·:[ Stephen Vincent ]:·
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Haptic: Is there a horse & heart in my mother breathing, sleeping? 1.05.2010

Haptic: Diane DiPrima, Poet Laureate, San Francisco, Inaugural Address, Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library, February 2, 2010.

Wonderful primarily autobiographical talk with evocations of New York /America in the 50’s, and her arrival and life in 1960’s San Francisco, communal living, the Diggers, drugs, the Vietnam war, et al. A language dedicated to restoring and revisiting in lovely detail vital acreage in the City’s history. Plus proposals as to how she will use her poet position to participate in and involve all levels of the City from young children to seniors - readings and work shops. There she was looking regal sitting in a chair on the stage addressing the realm of all of us who - one way or other - serve the City’s muses!

Haptic: “Autumn Leaves”, Miles Davis on the Juke, Noe’s Bar in the late afternoon, my birthday, February 1, 2010.

The Bay Area is again awash with poetry readings & the haptic pen was happy to be out there ‘on register.’

Haptic: Brenda Coultas, poet, reading from The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations (Coffee House, Press) , Maude Fife Room,Wheeler Hall, University of California, Berkeley, January 28, 2010. Excavating the geo-cultural lines between Indiana & Kentucky, folk, contemporary & past; singing off the arteries, north & south, Civil War, abolition & not, the language lines colliding, dispersing, bones into gothic, gothic into bones; rhythm and intonation some kind of salvation. Charmed us!

Haptic: Wayde Compton, poet, reading, Maude Fife Room,Wheeler Hall, University of California, Berkeley, January 28, 2010. African-Canadian, mixed blood, from Vancouver - excavating the history of origins and shape. Love the sense & pleasures, no matter how racially ironic, of historical investigation.

Haptic: Dennis Tedlock, poet & translator, talking about and reading from his new UC Press book, 2000 Years of Mayan Literature; Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, Friday, January 29, 2010. Tedlock is a man who has spent his life upturning and deciphering glyps into a corresponding, lyrical English translation. He is the Jerome Rothenberg of Mayan un-covery. He does it with much love, respect and attention. The daily life and the corresponding cosmographic parallels become very much alive. Magic mixed with real soup. The book is visually splendid. The work of a lifetime.

Haptic: Day 1, 9-10a.m., January 20, 2009,
George Moscone Center, Yerba Buena Gardens, watching and listening to the the President’s Inauguration address on a jumbotron television screen:

Announcing:
The First 100 Days of Obama (100 haptic drawings and 100 journal entries) by Stephen Vincent published by Steven Wolf Fine Arts Gallery.
Signed, Limited Edition of 100 copies, 25 - 100.
7.4 x 9.75” (vertical)
204 pages
ISBN 978-1-61623-499-7
Price: $25
To conveniently order, go to:
http://stevenwolffinearts.bigcartel.com/product/the-first-100-days-of-obama-by-steven-vincent

The initial 25 copies published on the one day only April 29th - the 100th day - exhibition of the work each include a unique drawing and journal entry. A very few are still available at $100 each and can only be ordered directly through the gallery :

Steven Wolf Fine Arts
49 Geary Street, Suite 411
San Francisco, CA 94108

Tel: 415-263-3677

Downsizing America Two Bicycles at A Time

from the Neighborhood Anthropology Series

Haptic: My Mother Breathes into The Infinite, 1/10/01

Big Sur from Nepenthe, December 21, 2009
Been thinking about Kerouac writing in Big Sur & what was ongoing ‘overhead’ - the presence of what he felt/saw as the Holy Grail and/or ‘those golden scriptures of eternity’. Was this it?

Grafitti, wallboard, Valencia Street, San Franciso

Sometimes, I confess, I wonder about some of my local neighbors who are practicing artists! Who they are and what goes on deep inside their psyches, and whether or not what they create is just a mirror back of what goes on inside any of us at a particular moment or space in time. Diane Arbus might have appreciated this character. There is a very good show of her work - unknown or barely so - now up at Fraenkel Gallery, 49 Geary Street, San Francisco.

Graffiti, Valencia Street, Mission District, San Francisco

Hard to look at this one without imagining the drawing as a comment on the zilch lack of public or private enthusiasm for marching anyone off into Afghanistan, or Yemen, or Pakistan, or Somalia or Iran or …

Not to sound totally apocalyptic - something will survive and flourish out of this - nevertheless, common sense in California (a rarity perhaps) makes it a good idea to make sure - for nature will keep open a restive and active workshop - that we acquire a full working set of:

Signage, Closet Door, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
(By the way, the new 2nd Floor history of 75th Anniversary of the Museum is
an awesome knockout of good stuff, smartly contextualized, and a great gift back from the artists, curators and collectors who have built a significant collection from the unique angle of a west coast vision. And we still have floors 3 and 4 to open in another week or so!)