Travel sketchbook - Garnada & Rose Garden

Today at the Berkeley Rose Garden. A beautiful old oak on the hillside with branches that spread out across some steps and a concrete slide.

And I had forgotten to scan this other one from several months back. Rehearsal session with the band Garnada as we were preparing for a benefit show in Oakland. Fusion bellydancing & flamenco to Middle Eastern music.

Lo Clasico @ Fort Mason Cowell Theater

Venturing out into the stormy sleet this afternoon to see Lo Clasico at Fort Mason's Cowell Theater in San Francisco with Bern. A Flamenco treat!




A little difficult to get too much sketching done since it was dark, but I managed a few scribbles.

LoCura @Yoshi's

Out for an evening with the ladies. A few of the dancers I used to perform with at La Taza de Cafe met up at local cabaret lounge, Yoshi's. We went to see LoCura, an Oakland band with a mixture of Latin/Reggae/Flamenco.

I'm on a roll with getting some drawings in my travel sketchbook. Second time I've had a chance to do so in the past year. Danced a bit, and got to do a few scribblings in between when sitting down for breaks.

Yoshi's is a neat venue. Never actually been there before, even though I live 15 minutes away. Japanese restaurant in half of it, and the other part is a cabaret theater where they feature Jazz, and occasional other live entertainment.

This was an interesting tableau: as Melissa was introduced and stepped out to do a flamenco solo sans music, the band retreated off to the side. They clustered off at the edge, as engrossed as we the audience were with the delicate/powerful performance.

For the first few songs the open dance area below the stage was empty and silent, but by the end of the set it seemed that at least half the audience was down there dancing while the flamenco dancer spun up above them(us) on the stage.

A night of Cafe Flamenco

Got back from dancing in a flamenco show with Yaelisa's students tonight in San Francisco. We had to get there at 6PM even though the show didn't start until 8. And after changing into costume, painting my face with makeup, and going through some last minute entrance and exit instructions, I found myself back upstairs in the prep room that was getting increasingly stuffy from all the hour-before-the-show rehearsal that was going on around me.

After a quick run through of my number (a farrouca), mostly in my head, I decided to save my energy (and sweat) for the actual show. A quick scan of the room found very few unoccupied spaces, but there was a tiny window in one corner with a chair propping it open. I squeezed over to that bright patch of light and fresh air. It was getting dusky outside, but not yet dark. Settling down I enjoyed the light breeze for a moment, then pulled out the much-neglected-this-past-month sketchbook to do some drawings.

* * *

The complexities of flamenco costumes.... Pinning on a mantone properly for the solea number apparently required multiple pairs of hands.

A young dancer sitting still for a breath as mom fixed her hair. She was impatient to be off!

The chaos and colors of sevillanas. Swirling skirts and bright fluttering fans!

Drawn on brown paper with black, grey, and blue markers, as well as a white gel pen for highlights.

Ah, as for the show itself, it went wonderfully, to a fully packed audience!

Morgan le Fay Sketch

Just a quick little update, and another teaser from Dreamscapes II:

A favorite enchantress for fantasy artists to depict. Sketch for Morgan le Fay:

Trying to finish this one before 5PM tonight when I have to head out for a flamenco show in San Francisco. So can't allow myself to get too distracted today. Focus!

Cafe Flamenco at the Verdi Club. $18.00 for a great show at 8PM for anyone local reading this. :)

Delving Below

I find all kinds of interesting forgotten things when I go delving around in old boxes in the basement. I was searching for some of my Tree Free Greeting cards today so that I could send one to my mother-in-law for mother's day. I knew they were hiding somewhere in the basement. They were of course in the last box I thought to check. But during the hunt I came across some other interesting things:

* My home-made Wiz-War game set. An addictingly entertaining game. Too bad it was never reprinted. The next unsuspecting visitor to my home will be forced to play this.

* Photos of my brother and I at the Takashi Murakami installation that was a pleasant surprise at Rockefeller Square in NY when we were there years ago.

* My old Rapidograph technical pens. I had a real love-hate relationship with these things. On the one hand, they were my treasure, $50.00 bought from my hard saved stash of Chinese New Year lucky money as a teenager. But they were more trouble than they were worth, always getting clogged. I prefer nice disposable gel pens these days. Picking them up, I got flashing visions of laboring over a sinkful of hot water trying to unclog stubborn nibs.

* An unsent letter from 2001. I suppose it got lost in a shuffle and I forgot to ever mail it.... I was in Japan, having just quit (sort of) my software job. As I read this again in the dingy basement it struck me how confused I was back then. It's easy to forget, now that I've found my niche. I'm often asked by artists who are starting out how I went about it. Well, this isn't that whole story (maybe I'll get into it another time), but it is a glimpse into some of it. The intended recipient never got to read it. Someone should.

* * *

October 14, 2001

Dear ##### --

Greetings, from Japan.

So... I am here now. It is very odd how quickly it went from being something in the distant future, to Now. No longer speculation and the safe distance of "a time yet to come." The weeks sped past, and then I was giving notice to the landlady. And then to work. And then after a flurry of stress and packing and unpacking and packing once again (San Francisco ->Los Altos -> Tokyo), suddenly theee months have whirled past and that date that was "three months from now" has become "two weeks ago".

I finished a book today - The Forgetting Room by Nick Bantock. It's a combination of art and story. Anyway, the thing I thought might be of interest to you, and worth sharing, was an excerpt in there of one of Garcia Lorca's poems:

The duende is a power.
The duende is of the earth...the dark sounds, a struggle, not a concept.
The duende is not in the throat, it surges up from the soles of the feet.
It is of blood, of ancient culture, of creative action.
It calls one out.

*

I have settled in here finally I think, after two weeks. It still feels a bit like an extended vacation, but I have not been lazy!

You see...at first, months ago, the Grand Plan* was to go here and work for Plumtree Software part time and do art as well with the rest of my time. But in July I went to a fantasy convention**. I was there as an artist for a small company I did some illustrations for - they paid for the trip in order to have me there at their table to talk to fans/customers. Well it gave me a chance to go and be among other artists who had made that world their life. For four days, I mingled with them, asked questions, was welcomed by them, and when i got home I suddenly wondered what was I doing as a programmer? I was so demotivated at work, and at night I was painting in a frenzy.

The need faded a bit after a month, though I kept wondering if I should quit Plumtree. I could do it. Monetarily at that point, art brought in enough. But...I would miss the people. But...there's the apartment. But but but....

At the end of August I went to another convention in Atlanta***. I'm afraid after that, my "but's" were evident to me as only excuses. And so...after considering it for a month, I told Plumtree I would not be working at all in Japan.

Thus...I am here, on indefinite leave of absence from Plumtree (though I doubt I will return to it) working full time as a freelance artist.

I went to a flamenco class‡ last Tuesday. Afterwards I came home and flopped to the couch, exhausted. And then it hit me -- that I could lie there and luxuriate and enjoy relaxation without the nagging feeling that I should be painting with those sparse two hours I had in the evening. Because I can paint all day now and do all the other things I want and need to do at night. I can read, or write this letter to you. It's such a wonderful feeling of freedom!

[....]

* * *

* The "Grand Plan" upon leaving Berkeley was to spend 2 years maximum at a software job while working my way into art. In the end the lure of the dot-com era and stock options kept me for 3.5 years.

** It was my first Gencon. Until then, I'd only attended small local shows, and the prospect of flying somewhere for a convention was daunting!!!

*** My first Dragoncon. I was fortunate enough to be sitting next to Robin Wood. She scolded me plenty for spending far too much time away from my table when I could have been making many more sales. But I was pretty wide-eyed and couldn't get enough, wandering around.

‡ Flamenco is surprisingly popular there. Had no trouble finding a class to take, and it was a nice way to meet new friends, seeing as I spoke maybe five words of Japanese.

Not missing city life

An evening out with my girlfriends in San Francisco. We're there to watch Eve's Elixir, a contemporary dance event featuring fusions of various traditional ethnic dance forms with a more modern aesthetic and influence. It's showing at Cowell Theater, at Fort Mason. We get lost looking for it, as there are no visible signs along the way. A surly ranger points us in the general direction, and at last we find the right area.

Park the car and hurry along because the show starts in ten minutes. I decide to leave my coat in the trunk because it seems mild enough. It's a decision I regret five minutes later as we pass between the old warehouses and towards the waterfront. The cold tears through the windtunnel of the buildings, and suddenly my warm scarf is not nearly warm enough.

There's a shivering line of well dressed people at the front of the theater, which looks to be an old warehouse that stretches out along a pier. We join in the teeth-chattering to pick up our tickets. After a while, I pull out my sketchbook, and though my fingers are numb, it's a good distraction from the discomfort to scribble a bit as we wait. Almost enough for me to forget the chill that slices through my skirts.

The odd thing about SF is that when you live there, you can't imagine ever wanting to live anyplace else. Nightlife, great restaurants at every corner interspersed with cafes, Golden Gate Park, colorful shopping neighborhoods....

Minor inconveniences are easy to dismiss when you're living in the midst of it. Basking in the golden haze of San Francisco fog that apparently creeps into your mind.

Driving's a pain. Parking once you get to your destination is worse. Monthly parking spot in Nob Hill? $300.00.
Cable cars...quintessential San Francisco. Fun for a visit. Try living along a cable car route that goes uphill. The driver must ring the bell to warn traffic at the coming intersection since the cable cars can't actually stop at any given spot. Every 15 minutes: rumblerumbleding-a-linga-dingdingdingdingDING!!!!
California weather's lovely! The city has it's own micro-climate though. Even in high summer, lugging around a winter coat because of unexpectedly cutting winds. October's really the only warm nice month. Never gets old to see tourists shivering in their shorts and t-shirts in June and wondering where there nearest overpriced souvenir sweatshirt vendor is.
Great dining, if you don't mind crowds.

At any rate, I'm remembering all the reasons I don't miss living there when Roberta asks me that very question. I answer with a very vehement negative.

At first I missed it terribly. I missed my Trattoria Contadina. I missed walking down to North Beach. I missed Golden Gate Park.

The week I was to move out from my apartment, I walked up the street to the top of Nob Hill, on my way home from a dance class. It was a rare warm day. Sky was still bright, not yet dusk. Powell St. stretched out before me, tumbling all the way down to the marina and into the bay. I crouched down on the sidewalk, catching my breath from the steep trek, stood there a while memorizing the sight, filing it away. Breathed in that always fresh-from-the-sea air.

The longer I live across the bay, the more the faerie glamour fades. I find I like living here in Oakland much more. I find places and things here that are more personable; I find the niches that strangely are at once grander and more intimate than anything a city can ever offer.

I can see the city now in the distance, across a glittering finger of water. Just a few miles away. Can touch it easily when I want to, or let it sit there like a jeweled band on the horizon.

An afternoon at the Ashkenaz

I get up this morning to head out with Bern and her 5 year old daughter Iliyana to Berkeley for some flamenco classes. I'm a little anxious as I've not been to any classes in a while. Bern and I mostly just do our own thing. But it's good to be injected with new inspiration now and then to get creative juices going. For that matter, same goes for figure drawing classes even when it comes to visual art.

Iliyana is in the children's class for the first hour. We have to wait our turn for the class that follows. We sit and watch at the sidelines among the parents, some of whom are enchanted by their little ones capering to the music of Carmen, others who seem a bit on the bored side, reading a novel or squinting at some paperwork. After a while, I pull out my sketchbook.

No pencil cheating I've decided now. Time to push further where I've already started the other day by using the less controlled brush pen instead of the usual minute points. It's how I used to do sketches in these books but somewhere along the line I lost my nerve and got too concerned with making it "look good" and started doing (very quick, but still) pencils first before laying the ink on top. As I was waiting for Bern to call and let me know she was here to pick me up this morning, I deliberatey did not pack a pencil into my bag.

Like not having been to a dance class for a while, touching black ink to a page without some guiding pencil lines can be a bit unsettling. Ink is so permanent. Each stroke has to be done decisively, with a purpose and a reason; knowing that once it has been laid down, it's there. Deal with it.

I watch the little hands stretch to the ceiling and curl in fleures. A dozen miniature black skirts twirl across the floor, following Yaelisa's graceful form. Iliyana turns hesitantly to look at us a few times, being the youngest and smallest in the class. Bern smiles encouragement at her. I touch black ink to the page.

gathered around to talk about abanicos

the older students dance some tangos while the two new ones sit back and watch

Scent

Took BART back from the city. Public transit is much preferable to dealing with rush hour Friday night traffic bursting out of San Francisco's seams as the clock hits The Hour. Make my way down those familiar steps, down the hallway that echos with with the discordant harmonics of two warring musicians vying for donations at opposite ends of the corridor. Down the second set of steps to the train and then thunderrumblerattle through the tunnel that takes me across the bay and back to Oakland. There's a funny smell to the car I'm in, but it's too crowded to risk giving up my seat by shoving my way to another car with a less odoriferous character.

The train screeches to its halt at Lake Merritt. My brain is still in the semi-comatose state that a full convention day always seems to leave me in. Spending all day every day alone in my office and painting away doesn't give much opportunity to practice the more engaging social talents. I do enjoy the shows, and while at them there is no noticeable strain. But once I'm alone I feel the drain. Step step step up to emerge back into the night.

The scent pierces through the daze, and involuntarily I smile as the fragrance swims through me. I remember it from when I used to live at Lake Merritt and took BART every other day. The trees near the station exit are in bloom, and their sweet and delicate perfume makes my whole body sigh in relaxation. Like the breath I did not know I was holding while on the train (holding all winter) finally exhaling.

I forget about those trees every time, a day or two later. And then some time will pass. And then I'll take a late night train home. Usually from the city, packed into a car, people and old carpet smells, mechanical station announcements, lugging bags up the whirring escalators....

And then that all falls away when those outer glass doors open and I breathe in the scent of my old friends.

Dana's there to pick me up. We drive back to The Foxhole. A scant half hour to toss my convention bags in a corner, grab a hasty bite to eat, pull my mind back from its drifting orbit, and grab up the flamenco shoes and makeup kit. The day's not allowed to be over yet. Back to La Taza de Cafe for the second show of the evening with Bernadette, Monica, and Garnada. Fusion flamenco and belly dancing show. A wine glass gets overly excited with my footwork during our new bulerias number and decides to join in. It skirts to the edge of the table, and as I execute a turn, it emulates me with a somersault to the floor. Poor wineglass.

Poor Monica who has to continue the rest of the show still, barefoot belly dancer around invisible splinters. She manages to avoid mishap.

It is a small, but appreciative audience tonight. They seem to truly enjoy the show, engaging in it, watching us with the enchantment plain on their faces and in the occasional exclamations we overhear.

* * *

While at Wondercon today, a few pieces completed during the quiet lulls. Sneak peak for some illustrations for upcoming Fantastical Visions IV:

The Flamenco Bug

It's evening, close to midnight. I've just come home from La Taza de Cafe after a show with Middle Eastern band, Garnada. Muscles ache with a pleasant twinge of exertion. A slight flush to my skin from the one glass of sangria I drank - the gift of Asian genes that turn my cheeks bright red with the mere scent of alcohol. The blush makes people think I'm drunk even when I've barely had a few sips.

Scrub the makeup from my eyes. I hate wearing makeup. Bern (the other dancer) and I both. The two of us wiping the lipstick off as soon as the show is over each time. The musicians laugh when they see us doing that. I think of shellac when I touch that crimson stick to my lips, painting a red "O". I think of the shellac Stephen showed me once in his studio, that he coats on the guitars he makes. It turns the rough sheets of wood into gleaming and beautiful instruments, coated in a layer of clear honeyed gold.

An old friend showed up this night to watch; from my software programmer days. Another lifetime. Sometimes it feels I have many lifetimes compartmentalized into this one existence. Can all the people of those disparate identities coexist in the same space? Or would that cause an implosion?

He got a nice front row seat. Not in the "poor people" section as we call the back side of the restaraunt, behind the pillar where the late reservations are seated. No, it was front and center, in the "our footwork will rattle the silverware right off your plate" (and sometimes right off onto the floor!) table.

He knew I danced, though he'd never come to see it before. Having seen it now, he had questions: How long have you been at it, where when what?

Dana loves it when I tell people of the Berkeley days - when I first caught the bug. It's an addiction I was warned by someone, by multiple someones, right from the start. You'll catch the bug. The first classes I took whetted my appetite. Then I met a guitarist, just starting out as well. There was an old house on the lot that he rented; squeezed right up against the main house with barely any space to breathe between them. This is the Bay Area after all. A quarter acre for a lot is huge. Most places...much smaller than that. The landlady ignored that second house, letting it fall to disrepair. It had no electricity, no water. The carpet (where there was any) was old and dingy, and the wood stripped.

We started to use it for practice space - me, the guitarist, and another dancer. After classes and homework and studying - computer science, biology, chemistry, anthropology; we'd meet there, slip out the back door of the main house and into that run-down shack. Candles and matchbooks in hand. Set the tea lights all along the windowsills. The light flickered up at the bare and useless bulbs in the ceiling, and glimmered in the black mirrors the windows turned into.

He'd play his guitar. Seviannas, Alegrias, Solea (my favorite), rippling through the small space. Anything, everything. We'd dance. Sometimes we'd practice what we had learned. Sometimes we knew the styles from class. Sometimes we made it up. It didn't matter, there were no critics present. The shadows shattered across the walls from the multiple light sources, shivering with the surreal aspect of it all. And then sometime after midnight - 1AM, 2AM, there would be mutual consent that the night had to end. Blow out the candles, and head back out into the cool night to our apartments scattered across campus.

I have romantic notions at times. Like wanting to take my sketchbook out to sit on the rock beside the pond in Tokyo to sketch the koi. Within fifteen minutes the mosquitoes dissuaded me from that fancy when I realized that in the time it had taken me to get situated and dig for my pencils I had acquired at least three golf ball sized bites along my legs. And that rock was not nearly as comfortable as I had imagined it would be! Or wanting to just close my eyes and drift when floating in that wonderfully buoyant salt water embrace of the ocean...but self preservation says you idiot, you know how dangerous that current could be? Eyes open, watch out where you are. Or the magical garden I dreamed of having when I was bouncing around rented apartments, for the house I would one day own...but that garden is now at the mercy of my less than green thumb, paired with relentless allergies.

Maybe it's just memory that alters and paints those flamenco sessions with a gloss of romanticism, but I don't believe that's the case. By contrast to those ill-fated notions of what I think I want reality to be, this actually was. I think even then that I knew it was a strange reality I was participating in that was an odd disjunct from the daily routines of studying and programming and stressing and exams; an odd gleaming thread in the fabric of that time.

My rehearsal sessions these days have a much more mundane veneer. Though now there are no longer candlelit jaunts in forgotten houses, that memory for me is linked with flamenco forever. Ingrained memory of exhilaration, abandonment, freedom, and utter immersion in movement and music.