pictured above is a little nosegay that aitor found growing in a parking lot near the post office. this sort of sums up the adventure day that our hostess, genevieve, treated us to today. almost every destination (save the eating ones) were about glorious wallowings in trash.
we started out with visits to both the east bay depot for creative reuse and urban ore - both variations on the theme of reuse. it was hard to remind myself that we live out of a car now and i can't just load up on weird stuff. i did, however, score a bunch of old wooden spools of thread, a nice old binder, some fabric bits and odd papers. at urban ore, we also got a collapsible easel that aitor hopes to run into his hot new craft fair display for our fall shows.
after this foray into junk shopping, we were in for our biggest treat yet. when we had asked genevieve what her san francisco must-do's were, she quickly replied that the albany bulb was her greatest bay area recommendation.
located in albany, california, the bulb is a former landfill used for dumping building waste from the 1960's to the 1980's. over the two decades of dumping it went from being a place where concrete and rebar were thrown into the bay to a bona fide, visible peninsula.
it's an odd place to visit. people are walking their dogs and playing with their kids but one can see tiles and wires sticking out of the walking paths.
"it gets better," genevieve kept saying.
deeper into the "bulb" (it is called this because the peninsula sort of takes on the shape of a bulb if viewed from above), more impromptu art and structures emerge. there are bike-part sculptures, a handmade hot tub, lots of graffiti, stencils. as genevieve put it "this is the kind of place you can just come out to and paint something."
the further we went on our tour, the more involved the art became until we were surrounded by massive found object sculptures and some of the first big paintings that appeared on the bulb.
apparently, this place also used to be home to awhole community of otherwise homeless people. between this community and artists who would visit, the bulb evolved into what it is today. and it seems to continue in this evolution. genevieve mentioned all kinds of things that had come and gone since her last visit. i took way more pictures than i could post here, too. it's a very photogenic space, with surprises around every corner...and all made of junk.
2 comments:
ooooh! this really makes me want to ride over to the leslie spit. i wonder if it looks, coincidentally, like a gob of hork from above.
aitor just informed me that day that the leslie spit is an area of similar creation. and since gobs of spit can look like almost anything (although mine are usually in the shapes of saints), it probably does.
i miss you.
Post a Comment