art

What’s punk in 2025?

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On my computer from KQED is a newsletter blurb. The enticing headline was about reviving a punk club from the 70s and 80s. I wondered if I could be the “”Mabuhay’” because I was here then and that was the only punk club I knew. And went to.

Although I knew I had been to the Mabuhay I couldn’t remember anything about my experiences there and wasn’t sure whether I had gone with Vincent before the fall or Linda after the fall. I texted Linda. Yes, she remembered going there and thanked me for the memory. Then I asked her about the 181 club which she didn’t remember to my astonishment. I texted back “You and I had been to hell and back when we met but compared to what was going on at the 181 we were innocents.”

A few hours later after riding on BART and emerging into and navigating through the low life on16th between Mission and Valencia, I walk a mile to the gallery where I will sit for four hours watching people and selling art.

Two people walk in. I think they’re guys and I say “Hey guys” when I realize that one of them has breasts and is probably not technically a guy but then I recognize that “guys”. although perhaps politically incorrect, is often said referring to an all-around person and not just a male so I’m not too embarrassed about the fact that I’ve used a masculine term for a couple. Then I think the Spanish language does this all the time. All of these thought processes take less than a second.

When the person with the breasts speaks they have a much deeper and fuller voice then the guy with the beard. It’s of no business of me or mine what the pronouns are. I’m never interested in that. I’m interested in who the person is, not what sex they like or are.

We greet each other, and after I ask them how their day is going, and hear their answer, I tell them that I have them trying to figure out who owns PayPal. This is a true icebreaker. We are at it right away… with Musk, Amazon, Airbnb: billionaire bashing.

These two people are so young and beautiful and alive and smart and all sexes at once, just so. This is in someway innocent compared to what they were doing at the 181 in the tenderloin of SF 40 years ago. That was scarier: more dangerous and vulnerable

But hey what’s going down for vulnerable today if not now everyone?

A woman in a hat with the dog comes in. The white dog is named Julian. Julian is so full of love, all I have to do is look at him, tilt my head a little, and he starts to wag his tail.

The woman with the hat and dog mentions the news. We together lament the news as I had been doing earlier in a different way billionare bashing with the guys.

This woman is more pointedly directed towards fascism. I wholeheartedly agree with her and say something hopefully stupid like “Still, it couldn’t happen like it happened in World War II“

She says “It’s already happening. They’re already taking innocent people and putting them away“.

All I could do is agree.

She bought a set of my heart card images. She paid cash and she, after tax, didn’t want the 72cents change. Told me to keep it. The heart cards she bought I originally made in February as “Valentines”. After February I call them “Love cards”.

Who doesn’t need a little more love?

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.

A Bug’s Life

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With all the rainy weather, the ants have come inside. They are all over my kitchen counter. Even when I have nothing that they can possibly eat on the counter, they are running around looking for food. If I do spy a bit of even avocado, covered with ants, I take the plate outside, get rid of the avocado and before you know it, those guys are clean gone.

I once had a spiritual teacher who said that if it was only himself and an ant after the nuclear holocaust he would do everything in his power to make friends with that ant. The statement made an impression upon me. Now almost a decade after that teacher has left his body, I look at an ant and I wonder how can I make us friends.

Ants are not the only evidence of insects in my house. My high school senior son has been doing a report on insects. He has a shoebox with a styrofoam square on the bottom. In neat rows, there is a grid of dead insects with pins poking through them. They hover over the Styrofoam, still as can be: dry, beautiful and intricate.

He has another shoe box of butterflies. I was looking at the butterflies today, and I said out loud to myself, “They are so beautiful, it’s too bad they’re dead.“ In my mind, I heard a voice say, “But I am not dead.” 

I knew I hadn’t been getting enough sleep but still this kind of hallucination was unusual. I’ve never heard voices in my head before. I looked at the box more closely and saw that one of the blue butterflies wings was maybe slightly moving. Then I thought I saw an antenna jerk. I looked around for some kind of validation of what I was seeing but there was no one else in the room. I wanted to ask my son but he was gone at a friend’s house. I looked more closely at the box. For sure the wings were moving.

There was no wind I was inside with no heat and no air-conditioning, no open window or door open. No breeze. I heard the voice again, “I am not dead. You just think I am.” The voice was coming from the box. I looked a third time. The blue butterfly’s wings were definitely moving. I pulled out her pin, and she flew away.

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?

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.