Washington DC, Part 3

Image above by Wolf Kahn at an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We were really surprised at the quality of the collection shown - another one of those times when we didn't plan to see the exhibit (it was across the building from a Monuments Men exhibit) but thought we'd just rush through but wound up looking for over an hour.

How can you not want to have art like this in your home? These two in the National Gallery of Art were Susan's favorites this time, Degas' Before the Ballet above and Rousseau's Boy on the Rocks below.  She winds up with different favorites every visit.

Here's one of my favorites:

And here's something at our Metro station that had me Fully Flummoxed:

What the ....? An angel with black wings? Huh? Contrary to New York City where we talk to everyone, Washington DC is very uptight and unfriendly so we just behave ourselves.

Well, not exactly everyone. We happened to be there when the Cherry Blossom Festival was going on so we stopped to watch their parade and wound up talking to these people. You might not recognize him but I've now put his books on my Amazon wishlist -- Andy Straka.  An interesting thing about him, aside from the fact that he is famous and that we had fun talking to him and his charming young accomplice, is that he is a licensed falconer. 

The parade was kind of a bust, slow moving because it kept stopping so people in the parade could sing or perform for the fat cats who had paid to have grandstand seats. The ordinary people like us just waited and waited on the sidewalk for the parade to move on. Definitely not like the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Not to mention the fact that we had no idea what this float was supposed to be.

 

The weather was great, the art was great, but it was a very long day and I got really tired and it's really easy to fall asleep on the Metro... or in the station.



Jamie Fine and Lori Katz (DC, Part 2)

Both Jamie Fine and Lori Katz are ceramic artists who are so willing to share information about how they work that it is almost frightening. They are one of the reasons we always go back to the Torpedo Factory.  I didn't know which one to feature as the lead-in picture on this blog so my Blog Wrangler settled my dilemma by choosing a Selfie she made in the bathroom on our trip. She told me if I stared at it long enough the mirror fog would evaporate and she would be revealed in all her splendor, glory and hotel towel.

 

Above is a wall installation of Lori's tiles, set up at the Torpedo Factory where she has a space. Her website is here.

 

Below is Jamie Fine giving me an up-close-and-personal lesson in texture tool making. 

 

 

Not until I got home and checked her info on the internet did I find out she had studied with Ruth Duckworth, who is one of my favorite artists. We saw a show of her work in Chicago years ago and the book of her work from that show survived our downsizing and has a prominent place in my collection of artists' books.

 

 

I've watched Jamie's video several times now.

 

 

Usually we see Susan Finsen at the Torpedo Factory but this year we missed her. You'll have to settle for a shot taken through the window of her studio. I really like her idea of "pocket" paintings..

 

 

A fine finish to our day? Could you ask more than to have your name on a porta-potty?

 

 

 

Washington DC, Part 1

 

We go from New York City to Washington DC every spring to see the Smithsonian Craft Show, an absolute 5-star show. Loads of great images of artwork on the website. 

 

Here I'm showing you just a few of the 90+ artists who are juried in to exhibit there.  The piece above is a purse made of polymer clay by Kathleen Dustin, below is a sculptural piece. No, I didn't realize polymer clay could look that good. There is an interesting video of her working here.

 



I don't know anything about weaving but the designs in the tapestries by Wence and Sandra Martinez were really eye-catching. 

 

 

Jackie Abrams wove baskets using scraps of fabric. We talked about how she would take clothing that people gave her, old childrens' dresses, wedding clothes, their favorite shirts, and use that to make the basket. I told her I thought a lot of military veterans (including me) kept the last uniform they wore so that might be another source of fabric for her. The piece below didn't have old clothes in it but instead had stones woven into it.

 

 

Gerard Justin Ferrari made some really cool ceramic pieces and was a fascinating person to talk to, very thoughtful about what he made and why he did the series he did.

 

 

Every time we ride Amtrak from New York City to Washington DC we are stunned at the devastation and ruins we see from the train as we go through Baltimore and Philadelphia. If you ever want to know what our country will look like once the Apocalypse comes, just take that train ride and look out the windows to the west. Thoroughly depressing. To top it off, we get off the train and ride the Metro to our very nice hotel, where we are completely isolated from any hint of deprivation. I'd like to claim cognitive dissonance but I really don't have that excuse, I just try to pay my taxes and not wonder why our government can't get anything done but yell at each other.  OK, off the soapbox.

 

New York City, Part 6

Let's wrap this up because 6 days days was too long for us in a big noisy city. And expensive! We finished with the American Museum of Natural History because I'm really interested in space (love watching Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson on Sunday nights) and they have the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater there. We saw the Dark Universe show(YouTube link here)  in the Space Theater and then looked at a lot of dead stuffed birds. That was supposed to help me with the shapes in my birds. Maybe.

We wandered through the Poison exhibit. The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland was all about poison - hatters went mad because they were exposed to chemical poisons when making hats. Susan really liked the exhibit (which made me a little nervous) but the best part about it was that we were practically the only ones in there and it was quiet. You had to pay extra to see it so I guess most people didn't bother. Or maybe it's because most people in that museum were children yelling and screaming. Why is it that kids have to scream when they see dinosaur bones? Or any kind of bones?

We finished with Mysteries of the Unseen World movie - there is an excellent trailer for it on YouTube (here). This is what the flea on your cat looks like, not that you really wanted to know:

The museum is interesting but creepy-antiquated and very, very user-unfriendly.

Friends we made on this day? On the C Line subway to the museum we talked to the teacher with 28 first-graders, all excited about going to the museum.  They were from a charter school and were incredibly well-behaved (but probably screamed when they saw the dinosaur). In the line for the Dark Universe movie, Susan and the guy behind her discussed how you said the title "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in Hebrew and how mice behaved.

Real friends we saw here in New York City know who they are and we love that they can take time to be with us and we love the wide-ranging conversations we get into and we love that they can come to museums with us and not hover and we love knowing people who live in this city because they see their city in a different light than we do and we love that.

Leaving New York City and remembering the world's worst comb-over:

and a creative museum visitor:

Just so you don't think New York City has everything, here's Austin own Nekkid Guy. He rides his bike everywhere and he definitely personifies TMI.

 

FYI - ArtExpo will be April 16-19 in 2015. Look for Seth Apter there. Mark your calendar.

 

New York City, Part 5

We were at the MOMA for a day. The whole day? Just about. But with us "whole day" means starting at 10 a.m. and ending about 4 p.m. with at least two coffee breaks and lunch. After that, our feet and our eyeballs and our brain are fried.  Above is a piece by Mark Tobey that Susan has seen twice now (previously in November) and is totally enchanted by. Maybe it's the title: The Void Devouring the Gadget Era. It was done in 1942 but is probably more appropriate today.


Dave Walker cartoon

She also likes John Cage's Fontana Mix (?) but whatever...

We saw a cool Jasper Johns exhibit where I learned that he used Kurotani Kozo paper so I'm sure that if I used that kind of paper I would be asked to exhibit at the MOMA. We never know what to expect from the "smaller" exhibits but are always pleasantly surprised. Robert Heinecken had some Polaroid prints that he included with some "He said/She said" disjointed fictional dialogue, designed for Mature audiences only, but very creative.

The links above may disappear after the exhibit goes down but you can still do a search on the MOMA website. Unfortunately, sometimes their website is big on descriptions and sparse on works, even those in their own collection.

And of course, a Gauguin exhibit. Sometimes the big name exhibits are just too much to take in at once, sort of like eating too much dessert, but you have to do it because .... it's there! For you! And better than in every art book you've ever seen, but sometimes almost surreal compared to your memory of those art book images.

Making friends again, with Natasha at lunch (she's studying to be a massage therapist) and Allie in the bookstore (she's originally from California). We had also made friends with a Chinese woman with two children, waiting at the bus stop with us. She and Susan had a discussion about the best app to use to see when the next bus is coming, which was not going to be any time soon.

We've been asked why, if we consider ourselves Introverts, do we talk to strangers? Actually, we are Pseudo-Extroverts -- people who pretend to be Extroverts to prevent being labeled as an Introvert, with all the accompanying tsk-tsking that seems to evoke. Talking to strangers is much easier than talking to people who know you because you can literally walk away from the conversation (and friendship) within minutes. It does take practice. When we first started talking to strangers it was a horrific terrible pain to do but then it became a easier challenge and now it's almost like a joke - "Who will we meet today?"

Just to be sure you know it's always about Me, here's Vanton and another birdie.

 

 

Sometimes I help with the kiln loading and unloading. You can see some of my birds in with everyone else's works.

Breaking News

My Blog Wrangler is, as usual, whining about the fact that I never do any of the work on the blog, never tell her what to say unless she pries it out of me, and never give her any pictures to work with. Never? Never? Maybe.

So I'll give her a break from our travel reporting and show you two little Squash pods I made, and that have already, warm from the kiln, been sold. Below are two new birdies. I've been trying to capture the feel of a baby bird, as opposed to an adult bird, and think I've pretty much got it on this one.

We continue to be amused by the fact that the city (or the railroad) keeps trying to paint this graffiti "canvas" clean. The little PacMen have been repainted numerous times. In the background is a new apartment building going up in downtown, oblivious to the fact that we have just been awarded the distinction of being #4 in the nation on the "Worst Traffic" list.

New York City, Part 4

We lucked into an absolutely beautiful day so we spontaneously decided to go to the Intrepid instead of being inside a museum.  (Comment from an amateur: "Why would you want to be in a museum? It's just full of dead people's pictures!") The Intrepid is interesting, but it felt sort of like a Disneyland ship exhibit. You can't get the sense of the vast size of an aircraft's hangar deck (underneath what you see as the deck the planes land on) when there are exhibits filling up the space.

That said, here I am in a medical evacuation helicopter. The goal was to get the wounded up and out fast and that meant a bare-bones framework of a helicopter-- with my feet hanging out. I found this interesting because I was with an air rescue squadron in Viet Nam. Our helicopters were much larger (below). The yellow piece is the hoist that would pull up a long basket with the wounded inside.

DaNang, Viet Nam, 1969

How do they fit planes in under the landing deck? Fold-up wings (below). Interesting stuff on the Intrepid but geared for avid fans of planes and ships. And kids. We did make friends with Charlene at the ticket booth. She's moved to New York City from Ohio to go to college.

Oh yes, we make lots of friends in New York City, once again much to the dismay of our friend who lives there. Why would we bother to talk to strangers when the rule of thumb on the streets is "No eye contact!" OK, we do the no-eye thing on the streets but on the subway is another story.  Remember, we never take our maps out because we don't want 5 different residents arguing with each other as to which is the best route for us to take. On the C Line we talked to Mark, once again proving that New Yorkers are the friendliest people around.

His companion had really great red (dyed) hair and we discussed colors and the fact that they were originally from Brazil. He mentioned he had once dyed his hair green and Susan jokingly asked if it glowed in the dark. Well, YES! And here's the picture he showed us.

We pay an outrageous sum to stay in the same hotel every time. Why? The staff is great. Here are Domingo and Marcel. Marcel really is friendly, he just likes to pretend he's stern, just in case you really aren't supposed to be in the lobby. They both take great care of us and always have a smile when they see us coming back in at the end of a long day.

 

This piece of art just didn't talk to me so it became a give-away. Both my gallery and my Muse have told me I'm getting too cute and have to work on getting my edge back. Point taken. Sometimes it's easier to be cute than to really push for soul. Nobody ever said being an artist was easy.