Two weeks of Art

I helped host some slovak artists in Santa Cruz area: Erik (big guy, drawing from huge swath of themes for his large paintings), Zuzana (her every move is dance), Fero (plays piano, even moving ones), Lucia (layers ornamental motifs behind the grit), Matej (graphic designer utterly open to new possibilities), Lenka (do it all herself designer), Veronika (an empathetic observer of a visual artist). All incredible in their ways, and each able to morph their working conditions, styles and themes to the Redwoods setting in Santa Cruz for two weeks and produce original art in 2 weeks, you can see in theApricity gallery at the Tannery.  Enjoy!

New Story

At the end of a long week of work, art and what is life, I got home. Took out the largest pot I had, filled it with water, boiled it and watched Spaghetti slide in, adding some oil and salt. I took the largest pan I had and made the sauce: tonno, chick peas, plum tomatos, garlic, and some eccentric ginger. Then I took the biggest bowl I had, heaped as much Spaghetti as I could and as much sauce as it would take, and ate it, bowl after bowl, each with teaser shavings of Parmigiano.  That was my weekend. When I need to recover, I go to my version of Italian. That is what I told my bartender friend Haruki, when I returned to work on Monday.

Haruki eventually closed the bar and moved on.  But bar folks eventually find each other, beer flows through us all. I saw Haruki a few years later at a new bar I was working, and he told me he wrote a short story about my Spaghetti. I didnt think much of it. I didnt think there was much of a story either. Sometimes you just have to spend the weekend eating spaghetti, or drinking beer, or whatever. But that weekend, I needed to eat spaghetti.