Renegade Craft Fair: A celebration of all things handmade

Renegade Craft Fair / This annual event has become one of my favorite
San Francisco things to do.

The Renegade Craft Fair at San Francisco's Fort Mason is a celebration of all things handmade in a variety of media. Last weekend's annual Renegade event provided hundreds of artists and craft makers a chance to escape their studios and step into a relaxed, festive and lively atmosphere.

Since its debut in 2003, the Renegade Craft Fair has showcased the best and brightest in Etsy indie craft and design, and it's become a major player in a booming DIY (Do It Yourself) craft movement in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Each year, the Renegade Craft Fair visits seven U.S. cities (Austin, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle) plus London. The San Francisco summer happening comes in mid-to-late July. I've been a Renegade Craft Fair goer for the past five summers, and it's become one of my favorite San Francisco things to do.

BambuEarth / Natural, sustainable, ethical, vegan, local
handmade soap.

From new and traditional to modern and innovative, there's always a diversity of art and style at the Renegade Craft Fair and this year was no different from the past. For me, I find it truly interesting to see what's new and hip in the areas of art, clothing, jewelry, photography, quilts, toys and other knick-knacks -- and to be able to meet and mingle with the artists behind these creations.

On Sunday, my wife and I were among thousands gathered inside both the Herbst Pavilion and the Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason to see over 450 modern makers of art.

There were arts and crafts enthusiasts, a poetry store, media scouts and taste makers -- even savvy shoppers stocking up early on unique, artist-created gifts for the end of the year holidays.

Of the 2015 Renegade San Francisco craft makers, one in particular garnered my interest and attention: Jordan Graves, a young, twenty-something artist from Savannah, Ga., whose Repeat Offfender -- yes with 3 f's in Offfender -- whose multi-disciplinary approach to art "generates patterns with digital artifacts for surface design, jewelry, and motion graphics."

According to her website, the multidisciplinary work of Repeat Offfender grew out of Graves' work towards a B.F.A. degree in Motion Media Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Sprouted Spirals / 3D printed jewelry by Jordan Graves.

Graves greeted my wife and I with a cute and polite smile as we perused her creative and colorful stud earrings -- she calls them "Sprouted Spirals."

They came in a variety of cool colors, including: white, black, red, blue, pink, purple, orange and yellow.

We were excited and so was Graves.

I asked what inspired her art and without any hesitation, Graves answered my question with interest and enthusiasm by saying it was her interest in textile design combined with a passion for digital roots -- you know, mathematics. Thus, Graves' combination of interests morphed into her unique creation of 3D printed jewelry.

Perusing Graves' website for Repeat Offfender is not only enjoyable, it's also about taking a deeper look into how she bridges her motion graphics background into her work and to see what is influencing her new collections. It's all about happy bright colors.

Photographs: BambuEarth by Michael Dickens ©2015; Repeat Offfender booth and Sprouted Spirals courtesy of RepeatOfffender.com. 

Baseball isn't perfect ... but it feels like it is

The Hall of Fame Class of 2014 / (L-R) Bobby Cox, Tony LaRussa,
Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Greg Maddux, Joe Torre.

"Baseball isn't perfect, but it feels like it is," said Joe Torre, one of six living inductees, whose speech capped a lively and, at times, emotion-filled day packed with wonderful stories and heartfelt memories as the Class of 2014 was honored in ceremonies and welcomed to Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. on Sunday afternoon.

On a day when baseball got it right, the tone of Torre's speech was best described by The New York Times "as if designated to deliver the greatness-of-the-game testimonial." 

And he did.

"We're responsible for giving it the respect it deserves," said Torre, who managed the New York Yankees to six American League pennants (1996, 1998-2001, 2003) and won four World Series (1996, 1998-2000).

During the nationally televised three-hour ceremony, Torre was joined at the podium by fellow managers Bobby Cox and Tony LaRussa, slugger Frank Thomas and pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine. Each living great -- and I saw all of them play or manage -- exemplified the game in the right way. Together, they represented quite an assemblage of accomplishments across the baseball diamond: World Series championships, Cy Young Award winners, Most Valuable Player awards.

Decent men all of them, too.

Roger Angell accepting the J.G. Taylor Spink Award

Baseball also got it right when it enshrined the esteemed Roger Angell, a longtime writer and editor for The New Yorker, who received the J.G. Taylor Spink Award on Saturday, the Baseball Hall of Fame's writing honor. The bespectacled Angell, 93 and thin, is revered for his revealing portraits and essays on baseball, which began appearing in The New Yorker in the early 1960s. Since then, they have been compiled into several books filled full of meditations and observations about our national pastime, most notably The Summer Game, which I first read as a teenager. I still treasure the book's words today like the literary baseball bible it is.

In his debut as a baseball writer for The New Yorker in 1962, Angell wrote a wonderful essay full of humor and insight about attending spring training in Florida. "Big-league ball on the west coast of Florida is a spring sport played by the young for the divertissement of the elderly -- a sun-warmed, sleepy exhibition celebrating the juvenescence of the year and the senescence of the fans."

Many have acclaimed Angell as the greatest baseball writer. "Angell's prose is clear and erudite, elegant and informed; he is a fan with a wicked eye for detail, a sense of humor and a curiosity about the way athletes perform," wrote Richard Sandomir in The New York Times. "He filled his notebooks but did not have to convert his jottings into an article under a tight deadline. He had months to digest his observations and then wrote long -- very long."

Said Angell: "I didn't have to write after a game. That was unforgivable."

Angell's main job for many years at The New Yorker was as a fiction editor, a job once held by his mother, Katherine White. His stepfather was the famous children's author E.B. White, who penned Charlotte's Web. So, it's no surprise that writing became Angell's life-long passion. He was raised in good company.

"When he accepted the award Saturday at Doubleday Field," wrote Sandomir, "Angell said that he collected '.300 lifetime talkers like a billionaire hunting down Cézannes and Matisses' -- loquacious folks like Keith Hernandez, Roger Craig, Bill Rigney and Dan Quisenberry. And he gave his thanks to baseball, 'which has turned out to be so familiar and so startling, so spacious and so exacting, and so easy looking and so heartbreakingly difficult that it filled my notebooks in a rush.'"

Peter Gammons, like Angell, a longtime chronicler of baseball, wrote: "It isn't simply nostalgia, it is a weekend that allows us a sense of where we are. As Angell spoke, one thought about a life of literacy, not tweets, that not only did he wrote so elegantly, but he edited John Updike, he edited John McPhee, which made me recall the sign Angell said McPhee had in his kitchen: 'When everything is going your way, you're probably in the wrong lane.'"

Angell is a "lover of books and words," wrote Maureen Dowd in a wonderful New York Times Sunday Review column that appeared over the weekend. His prose combines his love of language with his passion for baseball. "Who else could use 'venery' in a story and write the world's longest palindrome?" she asked.

"Within the ballpark, time moves differently, marked by no clock except the events of the game," wrote Angell in The Summer Game, the first of his seven books about baseball. "This is the unique, unchangeable feature of baseball, and perhaps explains why this sport, for all the enormous changes it has undergone in the past decade or two, remains somehow rustic, unviolent, and introspective. Baseball's time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which players move at exactly the same pace and rhythms as all their predecessors. This is the way the game was played in our youth and in our fathers' youth, and even back then -- back in the country days -- there must have been the same feeling that time could be stopped. Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young."

Indeed, baseball hasn't always been perfect, but this past weekend it felt like it was. It made me feel forever young.

Photographs: Courtesy of MLB.com.

It's a date: My social media engagements

One of many things I appreciate about social media is the opportunity to engage in opinion and conversation with people who share similar interests with me.

Over the past few months, I've discovered a couple of online forums that are both engaging and enjoyable, and they're worth making time for each week:  "Tate Debate" via Facebook on Thursdays and the Washington Post's "TV Column Live with Lisa de Moraes" chat via the newspaper's website, washingtonpost.com, on Fridays.  The former is thought provoking while the latter is lively and entertaining.  Together, they make up my social media engagements.

Tate Debate / Thought provoking

On "Tate Debate,"  moderated by the staff of the London-based Tate Museums (which includes the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern), a topic or question is posted each week on its Facebook page for art enthusiasts to digest and share feedback.  Recent debate topics have included: Digital technology ("How could it change the arts?) and artistic concept versus artistic creativity ("Which is more important?"). With a new exhibition, "Watercolour" opening tomorrow at the Tate Britain, last week's debate focused on painting in watercolour.  The question: "What do you think of watercolour ~ a traditional method, or a visionary, abstract medium?" brought out some very interesting and thoughtful answers. Here's a sample:

"Watercolour is unforgiving and the sharpest insight to an artist," opined a middle-aged male artist from Utah.  "It reveals the actual thought process of its creation."

Another contributor, a twenty-something woman from England, added: "Whether a medium is traditional or not highly depends on the person handling it."

Because of the eight-hour time difference between London and the Bay Area, by the time I log in to Facebook on Thursday mornings, anywhere from 25-50 comments or more have already been posted to the Tate Debate.  Still, I find it's a great opportunity to see what's on the minds of other art lovers ~ especially since most of the comments are posted by Europeans ~ and, I have found, it's a unique opportunity to put in my two-cents worth from across the pond.  I've even received a couple of e-mails via Facebook commenting on my responses or thanking me for "Liking" their comments.

By the way, here's my response to the last week's "Watercolour" debate topic: "Watercolour is popular and universal.  While I normally think of watercolour as traditional landscapes painted in pastels, it's obvious that watercolour can be an abstract concept painted in bolds, too.  Each in its own way is beautiful ~ and powerful, too.  There's no right way, no wrong way to paint watercolour."  My comment even drew a couple of "Likes".

The TV Column Live /
Lively and entertaining

Meanwhile, the Washington Post's "TV Column Live with Lisa de Moraes" chat (Fridays at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT) usually runs for about an hour.  De Moraes, the Post's witty TV columnist who also writes a TV blog for the Post, answers questions about "the drama, comedy and heartbreak of television ~ both on screen and behind-the-scenes." Through my own observation, I've discovered she loves 30 Rock, but hates ~ hates ~ American Idol's Ryan Seacrest (she calls him Seabiscuit), and she fawns over most PBS Masterpiece Classic "crunchy-gravel dramas" (a term she coined to describe a lot of English period dramas whose mansions include a crunchy, gravel driveway) like the recently aired "Downton Abbey."

Last week, de Moraes started off with a bang and came with a topical agenda: "Super Bowl ads ~ best ever of The Big Snooze? Idolette telling Ryan Seacrest he's all washed up emotionally from 10 years hosting show ~ best TV moment of the season? Will Keith Olbermann get you to watch Current TV? So much to talk about this week.  Let's get started. ..."

I should note: I credit my wife for introducing me to the "TV Column Live" chat and, after regularly participating, not only do I find it to be entertaining, but also an interesting perspective on the TV industry from a media insider and that ~ bottom line ~ it's a very much a business based on ratings points.  In a typical week, de Moraes (whose nickname is Pookie) responds to between 35-50 questions.

Here's a couple from last week's chat:

From Bored with My TV Shows: "So, Pookie, I watch the following: Blue Bloods, White Collar, Modern Family, Castle, Hawaii Five-O. I am sorta bored with them, except for Modern Family, which is always top-notch.  Castle is amusing at least. What should I start watching?  Lisa's response: "Episodes on Showtime because it's the best comedy on TV, Mr. Sunshine on ABC (just to see Allison Janney play crazy), The Good Wife because Alan Cummings is fab, new season of American Idol because Steven Tyler is a revelation. ... I could go on and on ..."

From 30 Rock: "Why doesn't NBC cut costs and get rid of the rest of the cast on 30 Rock and devote the half hour to Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey?"  Lisa's response: "Wait a minute! You want to get rid of Kenneth the page? And Tracy Jordan? And Jenna?  I admit Liz's writing staff could go, but I draw the line at Kenneth, Tracy and Jenna ..."

Occasionally, I've submitted a question and sometimes, like last week, I got lucky to have mine used during the chat:

From Countdown to Current TV: "Hey, Pookie: I'm looking forward to seeing Keith Olbermann's literary wit and acerbic commentary resurface on Current TV. Do you think he made a good career decision joining a fledgling cable network and should MSNBC be worried?  Lisa's response: MSNBC seems to be hanging in there without Keith.  And, as to the career move, it depends on his equity stake, I think. ... I always enjoy watching Keith move from network to network. ... And I'm anxious to see what other shows he's going to exec(utive) produce. ..."

Say what you will about social media, being able to contribute to a thoughtful, cultural discussion and sharing in an entertaining dialogue with a media critic are both pretty cool things in my book.  After all, like Madonna, herself an artist and cultural critic, once said: "Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion."