Notes from Underdog.

Family on the web: On Education, On Art

Two family related pieces to plug:

My Dad wrote a piece for the Marin Independent Journal on the obstacle that standardized testing has become in American education.  I'm bias, but I do think it's pretty darned spot-on. I only wish the people who control how education is funded and mapped in the US would read and be changed by it.

"An obstacle, not a solution" >>

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Meanwhile, my sister has a new web site to help promote her art. I'm helping her lay it out and get it going, and we still have to update the prices and add a few more pieces.

Check it out:

Tracy Phillips on Artspan >>

Brother of Crumb

I was thinking about Maxon Crumb the other day after spotting him across the street from GreenCine HQ - not unusual, he lives and hangs out in this neighborhood - when this engaging article by Edward Guthmann appeared in the SF Chronicle:

Still in the shadows, an artist in his own right

And there's a podcast now, too.
Definitely worth a read and a listen. If it weren't for the film Crumb, I'd never recognize him, wouldn't separate him from the other drifters and sketchy denizens of the tenderloin. 

Written on the City project

My friend Josh, also a writer and also a grad of CCA's creative writing MFA program, started this cool web project - a collection of photographs of words that have been painted/grafitti'd/stenciled/etc in urban areas:

Written on the City

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a picture of words can be worth a lot, too.

Chat-music.

From the Why didn't I ever think of this? Dept.

Artists mine Internet forums to catch musical essence of chat (by Kenneth Baker)

"Listening Post" consists of 231 little screens, each about the size of a dollar bill, hanging in an array of 21 even vertical rows. Four hidden computers with customized operating systems feed the screens with text captured a short time earlier from thousands of online public forums such as chat rooms and bulletin boards.