Barreda boys: from bay to borough num 6

Oh yeah i nearly forgot...our first meal on the road...over priced and underwhelming...but one hell of a name:


Rising early to a setting moon the immediate landscape looks so alien, a long, low, flat barrier between us and a more earthly set of mountains in the distance.

the salt formations here are called cotton balls made up of mostly borax...it is here that borax was discovered and was picked by chinese workers and carted via 20 mule teams to san francisco.


unaccustomed to such thick air we escaped to some altitude...relatively.


but then took a detour to the lowest point in the u.s. called badwater basin.
standing and looking up to the cliffs one can see a sign marking sea level.
it's that white band in the upper right corner of the photo...282 or so above us.



dry cracked salt-mud anvil.

Barreda boys: from bay to borough num 5b

Finally...on our way. we stopped for a little nourishment at the world famous "Hat" and enjoyed some intense Pastrami Dip.



then hit the open road. destination: Death Valley




long in to the night we traveled civilization growing scarce as quickly as the waning daylight.
but in that darkness with seemingly no one around twinkled billions of bright eyes winking in the sky. more perhaps than most will see on a typical evening. so with orion burning bright we set up camp 190 feet below sea level and staggered to bed curious what this menacingly named landscape might bring come morning.

can you see orion?



Eucalyptus anvil...alright i guess this is graffiti...but at the time it seemed a better option than carving an anvil into a tree...which to be honest has not totally left the realm of possibilities.

Barreda boys: from bay to borough num 5

On the way out of Claremont...no sooner had we crammed ourselves in the car when disaster struck. benign intentions to turn around and get on our way. no need for drama. yet she found us in the form of a low overhang. need i say more?










so now about 1 day and 6 hours behind schedule we can happily get on our way....


Mud anvil

Barreda boys: from bay to borough nun 4

Ooh how do I update a blog from an iPhone without pictures?

Verbalize my senses....
Example:
Imagine it: anabandoned ranch on a secret plateau named "squeaky springs" ... Speaks volumes... Can you taste the dust? hear the crunch of the gravel and the crisp whistle of the breeze interrupted by the shriek of rusty hinges?

But don't let's get ahead of ourselves. First to Claremont where the dry sunny landscape of so cal was replaced by a glistening green electrified by surrounding fog and raindrops that prick with cold.
David and I attemped to summit mt baldy only to be turned around the thundering voice of reason blaring from the loudspeaker atop the five-oh-mobile.

Yeesh...i give up...there's no way i can do justice to the following images with my words:








Henry Chang and Davidcito




Alexander Chang


Alexander


Walter, Alexander, David, Nicole and Henry...a wonderful perhaps 18 hours spent playing games, watching Letterman and eating home-made Korean Barbecue ribs.


in our excitement we nearly forgot it was valentines day and totally forgot that we were encroaching....
so here's a Valentine Anvil for lovers.

barreda boys: from bay to borough num 3b

Images from the Museum of Jurassic Technology:


crab fox with hologram



Micro-Mosaics made from butterfly wing scales and diatoms...incredible to me that i was able to put my camera up to the lense of the microscope and get these images...they barely visible to the naked eye.







Blurry image of the famous Megolaponera Foetens after death

no anvil

barreda boys: from bay to borough num 3a

"I wanna stay up all day"

an island of coils of gold and shimmering ayes

drifting and sprinting before me.

went fishing this morning with my cousin steven.

brought david too, but only for ten minutes...a shade of green told us he was done.

nary a fish was to be had...steven is convinced that i'm bad luck fisherman.

strike two.

i had a blast on the choppy, seemingly barren seas.

after a few hours, however, we knew when we were beat...headed in and fulfilled a fulfilling day with accomplishment of a dream of mine: going to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

you'll know it from the book: mr. wilson's cabinet of wonders.

i reveled in the obscure constructions, radical installations and numerous curiosities.

simple assemblages reminiscent of the museums i used to make in the base of the barn...inspiring me to return to that kind of work.

and the cheery on the top of todays sweets was dinner at Diana and Steven's house with my cousin's Isla and Jax....sweet chunks of heaven.

Isla Rain reading


Cousin Diana and Baby Jax


Family Meal


Nanna Bunny and Jax

Barreda Boys: from bay to borough num. 2

Looking down on a hawk soaring over the angels.

second day in la...davidsito is still under the weather.
so around lunch time i ran up the mountain to the getty and reveled in the citadel of creativity.
had a pleasant tour of the architecture, but was overcome by what basically turned out to be a private tour of a show on russian futurist books. the passionate great grandfather of todays zine culture. spent over an hour getting wonderful information and stories from one of the curators and even got the other curator to join in.
these artists writers, created new languages in art, in aesthetics and rewrote the rules for the languages that existed.
precursor to the dadaists they developed poetry of "zaum" - trans-rational language that spoke through sound and appearance rather than meaning.
so i wrote one too.

seethe

   the slide

grumble 

twist

essst

calm

Mav

veneer

eeeeer

se

earse

slow 

to walk.

wire anvil

Barreda Boys: from bay to borough num. 1

"stop paying attention to every note"

we left sf bout mid day yesterday packed into an overloaded jetta like forest animals in a mitten.
david in the pilots seat, grey in the archivists seat and myself under a precarious mound of possessions engulfing me further at every left hand turn.
cruising the 101 we landed at davids friend len's house...a former associate of david's who energized us for the first leg of our trip by telling us of covering the la riots.

with the presence of laurence olivier he recounted several stories of hot shots and near misses.

as dusk approached we inserted ourselves back in to carefully proscribed positions and took off with the sun setting over our right shoulders.

stopping at a little mexican dive for nourishment and a glistening fullmoon lit vista point for wonderment we progressed down the road calmly and smoothly...a bit more smoothly than the we can say for the overloaded rear springs.

anyway, here are a few shots



at the starting line



cloud anvil



chip anvil








pacific barreda boys