Photocosm

Sam Andrew's Art Exhibit

Sam Andrew is a Bay Area artist and all-around good guy. If you've ever listened to Janis Joplin or Big Brother And The Holding Company, you've caught his guitar playing. He's got a show of his paintings at The Depot in Mill Valley through November. I wasn't able to make his reception on November 6th, but I visited the show this week and photographed these paintings. Sam has a real gift for portraying people. He has a playful way of changing their shapes or putting them into strange settings, but without making fun of them, and he can also just play it straight.

Located in Marin County, The Depot is a venerable bookstore/cafe downtown on Throckmorton. Their website is www.depotbookstore.com.  Here's Sam's vision of The Depot, it's also the title painting of the exhibit, Depot People. If you visit, you'll notice he's caught the essence of the place pretty well. Because of the exposure to the south, the light at The Depot in the morning is rich.

Here's another painting from his current exhibit. Somewhere in this sea of people, you'll find me, but simulated humility doesn't allow me to be specific. Just find the best-looking guy, what can I say. That won't be me.

This is titled Big Brother Dance, or something close to that. Sam paints himself in the lower right. He's playing for the other band members. As he observes in the notes for the painting, it could mean he works for them -being smaller and lower- or maybe it means he's playing their tune and they dance to him. Frequent visitors to San Rafael will recognize the Mission in the upper background.

The Flowers of Emeryville

I stop by Townhouse Bar & Grill in Emeryville now and then, it's between Berkeley and Oakland. Townhouse reminds me of Buck's, a restaurant in that millionaireville known as Woodside. Buck's is where Silicon Valley venture capital players eat, and Townhouse is a bit like that.  There's a good atmosphere at Townhouse, you aren't crammed elbow-to-elbow, the food is fresh, the bread is artisan quality, and you dine there with the feeling that you've made it, or you're on your way to making it, or you have table partners who have made it, or maybe you can all just look at the other tables. When the waiters bring the food, you at least know they made it.

Townhouse has fresh flowers on the patio and inside the restaurant proper. They maintain the flower displays outdoors, but I had wondered who took care of the displays inside. Townhouse doesn't have to display fresh flowers inside, but the bloomers are a statement about the kind of place they run.  Fresh flowers tell the diners they can expect their food will be fresh and the air will be fresh  -not scented by little boxes that spit out chemical aerosols every four minutes and reduce odor smell by numbing your olfactory sense. Besides, fresh flowers add color to those gray suits at the table. Also, flowers have lots of energy -shakti- and diners will respond to this invisible spice which operates beneath our normal consciousness.  Flower essences are used in healing therapies and for health, but it doesn't matter that diners generally won't know about Bach flower remedies and the like. What counts is that I know they don't know.

I finally got to see the changing of the flowers. Turns out the indoor flowers are maintained by Mary Kirk. She owns Petal Pushers, based in Oakland on Telegraph Avenue, and her website is  www.petalpushersflowersandmore.com.  When I arrived, Mary was working on an arrangement at the back of her van. That's the photo at the top, a work in progress.  I wanted to go inside and take some flash snapshots of her floral arrangements, but Townhouse doesn't allow bowling shoes. Just as well, flash photos of flowers are inferior to natural, even daylight.  Here's a closeup of the arrangement before she took it inside.