strange days

i'm on caffeinated beverage #4 in blue bottle cafe (17-foot ceilings, ash counters) and have just purchased a flat-panel monitor online, piggybacking on wifi from the gbus parked across the street--reading these innumerable AJS and ASR articles will never be the same again.

after breakfast with nat, celia, and dan, i visited liz at cca and saw her stuff (she was at the ranch last summer, then at emma lake after, which was cause for much envy), then went to the galleries at 49 geary to check out the hopper/eggleston/frank exhibition at fraenkel (full of illustrious things but disappointing nevertheless). much of the building was full of white, high-ceilinged galleries full of forgettable art. fortunately, there were highlights, chief among which were the amazing michael david monochromatic oils at room for painting, room for paper. the photographs really don't do these pieces justice--oil thinly applied on gesso, then removed selectively to achieve shade and tone; apparently all imagery from memory and imagination.

michael david's july, 2005. image from room for painting, room for paper.
(i want this one. someone should donate $6000 to my art fund. i look at this and think immediately of "fern hill")

ulrike palmbach's hounds (2006). image from iconoduel's marvellous flickr set.

there were also hand-stitched life-size dogs made of stuffed stockings by ulrike palmbach at stephen wirtz gallery, a great tom killion steamroller print at john windle antiquarian bookseller, large-format photographs of abandoned landscapes by shai kremer at robert koch (also featuring edward burtynsky's shipbreaking #9 diptych, half of which is visible here), and marvellous mixed media pieces by hadi tabatabai at brian gross.