Juliawmartin

by Marthine Satris

Earlier this year, I was walking down San Pablo around where Berkeley and Oakland rub elbows, and I saw this flyer inviting anyone, no matter whether you identified as an artist or not, to submit Instagram photos to an art collective called Femme Cartel for a show in Oakland. I was arrested by the casualness of this call for art, and the democracy, and the challenge: hey guys, you think you’re so artistic with your tilt shift and your Valencia filter? Submit and find out.

Their flyer encouraged women, people of color, young folks, and LGBT folks in particular to press send. It was a very East Bay outsider moment at the same time that the fine art world has been inflating itself to obscene proportions in New York and London. But being the Bay Area, where graffiti art decorates Facebook’s headquarters, it had the techno-utopian vibe, too (bring art to the people and the people to art… using an app!). I was charmed by the irony of paper flyers stuck to telephone poles asking for Instagram photos to be submitted to their website. A neighborhood appeal and a virtual one.

Femme Cartel, as I found out via googling and boldly filling out the contact form on their breezy website, is spearheaded by two young women from Oakland who use their art world and PR savvy to curate shows that show off the contributions of women to urban art.

I met up with the Femme Cartel founders, Christina and the incredibly-named Femily, at Awaken Café in Oakland on one of these stupidly hot days we’ve been having in the Bay Area this summer. Femily was wearing silver hashtag studs. They explained to me that the show (called “Beyond Breakfast and Selfies") might seem like a leap from their earlier shows, which featured painting and drawing. But Emily pointed out, “When you are walking along and you see graffiti, you’re blurring through all this shit and then you see something amazing, and that’s kind of what it’s like with your Instagram feed. There’s a lot of breakfast, and selfies, and then there’s a gem, and you live for those gems." They're hoping to create a feedback loop between the gallery show in Oakland and people’s use of Instagram–they want to see visitors to the show incorporating more fine art into their feed, and these 60 talented photographers infiltrating the art world.

The following 10 artists are a cross-section of those 60, who were whittled down from the 150 who submitted work. Most were women; it seemed only right to highlight women here, too. Some are professionals, some amateurs, most are local, and they’ve all now been inducted into the Cartel. May they rule us wisely.

Amber Schadewald (@aschaedewald)

“’Found your teeth in the trash’ is an image of some dentures I found at the SF dump.

I’m beyond amazed at what accumulates in our city’s waste bins and the lifecycle these objects take on once deemed ‘garbage.’ While a pair of dentures may not ‘recycle’ well from one person’s gums to another, I would fill all my pockets with discarded chops if given the opportunity—these pearly (nearly) whites wouldn’t be the first set of fangs on my mantel.”

Kris Austin (@kristellaface)

“The Goblin photo was taken during an adventure with my sweetheart; we love to explore the run-down beauty of Oakland. The dog was running loose and had a stealthy, wolf-like quality that I loved. I think it was stalking us with the hope that we would drop a taco. I’ve always been a photographer and I write and create other things, but I’ve always reserved the term ‘artist’ for other people. This is the first time I’ve ever submitted anything to a gallery and it will be my first show.”

Sarah Deragon (@sarahderagon)

“My favorite photo in the show is of my partner reaching out for our white cat, Nigel, in my photography studio. It had been a long day of shooting and the cats love it when the background paper is down, they just have a field day, so it is a fun memory, a beautiful moment in an afternoon of my life. That's the beauty of Instagram, sharing beautiful moments of our lives.”

Sarah is a photography teacher and has this advice about improving Instagram shots: “I think folks should take more time processing their photos before posting and be more creative with what they're shooting. Instead of taking just one photo and immediately uploading it, take three to five photos, pick the best one, process it through an app or two, and then put it up on Instagram. AfterLight is an incredibly cool app you can use to brighten photos, crop them creatively, add frames, and even light leaks and fun filters too.”

Courtney Cerruti (@ccerruti)

“I shoot a lot of pictures when walking around San Francisco. I took this picture one morning while crossing the street to get my morning tea. It was probably 10 a.m., and this woman looked as though her night was still going instead of a sleepy weekday morning just beginning. I loved her confidence, and her walk. This piece is called ‘Strut.’

Instagram has become a part of my everyday art practice. Instagram fosters such a creative community that often translates into the real world; I've meet many artists and makers through Instagram. Participating in the Femme Cartel show is another way to bring that community together. I've done several collaborative pieces with fellow artists as a way to engage more. Earlier this year I created a show called #3636Project which included 36 different artists locally and from around the world. I also recently started something called #socialsketch with a fellow instagrammer and painter, Michael McConnell, aka poopingrabbit.”

Ebony Haight (@ebonyh)

“When I was sixteen one of my teachers said to me, ‘So you're an artist.’ There was a flood of emotions associated with this: pride, excitement, fear. Even though it sounded right at the time, it would be over 15 years before I started openly referring to myself that way. Yes, I'm an artist. I’m someone who feels a persistent need to look closely at, obsess over, and engage with things, and to try and understand life by capturing, crafting, and sharing my experience and impressions.

These photographs were taken at Scribe Winery on a trip to Sonoma I took a couple months ago. Apparently the Hacienda, where these pictures were taken, was used to house bootleggers during Prohibition!”

Sharlynn Velez (@sv1)

“When I came back to the U.S. after being evacuated from Japan in 2011, following the earthquakes, I was so happy to see that some of these old signs were still around, but I was also saddened that so many of them had been replaced with poorly designed, cheap plastic crap. I decided to start photographing them because I wanted to document them. As I got more skilled with shooting and editing my sign photos, I realized that this was something more than mere documentation: I was creating art that helped people see the beauty that I see in them.

I’m a founding member of the #signgeeks community [on Instagram]. We plan trips to locations densely packed with vintage neon signs, and on these trips our friendships have grown into a family. Currently there are over sixty people in our core group.”

Kenny Robinson (@notkendra)

“Cats make the perfect subjects for an Instagram portrait because we can read anything we want in their expressions: quizzicality, haughtiness, disdain, love. I got Instagram right around the time that I joined a Facebook group called “Yes I Do Want to See a Picture of Your Cat.” My cat Homer was a big hit, and the number of cat pictures that I took probably tripled.

Having my pictures chosen for the show meant so much to me. I have always loved taking pictures, but the technical aspect of composing a shot is pretty much lost on me. F-stop, shutter speed: I can never remember numbers and equations. Having a digital camera/phone has really opened up the possibilities for me. Having strangers see my photos and say to themselves, ‘We like these enough to have them in our show,’ feels like validation as a photographer. It is an amazing feeling.”

Rachel Welles ( @rule_of_red)

“This portrait is of one of my dearest friends, Reid, also known as Ruby Blue Gender-Bender in the local drag scene. He's come a long way, and this portrait marks one of her early days of being out publicly in drag. It was taken outside of El Rio on a sunny afternoon a couple years ago, while we were waiting in line for Hard French (a local monthly queer party). I really like it because she is glistening and really herself here.

As a teen, I was aware of my queer feelings, but my immediate environment was not as welcoming. I wanted there to be more of us, or at least more of us that were out and not afraid or ashamed of our identities–whatever they may be. I wanted that so bad that I uprooted from Hong Kong (my home town) to San Francisco about a decade ago and found a haven of queerness. I've always documented this feeling that I sought out, whether it was the people I was around or at events, and I try to celebrate that in my personal work. As overused as hashtags are these days, I personally enjoy exploring ones associated with queerness. It makes all of us feel like we're not so alone in this universe.”

Jane C. Allen (@janecallen)

“I don't usually scout locations to photograph but the two photographs that are in this show are unique exceptions. The photo that I took of the yellow chair on the sidewalk was right by my home in Palo Alto, and when I saw it the first time, my phone was out of batteries, and I was really hoping it would stick around so that I could photograph it on my next time around. Lucky for me, and now us, it was.

I've always been an artist but just in the last ten years have started to care about actually documenting the things I view in life. Most of my photography I capture with the intention of using it as a catalyst for multiple exposure art or the composition for other non-photography pieces.”

Vivian Chen (@vivianchenphoto)

“Inspired by a post-Christmas road trip with my husband up Highway 395, I set an intention for myself to slow down and go outside at the beginning of this year. I documented that road trip on Instagram and I was reminded of the simple beauty that can be found in nature. One of those photos is ‘Manzanar,’ a photo I took at one of our stops along Highway 395. I love how the light falls in this dusty dreamy landscape with the bare tree and the yellow tumbleweed. The Sierra Mountains in the distance gives it a feeling of infinite space."

Beyond Breakfast and Selfies, at Rock Paper Scissors Collective in Oakland through Aug 2014.

Mostly recovered after a long bout of grad school, Marthine Satris is an editor and writer in the Bay Area. Her name is not pronounced the way you think it is.

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That zany bunch the Arcade Fire are back with yet another locally relevant cover. Last night they were in Edmonton, birthplace of Michael J. Fox, so they kicked out a rendition of Huey Lewis’ Back To The Future theme “Back In Time” that segued into Reflektor jam “Here Comes The Night Time” — which, in the event that you’re sick of all these covers, is still an excellent tune in its own right. Voyage all the way back to August 11, 2014 to hear the medley below.

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Texts: Cool! What does it say? Emails: Oh God… what do they want? Phone call: I basically assume someone has died.

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) July 17, 2013

Love the brilliantly simple system behind The Floyd Leg. Ideal for people that move often.

(via Krissy)

by Jia Tolentino

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No, this isn't a case of a kid sticking a tooth into his nose and getting it stuck. This is a tooth that grew up into a guy's nose. Basically, he was close to being a human Narwhal. You're welcome for the nightmares.

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The charm of the first hour or so of the first day of a music festival often comes from the fact that no matter what plan or itinerary or schedule you make on some helpful “official app,” you will almost immediately forget all of that and experience complete stupefying shellshock. It’s nice, though, because it can lead to some unexpected things once you just let the disorientation take over. A perfect example of that occurred Friday afternoon at Outside Lands when Mikal Cronin performed the opening set at the Toyota Soundwave tent curated by SPINMedia. Audience and artist were equally overwhelmed, and it led to a laid-back performance with a few surprises.

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I'm sitting in an office in Manhattan a few blocks from Central Park. It's a fairly typical workday, filled with emails, trips to the coffee pot, and refreshing my sites. I'm on all the good ones: Twitter, Facebook, you name it.

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The Museum Of Endangered Sounds

via The Paris Review

New York City’s tech scene, basically. via Facebook New York City’s tech scene is really booming, or so we’ve been led to believe, what with the coining of the phrase “Silicon Alley” and the whole Brooklyn Tech Triangle thing. Which is good we guess in the sense that it brings jobs, but it looks like it also brings some of the bad parts about the meritocracy that is tech, like the fact that it’s mostly a bunch of dudes in the boardroom yelling “DISRUPT” into their Google Glass or whatever. In fact, New Yorker’s tech scene is so good at excluding women in the boardroom that we lead the nation in it, with just 38% of NYC tech companies having a female executive on their board. Crain’s reports that the 2014 Innovation Economy Outlook Survey, included a question about the tech gender gap, asking tech executives around the world how many had… Read More

The Enigma and David Duchovny on the set of The X-Files.

by Jia Tolentino

I was recently on a New York street and of course noted the scattering of covered woman among the passing thousands, in scarf, veil, hijab, bonnet, wig. One was Hasidic, in long sleeves and closed neckline and stockings in July, with a little hat on top of her wig. I was in jeans and a black T-shirt, my graying hair windblown.

Now those women discomfit me in the same way I’m sure they can discomfit others. They represent denial of battles hard fought—for birth control, abortion, equality in any public forum, to dress how we want without being objectified, or just to be heard. [...] But covered women are my madeleine. I see one and my past comes back. Each can only use the language she’s received. Each is a real person with hopes and losses—even if she is also a reminder of what we can lose.

Which is why I look her in the eye, direct and real, and smile a smile as genuine and warm as I can muster. I say “Hello.”

I wish I could speak to every one of these women. I would say, “You are proof enough of God.” I would say, “You do have a voice. You can write. You can vote. You can whisper to your children.” I would say, “Look at yourself uncovered in the mirror and don’t forget what you look like.”

“I see you. What do you wish you could do? What, or who, would you love?”

This essay by Leah Lax at Dame Magazine, about respect and power and domestic space and coming out and orthodox religion, is very, very good. [Dame Magazine]

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PS 261 in Boerum Hill has a garbage problem, say local residents who are getting tired of seeing, and, this... Read More… Read More

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Saturday marks the 239^th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Last year, Ben Blatt took a closer look at the document and asked whether John Hancock’s notorious signature was really too big after all. His article is reprinted below.

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This is the first in a two part series. Part two publishes tomorrow.

Wild Goose Chase

by JOSIANE CURTIS

Portland has more Canada geese than anywhere else I’ve lived. They’re mostly harmless, and occasionally cute in the spring, when the fluffy nutritional yeast-colored babies line up and flop flop flop in a row behind their mamas, or scatter as bikers fly past on the Burnside-to-Steel-Bridge esplanade. I’m skeptical, and I walk in a wide arc away from where they gather on the grass along the SW waterfront.

The only geese I encountered before Portland were hateful and mean, or protective, if we want to give them the benefit of the doubt. A childhood friend of mine, Britta, had two as pets. I don’t remember much about my friendship with Britta besides those birds, and the fact that I was jealous of the snappy names her parents had given their daughters, Britta and her younger sister Brooke, the kind of feminine but original names well-suited for pretty petite girls with blonde bobs and perfect blunt-cut bangs. I don’t remember if the geese had names. I do remember that they chased me every single time I went to her house, somewhere between the front door and front gate of the yard, either coming or going or both.

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Well they can’t chase you if you don’t run, my mother told me once. It seems strange, in hindsight, coming from her. She had been a runner her entire life, literally and figuratively, running track in high school and then moving from coast to coast, always coming or going or both. It seems like the kind of advice a father would give, or at least someone more sturdy, someone grounded.

But if you don’t run… what happens when they catch you?

There’s only one way to find out.

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Do you know when someone gives you flowers for no reason? Do you know what that feels like, versus what it should feel like?

What it should feel like: The sunlit section of a hardwood floor inside a west-facing French door, inside a cool house, on a late afternoon in September. A spot of warmth that is unnecessary but nice. Welcome but not overwhelming.

What it does feel like: What I imagine it feels like to be chased by something when you’re standing still; when something catches you because you don’t run. What I can only imagine that feels like, because I never tried to find out.

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When I swim laps at the SW Community Center pool, I pretend I am being chased by a shark. I am maybe the only person who prefers the pool during peak swim times, when we have to put three people to a lane and swim in loops, trying to match each other’s pace. I choose the lane marked “Fast” even though I am not a particularly fast swimmer. But I pretend the other people in my lane are sharks, and I become a fast swimmer.

Whenever I am forced to stand still, I think of losing my legs. I get visibly nervous on crowded escalators, clench and unclench my fists and step side to side when people stand in pairs in front of me, laughing and holding shopping bags and blocking the path where I would step. When I am still, I picture rounded but strong black beaks pecking at my shin bones, or shark teeth taking off one of my lower limbs altogether.

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He leaves flowers in my car door one morning and I can’t remember if I even smile when I see them. Have you ever felt thank you and I’m sorry in the same sentence, for something someone else did and something you didn’t do, or rather, something, a warmth, you didn’t feel? When, instead of warmth, fear and gratitude and guilt swim fast loops in the pit of your stomach. Those feelings don’t work well together; they crash and curdle.

But if you don’t run… what happens when they catch you? 

I want to find out, but I don’t know how to be still without the nightmares. I want to stop running but I am skeptical, walking in a wide arc around where he pauses to catch his breath. 

Josiane Curtis is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Portland. You can find her twitter here. You can find her website here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She last wrote in these pages about the first sign of dawn. Her work recently appeared on The Rumpus here.

Drawings by Andrew Smith. You can buy prints and originals here.

"Runaway" - Mr. Little Jeans (mp3)

"Mercy" - Mr. Little Jeans (mp3)

Variety reports that Jennifer Lee, the co-writer and director of the animated smash-hit Frozen, will adapt Madeleine L'Engle's fantasy masterpiece A Wrinkle in Time for an upcoming Disney movie. There is literally nothing in this sentence we don't love.

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The Beach Bus will take you here, but if you want to survive it, you’re on your own. via Facebook It’s August and all your rich friends are Instagramming the hell out of their weekends at the Hamptons castles they’ve Airbnb-ed. We wish we were there too, but luckily you can still get out of the city without taking up a third job! The NYC Beach Bus has expanded beyond their name and is heading inland to insanity (Action Park!) and culture (Storm King Art Center), so you can still go to neat places as the summer fades and even after it’s done. If you want to eke out some more summer thrills, the Beach Bus now offers trips to Jersey’s recently-reopened Action Park on Saturdays until September 1, and on September 20, 21, 27 and 28. For those of you who don’t remember Action Park from when it was open in the 80s and 90s,… Read More

A few years after Brian Rose's fascinating photo book "Time and Space on the Lower East Side" (which explored the LES over two very different time periods) comes the...
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Arcade Fire’s latest localized tribute cover went down last night at the Santa Barbara Bowl. Dead Kennedys’ “California Über Alles” was the song of choice, despite the fact that Jello Biafra and company hailed from San Francisco, five hours north of Santa Barbara. Hey, when one of indie rock’s greatest bands is covering one of punk rock’s most classic songs, who can really split hairs about geography? Watch a fan-made clip below.

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by Jia Tolentino

It seems to me that the best possible way we could spend our lives would be trying to emulate these vibes. Watch for the cameos, which start mostly with Samsung products but get much better from there.

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“I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

Spanish physicist Manuel Linares has developed a brand of ice cream that changes color when it experiences a change in temperature and comes into contact with saliva — but he's keeping quiet over how he came up with this delicious creation.

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MAKE Magazine's Jeff Highsmith wanted to build his 4-year-old son an interactive model of an Apollo spacecraft. The result was the surprisingly complex play area seen here – but to really appreciate the thought and effort that went into this project, you really must watch the making-of video. Seriously, this'll blow you away.

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Well, fuck. I don't know how we're ever going to defeat the corvid apocalypse if crows can convince bears to join their side just by being loud.

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