I have been seeing Grace Potter and the Nocturnals on TV quite a bit lately. First, I saw her being interviewed on the Guitar Center sessions from AXS (a "new" TV channel that I just started subscribing to) Her live performance in the session was so full of energy. She is a very talented multi-instrumentalist (piano and guitar to name a few) as well as a soulful singer. There was an interesting conversation about how she started playing piano: her mom was a piano teacher and gave group lessons to local kids to earn some $. Grace Potter asked her mom to teach her stuff she taught the most advanced student so she could be better than all of them!
Later that night I was channel surfing and saw Palladia was supposed to be showing a programme about Heart (the rock band with female lead) but I saw this instead:
Well, I don't recall the Wilson sisters (from Heart) looking that young. They were certainly that young in the 70s but the clothing was not from that era for sure! I didn't realize that's Grace Potter until the end. (Gotta admit I'm bad at recognizing faces, even good looking ones!) Her vocal style did sound a bit like Heart though. And she's hot in the video!
So I decided to listen to the whole album. (I don't listen to much pop rock these days.) I enjoyed it. Some songs reminded me of Fleetwood Mac too. And, surprise surprise! Grace Potter has indeed covered a Fleetwood Mac song ("Gold Dust Women") with Warren Haynes.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Monday, April 07, 2014
Art explosions Spring Open studios
Art Explosions has studios in SF for rental by artists and 2 of their locations hosted open studios this weekend. I went talk to some artists and checked out their works.
Melisa Philips
She was the first artist I talked to. If you know me, I am not the type who could talk to strangers easily. Fortunately I saw a picture that seemed to be taken in Hong Kong in her studio and I used it as a conversation starter :P It was indeed taken in HK in 2006 when she attended a wedding of her friend. The works she showed were mostly photo as well as some paintings (some based on photo she took) She is very into patterns and shapes, e.g. those from the windows of buildings or staircases. I bought two bike-related photo from her for $5ea. I also found her painting "Give Me a Sign" very interesting. It's actually based on that HK photo in which there were lots of signs of stores/restaurants, a typical sight from the main streets in HK like Nathan Rd. Finally she told me about her online shop at Etsy.
Mathilda Lazelle
Her big self-portrait was actually the first piece I saw at the event as it is close to the entrance (and she used it for one version of her business card. Great idea :) The paintings she showed was mainly people or food, or both. One of them is superimposed images of a person and a jellyfish. I told her about one main character from Haruki Murakami's novel liked watching jellyfish as he felt calm. She felt the same way too. Not me though. To me, jellyfish represents danger.
Rasika Apte
She is an Asian American artist from my generation. She was working on a watercolor piece while I was there and we started talking about it, which has several circle outlines. She told me she is developing a theme with repeating patterns. She has already painted a few. And it all started with one small painting with a radish. Another painting of hers that caught my eye was one with a Sikh temple. She painted it after the shooting incident at a Wisconsin Sikh temple. It was based on some photo she had plus her own imaginations.
Ameena
She showed a large Pollack-esque abstract water color, which is a collaboration with another artist. In addition, she had a lot of small acrylic paintings. We talked about the challenges with such a small real estate.
Mary Stengel Bentley
She had a very interesting piece titled WELCOME. Each letter is converted to binary ASCII and each 0 or 1 was painted with a different colored pattern. Perfectly fitting the
Bronwyn DexterOne of her piece has a red-ish background with a few running horses and "cheez-it"-like patterns. I told her it's the year of the horse on Chinese calendar and she could sell it to Chinese for a good price. She is also a musician. In fact she used the Fender Jaguar head image on her business cards (that's the guitar she plays. So do I!)
Emily Proud
We talked about what kind of art she does inside (and outside) this studio. She told me the watercolor landscape she showed was actually drawn outside near Land's end. She is also a teacher. Maybe I could take one of her group lesson some day.
After talking to Emily, I left this location (2425 17th St) and moved on to the 3-story building on Alabama St.
Alison Walker
Like many other artists, her works utilize many repeated patterns and lines as common themes. One piece that caught my eye though was a drawing of a rose, which was based on the ones planted by inmates at the Alcatraz (she visited as a botanical artist working to preserve such images since the place was being torn down) She left a lot of white spaces and used quite a bit of thin narrow lines for the stem and leafs, which reminded me of Chinese paintings.
Hannah Schutzengel
She was working on a small painting (oil on treated paper) I told her it looks like avocado to me :P
Lucia Gonnella
I was attracted by a few of her seaside landscape painting about Bari (in South Italy), the bay area and Hawaii. Took a few picture which got her notice and she started talking to me about her art. Bari was her birthplace so no wonder she has several paintings about it. In addition to traditional paintings, she also made relief sculpture on canvas with a person (herself) and flowers. Another interesting piece consists of three canvas connected with door hinges. It's about water. She intended it to be viewed closely, with two canvas on each side of the head. I was glad to talk to an artist with lots of experience and so friendly.
Beth Knight
Her pieces were all about dogs appearing in various sizes in the city.
Melisa Philips
She was the first artist I talked to. If you know me, I am not the type who could talk to strangers easily. Fortunately I saw a picture that seemed to be taken in Hong Kong in her studio and I used it as a conversation starter :P It was indeed taken in HK in 2006 when she attended a wedding of her friend. The works she showed were mostly photo as well as some paintings (some based on photo she took) She is very into patterns and shapes, e.g. those from the windows of buildings or staircases. I bought two bike-related photo from her for $5ea. I also found her painting "Give Me a Sign" very interesting. It's actually based on that HK photo in which there were lots of signs of stores/restaurants, a typical sight from the main streets in HK like Nathan Rd. Finally she told me about her online shop at Etsy.
Mathilda Lazelle
Her big self-portrait was actually the first piece I saw at the event as it is close to the entrance (and she used it for one version of her business card. Great idea :) The paintings she showed was mainly people or food, or both. One of them is superimposed images of a person and a jellyfish. I told her about one main character from Haruki Murakami's novel liked watching jellyfish as he felt calm. She felt the same way too. Not me though. To me, jellyfish represents danger.
Rasika Apte
She is an Asian American artist from my generation. She was working on a watercolor piece while I was there and we started talking about it, which has several circle outlines. She told me she is developing a theme with repeating patterns. She has already painted a few. And it all started with one small painting with a radish. Another painting of hers that caught my eye was one with a Sikh temple. She painted it after the shooting incident at a Wisconsin Sikh temple. It was based on some photo she had plus her own imaginations.
Ameena
She showed a large Pollack-esque abstract water color, which is a collaboration with another artist. In addition, she had a lot of small acrylic paintings. We talked about the challenges with such a small real estate.
Mary Stengel Bentley
She had a very interesting piece titled WELCOME. Each letter is converted to binary ASCII and each 0 or 1 was painted with a different colored pattern. Perfectly fitting the
Bronwyn DexterOne of her piece has a red-ish background with a few running horses and "cheez-it"-like patterns. I told her it's the year of the horse on Chinese calendar and she could sell it to Chinese for a good price. She is also a musician. In fact she used the Fender Jaguar head image on her business cards (that's the guitar she plays. So do I!)
Emily Proud
We talked about what kind of art she does inside (and outside) this studio. She told me the watercolor landscape she showed was actually drawn outside near Land's end. She is also a teacher. Maybe I could take one of her group lesson some day.
After talking to Emily, I left this location (2425 17th St) and moved on to the 3-story building on Alabama St.
Alison Walker
Like many other artists, her works utilize many repeated patterns and lines as common themes. One piece that caught my eye though was a drawing of a rose, which was based on the ones planted by inmates at the Alcatraz (she visited as a botanical artist working to preserve such images since the place was being torn down) She left a lot of white spaces and used quite a bit of thin narrow lines for the stem and leafs, which reminded me of Chinese paintings.
Hannah Schutzengel
She was working on a small painting (oil on treated paper) I told her it looks like avocado to me :P
Lucia Gonnella
I was attracted by a few of her seaside landscape painting about Bari (in South Italy), the bay area and Hawaii. Took a few picture which got her notice and she started talking to me about her art. Bari was her birthplace so no wonder she has several paintings about it. In addition to traditional paintings, she also made relief sculpture on canvas with a person (herself) and flowers. Another interesting piece consists of three canvas connected with door hinges. It's about water. She intended it to be viewed closely, with two canvas on each side of the head. I was glad to talk to an artist with lots of experience and so friendly.
Beth Knight
Her pieces were all about dogs appearing in various sizes in the city.
Sunday, April 06, 2014
馬到成功 vs 馬到功成
以「馬到功成」一詞恭祝對方在商業上、在競賽上取得好成績，從小就聽不少，也不止於新年才用得上。踏入馬年，忽然發現很多地方展示「馬到成功」標語，包括球場（在歐洲足球場出現為中國客而設的廣告板已是屢見不鮮）小朋友學校（那是預祝籌款達標，可能因為中國人家長眾多吧）看來兩詞不同，又是中港差異吧。於是Google一下，多得蘋果日報左丁山撰文解釋，原來兩詞各有出處：
「馬到成功」見元代無名氏《小尉遲將鬥將認父歸朝》第二折：「那老尉遲這一去，馬到成功」，意思係一開始就成功，掂晒。至於「馬到功成」，出自元代鄭廷玉在《楚昭公》第四折：「只願你馬到功成，奏凱而還」，意思係事情順利，得到勝利。不過習主席說的是「馬到成功」，各大媒體知道要怎做吧。
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