book I created around the story of her stint as an art teacher for kids in the San Diego Museum of Modern Art.
I can't wait to see the DVD of the perfomance. I've seen the costumes, part of the text, I created two sets of props...the suspense is killing me.

Hotel Francia

This is the hotel we'll be staying in. You need Flash to view the whole site, but it's worth it. This morning over breakfast Al and I pored over our copy of Lonely Planet Mexico and I'm really excited. Can you tell? In the guidebook it says that D.H. Lawrence stayed in the Hotel Francia. It doesn't say if he liked it. But it looks pretty freaking cool.

Chapter 11-Dress Her in Indigo

"After a hotel lunch, a few miles out of the city on the Mitla road we came upon El Tule, and Meyer said that he wanted to be a tourist for a few minutes, and look at the biggest tree in the world.
It was not far from the highway, a hundred yards perhaps. It dwarfed the old church nearby. I was astonished to see how rich and vital and green it was. Seemed to be of the banyan family. Elephant-gray bark. Glossy dark leaves. There was a low iron fence all the way around it. The trunk was maybe a hundred feet in circumference. It made better than an acre of shade.
Meyer stood absolutely still, staring up into the cool green shadowy places beyond the giant lower limbs. When he turned smling toward me, I knew that the tree had restored his nerves and composure.
'At the time of Christ,' he said, 'nobody was giving this tree a second look. It was just an ordinary little tree.'
'It looks as if it has decided to stay around awhile.'
'And I am going to come back here,' he said, 'and I am going to paint myself blue, and I am going to live up there in the top of that tree forever.'" (Dress Her in Indigo, John D. MacDonald, 1969 p. 131)

Which is by way of announcing that I am going to Oaxaca next week. Dress Her in Indigo is one of my very favorites in the Travis McGee series, and the majority of the action takes place in and around Oaxaca. I am going to take the book with me and do a little travelogue documenting the places mentioned in the story. That's not the only reason to go, of course, but I always benefit with a little framework to brace me.

I'm a little nervous since my spanish is abysmal. (We had spanish lessons in elementary school, but we'd invariably have different teachers every year. The new teacher would be shocked, shocked! at the previous teacher's approach to teaching us the language and start us over again from the beginning. Therefore, I can usually recite the spanish alphabet, and I used to know all the words to "De Colores". )

Alex is blessed with fluency in spanish, so I usually end up looking like his mute, retarded companion in Mexico. Fortunately I can draw real good. If all else fails I can do "Pictionary".

We are staying in the Hotel Francia near the Zocalo. It is rumored to be a bit noisy, but I'm hoping that mid to late November is not a big party month. We leave on the 14th (in the middle of the freaking night) and arrive at around 9 am Tuesday. I'm sure I'll get into it when I'm there. It's just the getting there that makes me crazy.

Hopefully I will be able to do some posting down there. Al thinks the hotel will have internet access but I'm pretty sure he's wrong. In our guidebook there's some listings for Internet Cafes, though. I will be taking my trusty little camera, of course.

In other news, tonight at Cricket Engine is the opening reception for "Pink Week". Yours truly has a piece in there.
If I was on the other computer I would post a pic, but I am not, so you'll just have to go see the show.

MPK