Tagged With: Art

Hat With a Hat

Hat With a Hat

Hat With a Hat

When she was in graduate school, my mom made this bust of her classmate and friend, Hat (and Hat made a bust of my mom). Anyway, she was using it to display one of my grandmother’s old hats. So, this is Hat With a Hat.

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Wood Carving

Wood Carving

Wood Carving

This is a wood carving on my mother-in-law’s living room wall.

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Mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic

I happened to find myself in downtown Rockville and came across this building with a lovely mosaic on the wall. Then I realized I knew the business housed there. This is the home of History Associates.

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Hawk in Steel Tree

Hawk in Steel Tree

Hawk in Steel Tree

This tree is a steel and concrete sculpture called Graft by Roxy Paine. It’s between the Natural History Museum and the National Gallery of Art. We especially enjoyed the hawk that was perched in it. What would be really funny would be a woodpecker.

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Stone Rings

Stone Rings

Stone Rings

Our Community Group (our church’s small groups) met this evening at Kofi and Danielle’s apartment building. It’s a newish building and a lot more swanky than anywhere we’ve lived. I’m not complaining, mind you. We’re pretty happy where we are. All of the apartments we’ve lived in had doors off of (mostly open) stair wells. The first place we lived, which was in Chevy Chase, had an enclosed stair but the others had open stairs. That’s not counting the Quonset Hut we lived in when we first moved to Juneau. After that we moved to an apartment that opened off a balcony across the bridge on Douglas Island. That and the apartment we moved into back in Maryland after our around-the-world trip in ’88 were both on the third floor of three story buildings.

Anyway, we met in one of the common rooms in the apartment building because there were about fifteen of us, which would have been a crowd in their one bedroom apartment. In addition to this stone sculpture on a table, there was a gas fire burning in a long, low fireplace. Needless to say, however, the real warmth came from the people we were with.

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Carpet Pattern

Carpet Pattern

Carpet Pattern

I was looking around for something to photograph today and took a few pictures of this carpet in Margaret’s room. It’s not a huge carpet but it’s certainly quite pretty. I love the colors and the fineness of the weave. We have a few carpets but that includes a few imitation Persians. When we got married, Karabet gave us some cash as a wedding present and we bought two relatively inexpensive carpets. They aren’t nearly as nice as this one, but then again, he gave us the gift out of his relatively modest means. We still have them and I still think of him when I consider them. That’s often where value lies (but I’m not saying it lies like a rug).

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Office Building Art

Office Building Art

Office Building Art

Cathy and I were in a local medical office building today and I, you’ll be surprised to learn, had my camera with me. I didn’t take pictures in the actual doctor’s office but in the lobby of the building was some art. The wall opposite the entrance was covered with these lined, glass panels, lit from behind. So, when it was time to leave, I took a few moments to get my camera out and take a few pictures. I don’t really have a lot to add. It is what it is. I wouldn’t call it high art, but decorative art seems appropriate. If nothing else it did add some color and interest to an otherwise nondescript office lobby.

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Little Bird Statues

Little Bird Statues

Little Bird Statues

Cathy has a roll-top desk that we got from some friends who where ready to get rid of it. Along the top of the roll-top, which is never closed, there is a little ledge where the top doesn’t go all the way into the carcass. She has a few little things sitting on that ledge including a line of dice of various sizes and side-counts. In the middle is this line of little bird statues. I don’t rightly know where she got them (I suppose I could have asked) but there they are. They are quite colorful—as you can see—and they stand about an inch tall. This green on is one of my favorites, along with the dark blue peacock colored bird in the center of the photo.

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Pukeberg Bookend Vase

Pukeberg Bookend Vase

Pukeberg Bookend Vase

This was, apparently, half of a pair of bookend vases, produced by Pukeberg, probably in the middle of the 20th century. Pukeberg was founded in 1871. In the 1930s, Pukeberg began producing decorative glass. We don’t really know a lot about it beyond that. We found a pair listed on eBay for $89, so they aren’t terribly valuable. I wanted to show off the various colors of the glass. In everyday room light it is basically amber colored. But I’ve shone a light through the glass and you can see reds at the bottom and greens towards the top. I think a more complicated light set up would do better but this was done with a flashlight sitting behind it and a flash bounced off the ceiling.

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‘Dragonflies’ Quilt by Dot

'Dragonflies' Quilt by Dot

‘Dragonflies’ Quilt by Dot

We had dinner at mom’s this evening. My cousin Becky and her boyfriend were there, as well, having come up for Jason’s wedding on Saturday. I took a bunch of pictures in the yard. The camellias are finishing up and the azaleas are just starting. I also took some pictures of Kai. But the picture for today is this quilt that my mom just made. It’s a pretty elaborate thing, with each segment on each wing being a separate piece of fabric. I also think the fabric she chose for the background is terrific, really showing off the dragonflies to good effect.

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Garden Sculpture

Garden Sculpture

Garden Sculpture

About the time I got to work this morning I got a text from one person and an email from another asking if I had anything to do with the appearance of this little garden statue next to our parking lot. The text message was particularly cryptic, although I suppose if I had been responsible, I’d have known what it was about. As it happens, I had nothing to do with it. Later in the day, two other people asked me if I put it there. I think it’s a little funny that so many people think this is the sort of thing I’d do. Maybe it is, but not this time. One said, “well, okay, I’ll believe you, but I know you’re responsible for the geckos.” I have no idea what that’s about and didn’t even know about the wire geckos that someone has put in trees around the parking lot. But apparently I have a reputation, mostly undeserved.

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Art Galleries

Abba

Abba

Cathy, Dorothy, and Dorothy’s cousin, Abba, and I went to a few art galleries today. If you’re looking for something to do on Thanksgiving day, you could do a lot worse than visit the National Gallery of Art or any of the Smithsonian museums. The Smithsonian museums are open every day except Christmas and the National Gallery every day except Christmas and New Years Day. Parking is free and there are fewer people than most weekends (and the day after Thanksgiving is generally a lot worse). We started with the National Gallery, parking just over a block away and starting with some sculpture and some other things on the lower level. Then we went up and through the rotunda and to the impressionists. This picture of Abba shows her sketching a painting titled Interior, after Dinner by Claude Monet.

Dorothy had asked each of us to bring a sketch book and to sketch at least three things that caught our eye. Since both of the girls are artists, this came naturally to both of them. Cathy and I had to force ourselves a bit. I drew a sketch from a sculpture by Paul Manship, one of my favorite twentieth century sculptors. It isn’t very good, frankly, and not something I’d be proud to show to anyone.

Dorothy

Dorothy

Abba drew from this Monet and Dorothy from a painting next to it, Théodore Duret, by Edouard Vuillard. The girls have very different styles of drawing but are both pretty tallented. They are quite a lot alike in other ways, however. Beyond the similarity of their hair, they have almost identical taste in clothes, they like much of the same music, their senses of humor fit together quite well, and the basically just get along.

From the National Gallery’s main building, we went through the tunnel to the East Wing, where we saw their collection of more modern art, including Picasso, Calder, and others. On the roof terrace, Cathy was excited to find the large blue cock in the third picture, in front of which she was happy to pose. When the girls were sketching the impressionists show here, Cathy was admiring Child with Toys—Gabrielle and the Artist’s Son, Jean, by Auguste Renoir, in which Gabrielle is holding a toy chicken. So, I guess she just likes chickens. I don’t think she planned her outfit to match the chicken, but she couldn’t have done any better if she had tried. We saw this cock in London, in Trafalgar Square, in 2013, so to see it here was something

Cathy

Cathy

We went back to the tunnel between the wings of the National Gallery and had lunch (it’s outrageously expensive, but they know there aren’t any other alternatives anywhere nearby). Then we went to the Freer gallery to see the Peacock Room, by James Whistler, as well as other works in their collection. That room, in particular, is a favorite and Abba had never been there. We also went to the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum (which are in the same building). They have a smaller version of Paul Manship’s Dancer with Gazelles, that I drew from in the National Gallery. They also had an interesting exhibit of works by Kumi Yamashita with shadows being cast that formed faces or bodies but where the objects casting the shadows were basically random. Abba also found a painting by John Singer Sargent that was picked as a match for her by an app that find the classical painting that you most resemble. I have to say, the resemblance was there. In fact, it looks a lot like Laura, another of the cousins.

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Cathy and Bear

Cathy and Bear

Cathy and Bear

I thought I’d post a second picture from our walk at Lake Needwood this afternoon. In the woods, behind the boat house, is this sculpture of a bear. It’s a cool, laid back sort of bear, wearing flip-flops and sun glasses. Cathy figured it was a good day to kick back and watch the world go by, so that’s what she did. There wasn’t a lot of world going by, as it happened. There were occasional walkers but not really enough to keep you interested for long. So, we continued our walk, crossing the dam and walking on a smaller trail around to the Gude Trail before returning to out car.

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Dot’s Plate

Dot's Plate

Dot’s Plate

This is a plate that my mom made in 1955 and I’ve always loved it. She was at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She insists it wasn’t graduate school because she didn’t get a degree, but I still think of it as grad school. She had finished college and was in art school. Ceramics wasn’t her main thing, but they did a little of everything including painting and sculpture, as well. Her interests were in textiles and she did a lot of silk screening. I still have the curtains that she made and which we now use as drop cloths for painting. But this plate is, I think, really nice. I wish we had some clue about the composition of the glaze, which is lovely. We have her wheel and kiln and would really like to get around to using them again.

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Persian Carpet

Persian Carpet

Persian Carpet

After we took up the wall to wall carpet in our living room, we planned to put down a large rug that was at Cathy’s mom’s house. Because I having actually finished, though, we haven’t done that yet. There is still carpet under a bookcase, the TV, and the piano. We could probably fit the rug in already, but simply haven’t done so. In the meantime, we’ve put this rug down in the middle of the room. It’s too small for the space, actually, but it keeps the coffee table from sliding on the hardwood. It’s also a very nice rug in its own right adding color to the room.

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Dot and Some of Her Art

Dot and Some of Her Art

Dot and Some of Her Art

As you know, if you’ve been following me for a while, my mom moved from the house she lived in for 59 years into a retirement community nearby. As they do with most new residents they published a short bio of her for the community paper. In that she talked about some of the art she has created over the years and she was asked if they might display a sample in their small gallery. They have a dozen or so display cases like the one shown here and she gave them some painted china and some small quilt work that she has done, to be displayed for six months.

I saw the display a month or so ago but Cathy wasn’t with us that day so after brunch with mom today we went to see it. The plates she painted include a nuthatch in the upper left, which is actually displayed incorrectly with the bird appearing to be on the ground instead of creeping down the trunk of a tree, as they do. At the upper right is a white-throated sparrow and the two birds on the lower plates are a black-capped chickadee on a wild rose (left) and a Carolina wren. The small quilt at the back of the bottom of the display was inspired by a Pablo Picasso painting of fish on a plate.

She has much more, of course, and has made quite a few much larger quilts but they would not fit into the display case. Also, most of the quilts have been distributed to her children and grandchildren. She showed us one she is working on now and I took a picture of her with that but decided to keep it secret until it is finished and given to its recipient.

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Beaver Attacks Woman

Beaver Attacks Woman

Beaver Attacks Woman

We spent most of the day on the road today, driving up to Massachusetts to visit Dorothy for the weekend and see her senior art exhibit tomorrow evening. It was four of us, Cathy, me, and our two moms (Dorothy’s grandmas). We didn’t have traffic problems to speak of until we got onto Interstate 95 around Boston. Then it took us two hours to go 25 miles. We met up with Dorothy and went to the art building where the final preparations are under way. I’ll post a picture of Dorothy’s art tomorrow. Today, here’s Dorothy pointing out an article about a woman being attacked by a beaver.

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Dorothy’s Art Installation

Dorothy's Art Installation

Dorothy’s Art Installation

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Cathy, Dot, Margaret, and I drove up to Massachusetts to see Dorothy’s senior art show, which was from 4:00 to 6:00 PM this evening. Considering school is nearly 500 miles from home, I think Dorothy had a pretty good crew of guests. Kendra and Jacob came the farthest, flying up from North Carolina. Emily and Jessica drove from Virginia and Rob and Susie drove from Maryland. Jean flew in this morning. Abba and Josh drove from Rhode Island. Of course there were a lot of her school friends there, as well. This is her piece and here’s her artist’s statement.

Pilgrimage

What makes a person? What dictates how we remember them, what we keep of them when they go away? How much of the story can we get from objects left behind, and how can our impression of that story change the trajectory of a family? We all encounter things that change us—spirits pass through and transform. To what extent do these encounters, proclivities, and transformations get passed down from parent to child?

This work explores the footprints we leave, the things we keep, and the things we throw away. We inherit traits genetically, but we receive much more from our families than genetic material. Repetitive, mythic cycles appear in family narratives, from a history of tight hip muscles, to a history of alcoholism, to a history of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stepping past the story of the individual, our family legends can teach us about the tasks that belong to us, the roads we are to take, and the whole to which we ultimately belong.

Dorothy and Rachel, another of the senior artists, are in a creative writing class together and their final project was related to their art project. Together they put together a book which read one way had Dorothy’s writing and flipped over had Rachel’s. I think the show was a success from pretty much every perspective. I enjoyed talking with the three art professors and they all had very nice things to say about Dorothy’s work.

One problem with this picture is that it’s a little hard to get the scale. The ceiling in this room is about 12 feet high, so this is a rather large installation.

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Dismantling Dorothy’s Art Show

Dismantling Dorothy's Art Show

Dismantling Dorothy’s Art Show

As the weekend wound down, we had a busy but nice Sunday. After church we had a very nice lunch with Emiko and her family at a house they had rented for the weekend. It was really nice to get to know them a bit better. After that we returned to the art gallery to dismantle Dorothy’s installation. Before taking it down I took a series of photographs of various parts of the piece. I have overall views taken two weeks ago but I wasn’t able to get many closeups then. With a tripod and a bit of time, I was able to get them, some from the top of a scaffolding, so I wasn’t looking up from the floor. Then we pulled all the pins and collected the various pictures, booklets, and related paraphernalia that made up much of the piece. The painted portions will be painted over, of course. If you were not able to see it, I’m sorry, it is gone forever.

But not without photographic evidence.

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Our Own Mound of Butter

Our Own Mound of Butter

Our Own Mound of Butter

For a while now I’ve bought butter in two-pound rolls. It’s a bit cheaper and we go through it quickly enough. In fact, I try to have one roll in the freezer that I take out (and replace) when the one in the fridge runs out. When Cathy’s niece Abba was here last year she took a photo on her phone of my two-pound roll on the counter. Sometime later She posted a photo of this painting on Instagram, titled “Our Own Mound of Butter.” I asked if I could buy it and now it’s hanging in our dining room.

I wasn’t able to get out into the garden to take any photos today. After going to the Motor Vehicle Administration (my favorite place) to register a new old car we bought my back started bothering me. By 1:00 in the afternoon I was having a really hard time. I got on the floor and did my “Say Goodbye To Back Pain” exercises. I went home shortly after 2:00 and spent the rest of the day on an ice pack. Late in the evening I got up and took a few pictures, including this one. I hope you enjoy it.

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Dancers in Mourning

Dancers in Mourning

Dancers in Mourning

With apologies for Margery Allingham (whose book was the inspiration for the title of my post), this is art work in a cemetery near where we live. I went to a burial there today, followed by a memorial service in Clarksburg. I didn’t really know the woman who died but I’ve known her husband for over 45 years. We’ve lost touch a bit but we’d run into one another occasionally. Nevertheless, he’s one of a small number of men who influenced me pretty significantly in my early life. After the service, I drove back to the cemetery and wandered around a bit and took some pictures. This art is in a Jewish section of the cemetery and I really like it. There was another similarly designed piece with Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea. I’m assuming that this is Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, who:

…took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”

(Exodus 15:20–21)

She was not mourning, of course, but as this artwork is decorating a cemetery, I thought that title might fit well.

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Portrait Print

Print, 'Henry', by Dorothy

Print, ‘Henry’, by Dorothy

Dorothy gave me a set of four prints for Christmas. Three of them are portraits of the three of us, herself, Cathy, and me. The fourth was also of her so technically a portrait but it’s her walking and not facing the viewer. Anyway, she asked me to take photos of them for her and I did. She also said I could use one of those as my photo for the day. So, while I took this photograph, the actual content isn’t mine.

Of course the actual content of most of my photographs isn’t mine. I just photograph what I see. Sometimes it’s a man-made object and sometimes it’s something found in nature. Rarely is it a me-made object and even then, I only make things with materials that already exist. I like these prints and I think I like the one of me the best, which sounds egotistical but I think it’s the best of the three technically and I just like the way it looks.

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Painted Box

Painted Box

Painted Box

I don’t really know anything about this painted box. We assume it’s Persian but don’t know if it was bought in Afghanistan or Iran (Cathy’s family lived in both). It has some writing around the top edge (not seen here) and if I can find someone familiar with the languages, perhaps we can get it translated and that will tell us more. It was difficult to get a good picture of this, because it has a high gloss finish and getting a picture with a large area of reflection was tricky. This one turned put pretty well, though.

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Mini Art Gallery

Mini Art Gallery

Mini Art Gallery

We were over at Dorothy’s this evening and enjoyed dinner and a short visit. I only took a few pictures, because it wasn’t really a picture sort of evening but I did take a few. She has put up a fair amount of art in the bathroom nearest her bedroom. This picture doesn’t really do it justice and I’m not sure any would, unless I did a 360 panorama. And even that would be tough. As you can see, it’s a fairly eclectic collection of things, from a key chain to a partially painted deer skull, with various prints and photographs as well. I’ve been to a few art galleries that were more like this, with a wide variety of things on the walls, not just one painting after another, evenly spaced and all at the ideal height. The old Barnes museum, before it moved into downtown Philadelphia was something like that, although it’s collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings are clearly in a class of their own. Nevertheless, it uses a lot more wall space than in a more traditional gallery. I have no idea if the new location has preserved that look and feel, but I would assume so.

Another gallery with the walls more crammed with things is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. This is one of my favorite museums and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Boston, unless of course you don’t care for art. But I love it. Of course, I’m not saying Dorothy’s bathroom reaches the level of the Barnes or the Gardner. But it has that same feel to it.

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The Big Train

Walter Perry Johnson Statue

Walter Perry Johnson Statue

Cathy and I spent a good part of the day running errands. Between two of them, I happened to turn on Monroe Street. A few blocks south of the County Courthouse there is a circular piece of land with apartment buildings on it, with Monroe Street going around it. It’s sort of odd and even odder that the circle has been there for quite a long while—it shows up on the 1923 USGS Topographical map. I’ve not found any explanation for the circular road, but I assume someone had property and the road went around it. As I say, it’s an apartment complex now.

At the south end of Monroe Street is Dogwood Park, owned by the City of Rockville. I didn’t know the park was there and I was also surprised to find this wooden statue of Walter Perry Johnson (November 6, 1887 – December 10, 1946), also known as “The Big Train”. I’ve taken and posted photos of his grave stone in Rockville Cemetery. I also went to Walter Johnson High School. But I was surprised by finding this statue.

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Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Cathy, Reading Over a Man’s Shoulder

A young friend of ours scheduled her wedding on January 2 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We made plans to go, of course, and were prepared to take Covid tests before going in to the wedding. Sadly, both the groom and a number of family members all tested positive for Covid. The wedding went on but they were forced to make it a very small, private wedding. Nevertheless, we had planned a day off from work (tomorrow) and we had a hotel reservation, so we drove up to Lancaster for a short get away. This is a sculpture by J. Seward Jonhson in Steinman Park, on W. King Street (Lincoln Highway) in down town Lancaster.

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View of Venice (Detail)

View of Venice (Detail)

View of Venice (Detail)

Dorothy and I went to the National Gallery of Art today. We’ve been enough ties we generally know our way around but there are always small changes to what’s on display. This year’s big surprise was a woodcut that represents a view of Venice. I took a few detail shots but somehow managed to miss getting an overall shot but there’s a very good image on Wikipedia. The sign for this work read as follows:

Jacopo de’ Barbari
Venetian, (c. 1460/1470 – 1516)

View of Venice
1500
woodcut on six sheets of laid paper

National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection

View of Venice was unprecedented in scale and ambition. To make his drawings, Jacopo de’ Barbari relied upon the work of surveyors, who likely took sightings from bell towers across Venice. They borrowed tools from other trades: compasses and astrolabes were used for navigation, and instructions for measuring angles and distances existed in treatises on gunnery. De’ Barbari’s genius lay in being able to integrate these views to form both an overview perspective and a city map. Master woodcarvers then used his drawings to create blocks for printing. The project took three years to complete.

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Glenstone Museum

Glenstone Museum

Glenstone Museum

Dorothy’s friend Tony got five tickets to the Glenstone Museum (https://www.glenstone.org/) for today asked Dorothy if she wanted to be one of the five. She said she did and asked if I could be the fifth. They’ve both been a few times before but this was my first trip to the museum. It’s on a 51.9 acre property on Glen Road in Potomac, Maryland. As art goes, I can’t say that I was particularly impressed. The landscape is very nice, even now, before spring has come, it’s quite lovely. The ‘Pavilions’ (sic) is an interesting building but not at all my style, except for the water-filled courtyard, which I like quite a lot. This room, however, room 7, appropriately called the Viewing Gallery, is very nice. Not so much for the room itself but for the view. The front wall and a portion of the wall on the left is filled with a single, very clean pane of glass. In the room is a lovely, curved wooden bench that is wonderful. I could sit there for a long while. Overall, the landscaping is fairly young but nice and it will improve as it ages. I’d love to go in summer and see how different it is. Again, not so much for the art, which I can take or leave (and would probably leave). But for the outdoor areas. Regardless, I enjoyed myself and I’m quite thankful for being included.

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Brookgreen Gardens

Brookgreen Gardens

Brookgreen Gardens

Brookgreen Gardens

Brookgreen Gardens

Cathy and I went to Brookgreen Gardens today (https://www.brookgreen.org/). We’ve been before, of course, but it’s been six years. We decided to see if we could go on their Creek Excursion but, as luck would have it, it wasn’t operating today because they were being inspected by the Coast Guard. We were able to get to the Lowcountry Center in time to get on the 11:30 Oaks Excursion. We visited a plantation cemetery as well as the sites of some of the plantation buildings, which no longer exist. It was an interesting excursion, although I think I would have enjoyed the creek trip more. Maybe next time.

We wandered around the gardens, which of course is the main thing there. The two shots presented here are more of the trees than of the sculpture and they are quite majestic. I enjoy both the sculpture and the gardens in about equal measure. Although it was hot, I’d say it wasn’t as hot as some years we’ve been. We also went to the Lowcountry Zoo and enjoyed the animals. They have a new exhibit with red wolves (Canis rufus) that only opened in the last week.

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Heron Sculpture, Parklawn Cemetery

Heron Sculpture, Parklawn Cemetery

Heron Sculpture, Parklawn Cemetery

We went to Parklawn Cemetery today to put flowers on the graves of Cathy’s dad and of the good family friend, Karo (Karabet). It’s been a few years since we’ve been there and the ‘neighborhood’ has changed a bit. Jim’s grave has had another right next to it but now there’s a relatively new grave on the other side. In the past we could look for two markers together but having a third threw us off a bit.

After putting those flowers out, we took some pictures to fulfill requests on Find-A-Grave. We found two of the requested markers and I got photos as well as GPS coordinates. It turns out someone had beat me to it, but it was a good exercise, anyway. While we were doing that I took a few pictures of this Heron sculpture. There were requests for other pictures but it’s such a huge cemetery, without some idea where the graves are, they’re going to be impossible to find. We’d need to go to the cemetery office to get locations and it was too hot to do that today. We may go back, however.

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Rat Gallery DC #1

Rat Gallery

Rat Gallery

Dorothy and her friend Rachel had a little art show the evening in the first Rat Gallery exhibit. Getting down to the gallery on O Street NW was not enjoyable, but we got there eventually and found a parking space without any trouble. The even was in full swing by the time we got there and it got even busier while we were there. I’d say for a first opening it was a success. I chatted briefly with Rachel’s parents, who had come down from New Jersey for the show. I also enjoyed talking with Katharine, our host and Dorothy’s friend from yoga teacher training. All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening.

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Rat Gallery DC #2

Rat Gallery #2

Rat Gallery #2

Back on September 30, Rat Gallery DC had their inaugural event. Tonight was their second and the turnout was very encouraging. For the first event, some people came, I’m sure, out of devotion to Dorothy, Rachel, and Katharine, the artists but also the organizers of the event. Tonight’s show featured three other artists and was even better attended than the first. While taste in art is about as varied among people as is taste in food, one can appreciate even what one might not pick to fit their home decor. So, while I wasn’t tempted to buy anything this time, I did enjoy the art and the people. Naturally I took photos. I could only wish it were a little easier to get to North Capital and O Street, Northwest. But it was definitely worth the effort. The next show, I believe, is in early February.

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Warrenton, Virginia

Old Town Warrenton, Virginia

Old Town Warrenton, Virginia

Warrenton Mural

Warrenton Mural

We visited a friend in Warrenton, Virginia today, spending most of the afternoon and evening with a larger group of good friends. We walked through downtown Warrenton, visiting a bunch of shops and basically enjoying being together. It was a cool, spring day and Warrenton seems like a nice town. It’s a bit of a hike from Rockville but once we were there we were glad to have gone.

After our walk through town we had a wonderful dinner and celebrated a birthday. After that we played a game called Codenames. Cathy and I aren’t particularly fond of games but we had a good time. I think we would have enjoyed simply talking with our friends more, but we understand that some people really like games of this sort.

We had been invited to spend the night there but wanted to be home Sunday morning so we left about 10:30 and had no trouble getting home in about an hour.

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Rat Gallery DC #3

Caroline, Sara, and Justin

Caroline, Sara, and Justin

Andrew, Rachel, Katharine, Anna, and Dorothy

Andrew, Rachel, Katharine, Anna, and Dorothy

It was time for another Rat Gallery opening and Cathy and I were there. I don’t know that we can commit to being at every one but we’ve managed so far. This one was very well attended and was even listed on WTOP’s “What to do in DC” listing on their Instagram story. Pretty impressive. Art is quite a varied thing and something that one person loves, another person may hate. Sometimes art is meant to express feelings or emotions, other times it tries to tell a story. It can simply be decorative, of course, or it can consider shapes, colors, and various other aspects of the physical world. It’s quite common for any particular work of art to appeal to a limited audience.

I thought these porcelain cups were lovely and I especially liked the one in the upper right of this photo, with the salmon pink petals. There were a few others that I liked the colors of, including the one immediately below that with the darker interior. They were all really nice and they spoke to me. The other artists had their followers, as well and I think everyone had a lovely evening. It was also nice that it started before it got dark, so there was some natural light for a while.

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Rat Gallery DC #4

Ina Quadrio Curzio's Art at Rat Gallery

Ina Quadrio Curzio’s Art at Rat Gallery

Anna, Dorothy, and Katharine

Anna, Dorothy, and Katharine

This evening was the fourth Rat Gallery show at 52 O Street NW in Washington, D.C. I was impressed with quite a few of the pieces on display this evening and I think it was a successful event. I’ve picked a shot showing oil paintings by Ina Quadrio Curzio, an Italian-British artist who recently graduated from Georgetown University with a double major in Biology and Studio Art. From her artists statement, her subject matter “is centered around youthful environments, activities, and crowds. In my exploration, the figures undergo a purposeful deconstruction, their form intricately woven into a patchwork of brushstrokes that dissolve the boundaries between self and surroundings. This approach serves to dismantle youth culture into its chaotic essence of uncertainty and vitality. It invites viewers to contemplate the complexities of early adulthood and explore how our surroundings shape our individuality.”

I’ve also included a shot of three of the five Rat Gallery team. If you have any questions about Rat Gallery or would like your art to be considered for a future show, you should go to the Rat Gallery DC web site and contact the team.

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