field trip with students

Today I went with students to SF to take photos, and to look at branding and type and color out in the world. This photo is a diagram of how to operate a crane and the photo below was taken when we were waiting around for a student who never showed up. I wanted to take them to the Fraenkel Gallery to give them some idea of what the art business world is all about. In this class are quite a few talented photographers.

Lucky for me Fraenkel Gallery was having a show about how Edward Hopper influenced photography or something but basically there were about 4 lovely Hopper watercolors, a few sketches and a couple of paintings and a bunch of photographs. It is interesting to hear which pieces students respond to.

I can't think of anything more lovely than a Hopper watercolor. Gosh I would love to have one of these. To be able to look at it all the time.

One of my students asked me what I liked about it.
They are so clear, so no-nonsense. Honest. You can see the light so clearly...he really knew how to see light. They are large too...I would say 20x24. Lots of white paper. Fresh, not overworked. What a thrill.

We went down the hall to look at some other 49 geary galleries and saw some cool space and star photos.
The 'resale' gallery was a hit with the students because of the variety. They had 2 Arneson prints. I suppose it makes all these places so nervous to have these groups of occasionally borish students but I think it is very important for the students and you never know--they may be back after they become big-time creative directors.

The Hosfelt gallery had this incredible series of pencil drawn pages from a book of Proust...another real thrill for the typographer and reader in me. She copied her xeroxes of the pages in a photo realist manner but what was cool was seeing the underlinings and edits copied too. And the typefaces and dingbats and bindings.

Some students seem to tire so easily. We hardly stayed at all. I didn't really snap enough photos. I wish we had gone more places.