san francisco
in january I spent a single day in san francisco. I arrived on an early morning flight & wandered the city streets until I made my way to the san francisco museum of modern art for their collection of agnes martin pairings & their exhibition of joan mitchell.
this is some of what I saw.
sitting in front of “wheat”
it’s mesmerizing. like a golden field stretched out for a thousand miles on a clear warm day—but not too hot. the kind of day when there’s a breeze that prickles your skin but you don’t go inside to get your jacket.
at first the grey border looks like one shade as you’re drawn into the fields of wheat, but after a moment you realise its two types of grey fringing the field like vaseline on a camera lens. it pushes you in.
wheat whispers to you so quietly that at first you’re not sure if its a voice or a gust through the tree branches. but it is a voice & you can barely make out what it’s saying. maybe the words don’t matter? maybe they don’t have any meaning anyway.
a woman comes into the gallery & stands in front of wheat. perfectly centered. the center column rises from her like steam.
she’s enveloped in yellows like a goddess or the painting of one, with a delicate shimmering halo.
is this what agnes wanted us to do? daydream into her paintings?
travel diary:
dawn + fog + boats + bridge.
after spending the night by the ocean I woke up at 4 am to make my way to the presidio to catch the early morning light on the golden gate. the fog was so thick I had to drive at a snails pace. the sky turned deep blue just before the sun came up & bleached everything white.
-N
travel diary:
just after dawn I get lost in the presidio & eventually find my way out into the haight-ashbury. the streets are largely empty, with only the odd groggy commuter clutching their coffee as they wait for the walk signal. I find a parking spot half a block from the intersection of haight & ashbury, which I'm certain wouldn't be there any later in the day. the morning is cool & the fog hangs in low & heavy. my los angeles blood can't bear to be out too long. I walk a half block in each direction, taking in the multi-coloured buildings & old victorian houses. the streets are quiet. none of the shops are open. I think about the east village in new york. I think about what these places used to mean, before you had to be a millionaire to afford their wood floor apartments & local coffee shops. I think about where all the art has gone, when profit becomes more important.
-N
spent a couple of days last week driving up the california coast. briefly stopped in san francisco to explore. between the rolling fog, the pre-sunrise wakeup call, & the getting lost in sloped narrow streets I found some interesting plant life.
-N
