A Texan in New York City, Part 2

We don't slow down. Tomas Saraceno's On the Roof: Cloud City at The Metropolitan gave us a chance to show both of us, for a change, in a photo.

I'm going to start saying I have a "studiolo" now that I've seen the Gubbio Studiolo. This tiny room with all its wood-inlay is worth searching for if you are at The Met.

Andy Warhol isn't necessarily one of our favorites but he sure inspired a lot of other artists, whether they admit it or not.

Another surprise discovery was the very small Japanese Rinpa art exhibit.

And finally, lunch. Pricey, but worth it when it means sitting down for a while.

Then there was the exhibit of Chinese scrolls, the Chinese garden, the photography, the library on the first floor, the Temple of Dendur, the Faberge eggs ....
Why would anyone wonder how we can spend all day at a museum?

A Texan in New York City, Part 1

We made a very short and spontaneous trip to New York City.
It was bad timing as far as hotel rates - our plane tickets were less than half of the cost of 4 nights in the hotel. But we went anyway.
"What plays did you see?"
None. But we did talk to an aspiring director/sometime actor at lunch in the MOMA.
"What great restaurants did you go to for dinner?"
None. We got take-out from a nearby grocery store.
"What did you do there?"
Museums. Museums. Museums.
Walk. Walk. Walk.

Susan always checks the exhibition schedules of a long list of museums and then tries to prioritize it based on what she thinks are the solid must-sees. Then she trims the list way down because we've learned that about 5-6 hours in a museum, including at least 3 coffee/lunch breaks, is all the visual stimulation we can absorb before our eyes fall out and our brains explode.  Some museums are smaller than other and we can zip through in 2-3 hours. Not so with the MOMA and The Met; 5-6 hours in those big boys just barely scratches the surface.

At the MOMA I wasn't excited about the Century of the Child exhibit but I did manage to sit at the kiddie table for a quick picture, despite the snotty guard who kept insisting "Wait your turn! Wait!" even though we were only the two standing there.

The Alighiero Boetti exhibit was great - I'd never heard of him and was totally surprised by the variations in his work. The real surprise for both of us was The Quay Brothers exhibit. Surprise in that it wasn't even on our list and we didn't plan to look at it but it was next to the cafe so we wandered in. We loved it. Dark, weird, incredibly imaginative stuff that makes you go back and look again from the beginning of the exhibit more than once.

Crowded as the museum gets, you can always find a chair outside in the garden courtyard.

The drawing at the top of the post is my way of keeping track of what we do, a sort of Zentangle journal thing I do at night. More to come.

Susan speaks: Blogging is supposed to be easy. Google, the owner of Blogger, has decided to make things "new and improved". We all know that means trouble. I HATE the new interface and I HATE that they don't give you the option of keeping the old interface. Nothing is simple anymore. Just when I finally found my camera and promised Don I'd do better on the blog wrangling....

Maps and Robert Scholle's Art

What are we reading now:? I just finished The Night Circus. When I got three-fourths of the way through the book I didn't think I could recommend it but then I got to the ending and ...wow... changed my mind.

 Our latest Netflix have been 5-star movies: The Last Rites of Joe May (great acting from Dennis Farina), Young Adult (great acting from everyone in this and a stunning twist at the end), and Jeff, Who Lives at Home (great acting from Jason Segel). We like it when we see "small" movies with great acting.

Who is Robert Scholle? Susan was in a class with him at ArtUnraveled and although he is very young he is very talented. She was impressed with his work and loved that he really got great energy in this piece.

Deming and Stuff and a Map

We owed these very interesting people a blog entry over a month ago.  I've told you before that Susan will talk to anyone, dead or alive. We were coming back from ArtUnraveled in Phoenix and stopped in Deming, New Mexico, to get gas and look for art stuff. At the gas station she started talking to these people and here is part of their story (as best as I can remember):

If you look closely you'll see that his motorcycle has an Alaska plate. He works on the North Slope for 6 months and then gets 6 months off. He does lots of road travel with his wife sitting right behind him. Road travel as in back and forth from Alaska to Florida and to California and back to Florida, driving right through the hotter-than-hell Southwest in August. On their helmets it says "If You're Not Living on the Edge You're Taking Up Too Much Room." They also live part of the time on a sailboat in the Caribbean.

Oh well. Just driving for 4 hours makes me tired and I'm doing it in an air-conditioned car!

When we were young, very young, and I was almost out of the Air Force (and had my Viet Nam tour over with) we had A Plan.  The day I became a cilivian we would fly to England, buy BMW motorcycles, and tour all over England and Scotland and Europe for 3 months. Then we would ship the motorcycles home and when we got back to Austin we could sell them to cover the costs of our travel. For some reason back then you couldn't get a certain type of motorcycle in the US so it was a big deal to bring them back. 

The Plan became more realistic, we loaded up backpacks, bought a Eurail pass, and flew Icelandic Air to Europe and backpacked through Europe for 30 days. Icelandic Air was nicknamed Hip-Hop Airlines because all the hippies (this was the early 70's) flew it, at that time; the rates were dirt-cheap because you had a stopover in Iceland and you landed in Luxembourg - a sort of odd route.  We slept in hostels and on trains, ate food from vending machines and street vendors and washed our socks in the sink every night. We had saved our money for a year, had no jobs, and no mortgage. And we were young enough to think that was the best time of our life.

Art stuff in Deming? Yes! We always stop at the Tinaja Alta Trading Company, a fancy name for an antique/collectibles store loaded with lots of odd, interesting, cool stuff.  Cindy and Miguel will cut a good deal for you as you pile up your stuff - old silverware, ledgers, buttons, etc. Everything you want and don't need but get anyway because you can never have enough art "stuff".

Yes, Backing Up to August

Last year I took a drawing class with Jane LaFazio. The best part about classes with Jane is that she is happy letting you draw the way you want as long as you are happy. So don't blame my drawing skills, or lack thereof, on Jane.

No, Susan didn't say that about her Photoshop class, she liked her class with Tangie Baxter. I'm the one that would rather poke myself in the eye with a fork than go to a computer class.

Yes, I have a posse. Next year I hope that Seth Apter will be teaching at Art Unraveled because I think he has a posse and I'll just sort of hang around with him and let his posse sort of merge with mine.

Susan speaks: Good grief! "Posse" my eye! The elevators are always crowded, they aren't following you, Don, they just want to get to their room in a hurry!

We Remember

The hole in our extended family will never be filled.  We remember.

Tooling Around My Maps

More maps. I like making maps.  I'm using my Michael's coupon to buy more sketchpads so I can make more maps. Stand back, I'm on my way.

And I like tools.  These were a direct result of being in Thomas Mann's Fastenation class.