No photos, no photos

Happy Birthday to me!  That's right, and this year was a big birthday too, though I'm not telling you which one.  A lady never tells.

The greatest gift of all was, of course, sipping French 75s with friends and family, and shooting many games of billiards, during which the skill level exhibited did nothing to justify the level of photographic documentation that followed.

That being said, one of my other favorite gifts of the night was a book of Ron Galella's photographs.  Galella was one of the most famous paparrazi photographers of the last half of the century, and his photos stand alone as art as well as documentation of the celebrity culture of the 60s and 70s.  He shot many photos of icons such as Jackie Onassis, Marlon Brando and Andy Warhol, as well as incredibly evocative portraits from the disco scene.

His photographic style has come to be so inextricably linked to the scene he inhabited, that it becomes hard to tell where the journalism ends and the history-making begins.

cheers!

Gillian

Daily Door(s)

The Life of Lee Miller

I know that the city is abuzz with excitement over the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the MOMA, and rightfully so.  However, the best thing that came out of my recent visit to the Museum was stumbling upon The Life of Lee Miller.

While some of Miller’s work has registered on my radar in the past, I had no idea just what a broad range of subjects her works touched on.

In the Lee Miller retrospective at the SFMOMA, museum-goers are treated to a multi-course visual feast that follows Miller’s career through her early days as a model...

... to a stint as a surrealist photographer in Europe where she cozied up with Picasso and Man Ray...

(Lee Miller,Charlie Chaplin, Paris, 1931© Lee Miller Archives, England. [above])

(Marie-Berte, Max Ernst, Lee Miller & Man Ray [above])

... continuing through to her more shocking photojournalist work, including this self-portrait of Miller bathing in Hitler’s bathtub shortly after the fall of The Third Reich…

...and on to her eventual settling down to a life on a small country farm.  I could delve more into the fascinating story of Miller’s life, but truly, half of the fun of going to an exhibit is in leading your own tour through a body of work, so on that note, I'll bid you adieu...

Home sweet Home

While I generally prefer to write about restaurants that I have a personal relationship with, i.e.  that I have eaten at,  I couldn’t help but share my latest gustatory/design find.  Located in Via Tortona, the Milan neighborhood known for its discerning aesthetic, Home is the brainchild of owner Monica Bagnari, designer Luca Rossire and architect Riccardo Salvi.  But Home is more than an evocative restaurant name; this epicurial sanctuary is also the personal residence of Bagnari, who converts it back into her home every night once the doors are closed to the public.

Each April, the Via Tortona neighborhood hosts the Salone del Mobile Internazional – one of the world's largest design trade fairs. In consideration of the project's unique location, Rossire and Salvi offered a number of top furnishing companies a partnership in the restaurant in exchange for donated goods, an opportunity they were wise to jump on.  As you can see, the result is a striking space where designers and gourmands alike would feel right at Home.

Midwest Side-- Sonnenzimmer

Of the many artistic talents to have blossomed in the Windy City (Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemingway), there are but few I have personally chatted about vegetarian cooking with, most notably Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi of Sonnenzimmer Studio in Chicago.  Whit and I met them several weeks back, and amongst a sea of felt-applique pillows (nothing against felt-applique pillows) and cheeky canvas totes (and who doesn't love a cheeky tote?), I was immediately drawn to their graphic design collaborations.  Sonnenzimmer's subdued use of color and non-representational style made them really stand out.  With their mastery of geometric imagery,  these two visionaires seamlessly blend both mod and  futuristic/technological influences in a very subtle and yet striking way.

Their gig posters were really captivating in their design and simplicity, and seemed to really represent the underground Chicago music scene they help to promote: confident, stylish, a little stark, and ultimately, very cool.

Daily Door

Victory is yours... if you're hungry

(an inspiring pitstop from my recent trip to LA)

The Victory Gardens so widespread during WWI and WWII are having a modern resurgence-- and a modern re-interpretation.    Urban organic gardens are popping up all over our city, as a way to reconnect with the land, a way to foster self-reliance in an ever-unstable economy, and a way to utilize public and private space to provide local, sustainable organic produce and reduce the food miles associated with the average American meal.

There are several community gardens in the city where yard-less urbanites can have access to a plot of soil on which to plant, tend and nurture greenery.

San Francisco Garden Resource Organization has a directory of all the Community Gardens in the city.

Also check out SF Victory Gardens, an amazing citywide project in which 15 households are chosen as sites for urban gardens, in an effort to create a city-wide mini farm of sorts.  These households will be welcoming expert Garden Teams into their yards/porches/windowboxes/etc., in order to ready them to yield abundant produce right here in the city, with crops assigned according to the various growing conditions of the sites chosen.  The fruits of their labors will be collected and re-distributed throughout the city as part of an urban CSA box.

Last but not least, check out the blossoming Victory Garden in the sprawling front yard of our very own City Hall.  Tended lovingly by SlowFoodNation volunteers, this ambitious garden will provide organic produce for local food banks, in an effort to get quality organic food to those who would otherwise be unlikely to acquire it.

Happy planting!

Gillian