Search Results for mark bulwinkle
June 25, 2017 by tomdalzell
Asia in (Quirky) Berkeley
Asia Colombo spent the 2016-2017 school year as a foreign exchange student at Berkeley High. She is from Italy. Her name is not pronounced as we pronounce the name of the continent, but as “Ah-zia.” She was a part of my family for the year. She took a strong interest in all things Berkeley, […]
April 24, 2017 by tomdalzell
April 26, 2017: Ashby Corridor with Friends of the Library
On April 3, 2016, I led a Friends of the Library walk along the Ashby corridor with a major excursion south on Shattuck. It was a beautiful April day. We met at Adeline and Emerson. At Emerson and Adeline, you have perhaps seen the “Imagine” mosaic honoring John Lennon in Central Park, New York, based on a […]
January 1, 2017 by tomdalzell
The Best of Quirky 2016
I published more than 50 Quirky Berkeley posts in 2016. That’s a lot! Here I subjectively choose some of the most popular Quirky Berkeley Posts of the year. A review of 2016 has to begin with publication by Heyday Press in the summer of Quirky Berkeley, the book. I have talked with hundreds of people about the […]
December 25, 2016 by tomdalzell
Field Trip: Clayton Bailey’s Museum in Crockett
For several years, Mark Bulwinkle has been encouraging me to meet Clayton Bailey and see his art. Bulwinkle is, in my book, the true north of Quirky Berkeley art. His recommendation carries weight. I didn’t know much about Crockett. I have passed it hundreds of times. I notice the C&H Sugar plant there. The […]
December 10, 2016 by tomdalzell
Star Grocery and the Quirkiest Commercial Block in Berkeley
Quirky is not a precise scientific term. It can float and adjust. It can mean many things. I have occasionally presented what might seem to be “normal” as quirky, based on the premise that when quirky is the norm, non-quirky is heterodox and thus potentially, um, quirky. The application of this world-upside-downism to Berkeley […]
November 26, 2016 by tomdalzell
Martin Metal: Berkeley of the Past, For the Ages
I first heard the name Martin Metal (pronounced Met-AL) in an animated conversation between Mark Bulwinkle and Zalman Sher, son of the late wire artist Emil “Izzy” Sher. Bulwinkle had known Metal over the years and they both worked on installations at the original Rasputin’s. Zalman had worked for Metal. They spoke of him in almost […]
August 19, 2016 by tomdalzell
Holiday Field Trip to West Oakland: The Genius That Was John Abduljaami
Our Martin Luther King Jr. holiday field trip is to west Oakland. It is a thinly veiled salute to the art of the late John Abduljaami. Abduljaami was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in 1941. He quit high school and did a hitch in the Navy, working as a jet mechanic. After the Navy he […]
August 7, 2016 by tomdalzell
Outbuildings (or is it – Out Buildings?)
When I walk Berkeley I imagine aggregations – a collection of photos of, say, quirky topiary. There is another way that aggregations happen. I reflect on the photos I have, posts that I have made, and I see an aggregation to be made. That was the case here. Here I aggregate mostly previously published photos […]
July 30, 2016 by tomdalzell
The Faces at Mad Monk
Ken Sarachan’s Mad Monk is open. For many the building on the southwest corner of Telegraph and Haste will always be Cody’s. For many more, there will be no memory of Cody’s. So it goes. Inside Mad Monk – books and records. Also inside Mad Monk, there are nine painted metal portrait sculptures by Mark Bulwinke. […]
July 3, 2016 by tomdalzell