Corner Light Monadnock, by Amy Park

Greetings from the West Coast, my collector pals. I'm still visiting San Francisco and have been enjoying all kinds of arty goodness during my trip. More on that later, because really the main point of this missive (as you well know!) is to introduce today's edition.

Corner Light Monadnock is based on an original watercolor painting by NY-based artist Amy Park. All of Amy's gorgeous architectural paintings render the solidity of bricks and mortar with a precision one would never expect to be coaxed from watercolor. (Well, this one would never expect it, at least.) As a medium, watercolor can be inconsistent and difficult to contain; their use in Amy's work gives the buildings a dreamy, cinematic intensity well-suited to the feeling I get when walking through the deserted caverns of Wall Street on a weekend afternoon.

There's a theoretical future version of myself who lives in a cottage in the woods (somewhere near Point Reyes, preferably.) Future me rides her bike into town in the morning to pick up her mail from the PO and kibbitz with the locals over coffee. Future me is more like fantasy me, however, because really I'm a city girl at heart - more at home in the wilds of Manhattan than amongst the redwoods. Amy's work speaks to past, present and yes, future me as well. It captures the majesty and menace of the urban landscape and transports me into it from wherever I may be. And in spite of its foreboding, I really want to be there.

Most of my San Francisco trip has been spent downtown and South of Market, amongst its own glass and brick towers. On Saturday, I caught the last day of America by Car, a very fine Friedlander show at Fraenkel Gallery. I also got a sneak peak at their upcoming Christian Marclay exhibition Stereo which is going to be totally amazing, I promise.

I've found lots of prints of the not $20 variety to covet along the way - a couple from Marclay, a little something from Chris Johanson printed by Paulson Press and later on today I'll pop into the venerable Crown Point Press to ogle their Amy Sillman and Julie Mehretu prints. Not to mention the fabulous and funny Los Francisco San Angeles prints from Ed Ruscha. After that I'll get my SFMOMA on, where I'm hoping to have time to get a closer look at their current Friedlander exhibition, an incarnation of which I saw all too briefly when I was at Foam in Amsterdam over the holidays.

Tomorrow's a toss up. Future me wants to squeeze in a trip to Pt. Reyes. But art fiend me wants to head to the East Bay and visit those prints at Paulson Press in person. Decisions, decisions! I'll let you know what the plan is in the morning, when I'll be back with a photo edition most fine, my last San Francisco dispatch before heading home to the sidewalks of New York on Thursday.