Two ways to get your drink on this Wednesday, July 8: join the international community of wine bloggers sipping sake the second Wednesday this month or find your local community for Green Drinks, typically the second Tuesday or Wednesday each month.
Lenn Thompson writes that the 59th edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, hosted by The Passionate Foodie, is an homage to Kushi no Kami, the ancient name for the god of Saké, and that the theme is perfect: “it’s just the kind of WBW theme that inspired the event in the first place — a forced exploration of a region or type of wine that is new or unknown…” Read more…
Hitting 100,000
It’s gonna happen soon: I’m going to hit 100,000 page views on my blog in the next few hours! Right now I’m at 99,940! Will your view be number 100,000? Let me know if it is!
Thank you for prowling with Art Predator! Here’s to YOU!
Bicycle Racks: Request for Proposals for Artist-Designed Bicycle Racks due Weds. July 8
According to the City of Ventura website:
The City of Ventura Public Art Program is accepting proposals by July 8 for artist-designed bicycle racks to be installed in high use locations throughout the city. The goal is to enhance Ventura as a bicycle-friendly city as more Ventura residents turn to cycling and other healthy, eco-friendly modes of transportation. Artist designs should be colorful, imaginative and FUNctional, accommodating two to six bicycles and conform to established safety guidelines
.
Each selected artist will receive $5,000 for the final design and fabrication per bicycle rack. The City of Ventura will be responsible for all installation. Proposals will be considered for reproduction in limited edition series and should include a separate budget for the fabrication of additional racks.
Artists interested in submitting proposals should exhibit the following criteria:
- Experience working with durable materials specific to the outdoor environment.
- Demonstrated success in comparable projects using creative, innovative and effective approaches
- Ability to understand a locale’s sense of place and design in a context-sensitive manner.
For more information, contact Denise Sindelar at dsindelar@cityofventura.net or 805-658-4793.
Submission deadline is Monday, July 8, at 5 PM by mail, in person or email. (This is quoted from their website; I imagine she means Weds. July 8 not Monday july 6).
Send mailed or hand delivered proposals to:
City of Ventura Public Art Program
Attn: Denise Sindelar
501 Poli St Rm 226
PO Box 99
Ventura, CA 93002About the Public Art Program
The Public Art program, established in 1991, sets aside 2 percent of Capital Improvement Project costs for the commissioning of artists and artist’s services. The Public Art Commission, a seven member volunteer council advisory group, oversees the program by approving artists, designs, and Annual Public Art Work Plans.
My guess is that’s a typo on the date: July 8 is Wednesday, not Monday. Good luck! The Ventura Bicycle Union will be involved in choosing the rack and making sure it’s not just a public art piece but functional. (Email me and I’ll tell you where to send the check!)
I talked with avid commuting cyclist artist Matt Harvey who joined us on the FFArtRide on Friday as well as the Summer Solstice Santacon about some of his ideas and they are HOT! Not only will they be funtional, but they are way FUN and knowing Matt and his work, they will resonate artistically as well.
I brainstormed some ideas with the Big Monkey who works with concrete and my nephew who just graduated with a degree in environmental studies from UCSC and with a degree in engineering from UC Berkeley. He’s got a huge passion for art and a huge hole in his pocket money wise but I coldn’t convince him to work on a project with the Big Monkey and I–and since we ‘ve got plenty going, I don’t think we’ll be going forward with our proposal as much as I’d like to!
Want one of these bike bike racks pictured above? Go here: www.dero.com/autospec/bike_bike.html
You can find the horse one here: http://brokensidewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/new_bike_racks_02.jpg
The Globe rack and a whole lot more here: http://www.creativemetalworksllc.com/Pages/custom_all.html
This blog post has some fun racks also: http://www.stumblingoverchaos.com/?p=1103
Poet Walt Whitman Sells Levis 501 Jeans in new ad campaign & Ellyn Maybe on Being an Artist
Whitman wears his Levis well to inspire a new generation, the millenials, the “Os” (for Obama) generation: http://goforth.levi.com/newdeclaration/gallery
OR hear here:
Bypass the Levis site and its accompanying ad campaign by clicking the link above to hear Walt Whitman’s original 36-second wax cylinder recording of what is thought to be Whitman’s voice reading four lines from the poem “America.” For more information on this recording, see Ed Folsom, “The Whitman Recording,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 9 (Spring 1992), 214-16. More information:
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
And here’s Ellyn Maybe, an LA poet, “On Being an Artist”:
POETRY: I Come From the West
I come from Ventura, from California
hiking through cattle to Two Trees, seeing
Channel Islands float in the sea, from
eucalyptus at Mound school, the quad at Buena.
I come from Aspen, La Honda, Taos,
Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View,
Los Altos, Peet’s coffee, Ridge Winery,
Stanford, Santa Cruz, Reno, Jackson Hole.
I come from driving halls delivering
fresh VC Press newspapers, from
reciting poetry on hay bales at
Renaissance Faires in Agoura, Larkspur,
Novato, from climbing the Collegiate
Peaks Yale, Harvard, Columbia, from
Yosemite granite, gym plastic,
Gibraltar sandstone, monkey bars, school roofs.
I come from mud between my toes, hail on
my head, sagebrush in my cuffs, hot springs
dripping from my curls. From burrowing owls,
red tail hawks, spotted owls, house wrens, finches,
peregrine falcons, bats. From bird nests,
cecil bruner’s, rose geraniums, pine.
From trailers, vws, stucco, tents.
From East winds and El Ninos. From
Sierra, Rockies, Tetons, Pingora,
Castleton Spire, Cascades, Mojave,
Great Basin, Coachella, Black Rock City,
Telescope Peak, Wheeler Peak, Badwater,
oceanwater. From sweat. From tears. From dew.
While it would be more obvious a connection to yesterday’s post about flarf and conceptual poetry to post a 315 experiment poem for today’s Monday Poetry Train, I am more intrigued by recent journeys into where I’m from.
Where are you from? How does where you’re from define who you are?
Once in February and once in June, I scoured my past to tell my story in as an evocative and poetic way possible in attempts to get the “best job in the world”–first, as Caretaker of the Great Barrier Reef, then as Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent. These journeys, as well as recent connections with old friends and journeys into facebook which takes me into the past, places me in the present, and offers me glimpses of the future, plus teaching Ray Carver’s short story collection Where I’m Calling From, led me to decide to post this poem today for the Monday Poetry Train. I look forward to adding some links and illsutrations. And finding out where you’re from! Post a link here if you write your own “where I come from poem” for us to go see!
Last June, I attended a Conceptual Poetry Conference at the University of Arizona Tucson. Now, a year later, Kenneth Goldsmith has edited the current issue of Poetry, Flarf and Conceptual Writing in Poetry Magazine : Harriet the Blog …published by the Poetry Foundation, much of which is also available on-line at Harriet the Blog (Flarf and Conceptual Writing in Poetry Magazine : Harriet the Blog …) and written the following essay,
Flarf is Dionysus. Conceptual Writing is Apollo.
An introduction to the 21st Century’s most controversial poetry movements. In this essay, Goldsmith asks,
With so much available language, does anyone really need to write more? Instead, let’s just process what exists. Language as matter; language as material. How much did you say that paragraph weighed?
Our immersive digital environment demands new responses from writers. What does it mean to be a poet in the Internet age?
His answer includes:
These two movements, Flarf and Conceptual Writing, each formed over the past five years, are direct investigations to that end. And as different as they are, they have surprisingly come up with a set of similar solutions.
What is conceptual poetry? Goldsmith offers up a primer in this extensive pdf here. In his Poetry essay, he compares and contrasts Flarf with Conceptual Writing:
Yet for as much as the two movements have in common, they are very different. Unlike Conceptual Writing, where procedure may have as much to do with meaning as the form and content, Flarf is quasi-procedural and improvisatory. Many of the poems are “sculpted” from the results of Internet searches, often using words and phrases that the poet has gleaned from poems posted by other poets to the Flarflist e-mail listserv. By contrast Conceptual Writers try to emulate the workings and processes of the machine, feeling that the results will be good if the concept and execution of the poetic machine are good; there is no tolerance for improvisation or spontaneity.
Flarf plays Dionysus to Conceptual Writing’s Apollo. Flarf uses traditional poetic tropes (“taste” and “subjectivity”) and forms (stanza and verse) to turn these conventions inside out. Conceptual Writing rarely “looks” like poetry and uses its own subjectivity to construct a linguistic machine that words may be poured into; it cares little for the outcome. Flarf is hilarious. Conceptual Writing is dry.
During my stay in Tucson and after, I wrote a series of posts about my experiences there and my attempts to understand this kind of poetry better which you can find at the end of this post.
In Tucson, I met many of the poets Goldsmith mentions in his essay and pdf or features in this issue, including LA poet, Vanessa Place who wrote the poem below. (Please note: I am struggling to get the stanza breaks to “stick;” you may choose to read and view the poem Miss Scarlett here.)
Miss Scarlett
by Vanessa Place
Celebrating Independence
Above is a Muppet version of celebrating Independence Day; and here’s the FFArtRiders version:
On the “Fossil Fuel Free Ride” July 3, we visited Bell Arts up the Avenue, Sylvia White and V2 in midtown, and Art City back near the Avenue. 
I was too busy keeping the ride rolling and neglected to get photos; fortunately, Mark was able to shoot while we rode!
After the ride, we picked up hot dogs, chips, vegies, and beer for an after party at Art City where Steve TV had reinvented an art installation, and Russell and crew cleaned the place up for us. Art City is always magical but sunset in summer is a special time indeed for us to enjoy the glow of the ride.
Marialyce brought homemade lemonade concentrate to combine with the ice water Jason brought over earlier, and the Big Monkey BBQ’d the dogs. A number of new and old friends meandered over to Art City after the performance pieces at Sylvia White, and many of us hung out until almost midnight.
Not sure where the NEXT after party will be yet, but the next RIDE is the Animal Fair Ride August 7!
The crowded street shows the Push’em Pull’em Parade where a few thousand families walked Main from near our house to the July 4 street fair downhill in downtown; this photo is close to the tail end of the parade–the Big Monkey and the small boy are wearing the blue wigs. (Go Dodgers!)
Happy Independence Day, USA! Enjoy the fireworks, everyone! I know we will!
Support “pay as you drive” legislation before July 9; DON’T sign petitions to undercut Prop 103!
As much as possible, we ride our bikes to get around and commute in town. You’ll see a group of us in our patriotic best out tonight riding around to various galleries for First Friday rather than the standard practice of driving.
But in California, it doesn’t really matter how many miles you drive a year when it comes to car insurance costs–no matter how much less you drive under 12,000 miles a year, you pay the same basic amount as anyone else.
This could change if insurance regulators have their way and the public supports them enough in a face off against a powerful, well funded, and very profitable insurance industry.
That would mean it’s up to you–and you have until July 9 to post your comments to the state legislature. Read more…
Ahh yes, getting warmed up for playa bike rides with the First Friday ArtRide tomorrow night! Meet up with us at the Son Jon Road City yard parking lot before 5:30 or from 530-6pm, OR outside or inside the Artists Union Gallery or the bar at Aloha or C St restaurant along the Ventura Beach Promenade.
And here’s a cool reduce-reuse-recycle idea for the Playa bound:
Big lumberyards wrap their bales of lumber in huge tarps for shipping, which the yards (like Builder’s Supply on 72nd in Omaha, NE) throw away. The tarps are huge, black or tan on one side & white with company logo on the other side. A Burner asked to have some & they said all she wanted, and that they work for tent flooring as well.
These are not just plastic sheets, they’re the regular fiber tarp like the blue stuff you buy at the hardware store. They’re great for a lot of pruposes including tacking around the front of camp to keep from tracking in so much dust. They’d also be good for windblock or additional shade.
And if you start on this now, you’ll have plenty of time to customize them! Anyone else got great playa tips? Post them here please and post on the ePlaya Q&A/Tips and Tricks forum (http://bit.ly/sqJx9)
Can’t wait to get your Playa going? Join the Do Lab July 11 for a FUNdraiser in LA for their Playa installation Read more…
June Wrap Up : : July What’s Up
June 2009 has been and gone; another month’s worth of days and nights spent. And what did I do here on this blog? What was the big news here last month? What in the world did I write and did you read in 9, 370 page views in those 43 posts last month–one every day and then some–to total almost 100,000 page views since November 2007?
WordCamp SF 2009 (and getting my posts on it linked to Blog Herald and to WordPress’s Wordcamp SF post), First Friday ArtRides in June and July, Burning Man exploits and art as always, and last but not least, my application to be the Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent. The hit posts for last month and of all time are listed below.
Summer is a time for outdoor concerts, vacations, BBQs, bike rides, camping, growing gardens. Being close to LA means there are lots of great events going on 1-2 hours away from free concerts at many of the museums and public spaces like the Santa Monica Pier and Grand Performances downtown to Shakespeare and street fairs.
This weekend the country erupts in Fireworks and patriotic displays of affection. Around here, July 4 highlights are always the free show up in Santa Barbara off Stearns Wharf and the Rotary show at Ventura College which costs unless you find a spot outside the field.
If you go to Santa Barbara, be sure to drop by the grand opening of the new Fishnet store and gallery which my friend Jenessa is involved with–she’s been tie dying and sewingup a storm and I am sure her creations will be a hit! (Beware of traffic headed to Michael Jackson’s Neverland for the public viewing!)
Poetry-wise, I’ll be at the Artists Union Gallery for Robert Peake read July 14. As I get a chance to post about other literary and artistic events, you know I will!
We’re most excited about the Fossil Fuel Free Ride July 3; join us at 5:30pm as the moon rises on the Ventura Promenade for a 6pm ride around town with stops at various art spaces and followed by an after party! The moon will be bright and almost full for the ride. Other July astronomy highlights, according to my trusty Tidelog:
F July 3: Earth at Aphelion
T July 7: full moon; penumbral lunar eclipse (not much to notice)
T July 20: new moon; solar eclipse–umbral shadow lands in India, crosses, Nepal, Bhutan, Mynamar, China, southern Pacific Ocean
Astrology-wise, according to Astrology.com, “Uranus, the planet of rebellion, turns retrograde today July 1.
Uranus is the oddball of the solar system. For starters, it rolls along its side — on its equator — instead of spinning upright in its orbit the way planets typically do. Uranus is also in retrograde for more than half of the year. This means it is only direct for two weeks, and is retrograde for about five months out of every Earth year.
Astrologically, Uranus liberates you from the shackles of convention and applies pressure to change whatever is stagnant in your life. Uranus rules electromagnetic energy and is like a lightning storm that creates chaos as it cleans the air, revealing a fresh new world once the storm has cleared.
But when Uranus is retrograde, expect the unexpected. Wonderful and startling surprises are very possible. This retrograde may set your wild side free, or it could make a notoriously outgoing person uncharacteristically shy.
To know exactly what to expect, review the placement of Uranus in your birth chart. If Uranus is direct in a chart, intuitive and inventive impulses flow on a regular basis. However, when Uranus is retrograde in a birth chart, rebellious urges tend to bottle up and then burst forth, seemingly out of nowhere. A retrograde period seems to reawaken freedom urges within individuals, causing them to suddenly and unconsciously rebel against any ruts or confinement in life. Is Uranus retrograde in your birth chart? Should you be on guard against your own rebellious tendencies in the following months to come?
The Lunar eclipse Tuesday July 7 is in my sign, Capricorn, about which Astrology.com says:
The second lunar eclipse of 2009 takes place on July 7, signaling the beginning of a dramatic eclipse period. A solar eclipse occurs on July 21 and then another lunar eclipse happens on August 5. A lunar eclipse always occurs during a full Moon, when the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, casting its shadow on the Moon. Eclipses also come in pairs.
We tend to be more emotionally expressive during a full Moon, and this time around, that bright orb in the night sky is no exception! This won’t be a boring month and you’ll want to keep your eyes and ears open so that you can take full advantage of the opportunities and avoid the pitfalls. This is a time to stand back and assess your goals. Your career/work life gets a lot of attention now, and with Saturn making a helpful aspect, you just may get the support you’ve been hoping for! The Jupiter/Neptune conjunction in Aquarius, which will be exact on July 10, boosts your optimism. While the eclipse in practical Capricorn keeps your feet on the ground, this idealistic duo reminds you to dream big!
The solar eclipse July 21 is in cancer, and it’s in the same place as it was 19 years ago so to get a clue about what’s going on today, take a trip down memory lane about where YOU were 19 years ago and what you were facing. For me, 19 years ago was also my Saturn returns. That year was the start of a whole new direction in my life, the beginning of a huge upheaval.
What else does this eclipse have in store for you? According to astrology.com means:
Get ready for drama! A total eclipse of the Sun will occur in the sign of Cancer on July 21-22. Although this eclipse will only be visible in northern India, eastern Nepal, northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, the northern tip of Myanmar, central China and the Pacific Ocean, this is the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the twenty-first century. This total eclipse will last for up to 6 minutes and 39 seconds; will not be surpassed in duration again until June 13, 2132!
A Solar eclipse occurs when the Moon is exactly between the Sun and the Earth, blocking the solar rays from reaching us. From ancient times to the modern-day world, solar eclipses have heralded spectacular events and drama! This eclipse occurs in the last degree of Cancer — and brings all the Cancerian energies of home, family, nurturing, caring, maternal instincts, emotions and sensitivity into focus.
Eclipses always occur in pairs. While a lunar eclipse brings the past into the present to see what works, a solar eclipse brings the future to present and triggers new potentials. Since Cancer rules family, home and vocation these areas will take center stage during this eclipse.
What does the eclipse mean for you? Since this eclipse occurs in the sign of Cancer, its impact will feel different depending on which House Cancer is positioned in your birth chart. Where the eclipse falls in the chart is significant, as the energies expressed by its house placement will show the areas of life that are affected by the new beginning that is implied.
If your Sun sign or Ascendant is Cancer, almost every part of your life will be affected. If Cancer is in your First or Seventh House, you will focus on yourself, your marriage or your relationship. If it is situated in the Second or Eight House, your earnings or joint finances will be impacted. If it is the Third or Ninth House, travel or educational pursuits are highlighted. In the Fourth or Tenth House, home and career will be front and center. Eclipses in the Fifth or Eleventh House put the spotlight on self-expression, children, groups and organizations. Finally, eclipses in the Sixth or Twelfth House put the focus on health, work and service. Wisdom holds that events that are triggered by an eclipse usually take six months to unfold, so you can expect this process of change to continue. The opportunity to break old patterns will present themselves as you make changes.
Do you know where Cancer is in your birth chart, and how it impacts your life?
Top 15 Posts for 30 days ending 2009-07-01:
9, 370 total page views
2009-06-01 to Today
| To date: 98, 100 page views | ||
|---|---|---|
| Posts w/over 1000 Views | ||
| Inspirational: Next Lunar Eclipse |
5,029 | |
| Last Day of 2008: Saturn Retrograde |
2,925 | |
| Chris Ringland’s Ebenezer Shiraz 2006: |
1,950 | |
| Trick Out Your Burning Man Bike: |
1,637 | |
| Great Barrier Reef Fun Activities |
1,284 | |
| Is America’s Shakespeare Bruce |
1,208 | |
| Google Voice Transforms Your Phones | 1,172 | |
| POEM I am a scary smelly skeleton pirate | 1,086 | |
| on being a mom…a poem | 1,030 |
art predator 
