More Great Windows

The Drapery Shop

A red floral Roman shade provides just the right amount of privacy.



The Drapery Shop

Mary of The Drapery Shop turns the smallest scraps
into something pretty.



The Drapery Shop

Harvest gold scallop valance with side panels



The Drapery Shop

Pole valance with trim, hung over rod





Shirred drapery panel with trim at bottom and
interior panel

The Drapery Shop

Mary Owens is the owner of The Drapery Shop. She's located in Manassas, VA.
I love partnering with her on projects. She's talented beyond belief and brings a perfectionist sensibility to each project.

The Drapery Shop

It's all about using a professional workroom to turn out great window treatments for every room. Many carry fabric and trim books and have samples of their work available for your inspection.


Fabric Selections: Living & Dining Rooms

These fabrics will look great on the windows when the job is completed. Always use a professional installation team to ensure proper hanging and dressing.

(all photography: Red River Interiors)

It's All About Windows

Window treatments are a great way to pull a well designed room together.
They add a finished or dressed look to any space whether formal or informal.
Choose color, pattern and texture to layer a room and add cohesiveness.

French Country Kitchen

A harvest gold valance and rustic tile back splash
add to the French Country style of this kitchen.


Orange Earthy Stripes

Ah... such a fresh look
against yellow buttery walls


Sheer Swags & Panels

Add a romantic touch to a master suite sitting area.

(photography: Red River Interiors)

I hope he didn't get the turkey and swiss

Local photog Laurie Naiman sends me shots of Peninsula life now and then. I enjoy his eye for subtle humor. It's like someone dropping a dry bon mot and then moving on so quickly that you don't realize why you're smiling.

He took this at Trader Joe's in Mountain View, where birds sometimes fly in through the front doors. One is hanging out near an olive-eyed creature in the sandwich area.

Continuing in the feathered theme, here's another of Naiman's bird photos that has a particular spark to it. Someone feed that model a Twinkie.

A truly classic classic

Whenever I have friends in town, I always seem to take them to the Stanford Theatre. Even if the movie stinks (rare), everybody likes it when the theater organist disappears into the floor.

Recently we saw “Arsenic and Old Lace.” I will lose my membership in the People Who Really, Really Like Theater Club for saying this, but I have never seen the play or the film. I thought it would be something gloomy. Two old women driven to homicide by tragic events.

Nope. The movie was ridiculously funny, filled with slapstick, rushing-around humor, the kind of comedy that my actor sig-oth calls “a lot of door-slamming.” As for the old women, they happily admit to offing a dozen gentlemen callers. The whole family’s up in the clouds (including a guy who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt) except for poor nephew Cary Grant, who runs in circles trying to figure out what to do about the bodies in the cellar. Maybe you shouldn’t laugh so hard, but you do.

One of the movie's strengths is that it still feels like a play. Most of the plot takes place in the aunts' front room, which on film creates a claustrophobic effect and makes Grant seem even more ridiculously trapped. And everyone has comic timing fit for the theater.

It’s easy to think of Grant as just suave and to forget what a natural he was at humor. But he just keeps rolling it out, making even a silly joke seem fresh. (“I am not throwing you out of the house. I am not throwing you out of the house. I am not throwing you out of the house. Will you get out of here?”)

Today I went online to learn more about the movie, and learned from IMDb that Grant detested his performance in “Arsenic,” saying it was over the top. Oh, what does he know.

Merry Christmas to All

Christmas brings out the best. I love the the use of fruit,cloves and pine cones to
add an organic feel to these settings.... Lots of creativity displayed here!
Until next year may the peace of God be with you this Christmas season.

Lady in the Red Room

"It's not just about the curtains
in the room but how you live in
the room." -Charlotte Moss
Red, black & white...the colors of
my wedding that's why I took
this shot..... memories

Capitol Hill Christmas - Washinton,DC

Christmas in the city is great, so I roamed
around Capitol Hill taking photos of houses
that put me in the holiday mood...aah... I'm there.

(photography: Red River Interiors)

Home is where the art is

Ah, bygone November, the month that I spent most of in Europe. It's crazy sunny in California, and was I really just walking in the snow in Budapest a few weeks ago?

It's never easy to leave Europe. You can try to bring some of it back, but a chausson aux pommes doesn't hold up well on an extended jet ride. On a related note, here's a great little article about building good sandwiches to take on planes. I want to write a similar story for the Weekly, but I need a Palo Alto angle.

Fortunately, there's always something good going on in the arts world to make you feel better. Last night's Chanticleer concert at Stanford's Memorial Church just about made up for not being on the Continent any more. I would fly long distances to hear those boys sing Biebl's "Ave Maria." They were in amazing voice last night, as always. If you closed your eyes, you were soaring, plane or no plane.

Every year, someone from Chanticleer always says how much the singers love MemChu, how they enjoy coming back to the Bay Area after all their traveling and touring during the year and finally feeling at home. Hmmph. Maybe they have a point.

Turo rudi also does not hold up well on planes. But it's nice that Wikipedia runs a photo of it.

Plants on stage

If you've got a spare four minutes and you're a fan of "Little Shop of Horrors" (no to the first, yes to the second), check out this behind-the-scenes video I just got a link to. That means click here. It's a spirited look at how they make the plants work, from the inside out.

Kudos to San Mateo High School's Tech Theatre students, who made the video. The show opens tomorrow night.

Let them eat house

My previous post was about losing and finding home. So how can I pass up an event about eating your home?

Up in the city, the Contemporary Jewish Museum is hosting a Dec. 2 event called "Cake Building and Design." Participants will get to build their ideal homes in miniature out of cake. Yep, frosting, too.

Artist-baker Sarah Klein leads the class. Her other work includes drawings, videos and a performance series called "The Bread Project," in which, she says, "I bring the process of making bread to people in unexpected places." So one minute you're in your office lobby, and the next your hands are happily plunged into dough. Sounds like a great way to question the wisdom of our hectic lifestyles.

All I can say is: Bring this woman to Palo Alto!

A powerful storyteller

I finally got over to the Marilyn da Silva exhibit at the Palo Alto Art Center, after we ran a preview of it last month. She's masterful at crafting details and finding nuances of feeling in metal, a medium that in other hands might not warm so easily.

All of da Silva's pieces are powerfully narrative, many telling of her pain and confusion after being burned out of her Oakland home by a 1993 fire. The array of candle-snuffers in her "Put Out the Fire" series -- many of them like odd-shaped houses dangling from sticks -- seem to ask "Where is my home now?" Home is somewhere in these dollhouses that have the mystical power to put out small fires, but it's hard to see it through da Silva's microscopic windows and doors.

Another candle-snuffer is in the shape of a saw cutting a home in two. Like much of da Silva's work, it's both playful and plaintive. Indeed, the artist often uses whimsy to soften the stories. One tiny home is shaped like a fish; another candle-snuffer is a doll-sized hat box hanging from a fire engine ladder.

Animals are everywhere, including the birds that perch atop many sculptures. They're figures who can be curious, menacing or ambivalent. Clearly the artist wants her audiences to make up their own narratives as well. Overall, every piece is made with such intricacy and care that da Silva's deep connection to her work shines through.

I was especially drawn to one display case with three silver candle-snuffers shaped like homes. In a lovely juxtaposition, the 1999 piece "North Star Lighthouse" is behind the trio, atop a small wooden dais. While the candle-snuffers are meant to put out fires -- and we've seen the destruction that the flames can cause -- the lighthouse gleams in silver and copper and glass. It feels like a beacon of rebirth, telling us we can rebuild even after a great loss.

I kept thinking of a dear friend who passed away unexpectedly this summer. He loved lighthouses, and I think he would have been drawn to the hope and grace of this piece.

Pictured: Whimsy is clearly present in this candle-snuffer made by Marilyn da Silva: By moving the handle, you can make the rabbit pop out of the hat. (A hat that is also a house -- look closely.) Photo by Marjan Sadoughi.

Brother, can you spare an E string?

What do you picture when you think of a musician playing with a case open for change? Someone with a clever T-shirt who says "dude" a lot?

Oh, ye of limited imagination. The latest trend is to be a classical violinist-turned-busker, hip-hopping from life with the London Mozart Players and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to a corner near you.

OK, it's actually a trend of one. Violinist David Juritz is currently traveling away on what he bills as "a 60,000-mile busk around the world." So far he's played in Stockholm, Sydney, Singapore and many other places that do not begin with S.

David says his goal is to raise money for Musequality, a London-based organization that brings music to underprivileged people. Y'all can catch a glimpse of him locally this week. He's scheduled to play outside Tresidder Union at Stanford University this Friday from noon to 1.

Pictured: David Juritz playing at Tiananmen Square. Photo courtesy of Musequality.

The road to creativity (Creativityi út?)

As summer slowly mellows into our mild autumn, I'm enjoying getting lost in a dreamy 1896 lithograph by József Rippl-Rónai called "Village Festival" (right).

A new acquisition of the Cantor Arts Center, the work shows a summer day in the country. I especially love the sway of the woman's golden skirt. It creates motion in the middle of all that peaceful stillness, just a gentle touch of movement.

Am I biased because the artist was Hungarian? Nem, nem. But this all gives me nice memories of walking down Rippl-Rónai utca (street) in Budapest on my way to Hungarian class. It was in the embassy district, stately and leafy.

It's lovely to live in a place where the streets are named after artists. Not another (yawn) Central or University or Main. We get plenty of roads named after plants, which is all well and good. But in Hungary, I lived on the corner of Katona József (playwright), near streets named after Radnóti Miklós (poet), Balzac, and Raoul Wallenberg, who was a sort of artist in his own way. Also nearby was Jaszai Mari square, named after an actress and now a good place to catch a tram over the Danube.

But you can't win 'em all. One of the roads I remember from Budapest has the picturesque name of Ferihegyi Gyorsforgalmi út, which is typically translated as "Way to Ferihegy Airport."

A grim reminder

It's hard to say I enjoyed the exhibit "Inside Terrorism." I felt grim and disgusted, and there was nothing uplifting about it. But it certainly won't let you forget the ordinary people wounded by terrorist attacks.

Currently at Stanford's medical school, this is a collection of X-rays and CT scans taken from two Jerusalem hospitals -- images of victims of terrorists. The ghostly, ghastly views reveal small objects that were never meant to end up in bones and brains. One victim is a 4-year-old child whose skull was penetrated by shrapnel. Another image reveals a suicide bomber's watch that got embedded in a victim's neck.

These are chilling images, even without blood and faces. During a recent visit, I heard another woman repeating "Oh, my gosh" over and over.

Photographer Diane Covert compiled the pictures, hoping to show the broad range of humanity harmed by terrorism. See for yourself through Friday; the exhibit is open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the lobby of Fairchild Auditorium.

Yes, he got permission

That gentleman out painting on the Bloomingdale's windows looks familiar for a reason: It's Menlo Park artist Mitchell Johnson, armed with house paint, creating a mural on the windows facing El Camino. Regular Weekly readers (you never miss a week, do you, dear heart?) will recognize him from our May 18 cover profile.

Mitchell expects to be out there today and tomorrow from 11 to 5, painting his tribute to the abstract Color Field visual movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Several of his abstract paintings are also on exhibit inside the store -- you can see them and the mural through the end of September.

Pictured: "Flagpole" by Mitchell Johnson.

Cheers for Chekhov

It's theater in the key of Chekhov on the Peninsula this September: Both the Pear Avenue Theatre and Dragon Productions are taking the Russian playwright for a whirl. First "Three Sisters" opens at the Pear on Sept. 7, and then "Chekhov in Yalta" by John Driver and Jeffrey Haddow bows at Dragon on Sept. 21.

Meredith Hagedorn calls the pairing "an interesting confluence." And she's a link of sorts between the two plays: Besides being Dragon's founder and executive producer, she's in the Pear production, playing Olga.

"Once we realized the coincidence, we felt it was an opportunity to highlight the continuing popularity of Chekhov and his work," Meredith said in an email to me. "His plays are particularly relevant today, as the U.S. deals with its fading international image and a future fraught with unsettling change.

"The fact that he labeled his haunting works 'comedies' is a challenge for producers -- not to get caught up in the malaise of the characters, but to maintain sufficient critical distance to illuminate their plights with a comic tinge."

The Driver/Haddow play, by the by, is set in Chekhov's Yalta villa at the turn of the century, covering four days in the playwright's life.

Pictured: Clockwise from top left: Liz Coy as Masha, Sarah Cook as Irina and Meredith Hagedorn as Olga in The Pear Avenue Theatre's production of "The Three Sisters." Photo by Shannon Stowe.

A letter to the president

Everyone's got something to say about the president, but Stanford student Jeff Mendelman penned a whole hip-hop song about it. Here's "Dear Mr. Bush" by JeFFHH, as he's known in the hip-hop community.

Jeff will also be on the Weekly's cover tomorrow, accompanied by a terrific story about him by Elizabeth Obreza.

Art anywhere

The Houston Zoo has painted rhinos, zebras and peacocks on its restroom stall doors, which just goes to show that you can put art anywhere. Locally, I got inspired to shoot this video by an underground parking garage.

I spend half my life in galleries and museums, but a visit to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation reminded me that art is often sweeter in unexpected places. A garage there features a cheerful three-part trompe l'oeil mural of waterways, Mediterranean architecture and plants. It's thanks to Los Gatos artist John Pugh, whose acrylic mural "Banos del Cielo (Baths of the Sky)" was finished last year with the help of philanthropic gifts.

"Our donors realized that the majority of patients come into the building through the garage and that entrance is not welcoming at all," said Anne Jigger, the foundation's vice president for philanthropy.

Kudos. May I suggest some other places in town that could benefit from this philosophy?

Also in my video is a recent photo exhibit at Keeble & Shuchat Photography. Shows hang out in a sunny conference room upstairs, a place you may never have seen even if you're a K&S regular. There's often one going on -- follow the stairs in the back of the shop. The exhibit shown was by the Santa Clara Camera Club, and I particularly liked "Flying Egret" by Li Li (the one with the swoopy white bird).

Lastly, one of my favorite pieces of public art, the cat sculpture in the tucked-away Seminary Oaks Park in Menlo Park. The park is worth tracking down to see this work by Belmont artist Robley Browne, who was on the Weekly's cover last year. Both cat and bowl were sculpted in clay and cast into bronze as a tribute to Catherine Birdsall Johnson, who lived on the land in the 1800s and loved felines. Wooden steps represent the stoop of the old house that was once there.

The music in the video is by Woody Herman & His Orchestra. It's "The End Of The Rainbow" (1940), found at www.jazz-on-line.com.

What's new

It's doubtful that Scarlett O'Hara would have decorated Tara with paintings of melting clocks. But actress Vivien Leigh is surprisingly striking (look right) in the rapid-fire and sometimes surreal brush strokes of artist Gilbert Marosi.

I interviewed Marosi and his son Robert Marosi Bustamante, a fellow artist, at their enormous Los Altos studio last year. Then, Marosi was focusing more on images from the music world, as well as scenes in the Wild West or busy cities. It's interesting to see him going in a new direction with his "Old Hollywood Reborn" series.

And this series isn't just about the classics you think of first. Bogie and Bacall are there, sure, but so are "Young Frankenstein," "The Beverly Hillbillies" and Steve McQueen.

Whenever I've got a free moment I like to check in with some of the people I've profiled in the past. Another visual artist who's always doing something eye-catching is Palo Alto's Kenney Mencher, who was in the Weekly in January.

He's known for his theatrical paintings of people in quirky, perplexing situations (props such as a half-full glass of water can figure prominently). Now his work includes something different, faces painted in oil on vintage attache cases. Personal trappings are tucked inside the cases: perhaps an antique pen and a letter, or a pair of wire eyeglasses.

The works seem to be piecing together forgotten worlds. And since these personal props are so small, one also feels a pang at how fragile life is, and how quickly it can pass us by.



Pictured is Mencher's work "R.R.Z.," an oil visage on a monogrammed attache case. Inside are what the artist calls "found ephemera": a vintage watch, a Playboy magazine from 1968, receipts from about 1956, and a letter written on stationery from the Vendome Hotel.

Steam heat

I had the best time researching this week's cover story. Getting to ride in a 1924 Stanley steam car on a summer afternoon was a true thrill. It was a waltz into the past, when the roads were calmer, life was quieter, and a Sunday drive was a treat. And it was also pretty cute to watch photographer Norbert von der Groeben practically crow with excitement at the prospect of riding in the antique car.

I could definitely see why Jay Leno raves about his own vintage auto (check out a video of it here).

Fortunately, our drive was not as eventful as some of the early steam-car excursions. Here are some anecdotes from the Stanleys' early days, as recounted in the book "The Stanley Steamer: America's Legendary Steam Car," by Kit Foster:

"Everything went to perfection till he got to Kennebunk Port. There his steering bar broke while he was going at high speed, and the carriage ran plum into a ledge breaking both front wheels and damaging the body badly. Frank jumped, landing in a brush pile and escaped uninjured."
-- An 1898 letter from F.O. Stanley, who with his twin F.E. (Frank) developed the Stanley Steamer

"The press had a bit of a field day March 4, 1898, when former Mayor H.E. Hubbard of Newton was injured while riding with F.E. Stanley in the motor carriage. Headlined as an 'explosion' by both the Newton Graphic and Watertown Enterprise, it was nothing of the sort. Instead, the burner had 'puffed back,' and flame flashed against the car body. Afraid that an explosion was imminent, Mayor Hubbard panicked and jumped from the car, breaking two bones in one leg."
-- Kit Foster

"A lady can very easily learn to steer it. ... (I)t is steered by a handle bar very much as you steer a bicycle. ... She must know enough about its workings to instruct the stable boys whom she would have to hire to take care of it and clean it at the stopping places on the journey. Even without this knowledge she could, if the machine were in perfect order, take a ride of fifteen or twenty miles just as well as a man."
-- Flora Stanley, F.O.'s wife, 1899

Pictured: The 1924 Stanley Steamer owned by Palo Altan Channell Wasson. Photo by Norbert von der Groeben.

Powerful opening night for 'Juvie'

So nice to see a crowded house for local theater, especially in downtown Palo Alto. Last Friday was opening night for Dragon Productions' "Juvie," and even though many of the actors are teens, the audience was certainly broader than just parents.

I hadn't been familiar with Jerome McDonough's script, which takes place during a night in a holding cell, telling the stories of the young people locked up. I found its monologues spare, powerful and very accessible. It had a way of making you feel disturbingly at home in a world you wouldn't want to enter.

After the show, everyone got to go behind bars, the audience mingling on stage with the actors for a reception. Director Paul Sawyer looked justifiably proud of his young cast. The danger with this subject matter is that you can fall into melodrama. But, like the script, the actors found a matter-of-fact side to violence and crime that made the topics even more haunting. They were remarkably natural, in particular Claire Martin as Jean.

For a more thorough take on "Juvie," check out the Weekly this Friday to see writer Elizabeth Obreza's review.

Pictured: Several cast members of "Juvie." Photo by James Kasyan.

Adventuring for your art

When I did a story last month on pipe organs, I had major kudos for Weekly photographer Marjan Sadoughi. To get "backstage" shots of the thousands of pipes packed into the way-up-high reaches of one church, she had to drag her camera equipment up and down ladders and squeeze through mini doorways.

Somehow she managed to tightrope-step along the catwalks -- her elbows in so she wouldn't knock the pipes out of tune -- and snag great photos. I felt like a wimp lifting only a notebook. Pens you can carry behind your ears.

But photographers seem tougher than the rest of us. A perfect example is San Jose photog Joe Decker, who's in the main gallery at the Pacific Art League this weekend for a solo show. I like the fact that his press release mentions not only his photos, but also the fact that he had to climb up crumbly cliffs and ride through frigid water in a dinghy to get them.

It was all part of a three-week photo trip to the arctic -- mostly Greenland and Svalbard -- to create an exhibit called "Above the Arctic Circle."

"I'd always been drawn to spare and difficult landscapes, but also I felt a need to go there soon, as the landscape of the arctic is changing, and I wanted to record what I could," Decker told me last month. Then he was off to Iceland.

Pictured: "Snowy Pinnacles at Dusk," a 2006 photo by Joe Decker showing the moonrise over black pinnacles in East Greenland.

Audition ambitions

One of the most eye-catching email subject lines to pop up lately: "You Wanna Shoot OR BE A President?"

Could be a new Michael Moore movie. Or a reality TV show (is the final rose a bullet or a ballot?). But actually it's an audition notice for a production of "Assassins," being put on in San Jose by the Actors' Theatre Center (auditions are tonight and tomorrow). The company is including a passel of supporting roles, which means you can play JFK or Honest Abe if John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald aren't your cups of tea. Hey, everybody's got the right.

Closer to home, there are a few other interesting musical-theater auditions coming up. Palo Alto Players is holding auditions for "Little Women" in September and "The Light in the Piazza" in January. It'll be a treat to see "Piazza" on a local stage, and I imagine the ambiance of the Lucie Stern Theatre will lend it a nice intimacy.

From photo to film

It sounds strange to say that my favorite-ever Cantor Arts Center exhibit featured photos of old tires and copper mines. But that's art. You never know what you'll end up transfixed by.

About two years ago, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky brought an exhibit called "Manufactured Landscapes" to the Cantor. In it, he explored the industrial impacts that humans have on the Earth. As I wrote in the Weekly, the photos showed "bright teal pools at the bottom of copper mines, sparkling silver oil-refinery pipes, and a red river of iron discarded from a nickel mine running like tomato soup across an Ontario field."

Strange beauty, almost otherworldly. I think I liked the photos so much because they revealed a world that white-collar me might never see. And in it they found remarkable glints of elegance and visual poetry.

Now there's a documentary film about Burtynsky and his work opening July 20. Also called "Manufactured Landscapes," it follows the photographer traveling through China and documenting "the evidence and effects of that country's massive industrial revolution," as a press release states.

So far, it seems that the film is coming only to the Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco and Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. But maybe that will change. In any event, for me it's well worth the drive.

Pictured: The DVD cover for the film shows the Edward Burtynsky photo "Nickel Tailings #34, Sudbury, Ontario" (left panel).

The power of the pipe organ

Hooray for old-fashioned craftsmanship. When the folks at First Congregational Church of Palo Alto decided to have a new pipe organ built, they didn't buy some all-computer glossy thing with a digital voice. They got the real deal: thousands of gleaming pipes, a lovely console that smells like new wood, and a new acoustically friendly wall for good measure.

(Here's my Weekly cover story on the pipe organs of Palo Alto.)

"For certain things, digital organs work. But we do a lot of traditional music. People expect a real pipe organ," said Joe Guthrie, the church's organist and assistant music director.

The one exception came at the lowest end of the scale, which would have required the largest pipes, 32 feet tall. So for those few pipes, the church saved space and money by installing the capability to play those notes digitally, Guthrie said.

Guthrie says this didn't compromise the sound quality. "It's so low -- it's not really a sound; it's a feeling," he said. For the record, the lowest note on the organ is a C.

The new organ was officially unveiled on May 13, replacing an elderly instrument that had pieces as old as a century. So what happened to Old Semi-Faithful?

It ended up with an organ broker who is "parting it out," so other organizations can buy parts of it to use, Guthrie said. Thanks to the Internet, you can buy and sell parts all over the place. Craftsmanship meets technology.

Guthrie feels nostalgic about some of the old organ, particularly one trumpet stop, which is a knob on the organ console plus a corresponding rank of pipes.

"There's a trumpet stop that has played many brides down the aisle," he said. "I hope it's been recycled and being used for other brides."

Pictured: Joe Guthrie at the new pipe organ. Photo by Marjan Sadoughi of the Weekly.

In praise of pomegranates

Imagine you're choosing actors for a movie, and you can cast only pieces of fruit in the lead roles. C'mon, bear with me.

You want big names. You want box-office draw. So you have to pick someone who's visible and familiar. Maybe an apple, or an orange, or a banana (you can pull in the Curious George crowd). But is that fair to the humble pomegranate?

Fortunately, the pomegranate is getting its moment in the sun on the Peninsula. "Facets of Perception," a new exhibit at the Los Altos Hills Town Hall, features 18 artists' paintings. Each one has a different interpretation of the fruit, from realist to surrealist to abstract expressionist. The result has a lot of festive red and is surprisingly charming.

The show is the work of Artists Beyond Obvious, a group meeting in Los Altos every Thursday "for critique and coffee," member artist Karen Druker said. The flock grew out of a watercolor class they all took from Mike E. Bailey a few years ago through the UCSC Extension in Cupertino.

Bailey had them work with the same still-life set-up for 10 weeks, painting it over and over, emphasizing different art elements. "We'd really get into it! We'd dream of whatever was in our still life," Druker said. "What usually happened was a breakthrough about week 7 when we ran out of ideas; then we'd usually get really wild or go abstract."

Post-class, the artists kept meeting, and now they had experience looking at the same thing from many perspectives. For this exhibit, Los Altos Hills city curator Ethel Blank suggested the pomegranate, which Druker says has "a fascinating 5,000-year-old history of symbolism."

"The pomegranate is an appropriate symbol for a group of women artists as it symbolizes woman, womb, breasts and fertility, along with a lexicon of other symbolism," Druker said.

Pictured: Not from the exhibit, but a nifty snap of a pomegranate trio from loneangel at www.morgueFile.com.

Who were those masked men?

I never knew a publicity photo could be so entertaining. This one showed up in my inbox a few days ago.

Big kudos to the person who thinks up the best photo caption!



P.S. It's actually "Papa" David Sharpe & Friends, who will perform kids' concerts at the Community School of Music and Arts next Saturday.

Free as a bird

Many of the Weekly's arts writers are freelancers. This makes for a nice mix of voices and experiences, as the writers bring their spark from different walks of life. For example, we've got a film teacher and a drama teacher, a seasoned journalist and a chap from the nonprofit world who only recently discovered his knack for newspapering.

Janet Silver Ghent has been working with me for just a few stories, but she's also one of the said seasoned journalists. Previously, she was senior editor at j. (a.k.a. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California).

With freelancers, you get to enjoy the stories they write for other publications. Such as one of Janet's recent j. columns, which she told me was about the difficulty of finding narrow shoes.

But there was much more to this cleverly woven piece. In a polarized world where people wield words like two-by-fours ("Golly, did I smash you in the forehead with my polemics?"), Janet is that rare bird, someone who can mix political issues with gentle humor. Check it out here.

Desktop art walk

Once upon a time, a certain Luddite used to embarrass her high-tech boyfriend at high-tech parties by announcing, "The Internet is a passing fad." Oh, come on. Half the fun of life in the office is roaming around online seeing what artists in other areas are up to.

This morning's wander was inspired by Palo Alto artist Erin Tajime Castelan, who has an exhibit now at Avalon Art and Yoga Center. She's a street painter with a full palette of chalk.

Interestingly, there's a new dimension: she's figured out a way to seal her chalk paintings on canvas, using water-based varnish. Now art that usually gets washed away can live in your living room. If I could create a painting as glowing as this, I'd want it to last, too.



Which made me think of other types of art that gets washed away. Which led me to the website of East Bay artist Kirk Rademaker (above). He makes sand sculpture, or in my official term, really flippin' amazing sandcastles.

Then I wondered about other folks who use media typically associated with children -- and I ended up on this beautiful site of the late finger painting artist Mary Ann Brandt.

I was feeling good, as though I'd taken a morning art walk out to the beach without leaving my desk. Then I drove off the road and ended up here. I'd been pondering macaroni necklaces. Did I really take a wrong turn, or is this just a very peculiar art gallery?

Pictured: Top: Erin Tajime Castelan's chalk-on-canvas work "Woman with Lilies" (Joel Yau was a contributing artist). Above: A Kirk Rademaker creation from Revere Beach, Massachusetts.

Picture this

Not to brag, but I was a heck of a photojournalist during high school at Menlo-Atherton. I think I had one photo published during my entire four years. Of a pep rally.

I should have gone to Sacred Heart. Seven advanced photography students there have been shooting rallies, too -- rallies about immigration issues. In fact, they've been getting very close to these hot-button topics by documenting life here in the Bay Area Mexican and Central American immigrant communities.

To top that, five of them took a photography trip to Tijuana in March. There, they spent five days at the Casa del Migrante, a Catholic refuge that shelters and feeds migrants and deportees. It sounds like their teacher, Lars Howlett, gave them a rare opportunity for insight into a complex international issue. If only we all had the time (and finances) to step outside our borders this way.

The seven students currently are exhibiting 80 of their black-and-white photos from this project at the SPUR Projects gallery in Portola Valley. A book may be forthcoming as well.

One of the photographers, Shannon Hamilton, will also grace the pages of the Weekly on June 6. She won first prize in the youth category of the Weekly's annual photo contest this year.

Pictured:

Top: This photo by Shannon Hamilton shows a migrant on a Tijuana street, most likely worn out from a long trip to the border. "For many the greatest challenges and dangers are faced traveling through Mexico from Central American countries such as Honduras or El Salvador," Shannon says in a photo description.

Above: Marie Hamilton's photo depicts day laborers waiting for work outside a supermarket in the North Fair Oaks neighborhood near Redwood City. The neighborhood is known to some locals as Little Michoacan.

Shazam! The show must go on

Let us for a moment trip out of this Palo Alto bubble we live in, and take a look at some fabulously inspiring theater folk in San Jose.

Get this: the new musical "Thunderbabe" opens tonight at Theatre on San Pedro Square. But on Tuesday night some yutz broke into a crew truck and stole all the show's sets, which were canvas panels painted like comic-book pages. Kapow!

Fortunately, it sounds like everyone in this superhero show stayed in character, making a superhuman effort to replace everything right quick. (This is when I would have magically turned into SuperWhine.)

Says the show's writer and star, Peninsula actress Bobbi Fagone: "We got on the phone and got a few neighbors and friends together. The scenic designer quickly came up with another idea to replace the panels and literally worked all night to get the design done. ... The next day, volunteers arrived at my garage and the painting began. Meanwhile the tech crew continued to work on implementing the new design using photos off our web site."

Bobbi says about 80 percent of the set was finished yesterday, with the rest expected to come in tonight -- you know, just before curtain.

Excelsior! Y'all are my heroes. Break a leg tonight!

Pictured: Bobbi Fagone, saving the world. Photo courtesy of www.bjfcreative.com.

A man on a mission

Hey, kudos to Ben Wu, who just snagged a Student Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It's thanks to his Stanford master's thesis project, a documentary film he made called "Cross Your Eyes Keep Them Wide."

The film has a Bay Area angle, too: It's a profile of developmentally disabled artists at the Creativity Explored studios in San Francisco. "Through their own words the artists discuss their work, the difficulties they sometimes face in the outside world, and the community they've built through the center," says the Creativity Explored website.

Ben, who now lives in Brooklyn, was one of three filmmakers chosen in the documentary category and 11 overall. He'll find out at a June 9 ceremony if his Student Academy Award is a gold, silver or bronze.

Good to see a man on a quest get some props. By making docs, Ben is trying to "save his soul" after working for years in reality TV.

After suffering through "Grease: You're the One That I Want," I can get behind that.

Photo courtesy of Ben Wu.

Soaring off to the Continent

The fastest way to get me to read a press release is to include a reference to Hungary in it.

(Oh, now I've done it. In my in-box tomorrow: "Musician Who Thinks Hungary Is Rather Nice Tours Los Altos." "New Exhibit by Artist Who Once Saw A Picture of Budapest -- Or Was It Bucharest?")

Anyway, so I have to notice how many young Bay Area classical musicians play Budapest, my former city of residence, as part of a Central European tour. It's a pogacsa-packed rite of passage.

For example, the El Camino Youth Symphony went in 2005, and the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra is headed there this summer. I also just got a press release about Gunn High School pianist prodigy Kenric Tam soloing with the San Jose Youth Symphony this summer at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. (Kenric and co. will preview their European concert on June 16 at the Heritage Theatre in Campbell.)

Even more than cruising the Danube, playing the Liszt Ferenc academy seems to be de rigueur for these musicians. And rightly so. The academy, which was founded in 1875 and has been in its present Art Nouveau building for a century, has a breathtaking large concert hall (look up). You can wander around the building forever, taking in frescoes and the graceful doors and windows and the sculpture of Liszt himself.

And perhaps you absorb some of the greatness of the academy's former teachers: Zoltan Kodaly, Bela Bartok, Imre Kalman...

You can make music in a cellar, or pluck out a timeless melody on a rubber band. But I imagine a violin bow or a singer's voice must simply soar in a jewel box like this.

Photo courtesy of budapest.hotelhungary.com.

An impossible island

Ooh, I just realized that in my Weekly story today on children's illustrator Kristin Abbott I left out the address of her Web site. You must check out her work at www.abbottillustration.com. Think of it as an escape from the tangled day you're having -- you can't help but beam like a kid at some of these.

It's also worth checking out the watercolor hues Kristin uses. In the newspaper world, we don't always get color on the pages we want, and disappointingly her story wound up in black and white in today's Weekly. Them's the breaks. Jump over to her site this minute.

The print above, "The Island Home," is one of the ones I can't stop gazing at. Kristin drew it in an "advanced perspective" art class.

She says her favorite compliments come from children who look at her works and say, "I want to go there." Oddly enough, I suddenly find myself wanting to be gardening atop an impossible island while flying a kite. Talk about an escape.

London calling

An exhibit catalogue popped by my desk the other day, sent by one of the most inspiring artists I've written about. Painter Klari Reis, who graced the Weekly's cover in May 2006, was sending word of her new solo show. It opens today at Gallery 27 in London.

This is surely a welcome jump across the pond for the artist, who grew up in Menlo Park and studied in London. It's also fitting that the exhibit is called "Hope."

Klari paints with wet plastic, making compelling patterns of swirls and blobs and blips. Her art represents the structures of medications, blown up huge and dosed with fanciful color.

Klari's work took on this theme when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and put on a frightening quantity of pills. Then she went beyond her own medicines to paint a world of pharmacology: painkillers, cholesterol-lowering drugs, HIV treatments.

It's a rare person who can paint her way out of a health scare, and find a cheerful lining of epoxy polymer. But there you have it.

As Klari's exhibit catalogue reads: "The intent is to deflect the negativity, distrust and avoidance often associated with modern medicine. ... The images are organic, alive with movement and life-affirming."

Pictured: "Lipitor" by Klari Reis, a 40-by-30-inch painting on wood panel

The fountain head

Here's some trivia for your next dinner party: There are 35 kinds of trees at Stanford Shopping Center. These are the things you find when you go wandering around the Internet with your eyes half-closed. But the better tidbit on the center's website is that Stanford's planters of flowers are "located in four microclimates." I was not aware that malls had microclimates.

The flora are indeed gorgeous at Stanford. I think some of the fountains could be modernized, though. Let's call in some artists and let them have a field day. Or, we could just replicate this fabulous Austrian fountain I also found online:

This is in Wattens, Austria, at the Swarovski Crystal headquarters. Big green thanks to Michael Slonecker and Wikipedia for the pic.

'From chaos to art'

Unsurprisingly, my best writing advice came from a book. In "Bird by Bird,” Anne Lamott utters this wisdom: always give yourself the freedom to write a s---ty first draft.

Brilliance. How many times have you thrown a smash-up of words onto the page and stalked off…and then returned to find that, with a few cuts here, a hacksaw there, you’ve created something wonderful? Funny, that never happens when you tell yourself, “You are writing bilgewater,” and throw your draft into the fish tank.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I sort of worship Leonard Cohen’s writing. Case in point: a line of poetry that perfectly sums up what we were just talking about: “I followed the course / from chaos to art…”

Cohen’s art keeps evolving. Not content to lie on the page, poems he’s written over the last 20 years are being woven into "Book of Longing," an evening-length work of music by Philip Glass. Oct. 9 is on my calendar; that’s when Glass brings the work to Stanford Lively Arts to open the '07-'08 season. An ensemble of musicians and singers are scheduled to be part of the concert, the work’s West Coast premiere.

This all came down from Lively Arts head Jenny Bilfield, who unveiled the new season yesterday. As usual, there’s a host of music, dance, theater and other arts folks on the line-up. My favorites include Lively Arts regulars Chanticleer and Rob Kapilow, but there are also many fresh faces and works. China’s Jin Xing Dance Theatre is on its debut American tour, and the Turtle Island Quartet is premiering a new work. You don’t exactly see filmmaker Spike Lee every day, either.

I always hear people complain that there aren't good venues for live music down here in the wasteland of the Peninsula. It does seem tough for newbie musicians, but there are at least plenty of names coming to Lively Arts, including: Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, jazz pianist/composer Uri Caine, country singer/songwriter Rosanne Cash, and the Juilliard String Quartet.

Plenty to look forward to; part of why I always say the hardest part of my job is fitting in all the arts events that go on in this area. See? I have an excuse for my writing to be chaotic.

Pictured: Top: Book cover from www.bookoflonging.com. Above: Uri Caine from www.uricaine.com.

Starry, starry night

Let's hope for clear skies on Saturday, April 21, when the Foothill College Observatory shows off its brand-new telescope. I love a good star party on a warm night -- so, while you're at it, hope for high-ish temps.

The harsh lights of suburbia aren't conducive to star-watching where I live, so quiet Los Altos Hills makes a nice change. I've had some great evenings at summer star parties at Hidden Villa: you can stretch out on blankets on the grass, buy granola bars, and share telescopes with your friendly fellow skywatchers.

At Foothill you'll also get to see the new 16-inch, computer-automated telescope that was recently donated to the observatory. And the Peninsula Astronomical Society will provide smaller telescopes, training them on Venus, Saturn and the mysterious deep sky. The rest of us who are less trained will happily point out passing airplanes.

The festivities go from 8 to 11 p.m. I'll bring the granola bars.

Photo courtesy of Scott Liddell at morgueFile.com. Yes, I am aware that this is the moon, not a star.