i know, i know, 2 in one day. but as i graded all these IDs about picasso, i started thinking about art, so here's another theme list (alphabetically, to be fair):

diane arbus. i saw her sfmoma show, which was great. man, i love black and white photography. her work is weird and insightful and sometimes disturbing and really brilliant.

chagall. i love that he uses a lot of red. lovers in a red sky is hanging in my closet. he also did some bitchin windows.

frank lapena. he does all kinds of interesting stuff. including this really beautiful woodblock of mt. shasta. he has a very recent book.

roman loranc. beautiful, haunting, mostly black and white photography. he does a lot of work in the central valley. and let me tell you, when i moved here, the first time i saw tule fog i thought "hot damn, it's like stepping into a roman loranc photo." where i used to work we had a couple of his photos up on the walls, and one was this great shot of a church in lithuania, with beautiful light streaming down.

rondal partridge. completely crazy 80 yr old photographer who lives up in the berkeley hills and is the son of imogene cunningham. he rocks, personally and artistically. check out his book.

picasso. especially the old guitarist (breaks my heart) and guernica (used to be in the kitchen of one of my apartments). i'm also really fond of his inkblots, particularly don quixote.

gerhard richter. brilliant german painter. i saw his show at sfmoma a couple years ago, and it really blew me away.

preston singletary. tlingit glass blower. nice guy, and does phenomenal work. i'm particularly fond of raven steals the moon.

and finally, my boy van gogh. i particularly dig starry night (it gives me happy don mclean thoughts), starlight over rhone (reminds me of the pier at pismo beach), cafe terrace at night (i love the lighting), and the bedroom (because l. frank did this rad coyote version of it).

(oh yeah, this of course does not count my numerous terribly talented artist friends, who are naturally my favorite artists).

and, just to be silly and break theme here, barry white. i love barry white. i also love the heyday fedex man, who always reminded me of a barry white song.