SAY Si, where art is spoken.

Z. Smith ’12

Conventions come and go. San Antonians barely notice their arrivals and departures. But professional artisans are getting a head start to ensure we remember the Concrete Decor Show, February 20-24.

This past week, they have been working with students to transform bare concrete around the entrance of SAY Si into a major display of the artistic side of the craft. A “river” will soon spill out of the building and over the entry ramp:

From the double-glass doors of the entrance, a micro-topping in vivid tones of blues and greens will progress down the sidewalk and descend a vertical wall to terminate in the landscaping. A team of national trainers from Miracote and Butterfield Color, aided by local concrete contractors, will install an earth-toned stampable overlay and add pattern and texture adjacent to the river mural. SAY Si students will add the finishing touches. They will illustrate native flora and fauna along the faux river bank, and permanent inscriptions of words the students find inspiring will punctuate the surrounding areas.

Concrete cosmetology – 5,000 square feet of it – will continue at SAY Si during the conference itself. According to the show coordinators:

Project teams, pairing industry experts with workshop participants, will create the ultimate makeovers of old, worn and unattractive concrete surfaces. Each area presents a building problem or unique challenge that the team will solve using products donated by leading architectural and decorative concrete manufacturers….

Inside SAY Si, workshop participants will apply a polyaspartic coating in the public gallery where the works of SAY Si students are exhibited. Old concrete floors in several studios where classes are held will be renovated. Two different techniques will be used: grinding and polishing an existing concrete slab and resurfacing another area with an innovative new polishable overlay technology. A special metallic epoxy coating will be applied on the floor in the Black Box theater….

Board member Susan Toomey Frost can barely contain her excitement over this major focus on a sometimes overlooked craft that is part of San Antonio’s heritage. Jon Hinojosa, artistic and executive director of SAY Si, is thrilled over the makeover because:

This project will not only showcase creative concrete master craftsmen, but allow our students to participate and learn a new art form.

And:

SAY Si is a family connected through art.

S. Ramos ’11

1. Cheez Doodles as Art (1), posted on January 8, 2011
2. Obsession preserves a slice of time in Mexico, posted on November 4, 2011
3. “Nuit of the Living Dead” (6), posted on October 30, 2010
4. Ban the Banner (2), posted on August 8, 2010
5. Alamollywood Part I: Are the Daughters Extremely Savvy or Starstruck? (3), posted on January 2, 2011
6. Susan Toomey Frost stimulates a second revival of San Antonio’s traditional tilework, posted on June 24, 2011
7. ‘Loanership’ program leads to Texas Centennial series of prints opening at King William Art, posted on May 28, 2011
8. Please put this song on Tony’s pony, and make it ride away (9), posted on July 25, 2010
9. Best Restaurant in Valladolid (5), Plus Warning, posted on March 17, 2010
10. Preserving the Art of ‘Papel Picado’ (10), posted on April 30, 2010
11. Oh, no! Not the Alamo (again). Can the lost mission of St. Anthony be found?, posted on June 11, 2011
12. ’1,2,3. What do you see?’ Too many toucans to count., posted on August 9, 2011

Thanks for following, and love receiving feedback. You have once again given me license to exercise absolutely no discipline in selecting topics about which to blog.

To get an idea of the sculptural beauty of coffee mugs crafted by potter Diana Kersey, ride across the Mulberry Street Bridge or the Millrace Bridge leading to the Brackenridge Park Golf Course. Each of these bridges is graced with more than 200 square feet of the artist’s figurative tiles.

At first, I felt silly interviewing someone who recently completed these two major public art installations about coffee mugs, but Kersey put me at ease. Yes, she still loves taking a lump of clay and shaping it into a mug as her potter’s wheel turns.

“Small projects allow me to explore design ideas,” Kersey said. “These small works play into the design elements of larger ones.” Plus, she is never bored because: “No two mugs are exactly alike.”

Gayle Brennan Spencer in San Antonio Taste Magazine, December 2011

Click to view slideshow.

Steve Bennett spotlighted the first bridge Diana Kersey completed on the San Antonio River in a June edition of the San Antonio Express-News:

However, while working out today, I watched part of a Turner classic film from 1933 that altered my opinion of life in that decade. Ann Vickers, starring Irene Dunne and Walter Huston, was based on a novel by Sinclair Lewis released only a few months earlier than the film itself. Reviewing the book for Scribner’s Magazine, critic Eli Siegel harshly concluded:

I suppose, therefore, that all laudatory adjectives could be used about Mr. Lewis’s last novel except those meaning that it was great.

Warning: Plot-spoiling ahead.

Not having read the novel, what amazes me is the topics dealt with quite openly in the screen version of Ann Vickers. This movie would not have passed the test of whatever Catholic rating system my mother would quote in order to forbid my viewing almost anything other than a Disney cartoon. The main character in the plot:

• Rejects suitors to choose a career over marriage
• Is close friends with an independent female physician
• Has an affair with a cad off to World War I
• Gets pregnant
• Has an abortion
• Takes a job in a woman’s prison
• Is unwittingly framed in a compromising photo and blackmailed by those running the prison
• Exposes the poor treatment of inmates in prison
• Falls in love with a judge whose wife is running around with a paramour in Europe yet refuses to divorce him
• Falls in love with said judge just as he is set to be charged for insider trading
• Has an illegitimate son with the judge
• And, when the now-divorced judge is paroled after three years, seems poised to live happily ever after…..

1933? Surely this movie must have been banned or have ended the career of Irene Dunne? But Dunne’s career was hot; she was gaining a reputation as the “First Lady of Hollywood.” And the contemporary review of Ann Vickers written by Mordaunt Hall for The New York Times barely raises an eyebrow about the subject matter and does not warn viewers of its mature content:

Although it cannot be said that the shadows passing on the screen are definite replicas of the characters drawn by the author, the incidents are invariably interesting although never suspenseful. More often than not the natures of the persons involved are hinted at rather than adroitly delineated, and the narrative, which touches on many phases of Ann’s eventful career, is somewhat too episodical. Owing to the fact that the producers have captured more than a mere suggestion of the spirit of the author, the picture holds one’s attention.

Under the “Trivia” section of The Internet Movie Database, I learned the plot did arouse some pushback from the Hays Office of censorship in 1933 and later, in 1935, a denial of an “approved” rating that probably destined the film for obscurity:

Some objections were made by the Hays Office concerning the plot of the first draft of the screenplay, where Ann marries Captain Resnick and then has an affair with Barney. The plot was changed to Ann being seduced by the Captain with the offense somehow deemed less if only one of the parties in the adulterous affair is married. No reference is made about any abortion in the trip to Havana, and in the released print the cause of death of Ann’s baby girl is never mentioned. RKO applied for an “Approved” certificate in 1935, when the production code was more rigorously enforced, but they were informed that no certificate would be given because of the film’s attitude towards adultery.

Miss Dunne, as has been mentioned, acquits herself favorably.

 

While Ann Vickers is far from an outstanding film, it is worth watching for its alternative view of life in the 1930s. And, for the same reason, I was hoping to download the book to my Kindle. Alas, it is not available. Nor is it a title in the catalog of the San Antonio Public Library, so I have resorted to ordering a used copy via snail mail.

I don’t mean the kind on verbal college admission tests, such as this:

Butterfly is to caterpillar as frog is to:

A. fish     B. amphibian     C. tadpole     D. toad

I can follow that logic easily. And I have learned not to get overly distracted by the imagery in commonplace idioms such as “raining cats and dogs.” Well, almost.

But I am talking about speakers who use long-winded analogies. By the time the speaker returns to the original point, they have lost me completely. I am concentrating solely on the analogy.

And I am referring to advertising as well. Generally, I am not subjected to much television advertising. The fast-forward button is extremely effective in eliminating it.

But, while working out at the gym, I have no such option. Which brings me to Swiss cheese, and the holes in it.

Some branch of Humana, I’d tell you which but it escapes me, is running an adverstisement focusing on three wedges of Swiss cheese. Some man keeps telling me to buy the cheese on the left, representing some Humana product with no holes in its coverage. But that cheese looks like flavorless baby Swiss cheese. I really prefer the cheese on the right with big holes on it. For some reason, I have always thought holey cheese tasted better than namby-pamby baby Swiss. I know logically the holes themselves have no flavor, but the cheese around them does.

Surely Humana has focus groups, so I guess I’m the only one who can’t fathom the wisdom of the analogy. All they have accomplished is sending me to the refrigerator to slice some Jarlsberg and exam its holes.

Maybe that is the whole point. Maybe the advertisement actually is extremely clever product placement by the Dairy Council? 

Leiwen, the interwoven thunder pattern on the nine pewter panels, was popular on bronze vessels during the Shang Dynasty, 1800-1200 BCE. These particular panels were crafted for and installed in the Taiwanese Pavilion during HemisFair 1968.

May Lam donated 14 pairs of the rescued 3 x 1-foot panels to the San Antonio River Foundation during ceremonies at the Asian New Year Celebration more than five years ago. She wanted them to serve as a tribute to the rich cultural contributions of early Chinese immigrants to San Antonio, particularly the hundreds General John Pershing brought from Mexico as the United States entered World War I (I would include a photo of the adjacent panel explaining this and spare myself from typing, but I stubbornly refuse to reproduce materials failing to recognize “River Walk” as two words.).

While General Pershing was pursuing Pancho Villa in Mexico, Chinese businessmen had gathered around his encampments, operating stores and  cafés for his troops. When he returned to San Antonio in 1917, many of the Chinese retreated under his protection and were encamped at For Sam Houston until President Harding granted them legal resident status in 1921.

According to author Mel Brown in Chinese Heart of Texas, some of these new San Antonians, known as “Pershing Chinese,” were able to qualify as “merchants,” an exception to the 1882 Exclusion Act that deprived Chinese of many rights accorded other immigrants and banned additional Chinese immigration. 

Brown wrote: 

Following release from Fort Sam, a somewhat communal lifestyle was assumed at first as the Chinese Camp men stuck together for practical reasons and mutual assistance. If one of them had skills as a cook, the group contributed economically to help establish his café. As the business grew, that man hired his cronies or pitched in monetarily to set up another’s store or café…. This communal response to problems or needs was typical of the Chinese immigrant experience in America. It was a rich cultural resource which strengthened all the Cantonese communities during many years of prejudice, discrimination and exclusion. 

The Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943.

Susan Toomey Frost’s obsession with vintage San Antonio tiles led her to her first postcard featuring a photograph by Hugo Brehme (1882-1954). In her introduction to Timeless Mexico: The Photographs of Hugo Brehme, just released by the University of Texas Press, she explains how she ended up in relentless pursuit of his work:

My Brehme collection began innocently with an image of a winsome young woman in the traditional folkloric dress of a China Poblana. She was standing in front of a tile doorway at the ex-convent of Churubusco, but it was really the tiles surrounding her that interested me.

In researching the history of tile making in San Antonio, I reasoned that vintage photographs of tiles could help me solve a puzzle. Which of the tiles installed in San Antonio were made locally and which were made in Mexico, California, or elsewhere? If I found a specific design pictured in a vintage postcard from Mexico, for example, I could be assured that the same design found in San Antonio was imported and that local San José workshops had not made it.

And so I began acquiring tile images in earnest. I found most of them on Mexican postcards, but I soon was buying images that didn’t picture tiles. Certain photographs stood out because of the inherent beauty of their subject matter and the quality of their execution. I began noticing that many of the better images were signed by someone named Brehme. Thus a new obsession had begun.

Susan devoted countless hours scouring the internet and monitoring eBay auctions. Collecting made her a whole new group of associates and friends throughout the country as she solicited card collectors and gallery owners to watch for both iconic and rare images of Mexico preserved by the German-born photographer.

In the foreword to Susan’s book, Stella de Sá Rego describes the pictorial style characterizing some of the Brehme’s most easily identifiable prints:

Although aware of his adopted country’s problems, he chose to present what was beautiful, unique, and distinctive about Mexico. He crafted his images with the greatest care, both in terms of composition and printing. The result is seductive: graphically strong images in a lyrical Pictorial style. That style had its origins in the nineteenth-century Romanticism that infused German culture when Brehme was a young man….

Pictorialist photographers sought to achieve the look and status of fine art (e.g., painting) for their works. To achieve this they employed various techniques. Dramatic lighting—as in images made at twilight or with watery reflections, for example—evoked a still, fin-de-siècle mood. The nostalgic quality was heightened by the use of toners or processes such as gum bichromate or platinum printing that rendered a soft, painterly look.

Politics affected Brehme’s photography as well. Following the overthrow of Porfirio Diaz in 1910, Susan explains:

Porfirio Díaz’s regime was Eurocentric, modeling its capital on Paris as a city of palaces, while the majority of Mexico’s oppressed citizens were on the verge of starvation. The new nation no longer wished to look to Europe, but inward with pride in its emerging national self-recognition. The new nationalism celebrated Mexico’s natural beauty, its indigenous heritage and its pyramids and archaeological artifacts. Brehme created indelible images that reinforced Mexico’s identity and the search for its roots. Consequently, Brehme seldom pictured the middle and upper classes in his postcards and photography books….

Through the years, we spent an absurd amount of vacation time waiting… and waiting… for people to wander out of our picture frame before we would snap photos of landmarks. As a result, we have boxes of slides devoid of any human scale or connection. Only recently did we finally realize the error of our ways.

If only we had this collection of Brehme to view earlier. As Susan writes:

Throughout his published work, Brehme typically included human figures in the compositions to give a sense of size or perspective. He usually placed human subjects at a distance and seldom shot close-ups.

And a wonderful quirk Susan discovered - similar to spotting Alfred Hitchcock in his films - is that sometimes the human figure was Brehme himself.

This spring, some of the 1,900 items relating to Brehme Susan has donated to The Witliff Collections at Texas State University will be featured in a major exhibition.

Of course, the donation probably has left Susan with a large hole in her heart and her home to fill. Wonder what obsession is taking their place?

Susan will be among the collectors explaining why they do what they do at the Witte Museum from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, November 12.

But, be forewarned, collecting is a highly contagious disease.

Before I even finished reading Susan’s introduction, I found myself following her leads to interrelated distractions. Are any Brehme postcards lurking in my drawers? Then, her words sent me pulling Frances Toor’s A Treasury of Mexican Folkways off the shelf to look for Brehmes. Soon I found myself comparing Carlos Merida’s “Seri Woman with Mask” to Brehme’s (?) photos of Seri women in the book. The silver bracelet on my arm is by Bernice Goodspeed, but I had no idea she had written guidebooks.  Oh, no, I am headed to eBay in search of a copy. And even while looking for that, I begin to wonder if I am too late to find any of the original books of Brehme’s photos for a price less than astronomical.

Help… I’m being pulled into the swirling vortex. Is there a known antidote? Or do I stop fighting and be swept along with the current wherever it leads?

Update added on December 4, 2011: Steve Bennett reviews Timeless Mexico in the Express-News and reports that the opening date for the Brehme exhibition in the Alkek Library at Texas State University is January 23.

Most businesses evidently believe duplicate signs are critical; even the city’s newly remodeled Visitor Information Center has two extra, twin signs flanking its doorways. I thought the Hotel Indigo was going for cool, but apparently not. And, although it’s not in the district, the city’s recently redone plaza with its strangely homuncular statue of Henry B. gets graced with an illegal sandwich board advertising a garage a block away.

There is no need for many words this time; the photos of illegal signs speak for themselves.

If you have the stomach for more ugly signage greeting our millions of visitors annually, here is a small sampling from older posts:

• Seesawing Signage Issues
• Slip-Sliding Backwards
• Enforcing the Code

Please complain about the lack of enforcement of signage regulations in the Alamo Plaza Historic District to your city council representative and consider dialing 311 to report violations you see.

Rabbit: “And help yourself, Pooh. Would you like condensed milk, or honey on your bread?”
Pooh: “Both. But, never mind the bread, please. Just a small helping, if you please?”
Rabbit: “There you are. Is uh… something wrong?”
Pooh: “Well, I did mean a little larger small helping.”

 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Twice a year it would happen. I could not breathe, and hives would gradually creep up from my calves. When they finally began to stretch up for my neck, where they would show, I would finally give in to the discomfort and go see my allergist for a steroid shot.

Now he is a well-respected allergist, and he ran all those stick-you tests. Cedar elm was one of the largest culprits, and they completely surrounded our home in Olmos Park. Red wine (Inner Pooh voice repeatedly interrupting the doctor’s words: I’m not listening.). And dairy products (Inner Pooh voice: I can’t hear you.). You mean as in milk, right? No, you can’t mean cheese?

So what’s a girl to do but give up drinking milk and live with periodic outbreaks of hives?

I had never been much of a fan of honey. But that was because I had never had a dab of it dribbled on the ideal vehicle for it – cheese. And we had to travel to Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain, last year to make that discovery.

The cheese plate at this beautiful restaurant we loved came with a nutty, orange-flavored honeycomb in the middle. Hold the bread; no need for it. Just pure cheese and honey. I feel guilty about not remembering the name of the restaurant in Sevilla, so am trying to atone by including photos of it as well.

A year later, only a month ago, we were wandering the streets of Perugia, Umbria, Italy, in search of a bite for lunch. I was feeling virtuous for not being seduced by the stunning chocolate confections in the window of Sandri Patisserie on Corso Vannucci.

We settled instead at Ristorante Gus, pleasantly shaded in the middle of the pedestrian-only Via Mazzini. According to a New York Times article that came out while we were in Italy, Gus is new. The locals seemed to love it and were all ordering sushi, but we were too recently de-planed to want that.

Good intentions still intact, I ordered a smoked trout salad, and Lamar had a vegetarian panino and chickpea soup. Everything was great, but that pesky little inner Pooh voice started singing about the bees once I spied the cheese plate. This bountiful cheese board came with a palette of eight different honeys to dabble on the cheese.

Now I am hooked. A comb full of honey leapt into my cart at Mustafa Asian and Middle Eastern Grocery Store. And from there, the blame’s all on Central Market with those banners tempting me with “For the Love of Cheese” every time I drove by.

Since vacations are not around every day, I’m resigned to letting Central Market shop around the world for me. Although I wish CM’s blog did not mention the word “dairy” and then this:

While cheese is a good source of protein, calcium and vitamin D, let’s face it: Fat is what gives cheese its beguiling texture and depth of flavor.

(Inner Pooh voice: I can’t hear you.)

To go with the honeycomb, I selected some rosemary Asiago, blue Stilton, Bucheron and some other powerful blue-veined, ancient-looking cheese. Sorry, doctor, but such behavior would be great for your business… if I had not moved away from all those cedar elms.

And sure wish I had a bottle of Umbria’s Montefalco Sagrantino to go with that cheese and honey.

So Pooh ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate… and ATE! Until at last he said to Rabbit in a rather sticky voice: “I must be going now. Good-bye, Rabbit.”
Rabbit: “Well, good-bye, if you’re sure you won’t have any more.”
Pooh: “Is there any more?”

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

The much maligned, homely honey mesquite tree was among the most useful. The hard wood could be hewn into tools or musical instruments; the gum and bark served as an antiseptic. While the tough seeds were discarded, the blossoms and pods were eaten. But don’t expect mesquite pods to be the next gastropub trend in the locavore movement. According to Texas Beyond History:

The Cahuilla utilized mesquite in three different forms – blossoms, green pods, and dried pods. Blossoms were collected and either boiled or roasted on heated stones, squeezed into balls, and consumed. Green pods were pounded into a juice using a mortar and pestle. Most of the harvest probably was pounded into meal using a mortar and pestle. The meal was moistened with water, then allowed to harden into flatcakes a few inches thick. It was stored in this form, but often bruchid beetle eggs would hatch and the cakes would become infested with larvae (Bean and Saubel 1972). The Pima, at least, are on record as saying that the larvae simply added some zest to the meal. Informants said that the pods could be consumed without any preparation by breaking them into small pieces and chewing them (Russell 1908).

While the area off Avenue A adjacent to the River Road neighborhood provides a glimpse of what the river might have looked like in its natural state, the recently opened stretches of the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River Improvements Project are virtually treeless. 

Flood-control projects of years ago were single-minded; trees impeded flood waters so were removed leaving a barren flood channel. Native grasses and wildflowers planted the past several years as part of the San Antonio River Improvements Project have improved that landscape dramatically, but 100-degree summer days cry out for shade.

My grandmother always said, “Little acorns grow into tall trees;” although she was reassuring a young girl she would one day blossom bosoms. And in greenhouses and fields outside of Lubbock, the Texas Forest Service is nursing acorns and those pesky Anaqua seeds that embed themselves in the ridged valleys of my walking shoes into a huge crop of saplings to shade the next generation hiking along the banks of the San Antonio River. 

In November, crews from the San Antonio River Authority will begin planting 3,000 saplings ranging in height from a few inches to a few feet in the first phase of the Mission Reach. Depending on the species – including cedars, willows, cypresses, cottonwoods, elms, Mexican sycamores, possumhaws and redbuds – the trees will take from 10 to fifty years to reach full maturity.

To provide a preview of some of the native trees soon to grace the banks, the San Antonio River Foundation worked with the Parks and Recreation Department of the City of San Antonio to plant 15 trees at Roosevelt Park by Mission Road. The trees were planted in honor of the hard work of the volunteers on the San Antonio River Oversight Committee who have shepherded the project along through the years. This anaqua sporting a Treegator skirt, slowly releasing water to nourish the roots through the drought, is among them.

The River Foundation will be sharing saplings for you to take home and plant from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Thursday, October 20, at Confluence Park, 310 West Mitchell. In addition a free tree, you will be able to view the Master Plan for this neighborhood park reestablishing the historical connection from the river to Mission Concepcion.

And, the best news: By the close of 2015, the River Authority will have planted another 20,000 trees along the Mission Reach. The next generation might not even need to wear sunscreen on morning walks.

January 24, 2012, Update: Want to add this link to another blogger’s recent post about plantings along the Mission Reach.