Marin Catholic Football Scrimmage

Marin County | California

Marin Catholic kicked off its 2013 high school football season Friday with a scrimmage against Cardinal Newman. The season warmup took place in Santa Rosa, California, and I was there courtesy of VarsityPix.com. Bill Schneider, CEO and co-founder of VarsityPix, has completely revised his site, making it easy to find new Marin Catholic photos each week. Bill will also be photographing the games, so parents and students will have an unusually rich selection of images to view and buy.

Those of you who played sports in high school – wouldn’t you love to have a collection of photos from those bygone days? Future grandchildren of today’s players will certainly enjoy seeing what they’re grandparents looked like as high school athletes. Bill’s site makes this possible.

Bill Schneider, VarsityPix CEO, greets Marin Catholic head coach Mazi Moayet at scrimmage with Cardinal Newman High School.

Marin Catholic’s Wildcats came close to winning the California Division III state championship last year, falling to Madison 38–35. Under head coach Mazi Moayed, the team is expected to have another great year, so stay tuned.

Big Art in Tiburon

Marin County | California

Last weekend Rica and I were walking through Tiburon’s Blackie’s Pasture when we came across an amazing display of these huge paintings. They were swaying in the Bay breeze, formidable but also vulnerable, right at the edge of the soccer field.

A crew, including the artist, Kiril Jeliazkov, was busy assembling his giants, but Kiril took a moment to explain that he had spent two years creating the 110-piece installation in an abandoned gymnasium. Each 20-foot by 10-foot piece was created using waterproof (and dog-proof) paint applied to special plastic sheets imported from Germany. From what I could gather, the paintings are an expression of the expansiveness of his life as he wants it to be. Rica said that taken together, the paintings reminded her of Christo’s Running Fence, created in Marin and Sonoma counties in the 70s.

Kiril invited us to join him and fellow artist Jean-Pierre Rives for a reception at Tiburon Town Hall on Sunday afternoon. Their works are part of the Tiburon Art Festival, which runs until August 18.

Maxwell Drever and Isabelle Drever greet Jean-Paul Rives at the Tiburon reception on Aug. 11, 2013. Isabelle is the director of Art by the Bay. Her father is an active art patron.

Uwe Wagner, of Tiburon Consulting LLC, discussing large art works with artist Jean-Paul Rives.

Rica gets an autograph from artist Kiril Jeliazkov.

We later drove into downtown Tiburon and found several of Jean-Pierre’s steel designs along the waterfront. He is a Hall of Fame former rugby player, which I suppose helps when it comes time to move his sculptures.

It’s obvious that both men are big thinkers. I couldn’t help marvel at the energy they must have in order to handle everything involved in creating and moving around tons and tons of art. They walked and talked like the rest of us, but these aren’t ordinary men.

If I were an artist, I’d probably do miniatures, little paintings to fit in egg cartons.