The warm weather was a pleasant surprise for a typical January afternoon. I had dressed in my coziest sweater and jacket, prepared for the standard foggy and cold January days I had become accustomed to in San Francisco, but the sunny weather forced me to peel off layers of outerwear to reveal the cool white blouse I had on underneath. My walk from the 16th Street BART station to the Ritual Café, where I was meeting Heike, felt more like a brisk walk on a sunny spring day than a wintery afternoon. It was bizarre weather for this time of year, but I perceived it as a good omen for the interview I was about to have with Heike Seefeldt—a German artist living in San Francisco.
I reached the Ritual Café, located in the Mission District of San Francisco—located just a few blocks away from the hustle and bustle of Mission Street with its lively Mexican restaurants, fruit and vegetable grocers, and trendy restaurants and bars. This popular local hang-out was filled to the brim with stylish twenty-something Mission hipsters sipping on cappuccinos, and others taking a break from their hectic work schedule to have lunch. Notebook in hand, my eyes searched the room for Heike, who was meeting me there. I spotted a woman outside the cafe that fit the description she gave me, and matched the picture on her Web site, so I casually went outside to greet her. Her tall and slim frame was clad in a comfortable cotton shirt, casual jeans, and a fuzzy purple scarf that complemented her blue eyes flawlessly. Her shoulder length hair was perfectly wavy and a pretty, deep brown hue. Her inviting smile made me feel at ease, and my nervousness dissipated amongst the noisy sound of coffee grinding and indie rock playing in the background. We made small talk, ordered fresh lemonades and warm bacon cheese biscuits, and searched for the quietest table to talk at.
Heike casually took out a neatly bound portfolio of her work, which showcased her many talents in scenic painting, small scale painting, and her interesting collage techniques. The first thing to appear in her portfolio was a series of fashion magazine covers that she had reworked with marker pen. The faces and bodies of beautiful models were deconstructed and drawn over with bright markers to form new faces brimming with colorful Tribal type markings, larger sized bodies, and different color skin tones. It was a clever twist on what a real woman is—not just thin and beautiful bodies clad in skin tight dresses or skinny supermodels with tousled hair prancing around in tiny bikinis. Her deconstructed magazine covers were fresh, interesting, and contained witty commentary about the plastic and superficial qualities of fashion magazines.
“After a lot of time spent going through magazines, it started to bore and annoy me and I found them really repetitive.
