Napa, California
July 2, 2008
Photobooth comes to Yountville
San Francisco photographer Christopher Irion brings his PhotoBooth Project to the Yountville Community Hall Thursday, July 10 from noon-7 p.m. and Saturday, July 12, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. People who live or work in Yountville are encouraged to visit the booth on one of those days. Irion invites townspeople to “bring your sweetheart, your kids, your dogs” and sit for a portrait. As a way of recognizing the collaboration with each participant, everyone is sent a complimentary 5” x 7” print. In addition, all the portraits will be included in a mural to be installed later this summer in front of the Bardessono Inn on Yount Street adjacent to the community hall. The installation will be on view until November.
The PhotoBooth is a lightweight, portable studio that can be shipped anywhere in the world. During the past three years, Irion has traveled over 8,000 miles and made over 2,000 portraits in communities across America. The booth is set up at cafes, in parking lots, at county fairs and on sidewalks.
Irion then creates installations of the resulting portraits taken of a particular community or group. A requirement of the project is that the installation occur in a place that is frequented by the community in its daily activities, with pedestrian access rather than in a place apart such as a gallery or community space. Irion considers the projects to be about community and only secondarily about art.
Irion is motivated by the concept of community. “I am interested in strengthening the ties of a community, by showing the group back to itself in a direct and democratic fashion with the idea that viewers can directly gaze on the faces of fellow citizens and have a moment to reflect on their relationship to one another. The installation functions as a place to meet one’s neighbors as a town green might once have allowed, so as to share with others the gaze of the community,” he explains.
The Yountville PhotoBooth project and Picture Wall installation have been underwritten by the Bardessono Inn and Spa scheduled to open in February 2009.
Click here to view photos of the Bardessono Inn and Spa construction site on Flickr.
Posted by Pamela at 10:52 AM | Bardessono Inn and Spa, Non-wine activities in Napa Valley | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Vintners John Conover of Cade and Plumpjack and Carl Doumani of Quixote joined in a little friendly wine combat this week pitting Cabernet Sauvignon against Petite Syrah as the top pairing for grilled lamb. KCBS Radio’s Narsai David armed himself and donned full Western regalia for the wine country picnic including a badge that mysteriously read, “Merlot.” (Photos by Drew Altizer)
June 18, 2008
Cab vs. Petite: A Different Sort of Rivalry
By Hank Shaw
A sunny day, good wine, good food and lots of good conversation. I’ve been here before. For the better part of two decades my life has revolved around the world of politics, and the setting at the Plumpjack winery Monday looked like any number of high-dollar political fundraisers I’d attended over the years. But looks can be deceiving.
For starters, the mere presence of the grilled leg of lamb and rapini greens served at lunch set this event apart: Both were better prepared than what you’d get at a typical buck-raking event. And the rapini greens? They would never be served at a Republican event (too foreign), and rapini’s bitter tang typically banishes them from Democratic menus as well. On the tables of politics, nothing should be too challenging: Political food is cheap, merely fuel for the conversation.
Good wine, however, does grace the tables of the political elite; just ask former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, who got himself in trouble recently for buying too much expensive French wine. He’d have done better to spend his money on the Plumpjack cabernet sauvignon or the Quixote petite syrah, both superb wines served with the lamb.
Monday’s luncheon pitted the Quixote petite syrah against a pair of cabernets: the Plumpjack and its sister winery, CADE. Which paired better with the lamb? There were even cards for the guests to cast their vote. (No hanging chads here, though) I knew I’ve been in politics too long when I started thinking that with two evenly matched cabernets duking it out on one side, and a lone petite syrah on the other, there was a whiff of this year’s presidential race in the day’s contest. Is Obama a cab?
Continue reading "Cab vs. Petite: A Different Sort of Rivalry"
Posted by Pamela at 3:50 PM | Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley Dining, Napa Valley Wines, Organic, Petite Sirah, Quixote | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
May 14, 2008
Hear Eleanor Coppola Read
From Her, "Notes On A Life"
"Eleanor Coppola shares her extraordinary life as an artist, filmmaker, wife, and mother in a book that captures the glamour and grit of Hollywood and reveals the private tragedies and joys that tested and strengthened her over the past twenty years.
Her first book, Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now, was hailed as “one of the most revealing of all first hand looks at the movies” (Los Angeles Herald Examiner). And now the author brings the same honesty, insight, and wit to this absorbing account of the next chapters in her life.
In this new work we travel back and forth with her from the swirling center of the film world to the intimate heart of her family. She offers a fascinating look at the vision that drives her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, and describes her daughter Sofia’s rise to fame with the film Lost in Translation. Even as she visits faraway movie sets and attends parties, she is pulled back to pursue her own art, but is always focused on keeping her family safe. The death of their son Gio in a boating accident in 1986 and her struggle to cope with her grief and anger leads to a moving exploration of her deepest feelings as a woman and a mother.
Written with a quiet strength, Eleanor Coppola’s powerful portrait of the conflicting demands of family, love and art is at once very personal and universally resonant."(Random House, 2008)
Click here to purchase, "Notes on a Life."
Upcoming Book Signing Events:
5/19/2008 - 7:30 pm
Kepler's Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650-324-4321
5/20/2008
- 6 p.m.
Tosca Cafe
242 Columbus Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-986-9651
5/22/2008 - 7 pm
Book Passage
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA 94925
415-927-0960
5/28/2008 - 7:30 pm
Capitola Book Cafe
1475 41st Avenue
Capitola, CA 95010
831-462-4415
6/3/2008 - 7 pm
Rubicon Estate (Click here for information on the 'Music in the Vineyards' event)
1991 St Helena Highway
Rutherford, CA 94573
To purchase tickets for this event: 707-258-5559
Continue reading "Hear Eleanor Coppola Read
From Her, "Notes On A Life""
Posted by Pamela at 10:54 AM | Art Education, Books, Non-wine activities in Napa Valley | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
