On this fine Thursday — otherwise known as the day that The Bay Citizen got landlines — famed artist Maira Kalman, creator of many "New Yorker" covers and two online illustrated series for the New York Times, met with a small press gaggle in advance of her solo show opening at the new-ish Contemporary Jewish Museum. 

The artist, who also identifies as a journalist, opened up the Q&A with an observation: everyone's name tags appeared to read "Maira Kalman." It brought home the point that Kalman is someone for whom material is everywhere: from the lettering of an ad to a snippet of a song to U.S. history. It's all fair game.

The show isn't designed to be a retrospective, exactly, but it does give a strong sense of the multitude of works that Kalman has done. Fabric embroidery is hung next to random items related to, say, her illustrations for Struck and White's "The Elements of Style." It's particularly fun to see the actual New Yorker cover illustrations alongside the magazine covers — including her iconic post-9/11 "New Yorkistan" illustration, which she said is owned by editor David Remnick.

A few other Kalman notes: she loathes the word "blog," wanted to be a writer before she had drawing aspirations, has multiple books coming out and finds the current cartoon caption contest in the back pages of the New Yorker to be beyond-words-awful. "It's like Reader's Digest," she said, before adding that she was sure it was massively successful. To kick off the show's interactive element, called "Milton," Kalman will be selling small, strange goods in the lobby of the museum. One of the things for sale will be British mushy peas. "I didn't find any labels that I'm 100% happy with," she said, when a member of the press asked if the unique packaging was made by her. It wasn't. But, as I write this, there are Kalman agents roaming San Francisco, looking for more options. Stop by the event tonight and see what they dug up.