Weekly Weird: cake babies and balls of clay

You might say that my Weekly Weird could probably be more accurately described as monthly. No matter, I'll soldier on.

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Rob and I were in San Francisco a couple weeks ago for a way-too-short weekend. Rob's sister, Deet Dee (ejddiamond*) of I Dream of Cake fame was graduating from San Francisco Art Institute with her MFA in 'New Genres' -- a concentration that sounds very avant-garde and way over my head.

The weekend was a whirlwind with a thesis show opening at Fort Mason, graduation ceremony, party, taco stand.

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The thesis show was really fun and chock-full of weird. Jail cell constructed out of soap -- weird and impressive; Man making ball after ball of clay with staring problem -- weird and creepy; ejddiamond's baby sculptures made entirely of cake -- weird and super awesome!

In their incubator-fridge

Actually cake!

Missed opportunity: Deet Dee could have totally trumped clay ball man in the weird-creepy performance-art genre if she actually ate these.

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A couple things of note on art school graduations: it's not like a customary graduation. It becomes immediately apparent that no one is there to receive their B.S. or is German (logic: scientists and Germans need order). For starters, it took me a while to realize that the ceremony had started because people were kind of drifting in (and out) and only 10% of the graduates were in gowns. I wised up when someone started talking into the microphone and asked me for a donation.

Procession; Niemand hier spricht Deutsches

If you've never been, the SFAI is a really amazing building, full with Diego Rivera mural, pretty courtyard, and beautiful rooftop view of the city. I would normally think it was really awesome to hang out on their roof, but it happened to be 90-degrees that day and the roof happens to be made of clay. My species was not made for the sun and I think desperate thoughts when I start baking on clay tiles. I wanted to give Ed Ruscha a mouth kiss for giving only a 90-second speech to accept his honorary degree.

But the most significant note about art school graduations: you can apparently tack on a speech even if you're not in the ceremony program and it's 90-degrees outside (true story). So while the ceremony hijacker talked and talked, I thought about what I would say if I had the moxie to grab the mic away from her. I think it would begin with "I'll be your party master this afternoon. Hey-Ho! [blow horn]... A wise man once said, [insert Jesse Helms quote]" and then lead into a long retrospective of Anne Geddes.

Cool things to do on a roof overlooking San Francisco Part I

Cool things to do on a roof overlooking San Francisco Part II

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More Deet Dee cake at the after party:

even tastier than bacon

* I'm in charge of setting up Deet Dee's portfolio site in exchange for what will be a really cool wedding cake. I need to fix some image issues, but then I'll post so you can see how cool her work is.

I Dream of Cake

Having a really fancy and expensive wedding cake has never been on my nuptial wish list. I would rather plunk down money for a variety of desserts and candy. Rob and I talked about having a very small cake for the sake of tradition, but maybe in the shape of our Wii characters or sculptural busts of our heads -- something we would find funny.

Rob's sister, Elinor, made her own wedding cake last November, which was delicious and gone within a couple minutes of the cutting (otherwise I totally would have tried to nab seconds). She recently took a job as a baker/decorator at this San Francisco-based bakery that I have to admit has made me reassess my feelings on the wedding cake.

The bakery is I Dream of Cake, which has some really impressive and some really crazy designs. They're truly pieces of art. Below are a few of my favorites:

This has to be red velvet cake a la "Steel Magnolias"

Awwww

I came across the illustration of Matte Stephens on Etsy. So cute.

Papillons de Papier

Australian artist, Catherine Swan, creates these interesting butterfly collages out of vintage Esquire and Playboy magazines. To butcher her artist statement, she creates a specimen out of the glamorous, technicolor world of magazines from the 50s and 60s and the fading significance of their content.

I like it for more superficial reasons: my appreciation of a nice mounted insect display.



To add to the butterfly theme, I found this cool seating chart idea on Hello!Lucky