(i drink my coffee) BLACK WEDNESDAY

The single cause of my no good, terrible, very bad day: Peet's Coffee, Austin, TX style is closing. Apparently they're just not selling enough. Peet's Coffee is closing its doors on the Drag on November 18. That's in 10 days.



I love Peet's and hate (hate!) to see them go. I'm not sure where I'll find coffee like that, I'm not sure where I'll find people like that: Bronwyn, Aimee, Dee, Dana, Bob, Meredith, Shannon, et al. They're good friends, I will miss them.

If you would like to call Peet's to mourn and/or complain, please do so: 800-999-2132.

All good things must come to an end? Are you kidding? 10 days. That's not even enough time to say goodbye.

a few of my favorite things

What are you doing? Nothing? Nothing, you say?

You should go to the Oswald Gallery. It's on 7th or 8th and Congress, and they've got some fine art that you should take a look (or two or three) at.

Jerry Uelsmann and his wife Maggie Taylor are amazing photographers. Their work is on display (for sale) at the Oswald through the end of the year. I definitely can't afford their stuff on my smallish salary, but it turns out the price of appreciation is free. It's worth going over there just to look.

Uelsmann and Taylor stretch photography past the careful composistion, printing, and editing standard to the medium's best artists. Uelsmann uses a traditional darkroom process - chemicals, englargers, dark rooms - but combines multiple negatives to create ethereal worlds. It's really difficult to create images this way, and yet the results are fluid and graceful - the process serves the art and not the other way around.


Jerry Uelsmann - Tree and Cathedral - 1975

I hadn't know to be a Maggie Taylor fan until visiting the gallery yesterday, but her images are equally stunning, achieving with color and found objects similarly other-worldly images. Taylor uses a flatbed scanner as her camera - using objects she finds to compose her images, many of which have upwards of 30 different pieces - seamlessly composed into one.


Maggie Taylor - Man With Too Much Time - 2004

I don't know if that sounded convincing enough, but Uelsmann and Taylor at the Oswald is most assuredly worth checking out. It's free, it's art, but don't break anything because broken art is not free.