Category

Friends

• 04.07.08
  sous chef at chez alis
  Chas, Daily, Friends, Sketchbook (0)

  

  sous chef at chez alis, originally uploaded by young@art.

  I took Chas up to Skyline so we could bother my friend Alis on a workday.

  Under the hazy sun I sat in the lounge chair while Chas made lunch and Alis took a work call. He wasn’t just making lunch, he was his own Iron chef competition. More complicated than that, even, because it involved acrobatics and small Tonka trucks. After about 45 minutes, he was done, and only after he had told me so, not a minute before.

  Nevermind the fact he was playing right beside an actual plot of bolting kale, cabbages and beet greens.

  When I brazenly picked up the plant saucer full of broken sticks, he furiously demanded I take the saucer with the crumpled up dandelion greens that had been yanked out of the ground and plunged into the water trough with the drowned bees and rusting scrap metal. I mean, salad.

  “NO!” He demanded, “That’s not yours! That’s Alis’.”

  There are two particularly delicious sounds that make me happy.  One is the low-pitch quiet sound of the barn in the afternoon, when the horses are chomping on grain and hay. I love this lulling sound. The other sound I adore is the high-pitched, little-mouth delicious sound of Chas, pretending he is eating sticks and twigs. So there we had pretend lunch ad afterwards, as he played, I sketched.

   

  

  

   

  
  
• 03.31.08
  It took us about a year, I think
  Daily, Friends (3)

  

  Leslie is so beautiful! You can read her blog and gawk at her gorgeous, supersaturated photos, her glamorous lipstick smile, and decide right there that you like this woman. And you should. Leslie has a heart of gold and is one of the warmest and sincere people I’ve met.

  

  What surprises me most is that we didn’t do this sooner. On Saturday, we met in the city. We had planned to go to Chinatown, a complete whim, until I discovered that the Cartoon Art Museum was exhibiting The Art and Flair of Mary Blair for one last day. It was a no brainer! And a total success, too; the show blew us away.

  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mary Blair, think back to the evocative, graphic success of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, or the colorful geometric patterns within It’s a Small World theme show at Disney, where Blair worked as concept designer in the 40s and 50s, pushing the animation envelope as hard as Walt would let her. Blair also painted many of the vintage Golden Books we grew up loving and now treasure for their simple, evocative graphic brilliance.

  

  Well, we strolled at a snail’s pace through the small exhibit, poring over little gouache abstractions, picking our favorites and annoying the museum clerk by not taking pictures of the exhibit. SEE?:

  

  In the museum store afterwards, I picked up a copy of Free Style Scraps: Silhouette, and balked at the price under my breath while Leslie negotiated the another book’s price with the clerk. When finished, she told me that if I didn’t buy the book, I should follow my instincts and pursue whatever my silhouette obsession another way. Which made me smile. The world abounds with inspiration.

  Toodling back down Market for coffee, and later for cream puffs (the world’s best!), we iced the cake with another hour of gib-gab over boys and blogs and puppy dog tails, nodding to the simulataneous phone calls from our loved ones, all too soon.

  But we’ll be at this again! Pinkie swear.

  

  
  

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