ART AND INSPIRATION IN THE BAY AREA (Cheri)

We started our Bay Area vacation yesterday at Eats on Clement Street.

Image Credit:   www.eatsrestaurantsf.com

O.M.G.

​We've eaten at Eats before; even mentioned it in a blog post before.  It's possible they've changed chefs or ownership.  It was good before; it's heaven now!

Mark had a roasted pluot french toast that was like custard infused into extraordinary sourdough bread.  My regular toast was so good that we checked . . . yep, they use Acme Bread, out of Berkeley.  I didn't check on the brand of the butter they used, but it, too, was clearly superior.

Even the "fried" potatoes were little nuggets of heaven, about one-third a rosemary-enhanced crispy exterior.  (I don't even like rosemary, usually.)  I'm trying to not entirely duplicate previous experiences, but maybe we could get back there again before we leave?

While we were there, I leafed through 300 Reasons to Love San Francisco, by Marie-Joelle Parent.  I've owned about 25 San Francisco guidebooks over the years, and this is one of the best I've read.  A lot of the time guidebooks are very duplicative.  This one feels like the author never cracked any other open, just set out experiencing life in the City to the fullest.  It was published in 2017, so there are bound to be some entries that are dated, but I would still use it as a first resource.

After we went to the de Young Museum - more on that in later posts - we stopped by Bi-Rite Creamery.  I may be looking for new experiences, but when it comes to ice cream in San Francisco, that's only if I've already had Bi-Rite's scoops.  (Just took a moment from writing to scope out local gelato shops.)

At the Pacific International Quilt Festival today, I took in two lectures and mostly shopped.  Yesterday I mentioned seeing Lorraine Woodruff-Long speak to the Monterey Peninsula Quilt Guild, through Zoom.  Here is the quilt that she entered into this exhibition:

Her story about working with her husband's office shirts made me laugh.  They went through shirts he wasn't wearing anymore and she, being a committed repurposer, kept some for her quilt artistry.  When she started working with them, however, he saw them and tried to take them back to wear again!  She knew how to avoid that; she simply cut all of the cuffs off of those shirts.

I had never seen an entire exhibit devoted to the work of Caryl Bryer-Fallert Gantry before, so I was very pleased to stroll through about 20 of her pieces, during the quiet lull near the end of the day.  Here is one which reflects her earlier work:

That work almost always featured lots of piecing and swirls.

​This piece is similar in color scheme, and also incorporates wavy lines, but it grabbed me in a way the first didn't.

At the very end of the day, I attended a lecture by Joe Cunninham, who has been a professional quilt artist since the 1970's.  He showed several quilts that will be exhibited next year at the Cahoon Museum of American Art on Cape Cod.

Before showing those, he talked for a bit about the opportunity that quilting,  even in previous centuries, offered women to depart from the norm.

He also subtly lauded women's wisdom in choosing quilting, an important method of creating "blankets" which men value, which involved cutting your fabric into very small pieces, then spending many, many hours with other women - whom you might not otherwise see for long periods of time - while sewing those pieces back together again!

(When someone asked him whether his quite contemporary quilts are "blankets" or "art," he comically pretended to dodge the question, then said that he hoped that they either ended up on museum walls, or on the beds of very wealthy people!)

Cunningham was a guitar player before becoming a quilter, and has incorporated playing and singing in some of his professional pursuits.  The quilts that he showed today had political references, and he ended his lecture with a quiet, haunting-above-all rendition of an otherwise familiar song:

​Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, yeah

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today

Picket lines and picket signs (sister, sister)
Don't punish me with brutality (sister, sister)
Talk to me (sister)
So you can see (sister)
Oh, what's going on (what's going on)
What's going on (what's going on)
 . . . .

Mother, mother
Everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us?
Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we've got to find a way
Bring some understanding here today

Picket lines and picket signs (brother, brother)
Don't punish me with brutality (brother, brother)
Come on talk to me (brother)
You can see (brother)
What's going on (what's going on)
Yeah, what's going on (what's going on)
Tell me what's going on (what's going on)
I'll tell you ya, what's going on (what's going on)

(Marvin Gaye, What's Going On)

​I walked out to the parking lot:

Even though my rental car was at the far end of the lot, since I arrived 20 minutes after the opening of the show, it had been abandoned by other not-so-hardy attendees.

I'm going back tomorrow!