When I take my summer walks and stop by the post office, I have been finding some good stuff waiting for me every time this summer. Here is a list of the artists shown here:
Last week, while the U.S. celebrated Independence Day, here in San Francisco we also celebrated the blooming of the Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum) at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. It was the worth the wait in line to get a whiff and have a look. The day I saw the flower, it was no longer especially pungent. What struck me is how big and beautiful it really is. The color is an incredible rusty, blood red. I was inspired to capture the palette with this latest piece in my ongoing Lines and Color Series.
How are your celebrating World Chocolate Day?
You could paint a small canvas to look like a chocolate bar. You could make a collage out of Kit Kat wrappers from Japan or maybe a map of Australia from Tim Tam wrappers or even postcards with your Niederegger Marzipan wrappers.
Sutro Tower is 50 years old, and it is time to celebrate our favorite “locals only” landmark. It gives us TV and radio signals, and one day will be used as the docking port for the alien mothership.
Prints are available of my latest piece at Society 6.
Wired City #3, 5.5” x 4.25”, mixed media on paper.
When it comes to San Francisco, there are certain iconic images that are recognized around the world, the most famous being the Golden Gate Bridge, followed up by cable cars and rows of Victorian houses. But for us locals, there are different and local iconic images that we associated with our City. We have Sutro Tower, the MUNI logo, and wires, lots of wires. You look up in San Francisco and you are as likely to see wires as you will see fog. Those are the wires that “ruin” many a tourist’s photo. The wires that perplex Germans who tell me they “thought San Francisco was a modern city…” San Francisco wouldn’t be San Francisco without its wires.
The wires are full of contradictions. A modern high tech city with wires strung everywhere. We are a wire-filled city where more and more of its residents forgo landlines and only have cell phones. A city where we are less likely to have cable TV, in part because we are too busy to watch TV and in part because Sutro Tower gives many of us great reception for free. A city where even the über-rich in Pacific Heights can look out their windows at a leaning telephone pole and a nest of wires.
With that in mind, above is one of a series of four handmade “souvenir” postcards of our Wired City. They have been sent out for various upcoming shows in Italy, France, the U.K. and the U.S.
When I saw the call for mail art with the theme Possible
Worlds I saw an opportunity to once again incorporate San Francisco’s
space alien docking port (a.k.a. Sutro Tower) into a collage. This one is being teleported via the postal
service to Italy.
I work primarily in mixed media, collage and landscape painting. My work has included maps, postcard-themed art and mail art projects. In 2013 I began moving away from found ephemera and shifted to making my own material. This started with a series called Collagescapes. With Collagescapes, I start by painting paper with areas of color representing the palette of a specific place. Next, I cut up the paper into hundreds of small pieces. The final steps are to randomize the pieces and then reassemble them in various geometric patterns. Collagescapes are both landscape paintings and collages. My latest work is a series called Post-Folk Art. It is a nod to the color palettes found in costumes, textiles, pottery and other forms of traditional Kashubian and Polish folk art. Since 1997 my work has shown in over 40 venues, primarily in California but also in other locations in the United States and abroad. My artwork can be viewed at tofuart.com
