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Posts Tagged ‘california’

September in Little Italy, San Diego

Posted in art,poetry,writing, Drawing, Graphite, Ink, sketchbook, tagged , , , , , , on November 7, 2016| Leave a Comment »

littleitaly_web

Piazzetta Basilone e Civico 1845. Little Italy, San Diego.  Graphite, ink, and marker. September 2016.

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Winter Nights, California

Posted in Photography, Quotes, tagged , , on January 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »

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The light in your soul is far greater than the darkness. Shine your light.

Lailah Gifty Akita

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Tender is the Night

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Quotes, wanderlust, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 15, 2014| 2 Comments »

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Plaza de Panama. Balboa Park, San Diego. December 2014.



I was trying to find a poem
To describe your skin, night
But the poets don’t know
the hours, or the look i just tried on you–
I cannot find you in their words.

I am always hiding in their verses,
moon behind clouds.
Distilling memories, crafting them into images, words:
what is the wine that we drink?
and who can write about the way you held me?

They do not have a name for this, for how perfect we were, the amber and coffee
of our hips.
Your kind chest,
your arms, taut as steel,
and the fact that i did not look at you, not once, afraid of learning too much
from the way you walked,
or the way your clothes fell.

Drowning so sweet,
tender fire.

Name the nights this year,
count them on the palm
of one hand.
Indifferent city, i stole moments of brilliance
from your stingy months.
I ride dark, subversive waters
and capsize
continuously.

‘Until the inconscious is made conscious, the subconscious will rule your life,
and you will call it Destiny.’
Carl Jung

Do the poets write
of a lion lying with his lioness?
Of fleeting things?

You drove and i held your hand
You told me one must laugh, pray and cry,
everyday.
I argued the last point.

San Diego, December 2014

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How To Love {Postcards from Paradise}

Posted in art, art,poetry,writing, Photography, Poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2014| 1 Comment »

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Sunset. Venice, California. November 2014.

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Anything Can Happen. Anything Can Be. Santa Monica, California. November 2014.



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How to Love
By January Gill O’Neil

After stepping into the world again,
there is that question of how to love, 
how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning—
the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape 
of cold wipers along the windshield—
and convert time into distance. 
 
What song to sing down an empty road
as you begin your morning commute?
And is there enough in you to see, really see, 
the three wild turkeys crossing the street 
with their featherless heads and stilt-like legs
in search of a morning meal? Nothing to  do 
but hunker down, wait for them to safely cross. 
 
As they amble away, you wonder if they want 
to be startled back into this world. Maybe you do, too, 
waiting for all this to give way to love itself, 
to look into the eyes of another and feel something— 
the pleasure of a new lover in the unbroken night, 
your wings folded around him, on the other side 
of this ragged January, as if a long sleep has ended.

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Above Seas of Clouds

Posted in Art Gallery, Art Show, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , on December 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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Continents



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Perfect Storms


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Icescapes


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The Light of Florence at 5PM


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Resilience


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Land becoming Cloud.

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Hybrid Notes : Bjarke Ingels. San Diego. 02.25.2011

Posted in Architecture, art, Books, Cures for the Nothing, Design, Digital Collage, Digital Manipulation, Drawing, Featured Architects, Lectures, Museum WOWs, Photography, Poetry, Quotes, San Diego, school, School Work, sketchbook, sketching, Theory and Criticism, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 28, 2011| 2 Comments »

Bjarke Ingels came to speak to our school Friday night.

The venue was the Museum of Natural History in scenic Balboa Park.

I am still blown away by the lecture and, more importantly, the message.

It was truly (r)evolutionary.  The fact that BIG’s insanely brilliant concepts not only get built but a) give back to the community in terms of urban interaction b) are socially and ecologically responsible and c) are giving him fame and making him a household name is galvanizing.

Expanding the collective idea of what is possible through architecture: this is the optimism we need after years of gloom, in face of all the naysayers and ‘pie-in-the-sky’ disablers.  Something is blooming in the state of Denmark.

What an event. My friend Alan Rosenblum told me it would be as if  ‘Lady Gaga came to San Diego’.

And. It. Was.  The students loved it. Three days later, and we are all still giddy.

I could not agree more.  Thank you Mr. Ingels.
You intensified the dialogue between students and educators, and showed us how the ‘crazy’ ideas that are developed in studio and propose new typologies for the city are not only possible but timely and welcome. This creates a better learning environment, where pragmatism actually means being part of the solution, not propagating the problem.

I had the same dilemma when working in traditional, corporate offices and found refuge in academia. BIG showed us that there is a third way, the ‘Bigamy’ way. You can have it all. You can be good and successful. You can be extremely famous
and not be arrogant. He spoke of pragmatic idealism, and hedonistic sustainability. He demonstrated how to create building that are fun to experience as inhabitants and city neighbors and yet are sustainable. He showed us the intellectual approach and use of hybridization of traditional typologies to achieve new functions and forms. To wit: the Garbage to Energy plant in the middle of Copenhagen, which will be the city’s tallest structure and will house a ski slope (!) and blow smoke rings each time one ton of CO2 is burned. These are usually ‘crazy’ projects that we see coming from the upper studio division, when we ask the students to ‘dream big’ (pun intended) and question the drab, anti-interactive reality of center cities such as San Diego. The students, deep inside, try to dream but are conditioned to think that projects such as the one we saw in the lecture could never be built due to various factors such as financial interests or politics of control, or even lack of relevance of our role as architects.

We have been liberated from all of this because we can now point to BIG’s projects. Here it was demonstrated that the only limits we have as architects and human beings are those self-imposed, or those we feel ‘reality’ has burdened us with. I know that as faculty we felt validated by BIG’s successes ( does it make sense?). The music and videos, the whole presentation and BIG’s  infectious enthusiasm, warmth and positive energy were, in the words of a student ‘AWESOME’. Another student told me he learned a lot about diagrams from the lecture.
The lecture also was a model for engaging presentations. I have been toying with the idea, but now I am committed to use music and pop references in my History of Architecture classes; I ran the idea with few students and they were all for it. 🙂 I will quote Ingels when he says that we need to ‘cease to consider the building as objects but focus on what they do for the city’ : this informs and generates a new approach to ‘sacred architectural monsters’ and teaching history of architecture (or as I like to think, architectural stories).

A big thank you to Allen Ghaida, the AIAS and all my colleagues at the NewSchool Arts Foundation for making this dream of an event a reality.

I sketched feverishly- and took down all the provocative quotes. Here are my hybrid/computer-augmented notes.

I will add all of the proper building names and location as soon as possible.

click to enlarge

…..and this was my present 🙂

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Progress with color techniques- the Queen Califia session

Posted in art,poetry,writing, Desk Crit, San Diego, school, School Work, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »

From yesterday’s Rendering and Delineation Class. So proud of my color-wary students.



Queen Califia Session 


Quen Califia Session II


Queen Califia III


Read the story of the mythical Queen Califia.

California is named after her!


See Niki St. Phalle Sculptural Garden ‘ Queen Califia’s Magical Garden’ in Kit Carson Park, Escondido, California.


Previous posts on the subject:

California and Califia

Listening to Baroque Music in San Francisco

 Working with Color

Queen Califia’s Magical Garden {Continued}


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SoCal – E>< : Exploratory Design Workshop

					

					Posted in Architecture, art,poetry,writing, Design, Desk Crit, Digital Collage, digital collage, photography, writing, architecture, Drawing, Experiments, F R A G M E N T S, Featured Artists, Graphic Design, Lectures, NaBloPoMo, Paper Goods, Pastel, Photography, school, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  on August 6, 2010|
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Something eye-opening occurred at my school yesterday.




I attended the exhibit for SoCal -Ex : Exploratory Design Workshop, completed by Professor Hector Perez and his students.




Here are the specific of the Workshop:


6 Explorers


Andrea Benavides/Alfredo Melly/Henry Palomino/Charles Santamaria/Nancy Tariga


25 Days


July 12-August 5


10 Field Trips


San Diego/La Jolla/Del Mar/San Juan Capistrano/Los Angeles/Santa Monica/Culver City/Venice/Pasadena/Palm Springs


9 Progressive Practices


Daly Genik Architects/Eric Owen Moss/Estudio Teddy Cruz/Gehry Technologies/Luce Et Studio/Michael Maltzan Architecture/Morphosis/Sebastian Mariscal Studio/Smith and Others


15 Extraordinary Residences


Charles and Ray Eames/Craig Ellwood/Christine & Russell Forester/Albert Frey/Frank Gehry/Greene and Greene/Coop Himmelblau/Alberto Kalach/Ed Killingsworth/Sebastian Mariscal/Kathy McCormick & Ted Smith/Richard NeutraRudolph Schindler/Don Wexler


I spoke with Professor Perez and he told me that the analysis of the case study residences and projects were concentrated on the ‘crown’, ‘body’ and ‘feet’ of the aedifices.












Through collages, reminiscent of Superstudio and Archigram, the field trips become a venue for envisioning alternative architectural and urban scenarios (Design Workshops). I hope you’ll enjoy these images just as much as I did; each collage read like a miniature work of art, and the juxtaposition of architectural drawings and bold hand-drawn colors created fantastic, detailed, abstract constructs.  What a wonderful way to illustrate architectural drawings, and bring to life photographs.  The collages, done by hand, using cutouts, colored pencils and paint had a physical presence, a texture that a purely digital (photoshopped) images invariably lack.


I am inspired to create some more collages of my own and…can’t wait for the book 😉


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Transitions (On the Road)

					

					Posted in art,poetry,writing, Photography, Poetry, tagged , , , ,  on November 23, 2009|
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Photograph from Nokia phone (3.2 Megapixel camera, Carl Zeiss Lens). Early Summer 2009.






Do you remember


Driving back from Las Vegas


Dusty


We stopped at a roadside fast-food


Nowhere, California?





We played Monopoly


waited until the sun came down,


until the traffic subsided.


You were merciless.





M.A


November 23, 2009







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