Rebels With A Kaws
Museum Day In SF
Pattern interrupts are mandatory
It’s so damn easy to get caught in the day to day grind. Even if you happen to enjoy your work we forget how fast time goes by. You look up and your whole week is gone. This is why pattern interrupts are so important for yourself and your team. Some of the best ways to break out is to get out of the office and into the real world for small adventures. Yesterday was exactly that. The team at FiveTen, the creative strategy studio I work with had a little group expedition to the SFMOMA to check out the KAWS exhibit. We spend a lot of time together but most of it is on the grind so having a day to cut loose was rewarding.
We jumped on the ferry from Jack London Square to the SF Ferry Building in SF. If you are visiting the bay and going from the around the bay into Frisco, take the ferry. It’s my most preferred mode of travel to the city, it’s never crowded, it’s clean, they have a full cafe and bar setup with snacks, and the views are stunning from the top deck. AND if I’m—mostly—sure that it’s cheaper than BART and it is for sure faster than driving. We hung out, cracked some jokes, shot the shit, while taking in the scenery as we glided across the bay.
When we touched down we took a stroll up market and into the city, Dre, Nana, and myself orbiting the outer edges of the group like satellites so shoot photos. Street photography is by nature not much of a team sport. Too many bodies with cameras in hand offset the energy. Don’t spook the herd animals. I hadn’t been out to SF for a day outing for while. Sometimes I forget how beautiful some of the architecture is in Frisco, so I shot some high contrast look ups from time to time. I find sharp geometric shapes against cloudy backdrops calming and appealing lately.
From graffiti to gallery
When we got to the show, it was dope ,but a lot smaller I think than we expected. Part of that I think has to do with KAWS work. It’s simple in nature which is what makes it dope. You would have a hard time convincing my that is it high overly thought out art. But then again it’s much more difficult to be simple than be complex. It was great to see how big the characters where in real life. I wish I would have had a little more time to dig into what materials were used to construct them. I love the cartoon nature of his work and clear influence of his graffiti background. There is a kind of pride I feel when someone from graffiti culture makes it. I think it feels good because for so long graffiti was looked down upon, but also a former writer you know how much someone has put on the line to create a piece of art that could be destroyed in less than 24 hours after creation. The artist is risking their freedom for an act of creation that will eventually be destroyed. But it’s also the ultimate test of socializing visual memes and seeing if something from the subculture can make ripple and become adopted by mainstream culture. For that act alone I have the utmost respect for KAWS. I also enjoyed seeing how he’s taken mainstream characters and mashed them up with his own flavor. So many great ideas are a clever amalgam of others that came prior to them.
There was a wall of sketches that I thought were dope and a video showing him laying out his line work on the larger scale wall pieces. I love when you see the artists process. It looked like he might have been using a type of pin striping brush and one shot. There was also some dope physical product designs he did like a diamond pendant w/ a chain, some Nike shoes, and a remix of the moon man award for MTV.
He had some great spin offs on cereal boxes and packaged products. There were several book offerings and post cards at the gift shop at the end, but we ran out of time, and I will have to double back.
An unexpected sidequest
Another exhibit that I didn’t know was there or expect to see was of Alejandro Cartegena’s work on display for a show called Ground Work. He put out a book called Car Pooling that went viral which he sold in several different editions. The work is a collection of images taken from a freeway over pass of people commuting in the back of work trucks. I love how he took something that could have been a one time great image and turned it into a deeper perspective and larger body of work. It said in the photo notes it took him a year to complete the body of work. I’m not sure if he went there everyday but either way the shots were incredible. There was a larger body of his work on display focusing around immigration, identity, and development in Latin America. I was struck by his incredible images including two haunting large frames of people photographed through the surface of the US/Mexico border wall. If you are in Frisco I highly recommend heading over to the SFMOMA to check out both shows. I’ll be going back again to check both of them out one more time.
Post museum we made our way around the corner to a fried chicken spot called The Bird. I got the spicy fried chicken sandwich w/ tater tots. It was solid, I love a good fried chicken sandwich. I think I’ll swing back through once more to see how their regular fried chicken sando tastes.
Fed and content we had a short walk to the ferry building. Ariving there I crossed paths with my homie Matt Beholder who was filming a segment on healthcare for an group called Worthy Health. They just interviewed me for a segment of their campaign, it made it feel cool to see them out in the wild working on another segment. I love getting to watch other production teams work and seeing how they go about their process. A brief catch up and then time for a chill ride back across the bay.
Started the day today feeling refreshed and energized. Back to the good grind.
Fin.
Hella appreciate y’all
-Scott
I listened to this dope live mix by Flying Lotus while writing this incase you need some solid tunes to be productive to.
Putting these posts out twice a week uses up a good amount of caffeine.
If you’d like to buy me a coffee, you can do so here. Thanks!
Some things I am reading/listening to:
Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
I finished the book. Found out for sure Elon Musk came up the name of his AI “Grok” because of the use of the word was created in this book. I didn’t realize the book had a good amount of controversy to it when it came out due to the implied sexual relationships at the time. One big take away from the book is that all large and small human social movements are cults. We are cultish by nature, all of us subscribe to some type of behavioral pattern around a bigger ideology than another human created.
5 Types Of Wealth
Great book so far. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a solid perspective and frame on how to have a much richer life beyond your financial net worth. I’m about 1/3 of the way through it. I’ll double back when I’m done.
An amazing podcast episode on Happiness.
This was put out by Dr. Peter Attia and guest Arthur Brooks, do yourself a favor and listen to it. Do it!
Another one down! If you’re interested in my work you can find more in the links below.
If you are curious about other pieces I’ve written on improving your photography, I recommend you check out these posts.
The Three Perspectives Of An Image
3 Reasons Why Your Photos Are Trash
The 2 Reasons Why Your Lighting Is Trash
4 lessons I learned while photographing Snoop Dogg
What a day! I remember seeing Kaws’ work for the first time in issues of 12 oz Prophet back in the day, he’s a hero of mine for real.