If she had not been across the street with a slow-moving antique cart full of artists books, Caydance would have had a closer look at the 1957 Ford and its driver -- before it pulled into the honking rush hour traffic and disappeared.

At home in her studio, Caydance pulverized an avocado, added lemon juice and Pico de Gallo salsa from a Mexican grocery in the Mission District; emptied a bag of restaurant-style tortilla chips into a hand-painted multi-colored terracotta bowl; with Don Julio Reposado tequila, Cointreau, and lime juice, made herself a medium-sized pitcher of margaritas; salted a large, green-tinted margarita glass; and poured about half of what was in the pitcher into the glass.

studio icon Across the room -- as if challenging her to unravel the possibly unprecise chronology of the images on the Arches paper tape -- the artists-book-without-a-key sat on her studio table.