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de Young Museum
Back in October of this year, my wife and I visited the de Young Museum in San Francisco during one of my vacation days, it was our first time since the remodeling took place. We truly enjoyed the day and appreciated the visit, although we didn’t stay there for long due to other obligations. I took my sketch bag but didn’t sketch anything, I was simply amazed at the amount of art on display and spend my time just looking.
We must definitely go back and view the exhibits at a more slower pace, specially the New Guinea Art section. We took some photos of some amazing pieces of that section as well as of the Art of Americas section, below is one of them.
When I was a kid I had the opportunity to also visit Museo Nacional de Antropologia located in Mexico City, I never got the chance to fully view everything, I am sure after so many years their collection has grown.
We also want to visit in the near future the Asian Art Museum as well as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art both located in San Francisco, CA.
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Asifa SF and APE 2008 Events
This past Sunday was a busy day for me, I got the opportunity to attend two events both in San Francisco, California.
The first event was held at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco, it was a benefit for ASIFA SF, the Bay Area’s Animation Association. I attended the noon presentation of Richard Williams, author of The Animator’s Survival Kit
He showed various clips from his new DVD set The Animator’s Survival Kit – Animated and answered a couple of questions. It was an informative and entertaining presentation. There were some animation techniques that had not occurred to me that made sense, specially after watching the clip.
The second event was the Alternative Press Expo, an event that I have always wanted to attend, simply because I keep hearing about it and it is always after the event. I figured since I was already in San Francisco, why not, so off I went.
It was pretty interesting, a lot of comics and books of all different types, a bit overwhelming… I am not familiar with most of the artists that were present that day (except a few), simply because this is all new to me. It was entertaining to say the least, but i didn’t spend a lot of time, just walked around the whole place checking stuff out here and there. I also saw Enrico Casarosa, Dice Tsutsumi, Ronnie del Carmen and Scott Morse.
Enrico was kind enough to give me a copy of his new book The Venice Chronicles, very nice book, I like it very much. I had read the story online however it is always better to have the book at hand. Even now when I read it I laugh at one thing or another.
Below is a picture of the promotional DVD copy they gave away at that Richard Williams presentation, he was also kind enough to sign his book, the promo DVD leaflet or sketchbooks to those that asked.. yeah I too got a signature, the picture also includes Enrico’s book (psst… buy it!), and the APE pass.
All in all it was a very positive and different day, it was very empowering to be exposed to the work of various different artists. My respect goes to all of you for taking the time to express yourselves.
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Help feed a hungry person… and learn a new word!
You too can help feed a hungry person, and learn something new by playing a word game.
The premise:
One word, four definitions… select the correct one and the site donates 20 grains of rice to someone in need. Is this real? apparently so.
From the site:
WARNING: This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance…
If you get a chance, you may want to visit the site and give it a try.
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Save Totoro Forest !!!
The Totoro Forest Project Benefit auction day is approaching, and everybody involved has been working hard to get everything ready.
I was recently asked to assist and for the past couple of weeks I have been helping Dice Tsutsumi, Enrico Casarosa and Andy Wang with some web maintenance duties, analytics / SEO. I also help them set up the new Totoro Forest Project blog, so I have been busy some of the evenings/weekends as well.
If you have not had a chance to visit the new Totoro Forest Project blog, you are missing quite a lot of cool information, they said they will be posting all kinds of interesting information as the date for benefit auction approaches.
Needless to say the techie side has taken over the artistic side (I have not sketched anything lately) and with Sketchcrawl 20th approaching (date to be determined), I know I need to get into shape. I have however been reading that book I mentioned a couple of posts ago and I can say it looks very good, now I just need to try the exercises.
I also took a few pictures I wanted to share with you, unfortunately my wife’s computer experienced a glitch and I had to deal with that (her computer is hooked up to the scanner, the printer and the digital camera), lucky person uh? 
By the way if you have not had a chance please visit her blog, she is constantly posting all kinds of goodies as well that I am sure you would appreciate and she would also love to hear from you.
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Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
On my wall i have a note that reads “I lived as I dreamed.”
That little saying/message originated from the movie Neverwas, and every time I look at that note, It reminds me that some things we worry about are just not that important (some certainly are but not all), it also reminds me to keep my childhood dreams alive.
Related to the above I recently came across a talk from Carnegie Mellon professor and alumnus Randy Pausch (RIP), which once again puts things into perspective. I hope you enjoy his talk.
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Totoro Forest Project
What is the Totoro Forest Project?
It is an international fundraising exhibition/auction event to support the non-profit Totoro no Furusato Foundation (Home of Totoro) established by Hayao Miyazaki.
What is exactly the Totoro no Furusato Foundation?
Well, it is a non-profit foundation as mentioned above created with the purpose to preserve the beautiful natural habitat of Sayama Hills which is located about 24 miles from the Tokyo Japan metropolitan area. Sayama Hills is the location that inspired Hayao Miyazaki to write/create “Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro)” in 1988. If you have not seen this movie, you must see it.
The Auction / Exhibition
Over 200 top international artists that work in different mediums have donated work specially created for this event.
The benefit auction will be held at Pixar Animation Studios on September 6th, 2008, a book will be available at this event as well that contains all the work that was donated. There will also be a special exhibition of selected artwork from the auction at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, California from September 20th to December 7th 2008.
I already spotted a couple of pieces that would be nice to have in my room, who knows maybe I will get to own a piece of artwork, or maybe I wont be so lucky and will have to just donate some money to the cause.
Please share this info with everyone you know, and if you live locally maybe we will run into each other at one of these events.
More information found at: Totoro Forest Project and Enrico Casarosa’s blog announcement.
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