Bart Station Performance

thew downtown berkeley bart station: we stationed ourselves at the bottom of the escalator in that short round building.



when choosing rush hour to do this, I do not know if it is a good choice to keep returning to the same location, to get the same crowd with different performances, or to travel from bart station to bart station with the same performance. any thoughts would be helpful. you can leave them in the comment section of the blog. thanks!

new adventures and friends

waiting for SF bus


new friends: stevie et moi


Avery and Dax


and i am wondering what it means to live the artist's life... this semester long project is meant to figure that out. being around other practicing artists is encouraging, especially when they do there 'thing' even at coffee shops, and when they can not find jobs, they make their money by commissions... and the fact that it actually works to live off of commissions blows my mind. i am witnessing real life. makes gallery life feel pretentious at moments.

take the digital away from me please!...

first step out of BART onto the Embarcadero last week


man and his cat wanting to go home.


street performances to be inspired by: THE BUSH MAN- though now the original man has been replaced, he has left a legacy of sitting on the embarcadero behind his bush, taking tourists by surprise by popping out, as if they could not have noticed him before.

Converting Cameras

Here are the two cameras to be converted.

On the left is a lens-less Kodak, with incredibly flexible and intact bellows, glass view back. I need to re attach the bellows to the front slide, and in turn for no lens, make a pin hole for its eye. As for the back, I am making it adaptable for 4x5 negative holders by extending the back of the camera out with light tight boards and velcro to hold the carrier in place.

The camera on the right is fully functional as is. But, instead of using a roll film, I want to experiment using small medium format negatives of the 3.25 x 4.25 size, available by efke films. I need to procure or make a larger changing bag for this though, due to the fact that every image made will entail the changing out for a next negative for the next shot.

First Street Performance

Today was the first street performance attempt made, and it was fortuitously amazing! After work at the lab I met up with Dax at the downtown Berkeley BART station where we proceeded to pull out his accordion, my stilts and a moth newly constructed. For an hour and a half at rush home hour, we produced so many smiles on faces that I couldn't help but want to go back again and again. We made an all time record of $20 dollars, a Sim phone card, and a poloroid (which is like gold now), all placed into a bike helmet for our makings. Essentially what we did: Dax played his accordion and sang as I danced around with his moth puppet on stilts. No attempts were made to evacuate us from the premise... which was a worry since no permit was at hand. But many people watched, smiled, took photographs and videos, all which made us have a fantastic time. It was enough inspiration to collect our dinner money every night this way!

side thoughts

January 3, 2009 I think that perhaps if one always tries to go one direction further than the known boundaries, to find out if there is some necessity out there that might be needed, one will always be happy.
Like the fish crawling out of the water billions of years ago or a man building his airplane to get off our planet, even if he only ends up hovering just slightly above in our same atmosphere, there still lies a great accomplishment: the lift.
I held today this thin insect, two wings and five legs, (five legs leaving me wondering if he knew he was missing one) in cupped hands as I sat on the edge of the door to the boat as the sun set. As it became darker a star was brought up on the surface of the still water next to the dock. Friends sing and play thick intruments now in the center landing of the cabin, I think that they could be in La Boheme, though in the style of post-industrial-folk-noir-yachtrock. I wonder if this independent study is coming together, and I wonder what is the next step. I think I need to do more- spelling out what needs to be done seems to be like a fifth grade bubble map upon light green lines on white pages. but it really helps. the internet connection is so unpredictable here that i can not spell check or upload photographs to show the cameras i am converting yet, but they will be posted soon. I work now every day at the photolab as a sort of secretary. it takes up a bit too much time, something that i need to remedy, because my shifts are in the middle of the day, 11-4, so day walks are limited to the weekends or rushed in the am/pm. . . benefits are great though, discovering them slowly.