This will be part one of two posts showing autumn in Davis. It feels like autumn lasts a very short time in Davis, but it’s actually a good little while and unquestionably the most spectacularly colourful time of the year. I am loathe to call it ‘Fall’ as the Americans do because it’s more like an amazing Rise, admittedly before the actual Fall when leaves get blown off the trees in a dramatic way. I love that part too, after the winds and storms come laying the trees bare, it’s like Christmas morning when the floor is covered in wrapping paper. November though was full of colour. Above is on Russell Blvd, as seen from outside the International Center. It got even more colourful than this a week or so later, this is really the start of the deep reds and yellows. That building is the Cal Aggie Christian Association, I’ve drawn that building before, it stands at a good location at the end of California Avenue so I pass by it every day.

This one was drawn downtown on F Street, at the corer of 2nd Street, and those two gossiping trees were starting to cover the ground in bronze-red leaves. The mural is one I’ve never drawn before, it’s a painting of the Columbus Cafe in San Francisco and was made decades ago by a local artist named Terry Buckendorf, it’s one of the oldest pieces of outdoor art in the downtown. You can learn more about it on DavisWiki. Obviously I wasn’t drawing many details (poor eyesight from across the street) but apparently the people in the cafe were well-known locals from back in the day. I wonder if I’ll ever end up in a mural, standing in the background somewhere hunched over my sketchbook. I don’t think I could ever make a mural, making anything that big would scare the life out of me. There are some really nice murals in Davis though, many with a bit of local history thrown in.

This building above is the Physical and Data Sciences Building” (PDSB), which was formerly the “Physical Sciences and Engineering Library” (PSEL), renamed this past year. In fact I was in that renaming conversation, I won’t say what my bright idea was but we have a new name for it now, I’m still getting used to the acronym. It’s nice inside, a big shared spaced for various units involved in data science, AI, quantum math and physics and all sorts of other related things. I will be finally moving some of our people in there soon too. The trees on the left were turning brown, and I drew this at lunchtime outside the recently finished new wing of the Chemistry building. There’s been a lot of construction in this little junction over the past few years but finally it’s all coming together.

I am trying my best not to remember the fifth of November, but look, that’s done now. Here are people lining up at the polling station in the Veterans Memorial Center, which I sketched on the way home. I had a headache, it only got worse. However the one thing I never forget about the fifth of November, that is the day we moved to Davis back in 2005. Nineteen years in this town. I remember it well, moving into our little flat in south Davis on Cowell Boulevard, walking down to Nugget and picking up a beer to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, sleeping on an old uncomfortable futon because we hadn’t bought a bed (or a sofa) yet. Waking up at 1am to the sound of the ground rumbling, our first experience of those mile-long freight trains that pass slowly through Davis in the middle of the night; we were relatively close to the train tracks, and it was a sounds I got used to pretty quickly (I still find it funny that even where I am now in north Davis I still feel the ground shaking slightly in the night when they pass through). We are now in our twentieth year in Davis, which I never saw coming back then. You never know what’s coming. Though on this date, I kind of did know what was coming. Still I drew the scene above with that tree turning deep dark purple, before watching maps turn red. Time to keep on sketching.

The scene above is of the building known on campus as the ‘Death Star’. It’s an annoying maze of concrete that is easy to get lost in. This is the entrance of campus, and the Death Star (properly called the Social Sciences and Humanities Building) is home to the Letters and Science Dean’s Office; I drew this as a gift for the outgoing Executive Assistant Dean upon his retirement, to remember the place by. I often have meetings in that building, and I’m ok if they are in the same place, but when they change location I have to give myself an extra ten minutes or so in case I get utterly lost. I have not drawn inside the maze of that building much in the past, but it feels like being in an Escher drawing. Safe to stick outside.

Finally, to end Part One, this bright yellow tree is outside the International Center, in the courtyard next to the space we hired for our annual Peter Hall Statistics Conference. I sketched this as I was looking out of the window from the registration table. I did a lot of sketching those two days, but I’ll post those separately. I can’t say I really understood any of it, but the colours outside were dazzling. Part Two coming soon.