CatSynth

I recently visited two openings for artists I met at Open Studios last fall and whose work reflects my interests in highways, architectural images and the urban landscape. The artists take very different approaches, and the shows were in very different parts of the city – but having both openings on the same night was a great opportunity to see them together and simultaneously reflect upon the city itself.

First, I stopped in the relatively quiet West Portal neighborhood for a show at the Greenhouse Cafe featuring Sonja Navin. Navin draws on her architectural background to capture familiar images of the city in her paintings. Perhaps the most “familiar” image was the King Street off-ramp from I-280 in her large painting entitled 280.

[Sonja Navin. 280. Photo courtesy of the artist. (click to enlarge)]

Navin experienced this interchange the way many of us do, i.e., being stuck in traffic, and thus had the opportunity to visualize it in detail. She also had a painting East on N which featured a familiar view along the N-Judah metro line in the Sunset district.

Although her subject matter is often architectural in nature, her painting style features large brush strokes and irregular areas of color rather than the straight lines and precision of architectural drawings. She also had several figurative paintings, and some such as In The Haight combine both character and street elements.

Navin’s exhibition, which also features artist Kacie Erin Smith, will be on display at The Greenhouse Cafe, 329 West Portal Avenue in San Francisco through April 30.

After brief ride over Twin Peaks, I found myself descending into the Mission district for an opening at City Art Gallery, where I was particularly interested to see new works by Mike Kimball.

Like Navin, Kimball’s interpretation of the urban landscape distills it down to basic elements, but his prints and paintings feature very clean lines and simple geometric shapes. One example is his Maritime Plaza, which I immediately recognized (it is a favorite out lunch spot of mine).

[Mike Kimball.  Maritime Plaza.  Image courtesy of the artist.  (click to enlarge.)]

Like the building it represents, the image is framed by the triangules and X-shapes of the seismic bracing. This was one of the first buildings to use this technique, which is now a familiar site on buildings in the Bay Area.

In Division Street, Kimball represents another familiar sight from daily life, the interchange of I-80 and US 101 that sits above Division Street in SOMA. The image is composed of very simple curves and lines and solid colors, from which one can distinguish the elevated structures of the highway and the shadows they cast, as well as details such as the markings (and probably graffiti) on the sides of the trailers.

[Mike Kimball.  Division Street.  Image courtesy of the artist.  (click to enlarge.)]

Trucks and trailers also feature prominently in Kimball’s work. His “Truckograph” series features a similar graphic quality to Division Street. His larger work Meditations on a port looks at the stacks of trailers at the port as an abstract collection of boxes. Kimball bridges the industrial and abstract in this work – close up, one can see the writing and metal texture, but from a distance one simply sees the colored squares.

Kimball’s current exhibition will be on display at City Art Gallery, 828 Valencia Street, through March 28.

The Bay Bridge has been closed over the Labor Day weekend for a major engineering feat. As part of the replacement of the eastern span, engineers actually cut out a small section near Yerba Buena Island, and actually wheeled in a new section of bridge. This allows the old doomed bridge to be used while the new one is connected up to the island.

Looking towards Oakland from Yerba Buena island, this is what things looked like before the cut- and-replace operation:

You can see a lot more time-lapsed photos and different angles at the official website for the project. They also posted some photos that better illustrate the move itself at Twitter:

[Click on the images above for full-size versions at TwitPic]

Note that this does not really affect the western half of the bridge near on the San Francisco side, which is what we usually show in our Bay Bridge posts and photos at CatSynth. Except of course that it is closed.

And it looks like the closure could be a little bit longer than excepted. There was a serious crack found in one of the metal supports, so now they are working to repair that before opening. It’s just another reminder of why we want to replace the whole eastern span, hopefully before the next big earthquake. Fortunately, the closure doesn’t affect us at CatSynth all that much.

This is the same location as the Wordless Wednesday from April 30.

It has been a really busy week at CatSynth, but we're taking some time to continue our “primary highways” series with a visit to the state of Indiana. Appropriately for our series, Indiana is nicknamed the “Crossroads of America.” And that is how many of us know the state, passing from one place to another. It boasts eight major interstate highways: I-69, I-65, I-94, I-70, I-74, I-64, I-80, and I-90. These are indeed crossroads among major U.S. cities, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Boston, Chicago. Detroit, Seattle and are hometown San Francisco.

I have traveled through Indiana en route from New York to San Francisco multiple times on I-80, which is part of the Indiana Toll Road. (Anyone surprised that we are once again traveling along I-80 during this series?)This highway runs along the extreme northern section of the state, passing through farmland, old industrial cities, and the suburbs of Chicago to the west. One can imagine along this landscape the demographic divisions currently being portrayed in the media. One can also observe Indiana's well-known reputation for being flat, particularly in the north. Though in the south, towards Kentucky, the landscape becomes more hilly.

In the northwest, near Chicago, I-80 shares its path with I-94. To the west, I-94 splits off to become the major freeway in downtown Chicago; beyond that it heads towards Milwaukee, then Minneapolis and the northern plains. In Indiana, it hugs the coast of Lake Michigan “before heading east on the long road to Detroit“.

A bit of amusing highway trivia involves I-69, which extends from Indianapolis north to Michigan and eventually the Canadian border. There have been plans for a while to extend I-69 south all the way to Texas and the Mexican border, creating another north-south transcontinental route. Former representative John Hostettler from Indiana was a strong supporter of the extension of I-69, but he also led a campaign to change its designation. Apparently, some “religious conservatives believe 'I-69' sounds too risqu

Well, after several weeks off, we resume our “primary highways” series with a trip to Pennsylvania. And once again, we find ourselves on I-80.

We begin with this interesting photograph from the completion of I-80 at the Milesburg Interchange, from the site pahighways.com. The east and west destinations are reminders why we keep coming back to this particular highway throughout the series.

I-80 traverses a path through the center of the state, though hills and valleys, mostly avoiding larger towns and cities. It is also famously windy and difficult to drive, particularly the eastern half. Indeed it has been cited as one of the “worst roads” multiple times by truck drivers and others. Nonetheless, it is quite scenic, and it does pass by a few notable places. Just south of that cool sign in Milesburg is State College, not surprisingly the home of Penn State University. This school is huge. There is Punxsutawney, the town made famous by the classic film Groundhog Day. Yes, they do have a groundhog there. On the eastern edge of the state, I-80 passes through the mountainous region around the Delaware Water Gap, a frequent “first stop” on trips heading west from New York.

In the northeast, I-80 also passes through the area that includes industrial towns such as Scranton and Allentown, which have been much talked about in the recent campaign. Hillary has some heritage here (and support). It is also where the media is looking for “drama” after Barack Obama's recent comments – I do sympathize with him, but I am holding back from jumping into that milieu. Let's get back to the road…

…much of the action is actually to the south, on Pennsylvania's other major east-west highway: I-76, the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It connects the major cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the capital, Harrisburg, and New Jersey. I have never been to Harrisburg or Pittsburgh – though I can name all three rivers, which I leave as an exercise to the reader.

According to the site Philadelphia Highways (part of pahighways.com), “Interstate 76 happens to come through the city just a few miles from where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.” Seems like too much of a coincidence, but it is actually the most appropriate number on the interstate grid. And for actual proximity, I-676 and I-95 are even closer to Independence Hall:

[Click to enlarge]

Philadelphia has an interesting dual identity. One is its central role in the history and “mythology” of the United States. (One of the “myths” is that is was the first capital. That was actually New York!) The other is simply being the sixth largest city in the U.S., with life and culture of its own outside the historical sites. It also has a reputation as one of the more dangerous cities. Nonetheless, I have visited several times with no negative experiences. I do feel bad for cities that have a lot to offer, but get tagged with that label. New York certainly went through that as well. We will see how things go for the “City of Brotherly Love” – I would certainly welcome comments from anyone who has lived there…

And we can't close this article without mentioning I-99. I-99 is infamous among some highway enthusiasts for being numbered so inconsistently with the rest of the grid, and for being a construct of pure political vanity. Again, from pahighways.com:

In 1996, Representative Bud Shuster who acquired funds for the upgrading of US 220, had this highway designated an Interstate in Section 322 of the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995…Bud had his highway designated I-99 and had the designation written into law. It was bad enough it runs past his son's car dealership, and violate Interstate highway numbering system too! It should have been numbered I-576, 776, or 976. I like the last…a fitting number for someone that had been under investigation for illegal highway funding acts.

The currently completed section if I-99 takes us back to State College, where we began.