Updates from the Author (plus the Difference between an Em dash and an En Dash)

This post is designed to give you all an update on the life of Gabe.  It’s not very funny, or insightful in any way.  That said, I’m especially excited about life these days, and I thought I’d tell you why.

Sports Writing

I haven’t posted much on Poco Hecho recently, due largely to my new writing gig at Bleacher Report, a sports website.  I say gig because that’s how I think of it, not because I’m getting paid.  I write about FC Barcelona and how awesome they are.  I’ve learned the difference between an “em dash” and an “en dash”.  An em dash is used to break up sentences–like this one–that have a sudden pause.  En dashes are used to connect words, like in pro-American.  To type an em dash: on a Mac, use command + option + hyphen.  On a PC, hold alt and type “0151” on your keyboard.  You’re welcome.

Bootcamp

Summer is just around the corner, and it’s time to get to work on that beach bod.  I’ve begun attending Vinyasa Sports bootcamps twice a week in downtown S.F.  An hour and fifteen minutes of outdoor exercise led by the unstoppable Lucy Roberts makes for a good time and a stronger body.  I especially enjoy these workouts because I do things I don’t normally make myself do (e.g. hundreds of squats).

Photoshop

Back to school!  I’ve begun a weekly Photoshop class at the UC Berkeley Extension in downtown S.F.  I’m finally learning the amazing program that makes artists relevant in the age of internet.  The class is taught by Hugh D’Andrade, a fantastic illustrator whose work you may have seen in San Francisco.  We each get our own big shiny iMac during class, which is an absolute dream.  The best part?  Student discounts, baby.

vFlyer

40 of my best hours every week are spent working for vFlyer.com.  This isn’t a new development, but our next project is.  We’re building a website-builder.  It’s a complete CMS (content management system)–think Wordpress or Squarespace–that will build some really beautiful websites.  I’m helping extend the theme library, and I’m pretty stoked for the product.  We’re also hiring.  Needed are both a software engineer and a customer service extraordinaire.  The former requires some serious computer skills, the latter some serious people skills.  In both cases, you’ll get to work with me.

Sketchbook

I filled up a little moleskine sketchbook that’s now touring the country as part of The Sketchbook Project.  I had lots of fun on with this little guy, and I like to know that it can be viewed by totally random art-lovers around the U.S.  I’ll never get it back, but I’ll be able to link to a digital version once the tour is through.  Currently the sketchbooks can be seen are in Austin, Texas.  After stops in Portland, Atlanta, DC, and Seattle, they’ll debut in San Francisco on June 18th.  The 10,000 books then stop in Chicago and Winter Park, FL (??), before settling permanently into the Brooklyn Art Library.

Summer Dreaming

I’ll be taking a two-month leave from work this coming summer.  At the end of June, I’ll say goodbye to vFlyer and turn my attention back to painting.  If all goes as planned, I’ll return to the Chautauqua school of Art and complete the eight-week intensive studio program.  This hopefully means a whole bunch of new paintings, and the opportunity to see some of my dear friends on the Eastern seaboard.

Conclusion

If you’re reading this paragraph, thanks for wading through the self-promotion and being interested in my life.  I hope the coming months are looking rosy for all of you lovely folks.  Most importantly, thanks for reading Poco Hecho, and I promise some more sarcasm, humor, cynicism, and narrative in subsequent posts.

Claude Monet was French

Today I stumbled upon an article about a Monet exhibition in Paris that has been extended to 24 hours/day thanks to long lines and massive demand.  Apparently 7,000 people visit the show every day.  The article's featured photo knocked my socks off - a lovely lesser-known Monet painting with plenty of personal significance.

Finishing my art degree at UC Davis, I enrolled in an art history course on the impressionist movement, and throughout the first months of 2009 I studied the lovely paintings of Monet, Manet, and Pissarro.  To prepare for exams, I created stacks of flash cards - an image of the painting affixed to the front, and on the back, important details like the artist name and date.  The trick was choosing which paintings to make into flashcards.  Memorizing every single painting in the textbook, or even those mentioned in lecture, would be daunting (one professor, Jeffrey Ruda, actually imposed this ridiculous requirement), and I considered myself very skilled at predicting which paintings may appear on the exam.  With dozens to choose from, and only 5 to 10 on each test, it was logical that our esteemed professor Catherine Anderson would select only the most important pieces.  On the day of our second mid-term exam (worth about 20% of the total grade), I came prepared to identify a good 30 paintings - confident my stack of flashcards included all the slides we were about to see.  I was right on, and I cruised through the test, quickly identifying each painting as it appeared.  Then, near the end of the exam - disaster.  This painting appeared - a Monet piece I’d failed to include in my flashcards.

I didn’t know the title.  I guessed the date within a few years but I didn’t know the darn title - an easy 2 points out the window. I glanced at the desk of the girl to my right, who had set to writing her analysis of the work - and the name she’d written seemed to jump off of her booklet and into my mind: “Claude Monet  - A Day by the Bay”.  Without thinking twice, I wrote this down and proceeded with my mini-essay about the work.  I never thought about the title again, I finished what turned out to be a stellar analysis, the test ended, I handed in my booklet, hopped on my bike and pedaled for home.

On my way through campus I ran into Gab, and she asked how the test had gone.

“Really well” I responded “except for one slide...”  And I explained the situation, and how I’d grabbed the ID from my classmate.  Gab looked at me kind of seriously, and said something like "can't you get kicked out of school for that?", and the true nature of what I’d just done started to sink in.  We said goodbye as she proceeded to class, and I biked home, slowly developing an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.  By the time I reached the Viking I realized a few things:

a. Since Monet was french, the title of the piece probably wasn’t “A Day by the Bay”
b. The girl on my right was just as clueless as I
c. Our tests would be the only two that incorrectly identified that painting as “A Day by the Bay”
d. The shit would hit the fan

I got inside and laid down on the couch, feeling pretty sick now.  I opened my computer and pulled up the class site and Monet’s pretty little painting read “Terrasse a Sainte-Adresse” and I wanted to throw up.  I imagined every step of the process - professor Anderson grading the tests, marking my ID as wrong, coming upon the girl’s test a few minutes later, reading “A Day By The Bay” again and thinking “hmm.. that looks familiar”, going back to my test, turning to that page and saying “aha!”.  Then me being called in to her office, confronted by the other girl, getting kicked out of UC Davis... and I couldn’t bear it.  I wrote an email to Professor Anderson right then and there.  I laid it all out - what happened, how sorry I was, how I wasn’t in the habit of this sort of thing, (but that I knew there was no way to prove it).  I appealed to her mercy and hoped for the best.

She didn’t get back to me for a couple of long days, but finally she responded and set up a post-class meeting, where she thanked me for my note and told me her decision was to simply mark that part of the question wrong.  She said that from my writing it was clear that I wasn’t casting about for answers.  I was elated.  I was so freaking grateful I painted her a painting.

Despite the lack of consequences, I like to think that I learned something.  Mostly that cheating is never worth it.  I would’ve still gotten an A had I simply left the name blank (Or come up with my own original name like ‘a day by the bay’).  I also learned that I’m not very smooth, and probably never will be.

Anyhow, 2 years later, that little Monet pops up in my Twitter feed, and a really rich memory comes back to me.  I hope the midnight museum-goers are enjoying it in Paris, and I hope Catherine Anderson is enjoying her tulips.