It's really just a weekend
One of fifty two
In any given year
Where women come together
On the banks of a river
In a place so rural
It truly really is
In the middle of nowhere.
It's really just an hour
When the bonfire burns bright
Drawing us in
Greetings exchanged
News shared
Conversation flows
Voices raised in rhythmic sound
Drums beat
Hearts lifted.
It's really just a moment
When you're handed o'er the drum
Your fear wants to say no
But you don't let it win.
You feel the power
That was always there inside you.
They saw, they felt, they knew
They drew it out of you
Into the air, into the night
Into your consciousness
Where it will sustain you the whole year,
That instant when
You
Made them dance!
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
A Day With AD/HD
A friend said "I don't think of you that way, I think of you as wonderful and talented, so you shouldn't bring it up all the time." It seems obvious that she buys into the last D of the acronym, which is "disorder". But the truth is that I DO 'have' AD/HD. It is something that I deal with every day and every night, all day, all night. In a world where everyone was like this, it might not be an issue, but a world where 90 to 95%* of the people are NOT like this means that schedules and social norms are not optimal for me.
It starts most days at 4:00 a.m. when I wake up with my brain in a state where thoughts are racing. "What woke me up, was it one of the kids? Are they okay? Is it the house? Is there a fire? The plumbing? A break-in? Is something wrong? What could it be? Listen, is it TOO quiet?" If I try go to back to sleep, I am haunted by worries and concerns and every thought turns to a dozen others exploring possible worse scenarios. I have learned to just get up and put a stop to the cycle of thoughts. Sometimes it doesn't take much. Read email, look at a project, write down a couple ideas, read a bit of a book, fold a little laundry. Alone at Mineral Point, I can go down to the studio and actually work on a project, but if there are family members or visitors present, I have to sneak around so as not to disturb them. After getting the brain reset, I can usually get in a few more hours of sleep.
But when I am up to stay, options open up. It is my understanding that 'normal' people operate in sort of a routine at that point, but I do not habituate easily. Patterns of doing the exact same thing at the exact same time or in the exact same situation do not settle into my brain as easily, so I need to think what to do next. Shower or have some breakfast or do a little of something in my jammies? When I do hit the shower, I often look at the array of bottle and have to think "Which shampoo am I using these days?" The pattern of tooth brushing and shampooing and soaping and hair conditioning is not automatic. Some days, I forget the conditioner and wonder why my hair is so hard to comb, if I remember to comb it. Other days, I get the conditioner on and forget to rinse it. It is unpleasant to be out in public and discover that your hair is not drying because it is full of conditioner, and the number of times I have rinsed it in a restroom sink and tried to dry it on paper towels is embarrassing indeed. Once dressed and ready for the day, well, the good news, is that the day is open to a million possibilities. I can see before me a dozen things that all seem equally attractive and useful and necessary. The bad news is that I must decide and each decision is cluttered with an enormous amount of data that should go it the decision. Sometimes, my brain finds it easy to choose and sometimes, the monumentalness of the task of choosing is paralysing, leaving to accomplish nothing at all. So I have found that lists are good. Lists narrow down the choices to some things that I thought were important in a time of clearer thinking and if the list was prioritized in that time of clearer thinking, I can just pick the top thing on it. I have lists that go for weeks, as things are added and things crossed off and sub-things fit in between things.
If the thing that needs doing is interesting to me, I can pop my brain into hyper-focus and devote myself totally and completely to that task without stopping for hours and hours. While I am working, my thoughts are racing of course, but they are racing in a focused way about ways to make the project work, about related designs I want to try, so sometimes, I have to stop and sketch out some idea, or sometimes I can replay conversations from the past or rehearse conversations of the future or compose something that I need to write, but that might require stopping to make a note now and then too. But I can zone into hyper-focus for hours until extreme hunger or exhaustion or some muscle pain sets in and brings me back to the real world. Often I have skipped a meal or missed an appointment, and certainly I have failed to do the breakfast dishes or to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer.
Laundry is especially problematic for me, as it requires that sequence of steps so far apart from each other and sometimes laundry sits wet until it gets musty and has to be rewashed or sits in the dryer until I NEED it to wear next and well, that wrinkle-release spray has saved me from my neglect of dried laundry on many occasions. Meals are an ongoing issue. Sometimes, I am hungry on schedule with the rest of the world, but more often, if I am hyper-focused, by the time I am hungry for lunch, it is 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. so by the time I am hungry for dinner it is 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. and if I have failed to plan ahead by stocking food in my kitchen, there are now no restaurants open and well, such a schedule does not jive with that of a family or friends, so I skip that lunch and overeat at dinner. AD/HD can make writing easy, as the ideas just flow. My racing thoughts are always a few steps ahead of my pencil or my typing fingers and can have the next thoughts organized and ready by the time my fingers ready to put them to words, but sometimes, if things are moving too fast, there are too many options presented to me and I can see where each paragraph could lead in any number of directions and I see too many options. It is then that my writing become run-on and disjointed and flies in too many directions. If I know I have to produce a piece of writing, I will try to write an outline in what I know to be a more balanced state so that when I am in a hyper-productive mode, I can translate that outline to words and resist all the attractive and interesting tangents and subtplots that rush into my brain during the production writing.
Now, if the work I need to do is not interesting to me, that is when AD/HD is its most torturous. When I have to add up the long columns of numbers two different ways to get the numbers to match in order to do my books in order to pay my state sales tax and write checks to my artists, I am pained. It is all I can do to force myself to sit down to it and go through the steps. Since I do not habituate well, and only do it once a quarter, first I have to study it and remember the steps and why they are the way they are. Then I can begin to painfully laboriously tediously boringly ploddingly mind-numbingly crunch the monotonous repetitive wearisome dull numbers. A thousand things tempt me away. It is a constant process of attempting to resist them. So many important other more interesting things demand my attention and try to call me away from my boring task. It truly is an awful chore to stick to task at this point. Only fear of the faceless formless nameless Wisconsin tax "man" and concern for my artists keep me at it. It seems to take forever and each step is a new horrible tedious painful boring chore. It is worse than these words can describe. Cleaning, doing dishes, sorting papers or closets or laundry all approach the same level of tedium and the same taunting tempting teasing siren call of distraction to a thousand other more interesting fabulously fascinating things. A picture must be hung, a broken thing must be glued, a phone call must be made to someone, a run to the store for supplies must be undertaken, a snack must be had, a different pile in a different room suddenly seems more important than this one, or as the t-shirt says "Oh, look, a squirrel . . . " "Maybe I should go for a walk" . . . and take the camera along and get some pictures and come home and down load them and post them on Facebook and well, you can see where the cleaning or organizing project went, can't you?
Bedtime? What is that? I might be exhausted at 8:00 or I might be zooming in hyperfocus making design notes or writing a lecture or carving a block print or reading a magazine at 2:00 a.m. and still not sleepy. If left to my own scheduling, I would work feverishly for about 6 hours, take an hour nap, work for another 6 hours, take another nap, work for maybe 4 more hours, then take a big sleep for 6 hours. Add some meals and a morning shower and just a tiny chore or two to that and we are up to about a 26 or 27 hour day, which is very hard to compress into the 24 that we are given. If living alone and working on projects, I kinda tent to live on my own schedule like that, pushing my long sleep period around the clock over time. That does not work very will when I am expected to keep store hours or meet people for appointments or dine with people. So I try my best to comply to the real world with a more 'normal' schedule.
And so you can see, AD/HD keeps my days interesting and it represents a challenge, not only for the management that it requires to get the right things done, but also for the added challenge of fitting into a 'normal' time schedule and to interact with 'normal' people and comply to 'normal' priority schemes, and I must admit that I do not always do a stellar job at it. Sometimes, I forget to even try!
*Thom Hartmann says that if a population has 5-10% of a 'type' of people, it cannot be a defect manifesting itself as a disorder, but that it has to be of benefit to the overall population somehow, just like the population needs very strong people but if they were all very strong, they might have trouble keeping themselves fed. He sees it as a variant that has benefit to the society, for example, to keep the society flexible, creative, spontaneous when it needs to be. I wish society saw it that way and valued us.
It starts most days at 4:00 a.m. when I wake up with my brain in a state where thoughts are racing. "What woke me up, was it one of the kids? Are they okay? Is it the house? Is there a fire? The plumbing? A break-in? Is something wrong? What could it be? Listen, is it TOO quiet?" If I try go to back to sleep, I am haunted by worries and concerns and every thought turns to a dozen others exploring possible worse scenarios. I have learned to just get up and put a stop to the cycle of thoughts. Sometimes it doesn't take much. Read email, look at a project, write down a couple ideas, read a bit of a book, fold a little laundry. Alone at Mineral Point, I can go down to the studio and actually work on a project, but if there are family members or visitors present, I have to sneak around so as not to disturb them. After getting the brain reset, I can usually get in a few more hours of sleep.
But when I am up to stay, options open up. It is my understanding that 'normal' people operate in sort of a routine at that point, but I do not habituate easily. Patterns of doing the exact same thing at the exact same time or in the exact same situation do not settle into my brain as easily, so I need to think what to do next. Shower or have some breakfast or do a little of something in my jammies? When I do hit the shower, I often look at the array of bottle and have to think "Which shampoo am I using these days?" The pattern of tooth brushing and shampooing and soaping and hair conditioning is not automatic. Some days, I forget the conditioner and wonder why my hair is so hard to comb, if I remember to comb it. Other days, I get the conditioner on and forget to rinse it. It is unpleasant to be out in public and discover that your hair is not drying because it is full of conditioner, and the number of times I have rinsed it in a restroom sink and tried to dry it on paper towels is embarrassing indeed. Once dressed and ready for the day, well, the good news, is that the day is open to a million possibilities. I can see before me a dozen things that all seem equally attractive and useful and necessary. The bad news is that I must decide and each decision is cluttered with an enormous amount of data that should go it the decision. Sometimes, my brain finds it easy to choose and sometimes, the monumentalness of the task of choosing is paralysing, leaving to accomplish nothing at all. So I have found that lists are good. Lists narrow down the choices to some things that I thought were important in a time of clearer thinking and if the list was prioritized in that time of clearer thinking, I can just pick the top thing on it. I have lists that go for weeks, as things are added and things crossed off and sub-things fit in between things.
If the thing that needs doing is interesting to me, I can pop my brain into hyper-focus and devote myself totally and completely to that task without stopping for hours and hours. While I am working, my thoughts are racing of course, but they are racing in a focused way about ways to make the project work, about related designs I want to try, so sometimes, I have to stop and sketch out some idea, or sometimes I can replay conversations from the past or rehearse conversations of the future or compose something that I need to write, but that might require stopping to make a note now and then too. But I can zone into hyper-focus for hours until extreme hunger or exhaustion or some muscle pain sets in and brings me back to the real world. Often I have skipped a meal or missed an appointment, and certainly I have failed to do the breakfast dishes or to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer.
Laundry is especially problematic for me, as it requires that sequence of steps so far apart from each other and sometimes laundry sits wet until it gets musty and has to be rewashed or sits in the dryer until I NEED it to wear next and well, that wrinkle-release spray has saved me from my neglect of dried laundry on many occasions. Meals are an ongoing issue. Sometimes, I am hungry on schedule with the rest of the world, but more often, if I am hyper-focused, by the time I am hungry for lunch, it is 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. so by the time I am hungry for dinner it is 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. and if I have failed to plan ahead by stocking food in my kitchen, there are now no restaurants open and well, such a schedule does not jive with that of a family or friends, so I skip that lunch and overeat at dinner. AD/HD can make writing easy, as the ideas just flow. My racing thoughts are always a few steps ahead of my pencil or my typing fingers and can have the next thoughts organized and ready by the time my fingers ready to put them to words, but sometimes, if things are moving too fast, there are too many options presented to me and I can see where each paragraph could lead in any number of directions and I see too many options. It is then that my writing become run-on and disjointed and flies in too many directions. If I know I have to produce a piece of writing, I will try to write an outline in what I know to be a more balanced state so that when I am in a hyper-productive mode, I can translate that outline to words and resist all the attractive and interesting tangents and subtplots that rush into my brain during the production writing.
Now, if the work I need to do is not interesting to me, that is when AD/HD is its most torturous. When I have to add up the long columns of numbers two different ways to get the numbers to match in order to do my books in order to pay my state sales tax and write checks to my artists, I am pained. It is all I can do to force myself to sit down to it and go through the steps. Since I do not habituate well, and only do it once a quarter, first I have to study it and remember the steps and why they are the way they are. Then I can begin to painfully laboriously tediously boringly ploddingly mind-numbingly crunch the monotonous repetitive wearisome dull numbers. A thousand things tempt me away. It is a constant process of attempting to resist them. So many important other more interesting things demand my attention and try to call me away from my boring task. It truly is an awful chore to stick to task at this point. Only fear of the faceless formless nameless Wisconsin tax "man" and concern for my artists keep me at it. It seems to take forever and each step is a new horrible tedious painful boring chore. It is worse than these words can describe. Cleaning, doing dishes, sorting papers or closets or laundry all approach the same level of tedium and the same taunting tempting teasing siren call of distraction to a thousand other more interesting fabulously fascinating things. A picture must be hung, a broken thing must be glued, a phone call must be made to someone, a run to the store for supplies must be undertaken, a snack must be had, a different pile in a different room suddenly seems more important than this one, or as the t-shirt says "Oh, look, a squirrel . . . " "Maybe I should go for a walk" . . . and take the camera along and get some pictures and come home and down load them and post them on Facebook and well, you can see where the cleaning or organizing project went, can't you?
Bedtime? What is that? I might be exhausted at 8:00 or I might be zooming in hyperfocus making design notes or writing a lecture or carving a block print or reading a magazine at 2:00 a.m. and still not sleepy. If left to my own scheduling, I would work feverishly for about 6 hours, take an hour nap, work for another 6 hours, take another nap, work for maybe 4 more hours, then take a big sleep for 6 hours. Add some meals and a morning shower and just a tiny chore or two to that and we are up to about a 26 or 27 hour day, which is very hard to compress into the 24 that we are given. If living alone and working on projects, I kinda tent to live on my own schedule like that, pushing my long sleep period around the clock over time. That does not work very will when I am expected to keep store hours or meet people for appointments or dine with people. So I try my best to comply to the real world with a more 'normal' schedule.
And so you can see, AD/HD keeps my days interesting and it represents a challenge, not only for the management that it requires to get the right things done, but also for the added challenge of fitting into a 'normal' time schedule and to interact with 'normal' people and comply to 'normal' priority schemes, and I must admit that I do not always do a stellar job at it. Sometimes, I forget to even try!
*Thom Hartmann says that if a population has 5-10% of a 'type' of people, it cannot be a defect manifesting itself as a disorder, but that it has to be of benefit to the overall population somehow, just like the population needs very strong people but if they were all very strong, they might have trouble keeping themselves fed. He sees it as a variant that has benefit to the society, for example, to keep the society flexible, creative, spontaneous when it needs to be. I wish society saw it that way and valued us.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Bittersweet
Sometimes things that make you very very happy can also make you very very sad.
The boys and I had this CD once and it had this song. It was called "How Can I Keep From Singing" by Ken Brown and it pretty much captured how I felt about being with my kids on vacation in the beautiful places filled with amazing nature that we visited on our vacations. Okay, it pretty much was my theme song about how I feel about everything. I played it so much that I wore it out. Well, the musician was one of those singer-songwriter types that travels around to festivals and small venues so I couldn't just go to the store and buy a replacement like when I wear out a Mick Jagger CD or a Dave Matthews CD, and I had searched on line a number of times to no avail. The other night, I got what you call a hankerin' to hear that song again. I was kinda in a bum mood for no logical particular reason and thought it might remind me of happy times and cheer me up, so I started to look around, And lo and behold I found it! Not the CD, but a blog by the artist with links to a few of the songs from the CD, including the coveted one. And I also found there some really lovely new songs that made me pretty happy too.
And I found this little poem by the artist:
Until
The wind makes no sound until it wraps itself in the leaves of the trees
and that sound is just a noise
until it makes someone feel something
then it’s music
Well, I titled this post 'bittersweet' and at this point you might be thinking this is all pretty good 'sweet' happy wonderful news, to have found the artist and the songs and some bonus good writing, so where is the 'bitter' part? Oh, it is there, because you see in my reading around the website, what I found out is that Ken Brown is 'retired' for health reasons and not touring anymore really, and that makes me a little sad that I probably will never hear him in concert anymore and that is a selfish reason, but mostly it makes me sad for him, that such a talented person that brought light to my life should suffer misfortune. That makes me very sad, even in the middle of the great joy of finding the old songs and the new songs and the sweet writings.
There's a lot of that in the world, isn't there? Sweet joy all entangled with bitter sadness.
The boys and I had this CD once and it had this song. It was called "How Can I Keep From Singing" by Ken Brown and it pretty much captured how I felt about being with my kids on vacation in the beautiful places filled with amazing nature that we visited on our vacations. Okay, it pretty much was my theme song about how I feel about everything. I played it so much that I wore it out. Well, the musician was one of those singer-songwriter types that travels around to festivals and small venues so I couldn't just go to the store and buy a replacement like when I wear out a Mick Jagger CD or a Dave Matthews CD, and I had searched on line a number of times to no avail. The other night, I got what you call a hankerin' to hear that song again. I was kinda in a bum mood for no logical particular reason and thought it might remind me of happy times and cheer me up, so I started to look around, And lo and behold I found it! Not the CD, but a blog by the artist with links to a few of the songs from the CD, including the coveted one. And I also found there some really lovely new songs that made me pretty happy too.
And I found this little poem by the artist:
Until
The wind makes no sound until it wraps itself in the leaves of the trees
and that sound is just a noise
until it makes someone feel something
then it’s music
Well, I titled this post 'bittersweet' and at this point you might be thinking this is all pretty good 'sweet' happy wonderful news, to have found the artist and the songs and some bonus good writing, so where is the 'bitter' part? Oh, it is there, because you see in my reading around the website, what I found out is that Ken Brown is 'retired' for health reasons and not touring anymore really, and that makes me a little sad that I probably will never hear him in concert anymore and that is a selfish reason, but mostly it makes me sad for him, that such a talented person that brought light to my life should suffer misfortune. That makes me very sad, even in the middle of the great joy of finding the old songs and the new songs and the sweet writings.
There's a lot of that in the world, isn't there? Sweet joy all entangled with bitter sadness.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Raindrops on Roses, Well, Okay, Pansies
I had a wonderful friend who was a photographer. I was in my teens and he introduced me to a number of concepts. He was my first adult cross-gender friend. As a teen girl, you might have 'boy' friends, but because they are never quite removed from the 'datable' pool, you are not quite as 'free' with them as you might be with girl friends. But he was married, a minister, and much older. Not 'datable' so more 'friendable'. He was also my first friend that was not my age. It never really occurred to me that you could have friends that were not your age. There were potential friends among people your age, and there were 'little kids' and 'old people'. But he and I became friends based on a shared hobby of photography. I traveled once with him and his family and on that trip, we photographed together. Mountain scenery, close-ups of wildflowers, people, each other, bits of strange folk culture, more scenery, more flowers. He taught me many things, technical and technique, but he also exposed me to the idea of a philosophy of art. He explained his 'rules' to me and made it clear that they were not the same as the timing-and-aperture-and-ASA sorts of technical things that were truth based, but that these things were clearly of the take-it-or-leave-it variety. He also make it clear that I ought to be developing my own artistic philosophy, a reason for doing it and rules that I would adhere to. One if his 'pet peeves', if you will allow me to use a phrase that is one of MY pet peeves, was photographers who faked things. You were not allowed to spray water on the roses or move a bug from one flower to a more perfect one or to snip off an imperfect leaf. You photographed it as you found it and if there was an imperfection, you either skipped that shot or you made it part of the photograph. So when I see a flower with a naturally occurring drop of water, be it from morning or evening dew or after a rain, I love to rush out there and capture the drops of water, smugly sure that I did not spray them there! It is my little tribute to my photographer friend and my little chance to remember the things we talked about and the special friendship that we had so many years ago and that we carried on by letter, actual hand written letter, about every year or so until he died. And yeah, it WAS his turn to write . . .
Friday, May 22, 2009
In The Artist's Garden II
Bruce is a ceramic artist, wall muralist, potter, art instructor, and gallery owner. Bruce is an 
historian, neighbor, comedian, jokester, expert in local goings on, and friend. His gallery is on Commerce Street in Mineral Point. He lives above his gallery and his studio is under his gallery, with a walk out to the back garden. There, I have been privy to education, advice, stories, and some verbal abuse. It isn't always clear which.
historian, neighbor, comedian, jokester, expert in local goings on, and friend. His gallery is on Commerce Street in Mineral Point. He lives above his gallery and his studio is under his gallery, with a walk out to the back garden. There, I have been privy to education, advice, stories, and some verbal abuse. It isn't always clear which.
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Creatively Inspiring Friend
The "Creatively Inspiring" friend is the one who encourages you in all your 'softer' artistic endeavors. She helps you pick out paint colors and fabrics when you redecorate.
She might even come over to help paint the wall. If you decide to gold leaf the wall in the foyer, she will help you research how to do it and be there when the tricky process is underway. She will look at your plans admiringly and tell you, yes, it can be done. She takes you to beautiful inspiring places like gardens and poetry readings and dance performances and musical performances. She encourages you to 'flair up' your wardrobe a little and says yes to trying a new hair style and will help you fix it if it doesn't work out. Her motto runs to the tune of "What's the worst that can happen" so she encourages you to take creative risks and inspires you with her own. She sees connections that will make your art better and encourages you to try new processes and new media and new subjects, and to explore your usual subjects in new ways. She is the "Whiz" to your "Bang!" and no project is too big for the two of you, no adventure too scary, no idea exists that does not have some merit worth trying or at least talking about. She sparks you to expand your horizons and test your limits.
She might even come over to help paint the wall. If you decide to gold leaf the wall in the foyer, she will help you research how to do it and be there when the tricky process is underway. She will look at your plans admiringly and tell you, yes, it can be done. She takes you to beautiful inspiring places like gardens and poetry readings and dance performances and musical performances. She encourages you to 'flair up' your wardrobe a little and says yes to trying a new hair style and will help you fix it if it doesn't work out. Her motto runs to the tune of "What's the worst that can happen" so she encourages you to take creative risks and inspires you with her own. She sees connections that will make your art better and encourages you to try new processes and new media and new subjects, and to explore your usual subjects in new ways. She is the "Whiz" to your "Bang!" and no project is too big for the two of you, no adventure too scary, no idea exists that does not have some merit worth trying or at least talking about. She sparks you to expand your horizons and test your limits.
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Last Great Museum
Milwaukee is home to a Harley-Davidson engine plant and to the Harley-Davidson Museum. Admit it: You want a motorcycle. They are pretty. They are powerful. They represent all things free and wild and adventuresome. You want a motorcycle. So do I. Niether of us will probably ever have one, but there is no harm is looking and being a little awed and spending a little time on 'What if . . . " 
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Some Paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe
Even if you don't like the subject matter or even the colors, there is just something soothing and calming about Georgia O'Keeffe's work. Sometimes, the contrarian in me tries not to like her so much because she is so popular. 
But then, I see one of her paintings, up close, to appreciate the way she left the light of the canvas to show through and how she got the shading and highlight just right to convey the three dimensions of the surface and I just love her all over again. The hard skull and the soft feather trade places here, with the skull portrayed in soft colors and subtle tints and tones and the turkey feather in dark crisp saturated contrasty color.
Where others might show a leaf in beautiful bright fall plumage of orange or yellow or red or at least the full green of summer, she dares to paint a dried winter leaf and makes us see the beauty of it. That sort of thing is easy for me to do, as you may have noticed by my ginkgo leaf photo a couple days ago, 
but sometimes I feel like kind of a freak for finding such beauty in every last stinking ugly detail of nature, and O'Keefe, well, she give me a little validation for my quirkiness!
Kids Appreciating Art
I love watching people but I especially love watching kids learn! Whatever the assignment these kids had been given, it was a mighty good one, because it set them to looking deeply at a single painting for a long long time. We too often look at each thing for a brief few seconds before moving on the next, sort of check list tourism, "Yep, been there, saw that", without really getting much "learnin'" from the experience. It is better to see a few things deeply and gather detail and meaning and layers of meaning from them than to see the surface of a many lot of things. 
Whatever assignment these kids' good teacher had given them, these kids were learning how to appreciate art in a wonderful way that will serve them beyond this day of visiting the art museum on a field trip.Art at the Art Museum
My favorite painting. The realism in detail is incredible, making this a fabulously beautiful painting. The idea of the grandpa and his granddaughter discovering bits of nature is fun to think about.
My favorite painting series. It is about something to do with numbers. I refused to think too hard about and just enjoyed the aesthetics. 
I love series of paintings. I love the idea of having a long hallway enough to display a series and the discipline to choose just one series and not a whole bunch of unrelated wonderful things. I could never do that!
My favorite art title. The art itself was this blue slab leaning against the wall. I didn't get it but I liked the title.
My favorite art idea. They commissioned this guy to do an art piece for a big blank wall and he sent them a letter. Instructions on how to do it themselves. I like the idea of sending an idea and the idea of not having total control of how the people execute it and I like the idea of real people doing the actual art of the art.
My favorite "folk art" painting.
My least favorite painting. There are some paintings I don't aesthetically like, but I understand them. There are paintings I don't understand, but I can find aesthetic beauty or interest in them. I don't like this one and I don't get this one. At all. Anyone? Ideas?
My favorite artist story is about the painter who did this one. She lived on the 6th floor and had animals and birds in her apartment. All the time. She was a bronze sculptor too but gave it up to let her brother specialize in it.
I loved the detail and overall aesthetics of this carved soapstone piece, but I don't get why Adam and Eve would get married. Marriage is a social construct and there would have been no society. Marriage is a commitment, but hey, there were only the two of them.
But the detail of the border was beautiful and wonderful.
My favorite cute thing. This bristly "folk art'"critter is a couple feet tall and maybe 3 feet long and just adorable. Really!
My favorite piece of furniture. There is a cat carved into the back.
My favorite sculpture. No surprise that it is botanical.
Milwaukee Art Museum
The art museum itself it art! The wings fold up against the structure or open into the sky.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Helix Sculpture at the Discovery Center
This beautiful sculpture of a double helix opens and closes and is surrounded by a double helix staircase so that you can view it from all angles. Amazing, beautiful!
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