Summer Yeti

dress, coat - 60s vintage // bag - thrifted // shoes - FreePeople

After a long hibernation in the halls of academia, the Summer Yeti emerges from her studio to bask in the Oakland sun and catch up on all of the museum shows she has missed in her dormancy. Having spent several months contorting her limbs to fit various conference chairs and desks intended for middle-schoolers, Summer Yeti is unsure on her feet, and may stumble from time to time before becoming fully accustomed to her fetishistic hooves.

She will need many cheeseburgers in order to regain strength and sanity.

Off-Color Italian Hand Gestures

ArtMRKT San Francisco / ArtPadSF, 2012

Rhymes with A Part of the Female Anatomy

purse, jacket - vintage // blouse - Wasteland LA // skirt -AA // shoes - thrifted // shades - BE

Snapped these at Dolores park while the old man and I went on a little impromptu shopping trip in the city. I'm always picking up things at the thrift store here and there, but I can't remember the last time I went on a shopping trip, with like, multiple bags from multiple stores and laughing and coffee breaks and Hall & Oates playing while I do one of those wacky trying-on montages where my boyfriend either gives an exaggerated thumbs down, or does a double-take over the top of his sunglasses.

In the end, I went home with about three things from Painted Bird and Buffalo Exchange, but it felt fancy, so that's what counts.

Last Looks

vintage everything // flats - tic tac toes

My 35mm camera usually winds itself when you reach the end of the roll. I always resign myself after 24 shots, but sometimes it will squeeze in 25 or even 26 exposures before winding up. When that happens, I ask Sterling to take a quick photo of me right before going into the store to get the roll developed. Sometimes the greedy greebles at Walgreens will grant me the extra exposures, but more often than not they go off into photo heaven, so I try not to get attached or excited about whatever's at the end of the roll.

These were serendipitous last looks, and I love how they came out, even the shaky one up top. The LA sunshine bleaches everything into a dreamy haze, but the Bay Area sun makes colors bleed like wine on a paper napkin. I spent the greater part of last summer in an office and then in a hospital, so I'm very much looking forward to this one - I want to do everything: camping, the beach, Big Sur, picnics, all of it...

Everything that can fit around summer school, that is.

Field Trip: Rebel @ MOCA

I took a smoking vacation last weekend—it's the opposite of taking a vacation from smoking. I quit just over three years ago when I started dating my boyfriend, who has never had a cigarette in his life. To him, smoking is not only disgusting by virtue of its stink and residue; I think he finds its utility as a social aid borderline disturbing. It's true. If alcohol is a social lubricant, cigarettes are the gears that slide to and fro against it, keeping the night moving. 

My friend Andrew wrote a very accurate play-by-play of the evening here, although the lithe antipathy of his pen is kind of masking the shuffling awkwardness with which we both moved through it. Neither of us really knew what to expect. "I have to go to this art thing tonight" he said "wanna come with?" It was certainly a thing, having much to do with art, but it had the darkly familiar feeling of the kind of Hollywood parties I frequented in order to distract myself during a particularly aimless and unproductive time in my life. We leaned against the wall, neither of us smokers, but both smoking to pass the time and make sense of what we had just seen / were seeing, most of which was celebrities and cameras and glad-handing men in suits with wet play-doh complexions; the calling card of face creams that cost more than your rent. Someone left an interesting comment in response to Andrew's article: 

...[is there no] space to mention of any of the artwork? Only talk of the douche-in-suit glamor? [The] Douglas Gordon video was breathtaking, Aaron Young's videos as well. Andrew, aren't you doing a disservice to the artists by feeding into the perceived emptiness and not addressing the content, even if it is problematic?

That was the whole problem. I didn't even actually see most of the work, and what I did see was almost impossible to absorb.  I would like to put some faith in the sincerity of Mr. Franco's interest in the art world, but Rebel—as the art thing was called—seemed more like an effort to gather the art world unto himself, instead of the other way around. Although the names of his fellow exhibitors loomed large—Douglas Gordon, Harmony Korine, Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha—their gravitas failed to rub off on him, their names swallowed up by spectacle and camera flash. Instead of putting the work in a white cube, it was placed in a fun-house. The blow up dolls, neon signs, and fake plants, were supposed to be a recreation of the Chateau Marmont, purporting a conceptual throughline taken from legends surrounding the making of Rebel Without a Cause. Nothing about the show led me to believe it was trying to comment on the nature of exhibition space, and try as it did, there was even less that led me to believe Hollywood is capable of commenting on itself. To call it a fake art show would seem uncharitable, but when I leaned in for a closer look of Ed Rusha's contribution—a 2011 painting conveniently titled Rebel—it was merely a silkscreen, "reproduced with permission from the artist."

By the time we reach bungalow one at the Chateau, I've had enough drinks and tiny crab things to genuinely enjoy myself. The cigarette gears were steadily turning, and as expected, the exchange and consumption of them led to some great conversations (just don't ask me to remember them). When I stepped gingerly up to the bar for what I decided would be my final drink, I spotted Mr. Ruscha himself standing next to me. I was just sober enough to not reach out and touch him, but I wanted some proof that he was real and not a hologram reproduced with permission from the artist. Waiting out the cold at the end of the night, the valet was taking longer than usual because Andrew lost his ticket. I shook my pack of cigarettes. I heard the last few shuffling around, but threw them out before getting in the car. There was no use for them anymore.

Mother's Day

dress - vintage // tights - Hue // heels - asos

Very happy I got to spend Mother's Day with my mom, my grandma and my best friend. We wandered around Olvera Street and had lunch at a tiny Mexican restaurant that was literally a hole in the wall. Elisa used my 35mm camera to take that wonderful photo of three generations of crazy Mexican women. As you can clearly see, these two brujas are mainly to blame for my perverse sense of humor and social ineptitude. Case in point: my grandmother's cane tends to find more use as a bazooka than as a walking aid.

Living away from my family sucks sometimes, but it makes little outings like this kind of dreamy and amazing.

Blow Me

Bazooka Joe wrapper from a weird tech launch party, 2012

The Dog Show

blouse - mom's closet // shorts - aa // boots - vintage 

I just got back from a whirlwind 36 hours in Los Angeles. I had been missing my mom lately, so I caught a last-minute ride on Craigslist to surprise her for Mother's day. My dad was in on it, and made sure they were at my favorite taco truck in Echo Park at the appointed time. I walked up and my mom totally freaked out! And then she bought me tacos!

The neighborhood looks different every time I go back. This freaky boutique is called The Dog Show; it opened in February just a few blocks from my old apartment. The stock is half the store's eponymous line of mostly neon spandex separates, and vintage in the 80s-90s acid-wash, punky-beach-bum vein... not really my aesthetic, but the space is amazing, and I still walked out with a black denim miniskirt. Don't underestimate my ability to shop anywhere...I've bought clothes from the dryclceaners that other people left behind.

Potential (for Seafood!)

sweater - vintage // dress - vintage // shoes - Ross (dress for less y'all!)

These were taken in Oakland just before gorging myself at Art's Crab Shack. It's a seafood restaurant and dive bar conveniently rolled into one. My dress is from the latest Golden Collective sale, and for once, I have refrained from hemming it to an aggressively-abbreviated length (or non-length). It's so light and comfortable, I've been wearing it for days straight. The little watch pin is from this teenie-weenie little vintage store around the corner from my house called Halmoni Vintage. The owner Natasha is so sweet and talkative. She hosts monthly art walk parties and ladies-only "body-positive" clothing swaps...which is good. I'm kind of tired of my regular BDSM clothing-swap.

Field Trip: Hangover Gallery Hop

These were taken with a few weeks ago when my good friend and former neighbor Andrew Berardini came up from Los Angeles to visit. He's a writer and curator with a wonderfully voracious appetite for books and art. We were both tired and hungover from a goth-themed dance party that happened at Will Brown Gallery the night before—hence my striped tights and witchy shoes—but since Andrew doesn't live here, we were up and out early the next morning to hit some galleries. I think we got four or five in, and just about every floor of the SFMOMA. The Mark Bradford and Rineke Dijkstra exhibits were particularly compelling (but I loved Mark Bradford already going in). The weather was super beautiful and I neglected to bring my camera, so I picked up a cheap disposable one from Walgreens. I'm pretty pleased with how they came out, especially since my own eyes felt like useless squinty buttholes all day.

Ordinary Accidents / Lady Business

Grey Magazine #6, spring / summer 2012 (via)

I'm still alive, counting the hours until this semester is over, then I can concentrate on work (and two very exciting projects I gotta keep mum about) and then I can start summer school, and then the next semester after that. If you're feeling peckish in the reading sort of way, here is a review I wrote of the Hannah Wilke show at Gallery Paule Anglim. I have a hard time talking about feminist art, so here I just took that language problem and ran with it. 

The thought of putting together an attractive outfit before going out into the world makes me feel like the women in these photos - when you're so close to losing it, a parking ticket can make you collapse. I don't have a car, but...you know what I mean. I did manage to don some festive footwear and meet the girls at the Golden Collective sale in the mission last night. I purchased a pretty new dress and downed several glasses of champagne before tottering home in time to take some stabs at editing a research paper. I'm hoping to be back on some regular posting schedule by next week. Who knows? I may even shower at some point.

But no promises.

Behind the Boathouse

I remember seeing the music video for The Toadies song, "Possum Kingdom" for the first time and being totally gobsmacked because I had heard the song so many times and imagined the lead singer to be this big, beefcakey Eddie Vedder-looking guy. Turns out he looks like kind of a weenie.

Sterling took these with his phone while we were snooping around the Lake Merritt Boathouse. I think my sweet 90s Tommy Hilfiger blouse really belongs on a yacht, don't you?