my hand wil always be imperfect because it's human

I just watched an art:21 episode that featured Margaret Killgallen and Barry McGee and I highly recommend it to any of you out there interested in folk- inspired illustrations and graffiti.


Margaret Killgallen was a San Francisco based illustration artist who was part of the very influential Mission School movement in the 90's. I first heard about her and Barry McGee in a documentary called Beautiful Losers which I encourage you all to check out.





It took me a while to warm up to her work but after I heard her talk about it, I appreciate how rich and how alive with narrative it is.






"And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human."






Barry Mcgee was her partner for many years, before her untimely death in 2001 (due to breast cancer.) He was another artist to come out of the Mission School movement, who occasionally goes by the graffiti name Twister. A lot of his art work comes from his pessimistic view of San Francisco culture which he believes to be rampant with addictions and hollow commercialism. He makes a lot of installations with these weird zombie mannequins doing graffiti on the walls.




The art:21 interview showed a lot of delicious establishing shots of their studio space packed with collected found objects and images painted directly on the walls. There were also a lot of nice scenes of them painting on non- art related objects like box tops and narrowly getting caught doing graffiti on trains.

The graffiti of Matokie Slaughter and Twister (Margaret and Barry)

I think it must be so wonderful to have a partner who's also an artist. Though I mostly prefer to do studio work alone, every now and again it seems like it would be nice to share that personal space with someone, or to have someone around to snap photos of your graffiti work before it gets demolished.

Watch both documentaries and tell me what you think!

Bright Star

Bright Star tells the story of the romance between Fanny Brawne and John Keats. It's a lush, complicated mood piece with an inevitable tragic ending.



Definitely another movie where I was hoping that love will prevail and they would be able to move to a farm out in the country and raise lots of chubby babies. It seems that passionate romances such as this must always be cut short in some brutal way. I can't imagine the pain... almost makes you want to not try.



I finished Bright Star at 3 a.m and then stood in front of my window for an hour to stare out at the street. I dreamt about green fields, swirling light blues, and a screaming woman which I later realized was my alarm.

"I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death. Or that I could have possession of them both in the same minute."

Wonderful soundtrack, vibrant colors, heartbreaking sonnets. Watch it and feel very sad...or very happy depending on how you look at it. Now all I want to do is write and roll around in green green grass.

All is love.

It's days like this that make me wish it was raining instead of snowing and that I had a vintagey apartment to cozy up in with a locked door. Wouldn't you want to curl up in this apartment?? Bad floral pattern and all. I listen to Aikea Guinea almost non stop.



Anyway, I had a great weekend celebrating my dear friend's birthday and it was filled with vegan food and loooovvvvveee and nearly nude female performers with pasties over their breasts.

Varietease Cabaret is located at the Lake shore Theater which is kind of an old shit hole with an awful opening band (think middle aged men playing hair metal) but the actual cabaret show was phenomenal! One woman stripped out of her undies while hula hooping with various parts of her body! I cheered and clapped and tried to hide my red face!

We also made our way to Soul Vegetarian which is a soul food/home cooking vegetarian/vegan restaurant out by 79th street. Everyone was stuffed and sleepy by the end of our meal. I ate a metric ton of kale greens and heavenly vegan mac and cheese!

On Sundays everyone is served the same meal, which is pretty much the above picture save for the BBQ tofu and the glazed carrots. Instead there was Seitan roast with gravy, glazed sweet potatoes and cornbread stuffing. Dinner was followed by the most lovely Apple pie. Stop by there and experience it for yourself!! We all walked back to the train very slowly....

All is love.