tej g.

[duccio]

I made an evening delivery into SF to avoid the Friday evening rush and made record time on the way in: exactly 45 minutes door to door. I delivered 6 painting stretchers, two of them were 90x72 inches - about the max size for my P/U truck. They fit around all the corners in the building and into the freight elevator with ease.

I arrived at 8PM and we brought the stretchers in and then lounged around talking about Marlene Dumas, Kiki Smith, Squeak Carnwath, Mark Bradford, others... She had tea, mixed nuts, dried apricots, and little sandwiches with humous, cheese and avocado. "You're the only person I know who doesn't like avocado", she said. I didn't tell her about mayo, butter, and milk, which gag the shit out of me even thinking about them... I'm gonna strike them out.

She has this great loft studio. It's not far from Grumpy's - another customer of mine - he's 80, hence the nickname. Here is upstairs I saw while viewing some paintings:


We talked about her work, and courage to keep on working, that it typically takes 10,000 hours (ten years) to become successful. She gave me this little collage/painting called Foot Care. That's her horse she keeps in Occidental down there in the corner.

I said I would bring four small stretchers 32x24 I had laying around at my house to trade for it. (I am a believer in artists being compensated for their work). It's oil and collage on one of my "business cards" (a 12x9" panel I hand out to people with my email addy on the back).

We had a nice time.

Comments

[bellakara]

I really like that first photograph!

[duccio]

Thanks. It was the only photo I took there except for another of the same subject, but with a vertical format. The horizontal was better and I cropped a tiny bit of the top and the left side to make it just how I wanted it.

She has a live/work studio in a factory building that has been redone. You go into the 4th floor space and there is a spiral staircase that goes up to the bedroom loft. The kitchen is downstairs with a comfortable area for socializing near the spiral staircase. About 3/4 of the space (divided from the living area by a kitchen island) is for painting, with about 16 foot ceilings. A row of windows the width of the space faces east, looking across a small valley at Potrero Hill rising steeply with it's rows of Victorian houses climbing up the hill one block above the next. Very nice place.

[bellakara]

It certainly sounds nice!