Author Archive
June 20, 2017 by tomdalzell
La Escuelita on Colusa – Kitsch Under the Big Tent
I am careful about using the word “kitsch.” I think that we should be cautious about making aesthetic judgments. We each discern and delight in beauty differently. Unless we are absolutely sure that we can make reliable judgments about the nature of beauty, we should stand down when it comes to making judgments. Something […]
June 17, 2017 by tomdalzell
Eli Leon – A Life of Making Art and Collecting
I don’t know Eli Leon. He is alive but not in our world, at least as far as we understand it. His collections are astonishing. He is best known for his scholarship about and collecting of African-American quilts, but his collecting far surpassed simply the quilts. A story that he tolerated is that during […]
June 10, 2017 by tomdalzell
Debbie Vinograd and Berkeley’s Magical Doors
Debbie Vinograd has lived and painted in Berkeley since 1974. She was born in Berkeley in 1951. While she was young, her parents moved to southern California. Her father was Jerome Vinograd. This is a portrait by Debbie of her father. This photograph of Vinograd is from the archives of the California Institute of Technology, […]
June 3, 2017 by tomdalzell
Shattuck Avenue Relief & Facades
In April 2016 I posted photographs of relief sculpture in Berkeley. I learned that there is a range of relief, depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form – high relief, mid-relief, low relief (bas relief) and sunk relief. For this here post I became a systematic flaneur (a contradiction in terms?) for six blocks of Shattuck south […]
May 29, 2017 by tomdalzell
Field Trip: Assorted Quirk in Chico
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May 27, 2017 by tomdalzell
Words
I intended to start this post with a reflection on the song “Words” by the Bee Gees. I had several of the lines running through my head. They worked as I remembered them. Good thing I listened to the song though. For me, it does not survive the test of time. Popular romantic ballads might […]
May 27, 2017 by tomdalzell
Earl Visits
We all recently learned that my friend’s long-lost twin brother Earl arrived in Berkeley for a visit after the twins were reunited thanks to my friend’s Quirky Berkeley fame. I have previously posted about the test my friend devised to verify the identity of the man claiming to be his twin and on that man’s […]
May 20, 2017 by tomdalzell
Weathervanes
Weathervanes are not without function, especially in communities where farming or sailing are important. That said, anymore they are generally decorative. The most common motif is the cockerel. Cock is the short form of cockerel. Think – rooster. Think – a male gallinaceous bird. In this post, that is the only cock that you will […]
May 13, 2017 by tomdalzell
Berkeley in 1967 (plus April 29, 2017: Summer of Love Walk on Telegraph)
On April 29, 2017, the Telegraph Business Improvement District celebrated the 50th anniversary of Berkeley’s Summer of Love (1967) with an all-day fair on Telegraph. Lots of tie-dye! What was the best part? Hint: It’s all about me. I led four one-hour walking tours of Telegraph from Bancroft to Dwight. Here are two of the […]
May 6, 2017 by tomdalzell