restingmotion

Saturday Morning

The view out my window promises a beautiful Saturday morning.  I however have a sinus headache, and have already been out twice with Tikka and know the humidity is higher than I would prefer.  That doesn't make it a less beautiful day; it simply means I need to modify my expectations.    

 

Moises is settling back in after my return from Texas, settling back into the apartment as well, as I don't think he was fully acclimated before I left.  Hence the sinus headache.  M is very clingy right now, and consistently tried to crawl up under my chin during the night whereas I usually manage to keep him on the lower half of the bed.  I know he needs comfort, but I have learned that I am allergic to cats, only mildly so, as I can have him in the house as long as I vacuum and don't let him cuddle up under my chin, but allergic nonetheless,  Cat-in-the-face was neither good for my ability to breathe or for my sinuses, but we will both recover.   

 

I am planning on a slow day, a day for puttering.  Next week is busy, so a personal day is a necessity.  Even so I may or may not keep up, just as I did not keep up with the blog this week past, and I am beginning to accept that a production schedule doesn't really work because I am not really interested in production, in producing a particular thing.  This is something that has shaped my creative life all along, even with sewing and knitting.  I am interested in making, but with writing, like in knitting or sewing, the end result is a happy bonus that comes out of the process.  I am not interested in the making in order to produce, I am interested in the process itself, and the results are simply a little something extra.

That said, I did actually finish something last week.  I knit a small scarf.  I had a skein of gray Ritratto mohair by Filatura di Crossa, and a few little bits and bobs, yarn samples from a mailing or two, so I knit a narrow scarf,  I'm not sure I ever thought I would want a narrow scarf, but I love this one and look forward to the day when the weather will cool enough that I will wear it.  I suspect that is a few months away.  I've almost finished another sweater, at least the knitting part, but I don't yet have a place to block anything, including the above scarf. I may get that much of my craft room cleared away this weekend, but considering my pounding head, and a general sense of laziness, I make no promises.

 

This last week also ended up busy.  Monday was intentionally quiet:  knitting, practicing embroidery stitches, sketching a few design ideas.  But I knew the week would be filled with meetings and events, and that quiet time was needed for balance, as I suppose it is, again, today.

The house is also progressing nicely.  The walls have been opened up.  The two small bedrooms that will be the new library are now one space, and I can get a wonderful sense of the space and the light.  This photo was pretty early in the morning, an hour and a half or so
after sunrise, but still lovely.

And framing is going in, so I can begin to imagine the new layout, walk through and feel the flow.  That translation from space on paper to something three-dimensional, a reimagined space, is wonderful, and I exciting.  I fell it is going to be as wonderful as I imagined it would be.

Foundations will be going in soon.  There are still meetings and decisions to be made both large and small.  I love the process, but even though I am not doing the work, it is exhausting, and I am a bit behind.  

 

It is also September, and the fall season has started up.  There are plays, concerts, exhibits, events -- my ability to step back and not overload my social calendar has always been somewhat weak.  I have learned to better balance quiet time, creative time, with going out time, experience and fellowship time, but I don't quite know how the demands of the remodel will play into that.  I suspect that once I get through this first couple of weeks, my input into the job will quiet down and things will be easier.

 

In the meantime.  I'm still plowing through ideas.  I did take the time out last week to go to the production of Candide at the Clarence Brown Theater, which was utterly fabulous, one of the best things I have been to in a long long time.  I knew Bernstein's score but had not seen the musical production. I have read the original play, in both French and English, but had not read the libretto.   I love the way everything comes together here, the sharp wit, bitterness and hopefulness, the cynicism and satire in the world view.  That is in fact, something that I think Voltaire does well, that combination of cynicism, with hopefulness.  Of course Bernstein's music plays up the hopefulness.  But I saw the same thing in Grass as well, in The Tin Drum.  Can one be both cynical and naive?  I think that is the essence of human greatness, that we need both.  And that is also, of course, why we need art.

 

Truthfully, I had not been a big fan of Bernstein's score, although it is quite possible that this was due to my own lack of imagination.  I had heard it in concert on more than one occasion, and, lushly beautiful as it is, I felt disappointed.  But I also tend to feel that music meant to accompany something else, as a libretto perhaps, is not complete without the words and even then, perhaps not without the visual component. One needs all the pieces to come together.  Do people who love show music love the music itself, regardless of seeing the show, or do they love the music because it also triggers for them memories of the show?  I've never asked.  And again, this may again be a crisis of my own lack of imagination.  I don't think I will ever be able to listen to Bernstein's score again without reliving bits of this production however, and I think that is a good thing, just as I can't listen to West Side Story without seeing West Side Story in my head.  But then, I love operas I've never seen live, or do I?  Or do I imagine the opera in my head while I listen, and do I listen only to the operas I can imagine, whether or not I've heard them performed? Context, it seems, is always important.

 

The production is over the top and highly entertaining, and I love having the symphony present, on the stage, as part of the performance. Candide himself is wonderful.  Everyone is wonderful.  Really, I wish I had bought tickets for more than one performance.  It would be a joy to see again and again. Who knows, perhaps I will.

A First Impression of the Joseph Delaney Exhibit at the KMA

Thursday night I attended a reception for the new Joseph Delaney exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art.  Joseph Delaney was a Knoxville native, the younger brother of Beauford Delaney, the better known of the two painters.  He painted in New York at the time of the Harlem Renaissance.

When I walked into the first room of the exhibit, I was immediately struck by this wall of drawings, charcoals, various works on paper, all in blacks and grays.  The works here span the artists lifetime and the sense of presence, characters and vision are strong.   But I didn't really get back to that wall to study anything in greater detail that evening.  There were too many people milling about, too much noise, and although I had a fabulous time, I could really only absorb about two or three pieces.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I can usually only absorb about 3 pieces in any trip to a museum or gallery, no matter the circumstances.

 

I want to write about my initial impressions that night, my first impressions.  the black and white wall (although not really so white) shaped the atmosphere of the room, and most of the works in this gallery were more somber in colors.   There was so much to see, but a couple of pieces really stuck in my head and heart, and those are the pieces I will show here.  I really didn't get beyond them in the exhibit, and I will have to go back.  I also didn't read any of the little plaques describing the pieces, and I know little about the artist himself.  This is typical for me.  I always want to look first, to open my own relationship to the work, then go back, and continue the discussion with whatever curatorial notes I find posted.  I suppose this is my form of disavowal:  these are my impressions, uninformed perhaps, but heartfelt.  Two of these works were discussed at the reception, and I was both gratified that two of my favorite pieces were chosen, but I was also distracted and tuned out part of the talk, possibly to my detriment, as I probably would have learned a lot.

The first work that caught my attention was this piece, and no, I did not take a picture of the plaque and I do not remember what it was called.  What struck me immediately is this powerful sense of combined movement and stasis, as if held in balance.  I liked the way Delaney plays with perspective.  It felt like he was messing with my mind a little; it seemed like there was an obvious sense of distance, but also another layer of perspective that turned it all on its head. What you see, and the perspective of the piece shifts as you move, depending on the angle at which you look at the work.  Near and Far; or is it Far and Near? Or does it even matter?  One gets the sense it is the power of motion itself that matters, as if that combination of motion and place creates its own vitality.  Notice the ship moving out to sea, toward the Statue of Liberty in the harbor.  You can see the island on which she stands, but the colors of the land are echoed in the water, blurring the distinctions.  She is both a statue, and a guiding angel.  The sense of place is palpable, as is the multilayered sense of movement, as if the two cannot be separated, either in space, or, in another sense, in time.

A friend commented on the portraits, and I turned to look.  I admit I am not good at portraits, at describing what I see, for the most part they always seem to subtle, flat even, but not this one.  I was drawn in by this portrait, titled Romaine, struck by the vibrancy of the personality that was captured.  It is full of life, the painting itself seems to shimmer with life, as if the subject could burst through the canvas at any moment.

And then there was this New York scene.  This painting shone like a beacon in the gallery.  It was by far the lightest work in the room, and that sense of bouyancy was palpable.  You get a sense of the grandeur of the city, but also of light and joy. not the almost dark energy of the first painting I posted.  And yet, there is something more than the grand ideas, and the idealized skyline,  The figures in the bottom of the painting seem almost too dark, related more to the other works in the gallery than to the light-filled upper reaches of this painting. It is as if the painting is saying something about ideas and aspirations as contrasted with the realities of life.

Notice these figures in the lower left corner of the painting. There is the lightness of the family pulling their groceries, almost a joyous embrace of the present moment.  Notice how the mother and child are bright, glowing, even, whereas the man is turning away from them and is beginning to fade. There are other people, children and adults of mixed races and backgrounds, some seem fully present, others almost like ghosts and remnants of the cities complex histories.  This seems especially poignant in the image of a jewish man walking toward the viewer, with what appear to me to be ghosts of ghettos past hovering behind him, who seems almost partially faded. Even he seems somewhat tenuous, fully there, and yet linked to some disappearing past.  

Next lets look at the figures in the center, all blurred together in motion, a mix of outline and color as if the present and history are all superimposed upon each other in the sense of a place, in the lives of its residence.  I love Delaney's figures, the way they capture motion and life, and also a sense of historic timelessness.  I also can't let go of the idea that the man directing the traffic, a policeman probably (?) reminds me as much of images of Greek satyrs as he does a man.  

 

I will have to go back to the exhibit and look at all the things I have not absorbed.  I will have to go back and look at these works again, and probably read all the available information, trying to see what I have missed, to further understand what I may or may not have misconstrued.  There is so much I missed that first visit to the galleries, so many fleeting glimpses floating through my thoughts awaiting further exploration.

 

 

International Quilt Study Center 2: Craft....

I've broken this visit to the Quilt Study Center into two sections mostly because it grew long, and I've divided it into sections labeled art and craft, not so much because I believe that one is more or less worthy than the other, or even that dividing lines are all that clear, but because it suited my purposes.  In this post I am covering the parts of the exhibit that were devoted to pieces that were created to be functional.  

Simply put, as much as I love art in and of itself, there is a special place in my heart for those who make things that are beautiful for everyday use.  We have little time or even use for such things in modern life, when everything is available to us without much thought and it is time that feels rare.  But I sometimes wonder if we've missed something truly important.

There was a small, but lovely exhibit of Miao pieces which included the two collars shown above.  These are pieces intended to be worn, and they show signs of wear and use, but the design and workmanship is stunning.  I want to say that they are in fact children's collars, but I neglected to take a photo of the descriptive plaque and cannot remember.  That seems foreign to us in modern life, where we feel our hands are put to better use than on handwork that will be quickly outgrown, but I'm not sure the results of our labors are any less ephemeral.  The act of making shows respect and honor and love, the wearing connects one to the art, to the cycle of life and art combined.  Such things remind me that we humans are creative creatures, that we are compelled to make beauty, and that it is in fact the act of living itself, and celebrating the small, the immediate, and the circle of our individual family and community is from whence our well-being and happiness ultimately arises.

It is not really important if something was made for everyday use or for special occasions.  What attracts me is the making as well as the using, that it is the act of living itself that is worthy of art.  Look at the detail in this Miao women's jacket for example.  It is not fast fashion.  This is something to be worn and cared for, to be treasured.  It is something that is meant to last, not permanently no, but nothing really is permanent, and to be worn with pride.

In some ways, we modern people have lost that.  Would any of us spend the time embroidering a jacket, putting in time to perform intricate work such as in the example above?  We think of our time as too valuable, and yet do the things we do with our time prove to be more lasting?  Do they bring us greater pleasure? I am not trying to denigrate the art quilts, I think they are fabulous.  I think human need to create is something essential to our being, that we are all creative, if anything, we do not honor or desire for creativity enough.

But one of the joys of looking at older, or traditional quilts and bed coverings is not only in admiring the skill of the makers, but also in reminding oneself of the joy in making something that was both necessary and beautiful.  No one has to make beauty, and yet we do. And our desire to express beauty can take many forms. The bedspread above is not quilted, or embroidered but stenciled. It is no less beautiful, no less useful, and the stenciling is artfully done.  Similar stencils are available in Michaels and we might stencil a placemat, a piece of furniture or a wall, and yet this bedspread dates from sometime in the 1820s or 1830s. Would we stencil a bedspread? Are we missing something in not curling up under the warmth of our own handiwork?

Or consider this embroidered blanket, embroidered with wool thread, which the description stated had probably been spun from local wool.  Note the date, 1816, making this blanket over 200 years old.  The workmanship is beautiful.  Can we imagine it today?  Such workmanship takes much practice and skill, and not every budding embroiderer has the patience or talent, but can we even imagine sitting down today and embroidering a blanket?  What have we lost and what have we gained?  

Is this any less art?  Someone meticulously cut out motifs, arranged them, and attached them by hand.

And so we still admire and celebrate that which survives, the patience, the skill, the handiwork:

Today these things are the exceptions, the treasures, and most of them are just that.  Most of what makes it to a museum is the exceptional, the work of the skilled and talented, but many of these objects also came from a time when most people needed to make what they used, and not everyone was equally talented.  The truth is that most quilts were not exceptional.  But we tend to forget about the quality of the average.  We are blinded by our own exposure, our experience, our knowledge.  We forget that we have become critics, and we forget that our vantage point is indeed from a point of exception.  But in many ways the average, the everyday, even the fact that individuals and communities made quilts, that the making was itself both a necessity and a bringing together, is forgotten. 

I think in some ways, that was the beauty of the Ken Burns quilt exhibit, although we admittedly did not spend enough time there.  It is something I regret.  I admit that compared to the work in the other exhibits some of these quilts seemed boring, but we were blinded by our own knowledge, our own skills as seamstresses although I for one am no quilter, and the fact that we had just come from the art exhibits.  But I also blame this on the curation of the exhibit itself,  It could have been so much better.  To that end I am showing two photos from the International Quilt Study Center's website illustrating the exhibit.   The photo above shows an example that I think worked.  The words printed on the wall relate directly to the quilts displayed, and give the viewer some sense of what attracted the collector, but for most of the exhibit this was not the case.

More often we had random words and phrases, yes Burns' words, but disembodied from a conversation and not necessarily relating to the nearby quilts.  Often these words, taken out of context, in a sense disembodied, seemed shallow and often patronizing.  They seemed to lessen the experience of viewing the exhibit rather than enhancing it.  The collection is in fact quite interesting, even though we did comment that the quilts were often boring.  But that is not the point, surrounded in a museum of the exceptional in terms of technique and style, a bit more work was required in order to bring the heart of this exhibit to the viewer.  I don't think it succeeded.

 

After returning home I googled Ken Burns and came up with this article in the New York Times.  I highly recommend the article.  Many of the words used in the exhibit come from this conversation, but here they are warm whereas in the museum they seem cold and detached.  There are also photos of quilts not seen in the exhibit, lovely quilts, but their loveliness is not why I mention them.  Read Burns descriptions of the quilts, what attracted him to them.  This is what was missing from the Burns exhibit, the connection with the collector.  In the end I think this is what we all want.  We want to see art, yes, but we also want to understand, we also want relationship.  We want to know what attracted the collector to the works he collected, what meaning he derives, so that we an then form our own conversations with what we are seeing.  This was lacking.

 

Having read the article, now I'd like to go back and see the exhibit again.  Still I think it could have been better done, it could have offered an opportunity for connection with our past and with the idea that everyday creativity is not mundane or even boring. Instead I am left with regret, regret that despite all the beauty, all the exceptional workmanship, we missed something essential, regret that perhaps we did not see the forest through the trees.

 

The two photos from the Burns exhibit are not my photos but are taken from the website of the International Quilt Study Center. 

 

International Quilt Study Center 1:Art....

I've been going through photos, and was reminded that I always intended to write more about my trip to Lincoln, including our visit to the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.  I took a lot of photos, only a few of which are shown here.  In fact editing through those photos and deciding what to write was one reason this post was delayed nearly a month.  Be warned, this is a photo-heavy post.

This large art-quilt is by Velda Newman.  There were three quilts in this exhibit, all huge, all meant, it appears to me, to be public installations, quilt as art.  The smallest one, the last one I show, is about the size of the large painting I bought for my living room.  The one shown above is larger than my longest living room wall. I suppose I should have gotten a photo with one of us for scale, but that would have interfered with the loveliness of the quilt itself.

Despite being large, the detail is also meticulous.  Admittedly, I was most entranced by the colors, and there is nothing surprising in that. And I am amazed at the artist's ability not just to conceive of the idea, but to execute the work with the large pieces of fabric.  I love small things and small pieces, but if you've been reading here you've seen that.  My inclination with large pieces of fabric is simply to roll myself up in them, swaddled. And yet it is for this reason that I am even more amazed: the idea and he execution are breathtaking.

Look at the piecing and the quilting on this detail,  a section of the quilt seen below.  

Obviously none of these are one's grandmother's quilts.  The quilts I am showing today are all by artists, artists who are respected in their field. but the styles are remarkably different.  That is the point.  Some quilt are envisioned as art, some as craft, some as a blurring of the two.  Newman's quilts, at least the quilts seen here, are traditional quilts in terms of technique but not in terms of subject and scale; they are quilts obviously meant for public spaces, not intimate lives.  

Although they speak the language of art, they do so in a different dialect than that which is traditionally reserved for the fine arts. This merging of genre's offers much latitude for insight and revelation.  This blurring of genres is something I see happening in similar ways in some kinds of music, in venues like Big Ears.  But perhaps that is my bias as well.  I love tiny details and amorphous broad categorizations.

 

Notice above the way the butterfly extends past the edge of the border.  Notice also the way the stitching of the smooth fabric, from a distance, gives an sense of softness, of depth, almost of a velvety texture, like the wing of a living butterfly.  If I did not know the scale of this piece, I would think the red tip on one butterfly's wings was softly embroidered, but it is stitched with smooth fabric.  Notice, in the photo below, by a different artist, the blending of materials, the watercolor-like effect created by blending hand-dyed fabrics with piecing, embroidery and brushstrokes.

But much as I love these large-scale works and the idea of art for public spaces, which is a bit of a theme at this moment in time, not just in quilt circles,  I also love the small and the intimate, the functional, the idea that beauty is something that is a part and parcel of our lives, both public and private.

These works are by Japanese quilter Eiko Okano.  Many of these quilts were more functional, and more traditional in size.  The above small pieces were actually described as study pieces, but I love how they are also useful, not something to be placed in a drawer but which can be used.

Although Okano uses multiple techniques, her work bridges the traditional with the modern, art with life, and the necessity of things, but things that bring beauty to existence.  The quilt above is a traditional size that could be used on a bed or on a wall.

Note the detail, each of these tiny pieces that make up the whole.  Traditional techniques and stitches, a widely varied selection of fabric styes and prints, combined into something that both honors tradition and the present, art and craft, necessity and beauty.

So how do we define art? How do we define craft? I do think that is always a question worth exploring.  This work by Molly Anderson is obviously a quilt, obviously a celebration of traditional handwork with appliqué, quilting and embroidery.  And yet it is something to be seen, to be appreciated in and of itself -- visual representation of both the world, but also of something intrinsically human -- something that takes what we know and moves us to think and see in new ways.

 

 

Two Prints

I recently rediscovered a photo I had taken at the opening of a new exhibition of contemporary prints at the Knoxville Museum of Art back at the end of January.  I returned to the museum this week to refresh my memory and perhaps to explore whether my thoughts had changed or evolved.  The exhibit is closing the end of this week, so I do recommend seeing it I you have a chance, although the works are part of the permanent collection and will resurface again. 

 

What I discovered is that thoughts and impressions do indeed change, but certain things do not.  The print I loved in January remains my favorite print of the lot, even though there are many fabulous prints, including examples by artists whose names are more well-known.  I am too old to think that this means anything significant.  My attraction to this print is not really about the quality of the print, although I do think it is masterfully done., All the prints are fascinating, and I am not qualified as a critic.  The fact that I am drawn to this particular work is as much about me and what I bring to the conversation as it is about the artist and the print itself. 

This is the print I loved, the print I still love, and I have actually been back to look at it on multiple occasions.  The print, titled Building,  is by James Surls.   I love the depth of it, which is imperfectly captured in this photograph.  Notice how the artist utilized both sides of the paper, so one sees depth to the print itself. Imagine the complexity of that process: these are not random bits on paper, the dual printing adds layers of complexity, but also enhances that sense of randomness I see in the print. But it is very hard to make something appear random, easier for nature than for orderly human brains. What I particularly like is the way it speaks to me of memory, of things past and things present, old and new and how our past shapes and organizes our perceptions of the present and the future.  This print speaks to me of home, of self, of holding on and also of letting go, and how we never quite manage either. Our pasts, our expectations, our experiences, shape us and are always there floating in our own personal ether, sometimes up front, sometimes further back, a part and parcel of who we are. And yet there is a certain sense of disruption here, of uprootedness.  One is grounded but just because who we are, our past, is always with us, does not mean we do not sometimes flounder, does not mean we have control over how we are shaped.

 

Oddly, this print also reminded me of another print, one I had seen at an exhibit at the McNay Museum in San Antonio back in August.   The prints are nothing alike.  The artists' work is nothing alike, and yet, even in this last visit to the Knoxville Museum, that connection came to mind, a connection not so much between the art itself as between the feelings the works evoke in this particular observer.

This print, titled Headed to the Promised Land, is by Juan Mora.  Where the first print was light and airy, this print is dark and heavy.  And yet, they both speak to experience and memory and the things we hold onto in the face of disruption.  Mora's prints, at least the ones at the exhibit in question address the experience of the immigrant, and this experience of holding onto culture and the past, while simultaneously being very uncertain about the future.   In both prints there is, at least to me, a sense of how the past and expectations shape our present, a tacit acknowledgement that who we are is shaped by all the bits and pieces of our lives.  Mora explores how we hold on to our pasts, explores fear, and the unsettledness of facing the unknown, acknowledging that we cannot imagine or seek the future, or even salvation, as separate from our fears and hopes, from the compounding of our experiences. And yet the bundle of the things that we deem necessary for life, for security,  also burdens us, and holds us down.  We must carry it with us, but we must also lighten our load, allow our stuff to fall by the wayside. If you look closely, you still find hope in this print, you still see that, although the things that we hold on to are both a part of who we are, it is not our baggage that will get us where we are going.

 

Two prints. Two cities.  Six months between my encounter with each.  An older artist and a younger one.  The Surls work is 20 years old, made when the artist was middle-aged.  Mora is young.  Both works speak to the experience of transition. I recognize that the connection is extremely tentative, and yet I remain compelled by something I am not sure I understand, I am not sure I need to understand.

Weekend in NY

I'm a little scattered this morning, and the post I was planning on posting this morning, that I had started writing and then abandoned is just that, abandoned.  I took photos in a rush, which is always a mistake, and now I am unhappy with myself because I must go back to the source and take new photos.

I'm not too unhappy however, because I am having a wonderful time in New York City.  I flew in Saturday, and went to the Ballet that evening.  Walking up the stairs to the balcony lobby in he David Koch theater and seeing that space filled with colorful balloons, creating a buoyant wonderland of color floating through the room, was a magical moment in and of itself. The installation is by Jihan Zencirli and I felt like a child playing with bubbles as we walked around it, as did many others apparently, wonder on their faces, people pulling their friends over and snapping selfies with balloons during intermissions.  Young, and old alike smiling, momentary glimpses of childish glee on the most carefully composed of faces.  And yes, the ballet was stunning as well, an all Balanchine program, beautifully performed.  I haven't been to the ballet, to a really good ballet in years, and I don't have the words for it, except to say that magic happened all around.

Sunday it rained, quite heavily at times, but we were out in the morning, exploring, wandering,  Trying to stay dry, not always successfully. We had thought we would go someplace and be promptly indoors, but it didn't quite work out that way.  By 1PM, tired, hungry, and also a bit wet, we decided to retire to the hotel, where we could while away the hours with a drink and a nibble.

We had tickets again that evening, again at Lincoln Center, but this time at Alice Tully Hall, a part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's series. Somehow, out of pure dumb luck, I think we may have gotten some of the best seats in the house.  We were up in the balcony, so not close, but the sound was marvelous.  We could hear every note, separately and also as a part of the whole, combining, and blending, merging into the conversation of the music.  The music was just that, a conversation between the performers, exactly what chamber music should be, something I had not been aware I had really been missing (I had not gotten tickets to one small venue in Knoxville this year, a decision that might have been a mistake).  Best of all, in the final piece, the Dvorak quintet #2 in G major, for two violins, viola, cello, and double bass, they performed the original scoring, with five movements, and it was just stunning.  The two slow movements add a balance and a depth to the piece that is not as evident in the four-movement version.  The soft notes of the double bass, played by Edgar Meyer, in the second movement were breath-taking, as in fact was the entire, stunning, performance. 

The rain was finally lifting so we decided to walk.  We stopped at the same restaurant we had eaten in the night before, Remi, just a couple of blocks from our hotel, but this time we were seated by the window, looking into he courtyard/pedestrian walkway.  I was entranced by the view of the courtyard and the play of light through the window, the reflections, and shadows. I'm not sure I captured it here, but I hope you get a little bit of the feel of the place.  

We walked back to the hotel through a series of pedestrian walkways, stopping to take some photos, then stopping for a grand mariner in lieu of dessert at the hotel bar.  I was entranced once again by the really rather mundane view out the window, the play of light and color, shadow and shape of the lights and the buildings, Applebees and all.  Greater America and New York combined, high and low and everything in between, melting together.

 

Christian Dior: Couturier du Rêve

I can't even begin to describe, or share the wonder that was the Christian Dior Exhibit.  It was by far the most spectacular and magical fashion exhibit I have ever seen and I am very happy that I was able to go.  If you have the opportunity to be in Paris before January 7th, I highly recommend it.

We went during a holiday in France.  Would I have changed my mind had I known?  Probably not; this, after all, was the weekend I had.  But the lines were long even though we had purchased tickets in advance, and the crowds were thick, especially during the early parts of the exhibit where there were drawings, pictures, accessories and a wonderful collection of miniatures of the gowns, many of which we would see later in the exhibit.  Those rooms were packed and barely moving.  I'm not particularly claustrophobic about small spaces, but the pressing crowds, the inability to move, and the fear of stepping on someone after I tripped over a couple of people who were crouching down to take photographs were not happy-making, and I progressed through those sections quickly, finding a nice open, quiet, corner, to watch the crowds (endlessly entertaining) and wait for Liana, who has far more patience, and who glided through the space like an island of calm in a sea of turmoil.

Luckily however many others have gone to the exhibit as well, and Susan has just posted a wonderful review of the exhibit, far more comprehensive than I am likely to write, with great photos, including much from these early rooms.

Mostly I just wanted to look at the clothes.

I admit to being shallow that way, but it is more than that.  With infinite time, and quiet and space, I would love to pore over the details, but I don't have the patience for the crowds.  So I'll simply share a few photos, a small hint really of what was there.

I loved this embroidered raffia dress, and especially the detail at the bottom, the areas without embroidery, which gives the dress a very modern feel, a nod to the truth that our work is both always unfinished, but also just a whisper away from decay.

Although work by the various designers for Dior was mixed with the originals to suit the various themes of the exhibit, there were also rooms dedicated to each designer who has worked for the house.  

 

I have always been particularly fond of Gianfranco Ferré, both his work for his own house and when he was at Dior.

But each designer has brought their own stamp to the tradition.

But these segments were very congested, and often dark as well.  My photographic successes are merely snippets here and there.

By the time we reached the magnificent final room, I was worn out and tired of the crowds.   This final photo of the dream finale is Liana's.  

 

 

This Is Not The Post I Planned To Write

I am sporadically working my way through the photos I took in Scotland, but progress is slow. I am still working on photos from the third day of my trip.  The plan was that I would post as I sorted, a plan that was not, perhaps, highly focused and organized, but worked, given my over-extended fall schedule and the fact that I tend to keep adding things to an already full plate.

The second day we went to Holyrood.  Frankly I found the ruins of Holyrood Abbey far more interesting than in the palace itself, although parts of the palace tour were, indeed, fascinating.  

And yet, as I was sorting through photos, thinking of how I would put them together, my thoughts went astray, wandering in a rather unanticipated direction, my mind fabricating connections between disparate and unrelated images.  .  

The above photo was taken at the fashion exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland.  I didn't record anything about its provenance because I was, and am still, attracted by the combination of pattern and texture.  Further, as I added this photo to my pending folder, muddling over whether I wanted to write about the Abbey or the fashion exhibit, the columnar nature of the pattern and the combination of smooth and shiny with the rough, fluffy and bumpy texture of the skirt reminded me of the abbey itself, with its soaring columns standing next to piles of stones and broken walls, visual reminders of collapse, as well as  the contrast of the grand and ambitiously uplifting design with sometimes very rough and uneven workmanship.   In some ways the outfit struck me as a modern interpretation, in fabric, of what I had seen in stone. 

But the jacket also reminded me of something else entirely, something unrelated to my Scotland trip.  It reminded me of this painting by Anselm Kiefer, Shulemith, which I saw in San Francisco in August of last year.  When I first saw this painting I thought of something sacred: dark and disturbing, yes, but also sacred.  Since then the photo has been sitting patiently  in my pending file, waiting for me to write something, and it seems odd that it would pop into my head now, drawn to my attention perhaps more by the colors of a garment than the nature of the work itself.  

 

The Abbey also had a sense about it of a being a sacred space, but my initial response to the abbey was not as visceral as my response to the painting. In fact, that palpable sense of holy ground initially seemed to have faded, trampled by thousands of feet.  But it still clung to the walls and the corners, the in between spaces, almost lurking, waiting to catch one by surprise and snap one out of oblivion. The abbey is filled with light, seems to masquerade as a place of light, a space settled into itself, almost where the cares of the world had been worn down and faded away. But that is an illusion.  Light and dark live together here, holiness and the ravages of time, etched into the stone with nearly nine-hundred years of human history:  love, loss, fear, joy.  Still, I cannot explain, perhaps I can't even fully comprehend, why these two things, the abbey and the painting, Shulemith, have welded themselves together in my thoughts.     

The Abbey was founded in 1128 and built over the next century.  It was also repeatedly destroyed by wars and mobs, vandalized, neglected, rebuilt, sometimes Ill-advisedly, replacing wooden beams with heavy stone work that the structure could not support, and in that sense it is a testament to belief and faith and humanity's need to build structures to honor and worship, to offer glory to our Gods (and yes, I am saying it that way intentionally).  And yet we often fail.  We humans cannot build without also destroying, we cannot rise above our natures, and our greatest impulses are always brought crashing down around us.  And yet we try again. The sense of holiness of a place arises not from lofty human ambitions, but actually from human failings, a testament to the struggle, a testament to our very humanity.  Yes, the ruins of the abbey are about soaring arches, actually both physical and metaphysical, our desire to reach for that which is greater than ourselves, our tendency to elevate ourselves too highly, and our tendency to fail in our efforts.

But how does any of that relate to the Kiefer painting?  I have read that the structure portrayed in Shulemith is a Nazi Monument, the Hall of Soldiers, by Wilhelm Kreis, except that Kiefer has altered the scale.  Rather than soaring, the arches have been shortened, and the walls are scored by soot and ash.  The monument, which was probably grandiose and inhuman in its original scale is, as portrayed here, still stark. But it is no longer a soaring monument but an oven, stark and dark and filled with death. The monument to the German soldier, the God of the Aryan ideal, has become a symbol of horror. In its heaviness and almost palpable sootiness, emphasized by the thick layering of the paint, the structure is both inhumane and because of its inhumanity it is horribly and unnervingly human.   And yet there is hope.  Deep in the center of the painting are the flames atop a platform of steps, a symbol of hope and transfiguration, a hope and transfiguration that comes only after acknowledging and facing our own denials and deaths, our own complicity in the human condition. The abbey as well is a symbol of hope, of our history with all its failings, and of our desire to rise above them.  But we cannot rise up without remembering the past, and making our peace with it, acknowledging the fact that we are complicit as a very fact of our being, and yet we can rise.  We traipse through life, and yet we too can rise.

 

 

 

 

 

Morning Melancholy

 

While I was in San Antonio I spent some time looking at an exhibit of nineteenth and early twentieth century French art glass at the McNay Art Musuem.  The McNay is one of my favorite small museums, and I try to go by each time I am in town.

This time the glass captured my attention, probably because I had just seen an entirely different collection of glass, glass created using entirely different techniques, in Arkansas at the Chihuly exhibit.  As I studied the small pieces and read the information posted, I thought about art and skill and fashion, how we hold ideas in our heads.  Looking at these small pieces of glass, I was thinking that some of them can never be recreated, the technique has been lost.  I'm certain we did not intend to lose that knowledge, those particular skills.  There were wars, people died, so many things changed.  We value different skills now, but sometimes we don't even know what we lost until we have lost it.

 

I remember back when I was in my early 20s, talking to artists in the Woodstock community of New York state.  I remember being told that only mouth-blown glass was true art, that fused glass, glass formed in molds, was inferior, was not art.  Did the first person who fused glass together and carved it think that?  No.  I suspect not. 

 

Of course we know better now, know that art and beauty come in many forms, in many guises.  Hopefully we know we are as apt to lose them as we are to hold on to them, and that those two desires, two results, are interrelated.  Hopefully we know that we can hold to tightly and crush the life. We can hold too loosely and not realize that what we truly valued has been lost. Or do we?

 

Seeking the Quiet Space

On a quiet block, in the quiet Montrose neighborhood of Houston, there sits a rather severe looking building shaped much like a Greek Cross, or is it an octagon superimposed on a Greek cross?  It could be easily missed, and yet it is a space I treasure, a space of profound holiness.  

 

This is the Rothko Chapel.  Commissioned by Dominique deMenil and completed in the early 70s as a non-denominational chapel, open every day, open to all, it has become a center for interfaith dialogue.  The interior consists of a quiet, some would say somber, modified octagon containing 14 paintings by Mark Rothko, paintings that are mostly black, or almost black, a blackness that I see as rich with depth and color and texture, rich with meaning.

 

I get that many people do not appreciate this place, and yet many do.  The world is big enough for many understandings of what is holy.  As I grow older I increasingly understand that every moment, every place and object holds its own share of that holiness, but we all too often are too preoccupied to see.  And yet, for each of us there are places or spaces that are totems of holiness, places to which we yearn to return. For me, the Rothko Chapel is one such place. There are many who find peace in the reflecting pool, the Barnet Newman sculpture and the stand of bamboo, and there are those, like me, who find peace in the meditative silence and darkness of the chapel itself.

 

I discovered the Rothko Chapel the summer I turned twenty.  At the time I had never experienced anything quite like it, and I was the only person, other than the docent, present in the space.   I didn't know much about Mark Rothko then, but the paintings seemed to embody blackness, not as a slick of color on a canvas, but as an act of absorption, an act of containing all of experience and holding it in a holy reverence.    I felt a profound sense of peace, a profound sense of contact not only with the divine, but with humanity, a link through all people and places and things through some divine thread.

 

When I was twenty, that sense of peace was something new and powerful for me and it was something I yearned for but which always seemed out of reach.  The only way I knew to find it was to return to that one place.  And I did return several times that summer, several times each summer I worked in Houston, each time I returned to Houston.  I took George to the Rothko chapel before were married and we shared our experiences of profoundly layered depth and peace.

 

Although it had been many years since I had spent any time in Houston, I had not forgotten.  When I planned my loop trip, beginning with Chihuly in Arkansas, I realized I could easily loop through Houston and end with Rothko.  It had been an emotionally overwrought summer and I felt deeply in need of a quiet meditative space.  I planned an afternoon, and I stopped in.  The space was as meditative as I remembered, the paintings as rich with meaning.  As I sat quietly, contemplating not so much the space, but the act of art, contemplating the colors of blackness, of darkened shades of color, I felt this attempt to reach out and into all that was and is and will be, all of human history and potential.

 

I also realized that I no longer need to seek out holy spaces to find that inner peace.  It lives in me and with me and it always has, although I have not always been receptive to its presence.  Even now I am not always receptive, and it was true that I had needed to distance myself from my daily routines in order to distance myself from my own emotional turmoil.  But I had reconnected with that peace long before I arrived in Houston, and I will continue to carry it with me.  Sitting in contemplation I recognized that I tend not to give myself enough space for gathering in and reflecting back.  I tend to think of that time to fill personal needs as wasted time, but it is in fact not wasted, as it is that time that fuels all the rest, that times that keeps it all from spinning out of control.

 

I did not really sit at the reflecting pool on this visit, but I have.  It was raining lightly.  Perhaps I was feeling petulant at the wetness, although I do not melt.  I watched a small child splashing a toy in the water, in the shadow of the obelisk, and I contemplated space and the way we interact with space, both the spaces we intentionally create, and the way our presence has shaped and formed even those places we label as "wild" or "natural". Our every thought, our every action simultaneously shapes and is shaped by the world.  How then do we decide what is holy or sacred and what is not?  How can we?  
 

Photo of the Rothko Chapel from Wikipedia, here.

Photo of Dale Chihuly's Niijima Floats, from the Facebook page of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, here.