Two excerpts from the artist’s book: Alternative Historical Guide to Colors
1980 North Berkeley
It was called Grove Street in 1980 when we moved into the large brown shingle house near the corner of Rose Street in North Berkeley. Years later, our street name changed to Martin Luther King Jr. Way, but the vibe of the intersection which included a tiny used guitar shop, corner restaurant, and massive, meandering toy store, never changed. Nearly uprooting the small lawn in front of the house towered a dark bark redwood tree with deep forest green-to-brown needles always piling up around its base.
This house, likely built in the 1910s, with its mood of an imagined radical intellectual’s past, was the apex — inside and out — for a clash of earthy tones, vintage appliance shades and a tiny glimmer of a brighter new wave future on the horizon.
A mental snapshot of this house — its exterior, its interior, and its inhabitants — is the source for this color scheme. One imagines walking up the short flight of front stairs while taking in the deep brown of the home’s outer wood shingle siding. Once inside, after closing the heavy front door, a walk down the hall to the kitchen quickly reveals, from peripheral vision, a mustard yellow Western Electric Bell System push-button wall phone fastened to the dark wood paneling opposite the kitchen table. On the tile counter, inside the small alcove kitchen, sits a faded avocado green Osterizer blender. And one of the home’s inhabitants has just arrived, wearing fluorescent pink bobby socks peaking out between the top of her canvas shoes and the cuffs of her navy blue, corduroy, school uniform pants.
This mix — from earth tones to neon — captures and reflects the eclectic mood of the early 1980s scene in Berkeley quite succinctly; it was a time anchored in the past yet hinged on the ideals of a new progressive, freedom-seeking movement. A portrait of Virginia Woolf hung on the wall and the B-52’s spun on the record player.
1960s North Beach
Capturing the essence of the neighborhood, the scene, the textures and even a bit of the attitudes, my friend recalls her parent’s view of San Francisco’s bohemian North Beach district in the early 60s: "… the ‘Greek blue’… kitchen floor, a maroon velvet dress, the air always being wet and the sky always being grayish white, pasta everywhere, usually served with a side salad that had some red, and my father's old ridiculous coral colored Chevrolet, that the artist Victor Moscoso would not accept as a trade for a portrait he made of my father smoking a cigarette.”
These words, these distinct memories, serving like a magnifying glass on a lost patch of time and place, are the source for this color scheme. The interior and exterior spaces that these colors conjure up are undeniable. The words have the ability to transport us to an apartment kitchen with large blue tiles on the floor and a view of a character in a deep maroon velvet dress sitting at a Formica table by the window. It’s hard not to fill in the rest of the scene. An overcast sky — the typical daily backdrop for San Francisco — and a plate of linguini, a side salad, and quite possibly a porcelain ashtray nearby, complete the setting. An imagined conversation fills the air. But it’s the coral colored Chevrolet parked in front of the house, on a steep, narrow street, pointing uphill that completes the mental picture. Two men leaning on the hood of the car perhaps: laughing, gesturing, joking, yet coming to no clear resolution soon. I imagine the early 60s to be meandering just like this — in personality and truly vivid colors.