Art art art

This weekend was full of art. Which is always a good thing. Saturday, after a stop at the Farmer's Market for a week's worth of vegetable goodies, I headed over to the SFMOMA to meet my friend Linnea. I hadn't been back to the MOMA since I interviewed there in June and I figured I was about due for another visit. Of course Neil has been going every Thursday night for free beer for the last month, but it is not free for the likes of me. He gets free entrance for being an SFAI student, and thus free access to complimentary beer. It is actually an art exhibit that is going on right now called "The highest form of art is having a beer with your friends". The art exhibit is just the experience that people have when they come and mingle. The overall exhibit is called the art of participation and it's very interesting. And hard to describe. The museum website describes it like this: "Looking back nearly 60 years across a wide spectrum of genres and media, this exhibition examines how artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process."

So we started at the top of the museum, and looked at a whole bunch of sculpture by Martin Puryears. He works with natural materials like wood, rawhide, etc. This was one of my favorite sculptures - it is made out of such hard materials, but the resulting piece is so soft in appearance, and so full and round.

Here is a few more pieces:

Then we spent a lot of time in the "Art of Participation" exhibit. There was a whole bunch of really interesting, really weird stuff. Mostly video, because these sort of exhibits are usually something that happened one time, in the past. And so the only way to "exhibit" them is to show the videotape of what happened way back when. That's the challenging part of performance art, is how to exhibit it in a museum after it has already happened. Here are some pictures of the stuff that was on exhibit:

This last one was one of the most interesting for me. You both put on this pair of noise-canceling headphones that has a microphone attached. But when you speak into the microphone, or if the other person speaks, you don't hear what was said for like 30-40 seconds. So the information doesn't get to you right away, and you are both talking over each other at first. It's interesting to think of what life would be like if this were the way things really were. You would have to be so much more intent on what people were talking and communication would take so much more concentration. Although I guess it would just be normal if that's the way life really was...Anywhoo - it was kind of fun.

We took a coffee break in the cafe at this point to rest our eyes and minds before tackling the painting collection. The painting collection doesn't change too often, and so most of the stuff on the walls I had already seen, but it's always nice to peruse through again. I think the Portland Art Musueum has a more interesting collection than the MOMA, interestingly, but I'm sure I'm just biased cause that's what I am used to.

By the time we finished, we had spent 3 lovely hours surrounded by art and that pretty much wiped the day out for me. I was planning on going home and starting to work on my own art, but by the time I got home, there was just time for cleaning the kitchen and cooking dinner.

So I got down to business on Sunday morning instead. I finally have gathered all the stuff that I needed to start making a lamp - lamp kit, bamboo reeds, bamboo skewers and papers. Neil introduced me to the coolest paper store on earth!! It's called Flax and it has more papers in one room than I have ever seen in my whole life. Printed papers, natural papers, crinkled papers, sparkly papers. I was in paper heaven.



So, with all my materials at the ready, and a design in my mind, I got to work. It felt so fantastic to be working with my hands again. I love to build and to feel the materials and watch things come together. Working with little wires, and super glue and tweezers and pliers and my drills - these are all things that I love to. I lost myself in the project for 3 hours or so, and finished the base of the lamp completely. I haven't found time to get back to it yet this week, but I can't wait! So far, it appears to be going well and the base seems to be a lot stronger than last time I built a lamp with hot glue only.

I am proud to say that I've been doing pretty well with the running, too. I miss a day every now and then (usually on weekends), but overall I've managed to keep up with the schedule. My longest run now has been 4 miles and I didn't die. Although I came close. Yesterday I got to do a "tempo" run, which means that I actually get to pick up the pace for a little while during the run. The distance is a lot shorter, which means I can run faster. That felt nice. It gets a little old to just be plugging away for mile after mile...

One other item of note: I saw the strangest thing yesterday while riding the bus to my doctor's appointment. I glanced out the window and had to do a double-take: there was a cat riding along on the back of a dog's back. The dog was just trotting along and the cat was just along for the ride on his back. The strangest thing. Smart cat.