Hope A 7/12/15 Hope A 7/12/15

In My Backyard

So I won't even post what my front yard looks like. We have a large picture window, which offers a view from my studio space onto an exciting stage of drama. If I lay on the rug and look up at the sky I can see the tops of the three eucalyptus trees that survive the concrete plaza's offerings. But if I look right outside there is a park, a plaza really, where a bunch of folks hang out all day and a few regulars make it interesting. It is mostly harmless, folks tending to keep to them selves, with loud laughter and talking and sometimes yelling. Most people don't recognize my street name but if I name the intersection of the nearest 2 streets, most know the spot. I have a lot of complicated feelings about living here, but there are some bright spots.

This month's postcard asks you to write about your favorite spot in your neighborhood. Most Saturdays, Andy and I walk four blocks to another rowdy park, walk through a small handmade gate into an oasis. City Slicker Farms have been bringing produce, garden starts and eggs to West Oakland since 2001. The urban garden and farmstand in our neighborhood is only a part of what they do. They have a nursery a few blocks away, a backyard gardening program helping to build raised bed gardens in residential and small businesses in the community. They recently purchases a lot of land not too far away that will include a playground, and an outdoor classroom and so much more. They just completed a fundraising event for construction costs, surpassing their goal by 10%.

Our Saturday walks lead us past abandoned empty houses, families outside, newish condos, artist lofts converted from a school and to the shady corner where the farmstand is set up every Saturday. Recently, they moved the stand inside, allowing for a glimpse into the garden. Prices are sliding scale, allowing anyone to get fresh vegetables. I usually pick up some flowers too, and on the way out we stop to see the chickens. I've seen a mix of people shopping at the stand but Joseph and the volunteers will chat for a minute if you want. Two weeks ago, I gave them a copy of this month's card. If you live in West Oakland, stop in!

City Slicker Farms farm stand is open every Saturday at 10 am until they run out. Prices are on a scale and if you are able, give them a little extra. It is an amazing asset to the community.

Hope A 6/4/15 Hope A 6/4/15

Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin

I have been listing to a lot of audiobooks the past six months. Partly because I am too tired to read at night and because I don't sit down often. Partly it replaces the television I sometimes play while binding books or folding hundreds of cards. But also it is a form unto itself, hearing the author speak the words they wrote, a rehearsed story in their own voice. I mostly listen to books ready by the author. When I realized I could borrow them for free from my library and listen to them on my phone, I found I preferred it to music while running the printing presses.

I like to browse sometimes when I am procrastinating, making a list of books I will someday listen to, so that it is easier to find something when I have hours of printing ahead, I had chosen Andre Dubus III's Townie because I read short stories by his father when I was in high school and they were one of a few books that carried me through my last months in New Hampshire, to Boston and away. I still have the collection I bought at a Barnes and Noble in 1994 with a Christmas gift card.

I guess I forgot their family ties to New Hampshire and Massachusetts, probably because at the time I had not lived anywhere else and did not long for its familiarity. But from the opening minute of Townie, I am reminded in voice and tone and words about kids I grew up with. The curse words, the this accents turning "fuck" into "fahhhck". How it is different than my dad's Boston speech, how I could hear the difference in my cousins' voices but could never articulate it. This book is dark, stories of hard times, of growing up poor and tough, in run down mill towns. These are places I knew a little as an adult, though by the time I got to Newburyport, 20 years after it appears in the book, the downtown has been spruced up, a cute movie theater played art films, the bus stopping on its way from Boston to UNH.

It is not my story or my background but I can see the similarities in some of my middle school friends. I grew up more middle class but our town was obviously divided, our middle school on the rougher side of town. My parents divorced when I was 12 or so, leaving my mom to work more, leaving us home alone. My sister's friends got drunk in the woods on school holidays but mostly we stayed out of trouble. But the trouble was there. This book is familiar as a distant possibility, as a life that would not have been mine but was just on the periphery. Even the sexism and misogyny, the testosterone driven revenge and impotent anger that wells up in response to threat to his sister or girlfriend, is part of what I grew up with.

As a story, as a piece of literature, the violence is endless and the story intertwined. But it is hard for me to separate this from my own stories, even now as I have friends in Haverhill, Massachusetts (say HAYvril) or Lowell. When the author begins a chapter about moving to an apartment in Lynn, my brain automatically repeated the rhyme my family would chant Lynn Lynn City of Sin, you never go out the way you came in... (my great Aunt lived in Lynn for a bit) and the moments later the author was repeating it. Apparently it was known outside my family.

I can't tell you if you would like this if you didn't grow up there. So here, listen to this, the accent I never got, the secret side of my hometown, one of the soundtracks to my adolescence.

I am working on a few zine, Where You From number 4, which will be stories from my hometown. Maybe this will be part of it. Maybe this is just more to think about.

Hope A 4/27/15 Hope A 4/27/15

Collaboration Station

screen print created for california independent bookstore day

Green Apple Books in San Francicso, contacted me about printing a broadside to be given away for California's Independent Bookstore Day on May 2nd. Even before I knew I would be printing something approved by John Waters I was in! Bookstores! Broadsides! and cursing!

I sent three designs, one of them featuring hand-drawn type because I like to take the most time possible before I get paid. I love this trick though, drawing type from a sample book. My lack of perfectionism means that even traced type scanned into the computer still has a rough homemade feeling. The bookstore and John Waters agreed. We settled on a pale blue paper, and black ink and I was off to The Grease Diner in Oakland, to reconnect with my screen printing skills.

If you want one of these posters, you will have to show up to Green Apple Books this Saturday, take a photo of yourself and post it to twitter, facebook or instagram with the hashtag #bookstoreday and claim one of these. And you can still get tickets to see John Waters speak on May 20th.

Also filed under "where have you been, Hope?" are these cassette covers I printed for crimewave music. Small Doses released two collections, available together or as Collection II only. Dreamy droney sometimes anxiety rattling stuff. I worked with Andy of crimewave to design these covers, based on photographs I took, and then created black and white images to print, using silver ink on black paper. They came out nicer than we could've imagined.

double cassette release from crimewave via small doses

Lastly, when my friend Emily asked me to add the outline of a grand piano for the business card for her father, neither of us could find a suitable image. So with a ruler, a decent free hand outline and some photoshop editing, we found something just right. I love printing business cards!

Hope A 2/12/15 Hope A 2/12/15

Mortality Check-In

Today I was telling an out-of-town friend about The Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland and a stranger overheard and asked if that is what we were talking about. He agreed it is a place to explore and not in most guidebooks. I have only recently discovered it. It is located near the entrance to the Mountain View Cemetery at the end of Piedmont Ave. There is a coffee shop nearby that makes their own peppermint patties. Often, after a cup of coffee and some chocolate, we wander up the street to explore the cemetery.

There is always something we haven't seen. We were there a few days ago and were diverted from our intended path by a pair of mourners. The cemetery is also used as a neighborhood park, a place to jog, stroll, fly a kite and take a date so the mourners were a rare sighting. We walked around the backside of a building that seemed too imposing to be open to the public. But after tugging on a door, we discovered its long, labyrinth halls, with marble skylights and eerie piano music piped in over speakers . We went up one flight of stairs but somehow were on the third floor. Some of the windows were covered with violet colored glass, casting a rose light in the halls. There were multiple glass skylights and marble, reflecting light. The bathrooms had sinks like small fountains, and tile floors. And they were open--a rarity. Though I am not sure I could ever find it again.

As we were on our way there, our friend mentioned a fountain at the top of the hill. I guess we have something to look for next time.

If you want more photos of a cemetery I loved to explore, check out these photos about Cimiereo Monumentale in Milan.

Hope A 1/28/15 Hope A 1/28/15

diRosa Museum Visit

My dad examines the art car in the main gallery

My Dad flew from Tennessee to visit last week. As it was his first visit to see me in the Bay Area, he went along with any idea I had. When I was learning to drive I remember that my Dad would let me play whatever music I wanted to listen to. He even would try to hum along and get into it. It is very sweet to know my Dad would sit through hours of Ned's Atomic Dustbin and the Pixes AND let me drive.

Lucky for my dad, I was a little more considerate of his tastes. However, I was interested in visiting the diRosa in Napa, not sure what to expect or what my dad would think of a modern art collection. You have to get a tour to see most of the work but we spend a little bit in a gallery, took a walk to the sculpture meadow, and toured the house. There is a site-specific video installation of the changing light through a stained glass window at Chartres. It was the second time in a week I spend a few minutes contemplating a part of that cathedral, a coincidence that was not lost on me. (Chartres is also home to a large labyrinth I had recently learned about).

Oakland friends who like conceptual art: this collection is packed with lovely discoveries. The owner passed away a few years ago, leaving his collection open to the public. And if you have an Oakland library card, you can see it for free. I will let the photos explain the rest. There are paintings, sculpture and conceptual work, and enough of it has a sacred, quiet, contemplative feeling that made it feel a little like its own church of art. Go. And take me back.

The front gallery, open without a tour guide, has a smoke ring machine you can operate

the bottle chapel.  we may have snuck back after the tour to sit inside. — the bottle chapel. we may have snuck back after the tour to sit inside.

Hope A 1/12/15 Hope A 1/12/15

Desktop Calendar

For two years, around the first of the month, I would be excited to go to Gennine's blog and download a free desktop calendar. It would satisfy both my need to have reminders for dates and deadlines and also answer the dilemma of what image to use on my desktop. She closes shop for two months around the holidays and my computer keeps a November calendar well into January,

I have had a little more free time in the new year and I have been experimenting with the papers and ink on my desk, and my recently repaired sewing machine (um, I had the needle in backwards for a year). I like the idea of drawing but rarely the result from observation and notation, and I have liked to incorporate collage into my notebooks. Some of the things I like walk a line dangerously close to scrapbooking but a few days ago I realized I could make my own desktop calendar. And I can share it with you. It might take me a few months to get the glitches out but here we go. Click on the link below to set as your desktop calendar.

Download the image from here . I had to save it to my desktop as a file before I could set it as the image but I am working on that.

Hope A 1/9/15 Hope A 1/9/15

Wintertime Views Out the Window

Oh, the quiet of January as I unpack hastily assembled boxes, and take stock of what I have. I bound myself a new datebook, filled in my calendar, and started making my workspace, well, workable. When I was at Penland this summer, I was lucky to convince a few amazing folks to trade their work for a year of letterpress postcards. Erin Curry printed on silk and Georgina Trevino, took a break from her jewelry design to try out some etchings and traded me one mint green lovely. Also, Constance Metcalf gave me a panel of handmade paper, inspired by a process shown to me by Amy Jacobs. All together, my windows are little fancied up. Also, with some help, I finally hung a lamp over my desk so I can see what I am doing at night.

January (in California) is great for walking. Andy discovered a sci-fi themed cafe near out house with coffee and 5 or 6 pinball machines. There's lots I want to do but it is nice to take a walk every day too, and see what is out there.

etching by erin curry on silk on the left, panel of paper by constance on the right

light over the work table! small victories 2015!

Hope A 12/31/14 Hope A 12/31/14

Resolutions and Goals Revisited

You might not remember this, but a year ago I thought I might loose my job along with all of my friends so I thought, I could step up, take on more responsibility for a little while in exchange for paying off some debt and helping a bunch of great people to keep their jobs.]

You may or may not also remember that the "temporary" position was less temporary than I wanted and all the time spent in that position was doomed really from the start, undermined by stronger forces. Which was ok with me. Until I did it again, agreed to temporarily take on more than I really wanted to for some idealistic kind of greater good. And in exchange for a scholarship.

At least two people have told me in the past weeks that I need to be better at saying no.

I thought I was getting better at setting boundaries, but i am just behind the curve. And, in both positions, I learned a lot, gained a lot and now they are both over.

So i'm resting my sore feet, sleeping in for a few more days, and starting on a new list for 2015. I did a lot of what I wanted to in 2014, even if I didn't make it to Rome. I like to give myself some reasonable goals, a few that will take some work, and something to raise the bar.

I'm happy not to be in credit card debt, to have a little savings, to be writing letters in the mornings, to have had a really wonderful reading experience in Oakland in December and to have seen both my parents and my sister. As for the postcard show, well, that is coming up but I can't say any more yet. But you should start sending them back if you've been procrastinating.

I won't promise to post more in the new year because, well, I like to write a good story with my photos and if I don't take the time to write, well I'm not going to worry about rushing it.

Ok, take care. See you next year.