27 February 2010

San Francisco Trip

A few iphone images from my recent trip to San Francisco for the Arts of Pacific Asia Show as well as the Tribal and Textile Show.




The recently completed Contemporary Jewish Museum near the MOMA downtown.





A walk across the Golden Gate Bridge where I spoke to the painters. Notice the small painters box suspended from the right hand cables. Two painters go up the cables in this box painting as they go.








A detail of a cross section of one of the 36-1/2" diameter main cable from the bridge. Each made up of 27,572 wires and adding up to a cumlalative 80,000 miles of wire. 



Sunrise near the end of the Alameda swap meet.



A friend hauling away the treasure.


Wanted, but fortunately had no space for...


Some of the Ruth Asawa pieces on permanent display in the tower at the de Young Museum. 








26 February 2010

Object #13 Sweet Mold




I found this sweet mold (okashikata) many years ago in northern Japan in an "old school" junk shop. I've only seen one other with bats which hang inside a noted sweet shop on Shijo Street in Kyoto.  Bats, in a tradition adopted from China, are a symbol of good fortune. In Chinese the word for bat is a homonym with the word for good fortune, and their love of rebus has resulted in bats being put on almost everything from imperial textiles to the cheap plastic dishes at that "Chinese-American" restaurant you stopped at in Casper, Wyoming.