Hiatus

So, I'm putting the Cabinet on a four-week hiatus, starting today, to focus my energies on a few other things. Get ready for some pretty amazing stuff--if I do say so myself, and I do--when we return to regularly scheduled programing in June. In the meantime, I leave you with one of my all-time favorite paintings, Willem de Kooning's "Door to the River" as seen in the big retrospective of his work at the MOMA last fall.

Books of the Moment

A little technological hiccup is making it tricky to shoot photos for my usual Friday art book post today, so instead allow me to present a few recent art titles that have landed on my desk lately, and that I'm looking forward to presenting in more detail at some unspecified time in the future. The Art of Urban Sketching by Gabriel Campanario, Wondering Around Wandering by Mike Perry, and The Dangerous Book Four Boys by James Franco. 

images from Gabriel Campanario's Flickr, Grain Edit, and The Curve, respectively

Yet Another Poem in the Ongoing Series about the Fall of 2005

November 22, 2005
Been taking the bus home

since I developed a mysterious pain
in the heel and arch of my right foot
about a week ago

(never felt anything just like it before
but know from his description
that it must be nearly the same thing
which afflicted Bill in Paris
causing us to stop for lots of extra coffees
and little tiny glasses of pale red wine
And that part wasn’t such a bad thing)

and there was a thing
I saw from the window of the moving bus last Friday afternoon
and forgot until yesterday morning when I walked back by it
and then again this morning

a new display in the window of
the only one of the Sutter Street clothing boutiques
that’s remotely chic and not corny

a shiny green blouse-skirt outfit
and an enormous arrangement of dark red full-blown roses

an unlooked-for way
to present the requisite red and green


image source is here

In Other News

This week's kerfuffle in the world of publishing is about Microsoft's major funding of Barnes and Noble's ebook and ereader program. But I have nothing very interesting to say about that. Instead I will mention that this morning on my way to work I saw a city crew washing the below mural off the street at the intersection of Market and Montgomery. So I looked it up and it turns out it was created yesterday morning in the course of a May Day peaceful protest. Its interesting to contemplate why they chose to remove it in the middle of the morning commute this morning.

image sources are here and here

A Visit to the Textile Library

The other day I bumped into a former coworker at a party. What are you up to these days? I asked her. I am a textile librarian, she replied. I think my eyebrows shot up into my hair and my jaw fell to at least my clavicle--what?! That's a job? That sounds completely amazing. Without even really understanding what a textile librarian, or a textile library for that matter, was, I asked her if a few colleagues and I could come and pay her a visit. And she said sure, and proceeded, when we got there last week, to give us the most fabulous tour of both the library (pictured above and below) that is her domain, as well as all the amazing textiles on the showroom floor of De Sousa Hughes where said library is located. Such an inspiration. So thanks to Amy, for a fantastic visit and for sharing her copious knowledge (and also thanks to Kate for letting me use her images--everything below this paragraph--when mine came out crummy).