David’s Little Blue

David’s new baby — Little Blue Prius! Even though Toyota Berkeley salespeople are a bunch of incompetent morons, Thank Goodness that Little Blue has no resemblance of them.

More than a car, Prius is a giant computer that geeks can spend many happy hours upgrading her and exchange notes with each other on various Internet forum. It’s not exaggerating to say that there is a Prius cult out there!

How much does David love his Little Blue? Everyday he has to spend at least half an hour with her, teaching her new tricks or getting to know her. Everynight he reads his Prius manual or Internet forum in bed, forgetting about his Girlfriend #1 next to him. *sigh* Maybe one day when he’s finally done with all the possible upgrades, he’ll remember his old girlfriend.

Maybe.

Half-timbered Turret at Autoire, in Quercy

This one was based on a photo in Eyewitness Travel Guides‘ “Dordogne & Southwest France.” The original photo was only abour 1″ x 2″, which made it quite difficult to see some of the details and forcd me to use my own imagination on some places.

I drew this one in Moleskine Watercolor Notebook, thinking that I wanted to add watercolor later. After adding all the details on texture and shadow, I’m not so sure about it anymore. It feels “done” to me, and I don’t know if watercolor will add more charm to it. I should’ve stopped drawing when I finished the outline, but I had too much fun and wanted to try out Noh Young Wook’s style.

Noh Young Wook, a young Korean, spent over a year travelling around the world when he quit his tiresome and boring architect job. Not having any particular destination in mind, he went from one country to another by feelings. He picked up Spanish on the way, got rubbed in Brazil (lost all 5 sketchbooks among others), got stuck at places more than he liked, got sick plenty of time, got homesick whenever he heard Korean, and got taken advantage of more than he deserved. As the journey continued on, he drew the places he set his foot on. I don’t envy his trip (too harsh and too stinky for me), but I hope that one day I’ll draw as well as him. His ability of simplifying architecture and adding charm to it is impressive! It must be great for him to draw buildings without his old stiff rulers!

Monet in Normandy

Yesterday I didn’t talk about the “Monet in Normandy” exhibition other than venting my frustration with Legion of Honor. The truth is, I feel too intimidated to give art critique due to my lack of academic training and the proper vocabulary. Today’s Chronicle, however, has an article by Kenneth Baker, “Getting up close to a master’s artwork reveals how Monet trained eyes to see it,” describing very closed to how I felt yesterday, especially on Monet’s failures:

“The exhibition has the virtue of including various failed paintings. Catalog and label copy cannot acknowledge this, of course. Nearly every picture wears a gaudy frame that chirps ‘masterpiece.’ But visitors can see the inconsistencies for themselves. Certain subjects defeated even Monet. In three paintings of turbulent shorelines, especially ‘Waves Breaking’ (1881), the brushstrokes that fumble for terms in which to capture crashing surf end up as a churn of frustration.“

Exactly! I remembered that I was stunned to see that crappy piece, but I wasn’t sure if there was something there that my untrained eyes couldn’t catch. I recalled that I was also shocked to see some of his lesser work, but I thought that it was just me, that I was unqualified to say anything about oil paintings. Now I know that I should just trust my own guts. After all, good art is supposed to stir up the warm feelings inside of its audience’s heart. If I can’t perceive that, it’s more likely that the artist didn’t do a good job instead of vice versa.

To be fair, there are far more great pieces than his failed ones on display. Even as being so unpleased with LOH and the 5-hour trip yesterday, I still planned to go back sometimes (before 09/17/2006, of course) to give it a closer examination.

Oil painting, unlike other painting media, is 3D. The paint itself creates its own sculpture on the flat surface, aside from the 2D objects that it presents. It’s rather fascinating! I had to squat in front of each painting to see that special effect. Monet’s early work was rather flat, but his later work had life of its own. Van Gogh, the crazy painter, was a master on this. I didn’t think much of his paintings until I went to Van Gogh Museum and saw them in person. I was enlightened by oil painting for the first time! And even better, there was plenty of room to accomodate the large crowd and I was able to truely enjoy it.

Legion of Horror

As I mentioned last time, I became a member of Fine Art Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (AAMSF) as of this Wednesday. I already visited AAMSF on Wednesday, so today I set out for Legion of Honor (LOH) for its Monet in Normandy exhibition as my first taste of LOH. I expected it to be popular, so I intentionally visitec LOH on a weekday. Well, the whole trip, except viewing Monet’s paintings, was a nightmare, and it made me seriously question the idea of becoming a member of FAMSF.

First, it is hard to reach by MUNI. From Downtown, one can take #2 and get off at the Clement and 33rd Ave. It sounds straightforward, but #2 comes every 20 minutes and takes 1 hour to get where LOH is. Then one can either take another 20 minutes of uphill walk (which is fine by me) or transfer to #18 bus. But after the #2 experience, the other passagers were like me, preferred our own #11 buses. By the time I reached LOH, I spent about 2.5 hours on transportation already.

So far I was only happy that I made it to LOH and enjoyed the monsieur’s beautiful music while observing the surroundings. It was windy and foggy and a little chilly, your typical SF summer. It was hard to take good photos of LOH due to the direction of the afternoon sun.

As I walked passed the impressive front gate, I was greeted by this thinker in the middle of its Roman style courtyard. There was even a tiny glass pyramid in the middle of courtyard, reminding me of musée du Louvre but without its elegance.

So far so good. Once I set my foot in LOH, the unpleasantness started. The whole place was swamped by visitors from all over the world, chatting and yelling and bumping each other! And this was just the entrance. Every blue uniformed man (security guards?) wanted me to hold my backpack instead of carrying it on my back, and none of them gave me any explaination. Not until that I spent good 5 minutes explaining about my back problem (I’m in physical therapy right now to prevent it to get worse), he finally backed off and asked me to carry my backpack in front of my chest. Huh? Really, what was the great deal about not carrying backpack on my back? If any of them would provide an explaination, I would be OK and cooperate, but I doubt that they even knew why other than “The people above told us so.”

The Monet exhibition, located in the basement, could not accomodate even half of its crowd comfortably. The space was simply too small for something this major, and Monet’s paintings made the situation even worse. His work requires close examination and distant overservation, but it was hard to do both without thousands of “Excuse me” to fight through the crowd. I didn’t bother to read any of the display text or listen to the $5 ($6 for non-members) audio tape; I just wanted to view all his paintings once and come back later at a school day. I couldn’t deal with the crowd. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

But I needed a dollar and 2 quarters for my returned MUNI fare. I went to the gift shop (you can’t avoid it, BTW) and picked up a postcard. When I paid for it, I asked the cold cashier that I’d like 4 quarters for one of my returned dollar. He completely ignored me. I repeated it again, he continued ignoring me. I repeated 4 times and he gave me all $19 in paper. I had to took out $1 and told him that I wanted 4 quarters, he finally did it without looking at me. I was mad, but soon forgot about the episode when I saw that their poster was on sale. I picked one and went to pay for it. This time I rememberd that members got 10% discount and I mentioned it to him. He scanned the price from a pre-printed tag, so I thought he did what I said. Not until later I found that he completely ignored my mentioning of my membership. *SCREAM*

So by the time I walked of of LOH, I was in a very bad mood. On top of that, it was completely cloudy and chilly, and I was hungry like hell. All I wanted was to go back to my sweet home, which took me another 2.5 hours.

5 hours on the road and 1 hour in LOH today, not a very good investment I will say. I certainly hope that LOH is not always like this, and that I was just lucky to bump into all the nasty workers and unusual big crowd. My first experiences of LOH and of AAMSF are like 2 opposite ends of my taste spectrum: bitter vs. sweet. *sigh*

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Yesterday I spent about 2 hours at Asian Art Museum of San Francisco after picking up my passport. Obviously 2 hours are ridiculously short for such a nice museum, but I got my membership and planned to spend many more happy hours there in the future. After all, my Chinese thinking taught me that I have to get my money’s worth.

I know the perspective is off and the stone lines make the drawing too busy, but I finally made it — my first major building drawing. I always love to see (non-architectural) building drawings but have a lot of fear about doing it myself, because they are big and complicated and impossible. Now it doesn’t seem so impossible anymore, and that is a great feeling!

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco 1

It’s funny that I have travelled around the world but rarely explored San Francisco (SF). She is one of the few American cities that one can get around without a car, although she still got a long way to go, especially compared to other major cities in the world. In the past I got a great but lousy excuse for being lazy, but that’s no longer applicable. Since today I had to pick up my Taiwan passport at TECO SF, I figured that I might as well go visit a nearby museum. Unfortunately, the closest SFMOMA closes on Wednesday, so I changed my destination to the next closest one, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (AAMSF).

It’s actually very strange that I had never visited AAMSF, considering that the Bart stop is only a couple of blocks away and Mulan’s mom has worked there as a curator for over 3 decades. My laziness amazes even myself!

To force myself getting out of the house and explore SF, I got myself two museum memberships: AAMSF and Fine Art Museum of SF (FAMSF). If I had read their brochures more carefully, I would’ve just got the more comprehensive membership (Contributor at AAMSF and Contributing at FAMSF) instead and saved myself some money. Well, now you know and you won’t make the same silly mistake like me.

I barely made it to its daily Architectural Tour, but I surely was glad that I made it. The tour guide was friendly and knowledgeable, and we learned more than we bargained for about this amazing building. Each of my tour mates was at least twice of my age, and everyone had a zest for history and museums. I even got the impression that some of them planned their retirement trips by traveling from one museum to another. It was incredible to see that old people were still curious about the world and had a thirst for knowledge. I can just see David and I doing something similar at our old age.

I didn’t expect to see everything today, so I only took few photos at the permitted area during the tour. This Indian (?) Bodhisattva is supposed to be the same as the one in Taiwan, but you can tell that he went through quite a bit of changes. For instance, he is a she in the Chinese culture, she’s well covered in white clothes, and her face is much more Chinese looking (not so obvious in this Taiwanese sculpture though). Our tour guide told us that he was her favorite object in the whole AAMSF, and she had seen all the collections for so many years. I’ll have to come back and check on his audio tour to learn more about him!

This is a fountain. Yes, a fountain! Everyone thought it was a big rock covered by a piece of transparent glass on top, but I heard water and suspected this art “table”. When the tour guide touched the surface to show us that it was a fountain, “WOW!” came out of everyone’s mouth. The Japanese artist (I’ll have to find out his name next time) spent 2 months grinding this stone, to make the top smooth and add an invisible seam at the edge. Water came up slowly at the center, at a pace unnoticeable on the flat surface, and went down quietly at the edge. Not a drop of water dripped down to the floor or the rock surface. It was indeed a piece of art!

I also checked out a couple of exhibitions (no photos are allowed): A Curious Affair: The Fascination between East and West and The Elegant Gathering: The Yeh Family Collection. The former was mostly disappointing; I don’t know if it was because my limited knowledge about the subject or what. The later one was far more interesting to me, because Yeh Gongchao was a famous political figure in Taiwan. It was also a thrill to me to see Zhang Daqian’s lotus painting. I was lucky to see Zhang’s exhibition at National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院) in 1998; I didn’t know why he was that famous before, but after that exhibition, I became his big fan, especially his mind-blowing lotus paintings.

BTW, just want to mention that a new book coming out from AAMSF by Mulan and her mom, Terese, after 3 yeas of hard working. Pretty cool to see friends’ names on books!

A fun fact: A farmer’s market seems to happen every Wednesday. By the time I left the museum, a couple of fruit stands was still in operation.

David’s Dishes – Stewed Lamb Shank 2

Voilà, the colored stewed lamb shank!