Flirting with San Francisco: All Over Coffee

My Dear Frisco,

You once said:

I agree, communication for us is a rather silent affair. I throw myself to your streets, you consume my thoughts, and at the end of the brief times I share with you... I'm always left with so many unvoiced questions, it gets harder and harder to talk about you.

We've had some good times:

May 10, 2009

November 9, 2008

May 15, 2006

But then I find out that you shared this incredible moment with someone else:

It's not that I mind... I just want to know when it happened?

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Paul Madonna has been drawing these deceptively inert illustrations for the San Francisco Chronicle since 2004 (his works were introduced by the paper in this article here). I absolutely love seeing his work on paper. His urban-scapes cling to the city - like a lover half-asleep in the morning. And the way in which he extracts brick, mortar, pavement, and window sill from their natural 'habitats', juxtaposing this wild scribble against the street - it's breathtakingly unsettled and... even liquid in manner. His piece above from 15 May 06: the ink-work is almost this stain that bends the curb to the road, nestling the grill against the urgency of the shadows. Textures are hinted at; cracks are pulled apart all the more widely; and the picture cuts off fiercely at the top as if to tell you, 'you're not looking at the right place'. And just off-center, the words: Your existence gives me hope... made all the more poignant because the graffiti actually exists in the Mission, SF. Or at least, it used to.

Paul's work has heavily featured the architecture of San Francisco, but in recent times, the he's ended up flirting with other cities (a trait we seem to share....)

Check out his archive here.

Urban-Trait-hunter: on the trail of Jorge Rodriguez Gerada

Ever feel like when you're dating someone, you've been here before... and that the only reason you're across the table from them is because you're after a particular trait? I feel like that with my harem of pretty cities sometimes.

"I'm sorry, it's not you, it's me. "

I'm just on this highly myopic hunt for.... the work of a particular architect, a shop (for a while, it was cities with a Muji store).... and tonight, it's the work of Jorge Rodriguez Gerada.

I had the rather good fortune of seeing Gerada's work while I was hunting down Parc de Diagonal Mar in Poblenou (after getting hideously lost in Eixample). I had my head half-buried in a rather tatty map, my hand mournfully clutching a woefully empty bottle of no-water, when suddenly... I ran into this strange, bespectacled woman peering somewhat gloomily out of a rather nondescript piece of urban "blah". And I almost missed it.

I walked on a little bit more before turning back, unable to figure out why I found it so attractive. I half hoped I wasn't turning into a gerontophile... but stranger things have happened.

Took ages to figure out who the artist was.

Love the way he uses scissor lifts, cherry pickers, knuckle booms to execute his work.

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Gerada's work is unsubtle - but that description is probably a bit of an obvious one given the scale at which he works. Yet his images are surprisingly fresh and charming in their "everyday" quality - billboards grabbing for attention, featuring (for one brief visual "sound"bite) an expression tied to the lay of the city, and the city of one person. The choice of material - charcoal - caught my attention more than anything. So often, people who dress a building with their art capitalise on the longevity of the medium, using vivid colours that cling tenaciously onto their hosts. But here, Gerada creates in the raspiness of charcoal, ash-like and ephemeral - a singe over render, mortar and concrete. For a minute, I resist an unfair comparison with Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". There is nothing apocalyptic here. Only a smudge in days on the years and decades of a city.

Gerada's official webpage is here.

Images shamelessly taken from here.

Gerada's email exchange with the folks at Wooster Collective (or one of the guest bloggers there).