Violin Performance

Concurrently with my art show there was violin performance and exhibition by Suzuki Violin Studio run by my friend. Suzuki method of teaching kids playing violin seems pretty awesome - kids learn by playing games, singing songs and imitating adults playing violin. All kids that performed seemed to have a lot of fun, which I think is very important. Needless to say, I also had a lot of fun watching the kids perform. They were super-adorable and professional at the same time.


A few photos from the performance and violin exhibition:

My Photos at the Crocker Art Museum

I got incredibly lucky and got offered an amazing opportunity to showcase several of my photos at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. I decided to display five photos that I took in 2006 in Namibia. Not many people travel there, so I thought these photos would be of interest to a wider audience. Don't tell anybody, but I did not have a fancy SLR camera then and all of these photos were taken with a compact digital camera. Yet another proof that any camera can take museum-worthy photos.

Here are my photos and I in the museum:

With my extremely supportive husband:

Sacramento Crocker Art Museum

At the end of May a few of my photos were exhibited at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, giving me a chance to look at other art exhibited there. The Crocker is a typical small city American museum: it showcases everything from paintings to sculptures, from traditional to modern, from the US, as well as all over the world.

I was not too impressed with the traditional paintings in the museum (though Anil liked them), but I enjoyed several pieces of the contemporary art. I also liked the building in which the museum is located and I'll make sure to visit it again next time I'm near Sacramento.

A few artworks that I liked:

Marshmallow Challenge

Marshmallow Challenge is a good team-building exercise that encourages collaboration and creativity, at the same time teaching the importance of prototyping and not making (false) assumptions. It is a fantastic icebreaker for any meeting, does not take too much time and does not require too many resources.

In fact, the only resources you need are:

• 20 spaghetti sticks (uncooked)
• 1 marshmallow
• 1 meter of string
• 1 meter of tape

The task is to build, using only resources provided, the tallest freestanding structure with a marshmallow on top, within 18 minutes. I gave this task to my labmates at the beginning of the lab retreat that we had recently, and I'm proud to report that two groups out of four, managed to build quite impressive two-story structures!

Before I gave this task to my labmates, I wanted to test myself in it, so I asked Anil to be my teammate and to build the marshmallow structure together with me. I was very pleased to find out that we had exactly the same approach to the task. We first started with drawing a model, and only after we agreed on it, we started building the structure.

We decided that a three-sided base is the most optimal taking into account the resources we had, which proved to be true. However, we hoped to build a three-story structure, which we failed to do as we run out of time. Still, I'm quite pleased with the marshmallow structure we built. It is not as easy as you might think!

Our marshmallow-spaghetti structure:

My Very First Art Show

My very first, and hopefully not last, art show took place at the beginning of May at Mission Bay Campus of UCSF. Three years ago UCSF started a tradition of annual art shows displaying artworks by its employees. The two previous years the show was located on the ground floor of the building in which I work, but this year it took place in the atrium of the Bakar Gym. I believe it was a huge mistake.

The organizers probably hoped that hosting the show near the gym entrance will ignite more interest in it, but I do not think that was the case. People who come to the gym are usually in workout-oriented mindset and are not particularly interested in looking at art. Secondly, there are often IT/biotech/pharma exhibits and conferences happening there, so likely, with time, most gym members learned to ignore anything that happens in the gym's atrium. Thirdly and most importantly, the light in the atrium was simply terrible! It was so dark there that enjoying any artwork would not be possible.

The old location, on the ground floor of the Genentech Hall, was much better. There is much more light there and also there were more people interested in taking a break from work and enjoying the art. Hopefully, the organizes made the same observations as I did and will revert to the old location next year.

Despite these setbacks, the art show was a good learning experience for me. I learned the importance of the proper display of art, and I learned that I should make my art more visible by making it bigger :) As I planned to display six pieces, I decided to keep them relatively small (each piece was only 11 inches by 14, including the frame). However, after I submitted my artwork to the organizers, they told me that there is a limit of three pieces per artist. Needless to say, that rule was not communicated to me before. I found it tough to drop half of the series, and I was also not happy that I had to stick with the small photo sizes... I'm sure that my photos would have attracted much more attention, had they been larger.

On the positive side, despite all the things that went wrong, there was a considerable number of people who seemed to be interested in my art pieces:

"Colors of Namibia" - the six pieces series I wanted to display:


Poster-invitation for the show:

Big Wheel Race 2011

Every year on Easter Sunday my street hosts "Big Wheel" race, during which adults (and very few kids) wear costumes and race each other on tiny tricycles. Evey year this event attracts both more participants and more spectators. In fact there were so many spectators that I did not manage to get into a front row to take good pictures!

Even though I watched Big Wheel Race twice before, I still enjoyed it a lot this year. This event just never gets boring and is a great reminder why San Francisco is a such fantastic place to live.

Here are photos and videos from Big Wheel Race that I took in the previous years:
photos from 2010, photos from 2009, videos from 2009.

Clarion Alley Mural Project

Between Mission and Valencia, parallel to 17th and 18th streets, runs Clarion Alley - a free outdoor art gallery open 24 hours a day.

Clarion Alley has been an ongoing public art gallery since the 1960s, taking its current form in 1992. Many artists of all ages, ethnicities, levels of experience and artistic styles have contributed to making Clarion Alley what it is today: the best place in San Francisco for exciting emerging art.

Every time I go to Mission I try to visit Clarion Alley to see if there are any new murals. As far as I can tell, every few years some of the old ones disappear and new ones appear in their place, hence giving a chance to new artists to present their work. I took photos of two newish murals (second and third photo below), but I forgot to check who are their authors... Will need to repair that mistake next time I go there.


Welcome to Clarion Alley:

Sadly, I do not know who painted the following two murals:

Jet Martinez and Kelly Ording, 2005:

Trapeze Artists

On Hoff St near 16th (Mission District), there is a relatively new mural with trapeze artists. I have no idea who its author or what its title is, but I like it. A big blue wall is much better than a big empty wall...

Radio Habana Social Club

One of my favorite places in San Francisco to have post-dinner drinks is Radio Habana Social Club. It is a hole-in-the-wall type of place with absolutely fantastic decorations. Some find them kitschy, but I find most of them thought-provoking. I also like that both the customers and the owners are unpretentious, and that prices are low.

It is also a lucky place for me and Anil as we decided to get married after we had a few glasses of sangria there on one cold winter evening :)


Not the best of photos, but you can get a feel for the place from them: