My tactic for visiting Art Museums - MFA yesterday

One aspect of being retired is that we are able to visit more art museums.  We belong to the ICA in Boston and the MFA.  Contrary to what my English brother-in-law says, there is wonderful art at the ICA, go visit it.

When Bethany was 7 or 8 and Christopher was 16 or 17, we visited my brother George and his wife Judy in Paris over Christmas.  We visited the Louvre one day and Christopher asked if he could go back for a second day which he did by himself.  I had achieved success with him for having brought him to museums at an early age.

I took Bethany to the Musée D'Orsay one day by ourselves.  It is not always so obvious to a 7 or 8 year old why anyone would visit an art museum, but my Mom took us at a young age and I credit that with my love of museums now.  Bethany was asking if we could go back to the apartment after the second salon.  "Oh, boy this is going to be a long day!" I thought to myself.  I had taken her here to give George and Judy a break from company for a few hours.

In a last minute ditch effort to get to see some more art myself I said to her as we entered the next salon "Find your favorite picture in this salon."  She came back 30 seconds later with her favorite one.  I thought it would take a bit longer than 30 seconds, but hey, that bought me a bit of time to look at a few pictures.  I continued this in the next few salons and then said, "OK, now find the ugliest picture in this next salon."  This diversionary tactic bought me 30 more minutes before this very tolerant 7 year old decided she had had enough.

As a follow up to this story, when she was 15, she gave me an art book of all of the paintings of the Musée D'Orsay.  SUCCESS!

What I realized yesterday as we visited the MFA for 45 minutes before we headed off to Fenway, is that this is how I visit art museums.  I walk into a room, glance around and walk over to the picture which captures my eye.  The pictures in this post are what caught my eye yesterday in my 45 minutes.

As an aside, Bethany does not have a very good sense of direction.  When we ask her which way to go, we usually go the opposite way.  After we left the Musée D'Orsay, in an effort to buy more time away from the apartment so George and Judy could get some more quiet time I said "OK, you get us back to the apartment."  She went straight back the fastest way possible, for the first time in her life.  At 26 she is still this determined when she wants to be, and she loves art galleries.  

Gloucester museum and visiting Star friends

Yesterday, I drove up to Gloucester to visit with B and J. After swimming in their very warm pool, catching up on our lives, and eating a wonderful lunch by the pool, B and I drove over to the Cape Ann Museum of Art. B, who is becoming a docent at this museum, knows that I am a quilter and there is an exhibit right now of a quilter Clara Wainright. Here is a link to one she did names Gloucester Fisherman's Wives Quilt. She has also exhibited in a small museum in our backyard, Decordova.

Many of her quilts have a social action or political statement, like the Fisherman's wives one. Clara also is published in our UU World magazine for her work with quilting in communities in a collaborative way. If I did not have a need to be back home I would have spent the afternoon there. The exhibit closes on June 20th, so I am going to try to get back up there.

What I was left with yesterday is that in our own back yards are wonderful art treasures stored in small museums. This museum has a sea coast origin so there are ship models, and sea paintings. Gloucester and Rockport are known for their artists, so you can only imagine the talent encompassed in this place. I also thought a lot yesterday about how artists often make a political statement by expressing that statement through their art.

BTW, right next door to the museum, is a glass bead maker shop. Again, I could have dropped quite a bit of money in that shop if I had some time to shop. Another reason to go swim with B, and top if off with an afternoon at the Museum. I will go back!

ICA - wonderful sunny day

This morning we went to the Barn and cleaned out Bee's locker. We walked up the hill to see where Autumn is buried, took a video of the view that he has and cried and cried and cried. There is an endless amount of tears we can cry it seems. The woman who was leasing Autumn showed up, with some flowers for his grave, right after we started clearing out the locker. She was devestated as well, and she has only been riding him for 2 months. On Monday, the day before he broke his leg, she took her husband to meet him. "Are you sure they don't want to sell him?" he asked her. It did not take very long for him to work his way into her heart.

We went by our local equestrian shop to buy racks to put our saddles on in our back shed, took K's car to the airport (Bee had been in NC with K and A when we had to call to tell her about Autumn).

As a distraction, and because we are members, we decided to go to the ICA. This is a wonderful museum BTW. Shepard Fairey's exhibit is incredible and another video "THEM" by Artur Zmijewski was excellent as well. We are already planning on going back soon before some of the exhibits leave. Then we walked into the North End and had a nice early dinner at a traditional Italian restaurant. Home by way of the T and a cab.

Murg is off to see Watchman at an IMAX near here and I am going to go to bed early. This is a result of buring the candle at both ends all this week, and some restless nights. Grief like this disrupts your equilibrium. A visit to the ICA helps as a nice distraction from this grief, AIG, CNN etc.

Your FLAIR says it all

In facebook just now, I added a piece of flair and look at my bulletin board. It brought back lots of memories of why that flair ended up there.

I decided to take a screen shot and date it as a record. I just added "Stop Whining" and "I survived 2008".

My friend K in Hawaii send me lots of flair, which I appreciate. I know I got "Motherhood is not for Wimps" from her and the Boston Celtics shoe when they won last year.

I have them loosely organized into categories, but I would never have them all lined up. I bet some SJs out there have them all organized in lines or alphabetically.

The knitting and quilting ones are obvious.

My favorite book is Le Petit Prince.

This collection is so obviously me, as is the entire Facebook account.

Happy Friday, and BTW contrary to my previous post I really mean TGIF. Stuff happen in between 7:30am in the morning. I won't need a wee dram tonight but a nice glass or red wine will be perfect.

Jackson Pollock now

The first time I saw a Jackson Pollock painting, I was in my 20's. I was also pretty cynical at that age, and wondered why anyone would ever think that piece of crap was art.

How things have changed? When I saw this image on Google this morning, I knew it was Jackson Pollock and I actually like his paintings now. I really loved our visit to Mass MOCA in November, when we saw stuff closer to Jackson Pollock than the classics.

Some of the reason I have changed is that I have done more art since then and realize that we are all artists in a way, just different media and techniques. Some of my quilt projects are a la Jackson Pollock, throw a bunch of different colors onto some muslin and see how they come out in the end.

On another note, I own a website the-smart-chicks.com. A friend and I have been talking about what to do with the site and over dinner last night we decided that we are going to find "Smart Chicks" to write chapters in a book. We want our mothers and daughters to write some chapters as well. Obviously all authors should be women and smart chicks. So, I think my chapter is going to be on creativity and innovation. Of course, that could change but on this date 1/28/09, that is my plan.

I am sure that Jackson Pollock would have said that we are all creative. In a past life I did a lot of work with Creativity and Creative Problem Solving. One of the main premises, is that we are all creative.

I reinforced this when we were teaching the quilted jacket classes. Some of the participants did not feel creative, and doubted whether they could actually finish their jackets. One woman, Margaret was just about done. She had one seam left to do. I asked her "Do you want me to finish that seam?" She threw the jacket at me and said "Yes, please!" I must have seen her struggling and wanted her to have a completed jacket. She put her sewing machine out on the curb the next trash day. HOWEVER, she did finish her jacket and has a creative effort that she wears around.

I digress, but my chapter now might be on jacket making and creativity.

Stay tuned for updates on the book and the website which I need to make active.

What we bring up to Coniston

Last night, as I was falling asleep, Rod was packing a box of books to take with us this weekend to Coniston. He has already taken several boxes up there.

Walking around at work it got me to think about what I want to bring up there and leave. Unfinished knitting projects. To get them out of the way? NO! To make room for more unfinished projects? NO!! Because at Coniston, I have more time and might finish them with less distractions around.

I first thought of bringing up some of my stashes e.g. yarn, fabric, craft books. However, if I start splitting those, then I might need something in MA that is in VT and visa versa.

So I might start bringing up projects, put in bags of unfinished knitting projects and then start finishing them up there.

It is interesting to think about what we want to take and leave up there, and what we want to keep around us the majority of the time.

A Mandala - "Oh Freedom"

I loaded some Pete Seeger onto my ipod over the weekend and being the compulsive person that I am, this is all I have been listening to on my frequent long walks and at work. The song that really stands out is "Oh Freedom". Inspired by this song, I drew a mandala last night with the same title. Freedom really is so hard to obtain, sustain and maintain and it is so elusive. I think this recording was done during the civil rights protests of the 60s. It seems that we have made a lot of progress, but is this progress also elusive and can we sustain it?

(Pictures to follow of this some of the this and some of the other mandalas that I have completed).

Our Assistant Minister taught a mandala class this winter. I have wanted to do some visual journaling for a long time; I bought a book which explains a metholology of visual journaling about 10 years ago intending to start. I assembled the art supplies, and bought the big blank sketch book, but it was always too daunting to start. Plus, the space that I had put aside for the journaling supplies, was always covered with fabric, yarn and little pieces of paper to be filed. I cleaned it off yesterday and did my first mandala in this space.

Having the circle as a boundary to contain my drawing helped get me over the hurdle of a blank sheet of paper. I am sure I was breaking all kinds of "mandala rules" as I sat in my sewing room last night, listening to Pete Seeger while I drew, but it worked for me.

When Rod and Bethany were headed to New Orleans for February vacation, we had sung "Oh Freedom" during the worship service and I was wandering around the sanctuary during a pre-New Orleans meeting humming it. It was purely freudian that I happened to be hung up on that song, in anticipation of having them gone for 5 days. It took our mininster pointing out that I was humming this tune for me to realize what I was doing. Those of you who know we well, know that 5 days of being alone is not something that I would normally be looking forward to, so why was I humming the song . . .

Oh Freedom!