art

San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade 2025!

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On the Subway we are wondering how all the groups are going to make a snake costume. We have seen cute monkeys, pigs, and rabbits but are having difficulty imagining a cute snake on our way to the Chinese new year parade 2025.

Coming out of the underground with most of the train, ascending the escalator, we can hear the drums, gaining momentum. The air is festive. It’s friendly all around.

We get to our desired spot and eventually edge our way in to the front next to the fence. Placement at the parade is paramount. At our corner, there are those lining the pavement, others standing on utility boxes, and a bunch of youth on a scaffolding where a building is being upgraded.

As soon as we are in place we begin the wave. We wave at everyone and everyone waves back. It’s agreed. We are celebrating life together. I am waving at beautiful women in beautiful costumes, at little kids playing their drums, at high school and college bands in full regalia with trimmed sashes and white tipped shoes. It is a night of forgiveness. We even wave at the casino ladies and the politicians in red mustangs.

There are illuminated dragons chasing pearls galore and innovative homemade 20’ long snakes. There are cool guys with green rimmed lights on the bottom of their shoes, which make them look like they are levitating as they run through their martial art routine.

The real martial artists are the ones on the scaffolding. I watch them get to the fire escape of the adjacent building. They move up from the first to the second to the third etc. until they are at the eighth floor when the scaffolding changes to a very long thin ladder which reaches the roof. I watch them until they get to the ladder and then I can’t look anymore.

A group of elementary school kids are dressed as Mahjong pieces. It is like the game board is tumbling down the street. I look back up and I can’t see the kids on the scaffolding anymore.

The best fun is to get “kissed” by a lion’s furry eyelash because it’s great good luck. That’s why you have to be up against the fence. I got kissed.

Then the red Lucky shopping cart rolls by. It is way gigantic, so the many people inside it look tiny, like a Gulliver’s Travel adventure.

On the subway home there is a kid in an appropriately sized stroller. He can see himself in the opposite glass. He is waving happily at himself and himself is waving back.

Bicycle King and the gumball machine

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Once there was a bicycle king. He was the best bicycle person. He had the most authenticity and genuine earnest enthusiasm for being kind and fair to all.

He made bicycles with parts from Australia, France, Italy, China and even parts from the United States. Much attention was paid to detail and the bicycles were like none other and became popular.

The bicycle king was a very likable, lively guy. He had gathered around him 13 employees. No one ever left the job. His employees had been skaters, they had been surfers, and they were musicians and photographers and bicyclists.

The shop where they assembled and sold their bicycles was super cool. It was in an airplane hanger with lots of musical instruments on the walls and black-and-white photographs that the staff had taken of each other. There were flowers around the outside.

The bicycle king was passionate. He was passionate about one thing one season, and the next season he was passionate about something else. However, one object that continually fascinated him was old fashion gum machines full of brightly colored little balls.

He collected the gum machines and had them all over the shop. He filled some with gum. In other machines he put blueberries, grapes, cherries, raisins, peanuts, chocolate covered espresso beans etc. He put macadamia nuts in one gum machine.

The bicycle king and his crew had fake money coins that worked in the gum machines. The macadamia machine was different. It didn’t operate according to the rules. The rules being: you put in a coin and you got out an object.

The macadamia machine after having received a coin sometimes didn’t give anything and other times gave five. It was unpredictable.The bicycle king had the machine thoroughly investigated by himself and others. There was no rhyme or reason to it.

It was the talk of the shop because there was one employee who always got five out of that machine, and no one knew why. It wasn’t about him cheating. It was about something else.

Graffiti

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Risking one’s life to express ones self

Here I am trying to drive to San Francisco with thousands of other people.

It’s a very very foggy day. Not foggy in San Francisco foggy in Oakland… 

I mean in a way it’s probably good. We’re not going quickly.

 I have driven this road thousands of times, tens of thousands of times, maybe hundreds of thousands of times 

and I know the buildings that should be there but instead of them being there it’s just a light soft gray large space of nothingness. 

I am in a freeway parking lot. I’m sure you know what I mean.

So I have time to look at the graffiti on the side of the freeway in a way that I’ve never had before. I’m stopped in front of the tags.

I’ve always held a lot of admiration for graffiti artists. 

Sometimes you see graffiti in places that are inexplicably difficult to get to.

 Almost makes you wonder if aliens put them there… Or angels… Or are there people that can somehow hover in the sky with battery packs or I don’t know.

Anyhow, these guys painting on the side of the freeway have easy access. 

There’s a teeny tiny little space where they can put their young bodies and write something on the side wall. 

One person wrote a word, which I’m guessing is a name, in a newly invented calligraphy with fantastic ability… The person could be designing fonts, the visual is compelling

Anyhow, next to the word/name the street artist wrote “art meets crime”.

I Love that. 

What is the 6 million dollar banana sold recently at Sotherby’s as art, if not a crime against all people working hard for an hourly wage?

No ART at Public school

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Tommy (not his real name) has been working In the office for years. When he first came, he seemed a certain kind of proper and prim. They’re quiet as well from that background different from my loud one, which is what I assume gives him his ultra upright demeanor.

After having been the United States culture for long enough and at that the school long enough he starts to lighten up. He starts to become more “hood“. Whether he always was this and is now more comfortable showing or whether he has over the years become this, is not for me to know.

What I do know is that I am more comfortable with him this way.

As I am leaving the office, he says, “Hey Dana, wait a minute. I have something for you.”

Although we have become friendly over the many years by exchanging a sentence, or maybe two as I sign in, we are not friendly enough for him to be giving me a present. I wonder what’s going on.

He hands me a bag of art supplies that someone has donated to the school and hopes I can use them.

I am shocked that I am the one in the school of 600 students that the office associates with Art.

There is no art teacher. Neither is there a maker space teacher. There is no one there to show the kids how to make something with their hands!

I teach one class one afternoon a week and I am the one they associate with art. Tragic in my mind.

Offhand people say oh, there’s no budget for that.

They have no understanding that in art a kid learns how to listen to their inner voice. How to listen to themself. How to make decisions.

They learn how to get an idea and follow it through to completion.

If you don’t like sports, and you don’t like academics, you better have art in your school or you are gonna fall through the cracks.

Art builds confidence in oneself the way no other academic subject does !

What is a flower?

Used to be

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Used to be I could go and did go down several times a year for over 30 years to Salamander Camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains . But no more. This past Monday, the owner, after an entire lifetime on this land, has signed the papers and given it away. Life is life that. Everything changes and eventually goes. It’s not even a bad thing. It just is.

Seems like a dream

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A week ago I leave my home on the coast, taking two flights to arrive in the middle of the country at Anderson Ranch Art Center where I spend 5 days in a workshop.

It is transforming to exchange my struggling professional artist educator role to be a student of someone truly remarkable.

Yesterday was our last day of classes. At dinner, I find it hard to imagine reentering my regular life. It seems so dull after something so rich. This morning we have breakfast together before we leave. Every Anderson Ranch meal offers cookies. Some days we have oatmeal and raisin. Other days: chocolate chip. Today it seems both are offered. Examining them, I pack two chocolate chip cookies in my purse to eat at some point during my long journey home.

It is so hard to leave, I am drawn towards the possibility of studying with this remarkable artist further. I am even considering moving to the middle of the county where he usually teaches. I need a change. 

On landing finally in my home airport after traveling most of the day, I easily resume the role of who I usually am.

Riding the subway home, four people are playing Rock Paper Scissors. I open up the morning’s white paper napkins carefully wrapped around the cookies. I take a bite. Oatmeal.

Heaven

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Watercolor by Dana Zed

I am on the plane looking at the clouds. I needed to get a Lyft at3:30 AM to make this flight. The window view is more beautiful than usual. It is dawn. I always get the aisle seat if I can cuz truth is I can still see out the window

i am looking at these celestial clouds and remembering when I flew after my sister Sally died young leaving three small children. I was in the airport talking to a person dressed in an air attendants outfit that I didn’t recognize.

Suddenly someone alerted everyone to get ready and others stand back. I was told to stand back, out of the way. I didn’t know what was going on. I obeyed.

Then low and behold, Steve Martin appeared. All the people I thought were waiting passengers and airline ticket counter people and attendants, were actors in a movie. Steve began arguing ridiculously with the ticket counter lady.

The experience left me with a strong impression that our real lives are not our real lives. Somehow I felt this had something to do with Sally. Like all our lives were plays and we were actors and it was her time to get off the set

After this experience I was on the plane. Wanting Sally to appear to me in the sky. Much like as a child I wanted God to come down from the ceiling. And do what ? Give a blessing? No. I think I wanted just to connect. I never got farther than God coming down because God never did. Or maybe God did.

Today in the airport cafe, I heard a concerned young lady asking her partner and wondering whether the cafe had hot chocolate because it was not on the menu. I looked hard at the menu and saw mocha this and mocha that. I said to them, “I think they do, just ask” and I went on my way.

Several minutes later I ran into them and asked

“Did they have it?” “Yes, they did!” She said. “Oh good, I’m happy for you”. I said. We all smiled.

And there you have it, God. Simple ordinary love here and there.

“Oh good, I’m happy for you”.