My roommate Jonny has designated me his cool consultant, a pretty big compliment. I advise him on things like the appropriate time and place for the Canadian tuxedo, and how many buttons on his denim shirt to button (all of them, of course). For me, Manuela de Medeiros unofficially holds this post. Since we started slinging cappuccinos together at the Riviera Bakery I have found myself in Bermuda length cut-off shorts and khakis- two dad-like styles I never envisioned myself championing.
When Manuela invited me to come see her art stylings at Tequila Bookwork (why do trendy cafes have to have such embarrassing names?), her cool status catapulted from supercool, to full-on rad. I grabbed my camera, jumped on my bike, and spent the evening making her fash-ion-a-ble friends feel uncomfortable as they attempted to avoid being in the frame of my photographs.
Manuela's work is process art-- emphasizing the means of creation over the finished product. She employs gasoline, nails, ink transfers, dry wall, wood stain, and fertilizers to modify her canvases (made of an equal variety of materials) and process or no process, the results are fantastically textured-- a sort of rough-hewn beautiful. There's this great dissonance between the form, one of system and process, and the organic quality of the pieces.
Oh, and Manuela's roommate Ariel was making me jealous with these dreamy shoes of hers. Oof.
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