Schlomo the Love Sponge

Horn blower,
cheerleader,
Bard reader,
ring leader,
love sponge,
funkateer,
fire walker,
temple builder,
love seeker,
booty shaker,
mighty, mighty
mitzvah maker,
our beloved Schlomo Waxler,
rest in peace.

To Do Good Work

Last night, an art reception at the new location of the 40-year old Freight and Salvage included images I shot of the awesome Chris Thile, the royal Taj Mahal, and the dazzling Patty Griffin....

....Later, I toasted three climate change activists, the current winners of the Project Slingshot Award with my buddy Jennifer Snyder and her co-workers at Clif Bar. The grantees big plans for the summer? Jesse will study an off-the-grid neighborhood in Portland, Oregon; Maya will build a rooftop garden at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, and Richard will produce five TV spots on nationwide youth activism. Ah, to do good work.

Enisa and Her Mother

Yesterday, I completed shooting a year-long project documenting the work of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund. It's been amazing to bear witness to the love that drives so many nonprofits to do their deep and lasting community work day in and day out. Here's a shot of Enisa, a social worker, and her mother, refugees from Srebrenica, Bosnia. The audio capture was intense. Tears flowed from all of us. Husband gone. Brother gone. Dearest cousin gone. House in flames. Concentration camp escape. Lived as refugees in Montenegro, Macedonia, Austria, Berlin, and finally California. Rebuilding their lives as Americans. Helping countless other Bosnian refugees. Heros living among us, in spite of their ghosts. Or perhaps because of them.

Puerto Rico Frenzy

Traveled to San Juan last week with two other fab shooters to document an extravagant bat mitzvah complete with amazing merengue bands, acrobats and choreographed floor show. While editing my 1,500 pix, this frame rose from the depths of a collective, swirling throng. Here's to the power of passion, the joy of the circle, the frenzy of the hora.

A good photo is taken. A great photo is grooved. L'chaim!

Sidewalk Reception May 17, 1-4pm

Sidewalk Reception for Mural #2
Saturday, May 17, 1-4pm
2901 Mission at 25th Street
Outside Mission Pie Bakery

Have a piece of Shaker Booty Lemon Pie while you're at it.

Video for Javier

In honor of one of my accomplices on the Sky in the Pie project, Javier Gutierrez, I post this video.

A talented young photographer and student at the SF Art Institute, Javier grew up two blocks from our project site. Equal parts creativity and warmth, his disarming smile made many locals curious about what the heck we were up to. His soft-spoken manner soon had them willing to answer our ten questions and pause for a photo.

Thanks for your hard work and big heart, Javi. And thanks for jumping on the 14 Mission bus so we could keep on interviewing that one guy with the pork pie hat. Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Sky in the Pie Mural Project: This Sums It Up

Rest in Peace

One of the memorable people we photographed and interviewed was tragically killed this month in a senseless freeway shooting. Even in the short hour we knew him, my assistant, Javier and I were struck by his generous spirit and the love he had for his family, his community, and his world. After he left with his two beautiful sons in tow, we both looked at each other and said, "Wow. There goes a super cool guy." May Luis "Al" Solari rest in peace.

Donations to the Solari family can be sent to:
Lilia Solari Family Benefit Account
A.G. Edwards-Wachovia Bank
456 Montgomery, 16th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94104-9763

Read the SF Chronicle story

Numero Dos detail

Mural Numero Dos

After four graffiti-free months, numero uno finally got tagged. Oh well, it was time for a fresh mural anyway.

Numero dos asks the question, "Where is the farm in your family?" and in talking with the people at 25th and Mission streets, we discovered some had family farms in places as far-flung as Korea, Senegal, El Salvador, Slovakia, Morocco, Ireland, and York County, Nebraska.

Even if global mobility is vast and fast, most of us have a settled farmstead in our past. I want one now.

Thanks to Bill Cleary for the installation balancing act, Christie Rixford for the design hours, and Chris Hawkins for the print job. Couldn't have done it without y'all.

Sky in the Pie Mural #1

Last week the first Sky in the Pie mural went up at 25th and Mission. I was helped by teens with a drill, a ladder, a lot of rope, and muscles. Up it went. The previous month, my crew and I surveyed one hundred people in the neighborhood about food and farming. Mural #1 has eight of these folks along with their answers to our icebreaker question: What is your favorite kind of pie? At the opening, an urban barn dance inside the Mission Pie shop spilled out onto the sidewalk. Some fiesta. Yeehaw. Three more murals to come.

Ag Flag

This weekend, I participated in the 2nd Annual Farm Art Show at Freewheelin' Farm on the North Coast of Santa Cruz county. On a one acre plot, Amy Courtney and Kirstin Yogg (top photo) harvest enough organic produce for 38 families and deliver it all by bicycle. Post-
petroleum farming, yee haw.

Answers to the question, "If you could thank a farmer..." from my current Sky in the Pie Mural Project, inspired me to create a Tibetan-style prayer flag for farmers. Freewheelin' Farm guests were invited to add their own "ag flag" to this gratitude clothesline. At sunset we left the installation to fray and fade, a reminder of the Great Impermanence, with a magnificent Pacific Ocean
as backdrop.

If you could thank a farmer...

The Sky in the Pie Mural Project proceeds apace. Last week we finished asking 100 people near the corner of 25th and Mission Streets in San Francisco ten questions about food, farming, and pie. We're done with the research phase. Let the production begin!

This is Jeff, a local tatoo artist, whose family used to farm in Sicily. He was the second person we interviewed. We gave him a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.

SF Arts Commission Grant Awarded

I received a 2007 Cultural Equity Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission to create the Sky in the Pie Mural Series outside San Francisco's Mission Pie Bakery and Cafe. Cafe owner Karen Heisler and her partners at Pie Ranch connect urban and rural communities through their work/study programs and they serve some of the best pie this side of my Grandma Alice's basement.

Since the fall equinox, I've been a slave to the fleeting light of autumn. My crew Javier, Ammo, JJ and I have been taking pictures and asking questions about food and farming of people we meet around 25th and Mission Streets. From this raw data, I'll create a book and five murals between now and the 2008 summer solstice. We are up to 75 portraits and are aiming for 100 before daylight savings time kicks in on November 4th. Stay tuned.

Her favorite kind of pie? "Any type of pie."

Neelam's Daughter/ Mark's Pie

To combat my despair when George Bush was re-elected, I dug deeper into food and farming projects, finding solace and wisdom in the simple fact that we all must eat. Neelam's Daughter is one of my favorite outtakes from the Produce to the People feature for Sierra Magazine. I was trying to keep up with former Black Panther Neelam Sharma and her crew as they lay irrigation pipe for the apple tree saplings they had planted in a schoolyard in South Central LA.

Mark's Pie came out of a Sierra Club Building Bridges to the Outdoors commission. I taught photography to a group of high school students who were learning about their food system by planting, growing, harvesting, baking, serving, and eating their way through pie.

Haas Grant Awarded

Working title: The Cantilever Project. I was awarded an Individual Artist's Commission from the Walter and Elise Haas Fund. I am producing large scale photographs for their San Francisco headquarters and a multimedia piece for their Web site. To document the work of such a wide-ranging, philanthropic community builder... What a challenge. What an honor.



You Can't Do It Alone, a 2003 bus shelter poster project supported by the Haas Fund, was displayed during Breast Health Awareness Month exactly four years ago. I collaborated with the Margie Cherry Complementary Breast Health Center, writer Laurie Wagner and Supernatural Design on this one.