Steal Like An Artist: The Book

Steal Across America Tour Diary #4: Portland, Phoenix, and San Francisco

Saturday, May 12th, 2012

I’m on book tour promoting Steal Like An Artist. See all upcoming dates or follow me on Twitter?

Portland had the best gloomy weather

Portland, a lot like I pictured it... The clouds!

The bookshelves at the Heathman Hotel — now including Steal in the collection! Great agency sign — a good life is when it's hard to tell the different

Portland: Love, love, loved the gloomy weather. Felt like the kind of weather you could actually get some work done in. Ate a ton of Vietnamese food, a Portland Cream from Voodoo Donuts, an incredible soft-shell sandwich at Clyde Common, drank a bunch of Ninkasi IPA, had my first morning TV taping, gave not one but two talks at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, saw the great John Frame show at the Portland Museum of Art, added a signed copy of Steal to the great library at the Heathman Hotel, shopped Powell’s and the excellent Reading Frenzy, and hung out with a bunch of my friends.

talking at Changing Hands in Tempe

Phoenix in the morning Rain! In Phoenix! Awesome.

Badass mural in South Phoenix Chalk drawing for KPNX phoenix

Phoenix: It rained when I was in Phoenix and I had a ton of work to do, so my time there was pretty quiet, but I had some great coal-fire pizza at Pizzeria Bianco, drew Steal in chalk for KPNX, and had a wonderful audience at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe.

Drawing at Flax Art

The view! Down the slide in the Google building

View of the bay from Google my drawings from Flax

San Francisco: I spent four nights in SF and it was my first time in the city, so it probably deserves its own post. Gave a talk at Google, drove around the city with my agent and splendid host, Mr. Ted Weinstein, did the farmer’s market at the Ferry building, walked the Filbert Steps to Coit Tower, window shopped on Valencia Street, drew and gave a talk at Flax Art, ate super burritos and hung out with my friends Lisa, Wendy, Mike, Erika, and Andre, hit the ballpark with the Logsdons, hit City Lights Books, ate a few slices at Golden Boy, had dinner with one of my heroes, the collage artist Winston Smith (that’s a whole story in itself), strolled Chinatown, drank Blue Bottle coffee, drove to Twin Peaks and Golden Gate park, and watched the Pacific.

The gates of Pixar!

Beautiful day on the campus Flyer in the atrium

Talking about Green Day Signing books for the lovely Pixar folks

My Pixar visit could fill up its own post, too. @DrWave gave Ted and me a tour of the campus and the amazing exhibit of Brave pre-production art, then I gave my talk, signed and sold out of books, met another one of my heroes, Steve Purcell, and spent a small fortune in the gift shop.

You can see more from my tour diary or follow along as it happens on Twitter: @austinkleon




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