San Francisco Airport (IN SPACE!)

San Francisco Int'l Airport in Google Earth

The Start of the Concept

Whenever I drive to the San Francisco Airport, I am struck by the complex network of freeway overpasses which I must travel over and under to get from the 101 to the terminals.  When picking up a friend, who hasn't yet arrived, I am forced to then loop back around and make my ascent back up through the Escher-esque maze of elevated streets. I look forward to these loops and try to slow down as much as possible to fully soak in the woven, concrete web surrounding me, much to the dismay of the hurried taxis in my rear view window.

I recalled this driving experience a couple weeks ago and eagerly searched for the overpass on Google Earth so I might judge its worth as a potential weaving.  What I saw induced one helluva satisfied gasp.  The freeway overpass was stunning from the air with its wriggling, gray tentacles arching this way and that in a strange sort of elegance.  A concrete fountain, frozen mid-spray.  An asphalt fern with twisted fronds.  So much movement and life!

But would these organic, curving shapes look good once woven with the right angles and straight lines of a circuit board?  I had my doubts.

The more I struggled with the circuit board compatibility issue, the more interested I became in the airport itself.  The octagonal center has a spaceship quality and resembles the Star Wars Millennium Falcon or the Star Trek USS Enterprise. 

SFO "spaceship" as seen in Google Earth

The little airplanes cling to the airport terminals like white flowers on silver branches which shoot off from the central "ship" like sun rays.  If this airport were a spaceship, I'd imagine its overpass "flagella" being used to propel itself through space like a massive, high-tech squid.  Quite structurally compelling, for an airport.


Combining Ideas

  In Photoshop, I experimented with how the airport might look woven with a circuit board, but the result was too busy and very aesthetically jarring.  Plus, the circuit board imagery seems to work best with the blocky grid of suburban/urban sprawl, and there was just blank wide open runway surrounding the airport.  I then thought, "What about putting this 'spaceship' in SPACE!"  Of course!  I had been so preoccupied by circuit boards that this idea was a major breakthrough.

Photoshop Test.  Image Credit:  NASA and U.S. Geological Survey.

I took the image of the universe and, in Photoshop, combined it with the SFO aerial photography image and knew instantly that I had hit on a magical combination.  These types of rough Photoshop tests not only give me a gist for what the final weaving might look like, but they also help me make important compositional decisions before I begin weaving.

Detail of Photoshop Test

Back From the Printer with my 30" x 50" Prints

This is the first time I have had large prints made for my weavings.  Previously, I was getting 8 x 10's printed at Walgreens, puzzling them together, and gluing them.  It saved me a little bit of money, but I started to realize that it wasn't worth the headache or my time.  Plus, I felt like working with two large prints would give my work a more professional look.

30" x 50" print of the San Francisco International Airport.  Image courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.

30" x 50" print of the universe, before it gets cut into 133 half inch strips.  Image courtesy of NASA.
 

The Dreaded Cutting Stage

This stage of the process is the most mind-numbing, hand cramping, and eye straining.  After measuring the back side of both prints into 3/4 inch strips, I take scissors to the prints. 

After measuring the prints, on the back side, into 3/4 inch strips, I begin cutting with scissors.

"Oh universe, how I hate the thought of cutting you up. But your life as a weaving will be so much more fulfilling. Know that as I slice into your starry depths, I do so out of love not malice. You are a martyr for the creative process, and I shall remember you always." -A Poem to a Photographic Print

Weaving

After two arduous 2-3 hour weaving sessions, I am halfway done.

Three hours later, I'm finished weaving!

The finished weaving.  All that's left to do is to glue down the strips (another 5 hour or so project).

Gluing Down the Strips

This is an important step of the process because without gluing it all down, the strips are loose and can shift around becoming dislodged and out of order.  Using a small brush, I lift up each strip and dab some glue beneath it to secure it.  The gluing process took about 8 hours.

Filming a Time-Lapse of the Weaving Process 

  

I programmed the camera to take .5 seconds of video every 5 minutes.  As I work, I hear little dings as the camera records snippets of me weaving.  These cheery chirps provide me with a strange sense of companionship as I toil away, and they also give me a comforting reassurance that there is a witness to this crazy process and that it will be recorded.  

My time-lapse video set-up.

Time-Lapse Video: "Future Of Flight"

Images of the Final Weaving

"Future of Flight", 2011.  30" x 50". Photographic Weaving. CLICK TO ENLARGE.

"Future of Flight". DETAIL.

"Future of Flight". DETAIL.

"Future of Flight". DETAIL.

Come with Me

I wrote this poem after seeing an African drumming and dance performance my freshman year at UC Berkeley.  The women were dressed in bright red dresses, leaping around, and stomping on the stage to the driving beat of drums whose rhythm pulsed right through the air and into my veins.  There was so much life being lived on that stage, I wanted to go home and spread the gospel of really LIVING.

Come with Me

Mr. Business Man

Under that suit is a body made from earth–

a product 

of ten million years

of tweaking by a Darwin

tuning fork

But down your chest hangs a 

Fancy Silver Tie

severing that God-sculpted masterpiece 

right in two

like dynamite set by train track men

to blow a mountain straight in 

half

Fancy Silver Tie

hanging like a hangman's rope

ready to strangle your soul

and let it sway in the wind bug-eyed

So why aren't you crying then

poor Mr. Business man?

Don't you feel hurt 

all sliced down the middle

like that?

You keep on typing 

and that phone still sucks on your ear so hungry

like a piglet from its mother's 

teet

Come with me

Take off that tie

so your torso can fuse its fibers back

Unstitch your spine from the

scarecrow pole

Throw that posture to the wind!

It's okay to flop down all messy-like

down in a heap of straw

Breathe in sky as the drum beat pounds in your thundering thighs,

it's called music and it'll do you good

Now shake that belly like it's 

strawberry jelly

Spread your sweetness on the

toasty ground

Do it just like I saw those 

Mozambique girls do, all covered in red

and jumpin' through the air like

rose petals in

wind

When I rub this warm, orange mud

on your scrubbed and disinfected flesh,

you'll remember that you are Man

and I am Woman

and this land was made for dancing

My smile will arch up like the hull of a sailboat

I will have done what I aimed to do:

helped you find your Life that

got lost along the way

laying wasted and strewn on

the rotting corpse of

civilization

for all these

years

Joyful Dancer, 2010.  Acrylic on canvas. 24" x 30". Sold.

Old Poem, New Painting

I was looking through a binder of my old college poetry the other day and was struck by the similarity in imagery between one of my poems and my drawing, "Bottom of the Sea."  It's been 9 years since I wrote that poem, and I definitely wasn't thinking about it when I drew this drawing, which makes me wonder if this imagery speaks to an aspect of my subconscious.

Here is the poem.

Bottom of the Sea, 2009.  Pastel on Paper.  21" x 28"

Goodbye

A boat passes by
Ah, your hand on my waist!
An animal cries somewhere in the
salty air

It is a Moment!
But it vanishes quick like warm breath in the Arctic
I think it slipped through the cracks in the wood

You are thinking of her, aren't you?
Hush.
Don't hush me you know it is true

My heart and I can leave you
two alone
We can jump off this pier
and sink slow like
pebbles dropped

Don't worry about us
we will be just fine
My heart and I can find some quiet cave
to hide with the sea urchins and spiny things
Eventually, the oxygen will disappear
along with my strangled, unbeating heart
leaving you
up above
with her

Crouched like a crab and
peering up
Your embrace wears the obscuring veil of
watery miles
Your love looks like waking from a sleep–
diaphanous forms, enmeshed in rippled sparkle,
arm fusing into forehead like
honey poured in milk
That's your love:
Luminous, foggy, blurry, bright
the way the world looks through a post-dream
watery eyeball

That's your love and that's your dream
but merely bubbles from my silent scream

I was born to make this sacrifice
I was born to die this way
with amoebas and microbes
at the bottom of the sea
She was born to have the moon
Quiet!
I will sink slowly soon

Photographic Weaving: The Process

Many people are quite confused when I explain the process for my photographic weavings. The explanation that I give is, in a nutshell, taking two large photographs of the same size, cutting them into vertical & horizontal strips, and weaving them together.  Simple enough, right?

However, the conversation typically goes something like this:

Them: " So you weave the freeway photos with actual circuit boards?"
Me: " No. With pictures of circuit boards. They're just two pictures woven together"
Them: " Do you make a painting of the freeway overpass and weave that?"
Me: " No.  It's a picture.  Aerial photography"
Them: " Are your weavings three dimensional?"
Me: " No. THEY'RE TWO PICTURES WOVEN TOGETHER!"
Them: " Huh. I still don't get it"
Me: " (sigh) I'll email you a picture"

Maybe it's my lack of clear verbal skills, or maybe it's the dizzying mental barage of freeways, circuit boards, weavings (oh my!) that gets people in a head scratching frenzy. Understandable. My conclusion is that it simply needs to be seen to be understood, so I've decided to chronicle my process, start to finish, below.

DAY 1

After pinpointing my next freeway victim on Google Earth, I go to the U.S. Geological Survey website to download the aerial photography. These images are in the public domain, paid for by our tax dollars. Thank you government. This image is of the "Distribution Structure" in Oakland/Emeryville, CA, just before getting on the San Francisco Bay Bridge from the East Bay.

The aerial photography files are very large and are, therefore, usually sent in sections. The interchange was downloaded in 4 sections which I then had to puzzle together in Photoshop so it would appear as one seamless image.



In Photoshop I fuse together the four images, determine the size, composition, and do some minor color correction. Since it's too expensive for me to get large prints made, I have found a cheaper alternative: I divide the image into a grid of 8" x 10" sections, get the 8" x 10" sections printed, and then puzzle them together to form one big picture. The poor man's print.

This initial stage of working out the images is the hardest part for me because it takes a lot of brain power, computer power, and decision making. From here on out it's all about patience and becoming one with the mind numbing and back breaking monotony (ahem...I mean the process).

Day 2

Back at home with my prints and now it's time to glue. I brush acid free glue on the back of each photo and use a roller to fasten them securely to the paper (which is acid free as well, archival all the way baby).

 And voila! My two images! They look so peaceful before they're all sliced up and forced into their over-under mating dance of woven chaos.

Now it's time to flip these bad boys over and start measuring the strips.  I measure the freeway overpass into horizontal strips and the circuit board into vertical strips.




One hundred and twelve strips to cut for the circuit board image. My hands are hurting just looking at it. I number the strips for the vertically cut image (the circuit board one) because the strips are free floating and if I don't number them I can easily get the order messed up. The horizontally cut image (the freeway one) is held together by a strip of paper that I leave uncut so no need to number the strips on that one.





I take frequent breaks during the cutting process or else my hands light up in an electrical storm of carpal tunnel nerve twinges. People ask me why I use scissors instead of box cutters or an Exacto knife. I feel like I have more control with scissors.




The beast waits to be tamed, her tentacles lay washed up on my kitchen floor until I awake rested in the morning. Tomorrow we weave! A productive day, I'd say.

Day 3

I spent a good 3+ hours cutting the circuit board image into strips.  I was now officially ready to begin weaving.  After two hours of weaving I had woven 20 strips.  Only 92 more to go! 

Weaving the circuit board image into the aerial photography image. This is after 2 hours of weaving.

These two hour sessions are typically followed by a series of neck, back, knee, and ankle stretches.  Weaving is very hard on my body, I had trouble sleeping last night because my back hurt so much.  If my weavings were a tad smaller I could fit them onto my drafting table which would be much more comfortable.

Day 5

Today, I spent another 7 hours weaving, and finally, I was finished.  But I still wasn't FINISHED finished.  After the weaving is done, I need to glue down all of the strips so that none of them slide around and fall out of place.  However, I've done enough work today, the gluing will have to wait until tomorrow. 

Day 6 

After 5 hours of gluing, the weaving is now very secure and flat, almost like a mat.  I can pick up the weaving and transport it without worrying about it falling apart. 

FINISHED AT LAST!

"Distribution Structure", 2011.  Photographic Weaving.  31" x 33".  CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

The big building with the yellow trim is the Ikea in Emeryville.  CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE 

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

 CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Time-Lapse Video

I set up a video camera on a tripod while I worked and programmed the camera to take .5 seconds of video at 5 minute intervals.  In this time-lapse video, 9 hours of weaving are condensed down to 40 seconds.