How to Dig a Hole

You can never go home again.

2011-07-07T17:37:00.000-07:00

HTDAH is going on sabbatical--thank you for your readership.
Holes are for filling.

Until we meet again.

Bucktown coffee break

2011-07-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

(for Tarak)

summertime

2011-07-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

Lake Shore Drive, Chicago

2011-07-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

Ravenswood, Chicago

2011-07-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

Pilsen, Chicago

2011-07-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

Bucktown, Chicago

2011-06-30T06:29:00.000-07:00

Andersonville, Chicago

2011-06-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

Ravenswood, Chicago

2011-06-28T06:14:00.001-07:00

On Official Business

2011-06-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

(Dinner hosted and moderated by past-featured artist/architect Jane Sloss.)

"On Official Business"
Debriefing the space of Mauve?'s gallery, suspicions of what comes next, and the status of Midwestern alternative creative spaces.
Dinner was served.

Architects, nurse, divination expert, social entrepreneur, policy publicist, writer, and monologist were in attendance.
--
Andersonville, Chicago
Friday, June 24, 8 pm

To Chicago

2011-06-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

(for Mark)

CA Hwy 178, Weldon, CA

2011-06-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

Weldon, CA

2011-06-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

Weldon, CA

2011-06-14T08:13:00.001-07:00

Highway 59, 60 & 69 near Afton, OK

2011-06-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

County Road O, MO

2011-06-10T22:31:00.000-07:00

Summer Solstice Picnic Potluck at the garden!

2011-06-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

(Saturday, June 18th from 3 - 6 pm at Garden for the Environment.)

Clinton, AR

2011-06-07T08:25:00.000-07:00

Moonshiner, Clinton, AR

2011-06-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

Pettaway Park, Little Rock, AR

2011-06-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

FLW's Price Tower, Bartlesville, OK

2011-06-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

Gentry, AR

2011-06-03T07:18:00.001-07:00

Pettaway Park, Little Rock, AR

2011-06-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

Pettaway Park, Little Rock, AR

2011-06-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

Bartlesville, OK

2011-05-31T09:12:00.001-07:00

GFE Meadow--one year later

2011-05-22T23:01:00.001-07:00

Hippocrates knew design

2011-05-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

An idea for bridging Architecture for Humanity as a public health service and wild west design.

"Life is short, the art is long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult." Hippocrates

(for D and her Osler's Beast)

Mauve Office: web title blocks

2011-05-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

Small Miracles: CCA Alumni Show

2011-05-03T07:11:00.000-07:00

California College of the Arts alumni show at San Pablo Art Gallery.
"Small Miracles" Opening Reception: Saturday, May 14th, 1-3 pm.
May 14th - June 19th.

I'll be there.

Utah

2011-05-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

Spiral Jetty's salt accretions

2011-05-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

Great Salt Lake within Spiral Jetty

2011-04-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

"Epicenter" Green River, UT

2011-04-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

"The Epicenter is a community-based housing and business resource center, instigating economic progress and creating decent shelter in the town of Green River in the desert of southeast Utah."

Stopping in Green River perchance, on a micro Utah adventure, I followed the monolithic bee box Fibonacci sculpture to a drink at Ray's this last Thursday night. Friday morning I caught first glance of the Epicenter and found it reminiscent of rurally-set downtown Greensboro, AL's HERO (Hale Empowerment & Revitalization Organization) Center.

(A Tornado touched down in the Sawyerville area of Hale county, 8 miles north of Greensboro. HERO is assessing the emergency needs of numerous families. You can donate to help aid the relief effort.)

Rural and Proud

2011-04-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

Watermelon-in-tow, Green River

2011-04-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Delicate Arch

2011-04-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

Green River, Utah's PD (Ecto-1)

2011-04-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

Persistence of Vision

2011-04-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

This is not science fiction; this artistic exchange between Carissa and Luca entails a number of lonely, unrequited inter-space plots, not exclusive to them and as old as the stars. The following collection of thoughts will certainly bias the work of Carissa over Luca’s. In a manner of speaking, Luca points to the sky; Carissa gazes.

From a Berlin-based residency, Luca investigates a repetitive silkscreen process, not based in the craft of pulling a clean black image across a white page, but in laying down the universe like a wrinkled sheet of ink. Everything is inscribed in reverse—nothingness is painted black, the white of the page is light. Upon approaching these 24” x 35” sheets of the compact core of Galaxy M87, the experience is distant and reminiscent of a pixilated snapshot of white noise. This is the origin image for an artistic collaboration, a transmission from Luca’s research days in video. From here, Carissa manipulates the cosmos.

“From here to there” is a collaborative gallery installation that showed at Mauve? during the month of November, 2010. On display were two bodies of work, side-by-side: a series of large format silkscreen prints of a named galaxy and a freestanding colonnade of white-framed letters to one’s self. Sometimes word, sometimes image, these single 8 ½” x 11” sheets share a digitally printed background of Messier 87, like a window in the room to an untouchable beyond. These pages are a private telescope through which passersby can study Carissa’s personal translation of the stars, and perhaps acknowledge their personal distance.

Carissa is a prolific collector of aphorisms, aphorisms swimming in a vast love-sickness. “While you are away” is a hand-written list, annotated, footnoted, asterisked, the order rerouted with arrows of “all the things I plan on doing to keep from thinking of you while you are away,” among them amending plural pronouns to assume singularity. This list grows into a conversation and lies across a window view of M87, with the same fatalistic ink wrinkles that obscure the clarity through Luca’s skyward silkscreen portal.

This particular strain of “away” is terminal. OK Cupid particulars, the erasure of an impossible and universally-faceless intimate rapport, and a stippled time-warp along a hand drawn timeline begins to measure when “I start to feel better.” These are all markers of a lingering, persistent longing that just begins to dissolve into dust. Songs from a satellite, from here to there, we never arrive.

Where does this leave us but in the embrace of two truths: we are not alone in the universe (by the very nature this is being read) and the universe will never reply. There is simply too much light, and we never stop looking.

--

Sabina Nieto. "Persistence of Vision." Rev. of From Here to There, artists Luca Antonucci and Carissa Potter. Mauve Journal Spring 2011: 16-17. Print.

Dore Theatre, Bakersfield

2011-04-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

PechaKucha - Inspire Japan

2011-04-10T10:17:00.001-07:00

(Proceeds from Inspire Japan will go directly to Architecture for Humanity, who PechaKucha supported last year with Global PechaKucha for Haiti. Yoshi's in San Francisco, April 16, 2011. Presentations begin at 20:20.)

Extra Extra

2011-03-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

“EXTRA EXTRA”
Mauve? Journal: Release Party & Collected Works
Gallery 1044, 1044 Larkin (at Sutter), San Francisco
April 8 - 9, 2011

Release Party: Friday, April 8th, 7 - 9 pm
Saturday's Show (for late-comers--party not included): Saturday, April 9th, 2 - 5 pm

From deep in UC Berkeley’s fundraising floor, a secret gallery occupying a cubicle has been percolating for two years. This office-set micro gallery ( Mauve?) has recently undergone an official transformation, assuming a new moniker: Mauve? Office of Exhibition. On this biennial birthday, we release our first large-format print journal featuring works by and words about previously exhibiting artists. A concurrent weekend-exhibition selects work from these last 20+ shows that have often responded to the context of our office gallery by bringing a little bit of home into the workplace.

Join us for waffles, pickles, and Tecate!

Tarak Shah & Sabina Nieto

About the authors

2011-03-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

(A difficult task at the behest of the International Journal of Health and Caring for our upcoming article.)

R

2011-03-17T17:44:00.001-07:00

(for Ramón)

Lenten season

2011-03-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

Mauve Office (online)

2011-03-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

(Mauve? Office of Exhibition went live today--much thanks to web gal Elena Nakashima.) Our new online home awaits your visit.

The Science of Cheese Toast

2011-02-22T07:41:00.001-08:00

(for Harish)

Garden for the Environment (seeking membership)

2011-02-20T18:26:00.000-08:00

Valentine (2007)

2011-02-09T09:09:00.001-08:00

(for Mark Wise)

Mauve Cubicle

2011-02-08T23:17:00.001-08:00

NEW HOME (abridged)

2011-01-23T21:20:00.001-08:00

Feel free to stop by: cargocollective.com/sabinanieto

Garden Valentine

2011-01-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Auxilary (revisited)

2011-01-16T17:57:00.000-08:00

Pedagogy

2011-01-15T21:33:00.000-08:00

Mauve Projects Underway

2011-01-11T18:35:00.000-08:00

(Presentation boards for Gallery rebranding and publication projects in web, print, and fundraising.)

(Final) Drop no. 5, at the Uptown

2010-12-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

--where the beers and beards are flowing.

Of note: Sent to sea Wednesday, December 15th.
Although ratified on the 5th, the 21st Amendment became officially effective today in 1933, repealing the 18th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Bottoms up! Prohibition ends!

The Un-Scientific Method as well comes to a rather untimely end. This is a goodnight missive.
Salud.

(Do share your comments at miabproject.blogspot.com with the visionary of this city-based adventure.)

Drop no. 4, released at Rare Device

2010-12-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

Variety: Sweet Pea, Lathyrus odoratus

Of note: From the sidewalk, wearing a coat belted at the waist and a small-brimmed hat, he turned to gather his two young children with his voice and said, “Come on, treasures.”

Specimen selection

2010-12-12T08:35:00.001-08:00

(No. 20 Sweet Pea, No. 30 Beach Strawberry, No. 29 Nasturtium)

Bromeliad and cork frog

2010-12-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

(Tillandsia varieties, cork height 1.5")

Drop no. 3, released yesterday.

2010-12-09T07:08:00.001-08:00

Evidence as to how temperature and humidity are so accurately captured.
(San Francisco Planning and Research Association: an extended installation engagement features "DIY Urbanism")

Drop no. 2, released.

2010-12-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

Site: Wave Organ, San Francisco, CA
Variety: Beach Strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis
Time: 8:22 am
Temp: 58 deg. F
Hum: 62%
Radio: "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl"

Of note: Today is my birthday.
Also, today marks an anniversary. Flight 19 disappears into the Bermuda Triangle. "We cannot be sure where we are. Repeat: Cannot see land."

Toot Whistle Plunk Boom

2010-12-03T18:16:00.000-08:00

(4 slingshots within a wall-mounted armature; branches, found bicycle tubes, patch kit, eyelets, and cork, 18" x 12" x 4.5")

Non-Residence Begins! Drop no. 1

2010-12-01T23:21:00.000-08:00

"The Un-Scientific Method"
This urban artifact has been designed by Sabina, Artist in Non-Residence at the Message in a Bottle Project.

Like you, it is part of a larger, endless urban treasure hunt.

If found, please comment at: miabproject.blogspot.com

Preparation for "The Un-Scientific Method"

2010-11-21T19:38:00.001-08:00

Lost at Sea (ii/ii)

2010-11-17T07:33:00.001-08:00

Winter Landscape

2010-11-14T06:07:00.001-08:00

The Un-Scientific Method (i/ii)

2010-11-11T09:28:00.000-08:00

Regalo

2010-10-20T08:18:00.000-07:00

Cookie House of Cards

2010-10-19T20:48:00.001-07:00

Sub-rosa Correspondency

2010-10-18T09:59:00.001-07:00

Observatory

2010-10-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Baptistry

2010-10-06T08:53:00.001-07:00

Night Depository

2010-10-05T08:49:00.001-07:00

Take Inventory

2010-10-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

Call-for-work in the Unemployment Wilderness

2010-09-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

Respectively seeking employment with cardboard adverts, two performers are captured by still photography. A business-bound designer in Manhattan is elapsed by an aloof public juxtaposed by a craftsperson in a Civilian Conservation Core (CCC) Amphitheater (Mt. Tamalpais, CA) who is met by an empty audience.

(This collaboration by Gabriella Guthrie & Sabina Nieto is a project proposal for The Work Office of Dumbo, Brooklyn.)

Recycled Bicycle Slingshot (prototype)

2010-09-21T09:11:00.001-07:00

(patch kit, found bicycle tube and branch, 9" x 4" x 2", 2010)

Garden turns 20! Come one, come all

2010-09-19T17:51:00.001-07:00

Papermill Cart

2010-09-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

(Artifact roaming the floors at the newly reprogrammed Papermill Community for the Arts in Kensington, Philadelphia.)

East River Park SeeSaw

2010-09-13T08:41:00.001-07:00

Birds of the Upper East Side

2010-09-08T09:43:00.000-07:00

(Collage with Gabriella Guthrie of the MiaB "Message in a Bottle" Project)

Garden for the Environment: featuring "Learn"

2010-08-22T18:00:00.001-07:00

Garden for the Environment: featuring "Eat"

2010-08-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

Thomas Olaeta

2010-07-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

July 20, 1918 - July 21, 2010

Minneapolis

2010-07-21T17:05:00.001-07:00

(On the eve of her 29th year, she was the first to vanish.)

Miss Dinah's

2010-07-20T23:43:00.000-07:00

(Sectional testbed for 20K House. Original photos by Terri Barnes, 2007)

I'm too sad to tell you

2010-07-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

(Homage: Bas Jan Ader, 1971)

Recent Conversation regarding Mauve? Gallery

2010-07-07T08:23:00.001-07:00

Joint venture with Tarak Shah, Mauve? Gallery has recently been featured in Works & Conversations (No. 20), a Berkeley-based magazine exploring artist reflections about making.

3 month old Meadow

2010-06-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

Red Rock Canyon (documented)

2010-04-24T19:55:00.001-07:00

Meadow Documentation

2010-04-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

Growing Home Community Garden: "Earthworks"

2010-04-07T08:52:00.001-07:00

(South Lot: permaculture keyholes and topographical interest)

Newborn Meadow

2010-04-02T19:07:00.000-07:00

(A gracious thank you to Tarak for his help on installation day.)

FROM THE BORDER / April 2010

Garden For the Environment's Hilary Gorden writes a monthly Organic Gardening Column.

"Newborn spring meadow at the GFE"

February’s plum blossoms have given way to March’s cherry blossoms and the streets and parks of San Francisco have put on their new spring outfits. Here at the GFE, we have something to celebrate for the season; a beautiful new meadow installed in the outdoor classroom.

Last fall during the GCETP program (Garden and Compost Educator Training, fondly referred to as Get-Up), one of the class projects was the removal of our small turf lawn. Although only 9’X12’, our lawn demonstration has become obsolete in the 21st century. When originally installed, the lawn was a way to show San Franciscans that large lawns could be replaced with a small lawn and a combination of water-wise border plantings and patio areas for a big savings on irrigation requirements. Now however, as climate change and population growth pressure our water resources, even a small turf lawn requires more water than we want to commit.

We built a new raised bed for food production with the old turf which had been cut up into squares for removal. First we excavated the new raised bed and installed gopher wire at the very bottom to prevent these rascals from stealing our crops. Next we laid the turf pieces upside down in the bottom of the bed to provide soil nutrients as they decomposed. These were covered with a sheet mulch of cardboard pieces with the edges well overlapping, to prevent the grasses from trying to grow again. The cardboard would also add to the decomposition process, adding nutrients to the bed. Finally we replaced the excavated garden soil, and covered everything with a thick layer of aged manure. This bed will provide a deep, fertile, and protected spot for growing edibles in the future.

Meanwhile, after some experimentation, we decided on a water-wise meadow as a replacement for the lawn area. The meadow would be created out of plants that could stand up to light foot traffic, and would include a pathway through the most walked-on route. We envisioned a combination of native bunch grasses, other grass-like plants, and a few tough groundcovers that would provide a sequence of bloom and color interest throughout the year.

Two of the students in the Get-Up class volunteered to follow through with the project, and the designing began. Renata Robinson and Sabina Nieto worked countless hours over the course of the winter, researching plants, attending lectures, poring over books, organizing brainstorming meetings with experienced designers, and talking to everyone who would be using the space to determine their needs and concerns. All that hard work resulted in a spectacular design for our space. With a budget of $300, Renata and Sabina went plant shopping, organized an installation date, and made the magic happen.

On the last weekend in March, as Renata and Sabina were putting the finishing touches on the new meadow, I had a chance to ask them about the experience. Here are some of the inspirational words I heard. “It’s a living design that you traverse.” “We’re trying to be smart about water and native plants.” “Birds and insects and wind move through it as well as people, so we tried to find a balance.” “We created multiple layers with different colors prevalent at different times of year, all in a very small space.”

Over the next few months, as the new meadow grows and knits together, it will receive regular watering and some protection from foot-traffic. By summertime, we hope that it will be able to stand up to light foot traffic, and less frequent watering. But by next year, most of the plants will need no additional summer water. To keep the whole meadow looking its best, and to help it thrive with the high usage it will get in the outdoor classroom, we will probably irrigate it on a schedule, perhaps once every two weeks.

This will be a huge water savings from a turf lawn that required much more frequent watering. It won’t need regular mowing and edging, nor will it require the constant fertilization that a turf lawn prefers. It will be sustainable for us and for the environment in a way that turf never could be. And it will add charm and seasonal beauties that turf never provides. It will inspire us by referring to the lovely meadows of Mt. Tamalpais and other nearby wild areas, and remind us that on our busy urban street corner, we are part of a much bigger web of natural life.

Many thanks to all the awesome students and volunteers who worked on different parts of this project, but especially to Renata and Sabina for an amazing new climate-appropriate, inspirational demonstration of what the GFE is all about.

Modest Meadow

2010-03-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

California Mediterranean Meadow

2010-03-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

Garden Thanks

2010-02-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

(Garden for the Environment's "Adopt-a-Square-Foot" thank-you postcard. Photo by Blair Randall)

"Growning Home" Garden, Project Homeless Connect

2010-02-12T08:15:00.001-08:00

Initial planting strategy for two ex-freeway frontage lots focused on food production for homeless users: row crop swales in fruiting rainbow order, and zagging permaculture keyhole beds.

Auspicious shipwreck

2010-01-15T08:27:00.000-08:00

Living Gallery

2010-01-05T14:37:00.000-08:00

(Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX and a row of greenhouses, Costa Rica)

Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum, with its sunken square sedge at the end wall of five enclosed barrel vaults, is the perfect opaque mate to a strip of hoop houses in the landscape. Early garden treasures normally kept within a greenhouse are placed outside the museum as a quiet lawn, reserving the interior for fine artifacts. The Kimbell is a stoic, petrified monument to the often brittle and translucent predecessors, these prolific nurseries, bubbling and patched in the wind. Extruded greenhouses proliferating agricultural land are the light-saturated seedling safe houses from the elements. Almería’s white plastic merlons can be seen from space. How to learn from these twin forms set in the prairie: one visually protective while thoughtfully reflecting light from ridges; the other, a familiar translucent shell, warms the productive life inside.

Casa Invernadero

2010-01-04T14:54:00.000-08:00

(A programmatically surreptitious proposition.)

Not just for plants

2009-12-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

The greenhouse may very well be a living gallery.
Current project pursuits include proposals of the greenhouse as an urban garden propagator and prefabricated prototype for expandable housing with Berta Lázaro.

Home is a place for growing.

Floriculturist Nick Grillo 1942, transparency by Fenno Jacobs (detail)

Farm City lecture

2009-10-15T13:17:00.001-07:00