Archive for the 'Art' Category
April 30, 2008 @ 10:58 am | Filed under: Art,Barcelona trip
Sunday. Our last full day in Barcelona. Scott was still tied to his two shifts of portfolio review. I knew exactly where I wanted to spend the morning: in the Gothic Quarter, and at the cathedral most especially. I had skirted the fringes of the Gothic Quarter the afternoon before, when I slipped out for a few hours between lunch and dinner to visit a Gaudi house (Casa Batilo) and the Music Palace, and had walked south from the Palace in search of a subway station. I could have kept on walking and I’d have been quite close to the cathedral, but it was late in the day and I knew Scott would be finishing up at the con soon. It made sense to save the cathedral for Sunday Mass anyway.
And so it was that I set off in a gray mist on Sunday morning, pink umbrella overhead. A short subway ride later, there I was. When I say “cathedral,” I mean the old Gothic church, fourteenth-century I think, not the Gaudi church-in-progress I raved about yesterday.
The gray day seemed fitting for this solemn old church. I was just in time for Mass, and it was sort of thrilling to be able to follow along even though the service was in Catalan.
I squeezed in a few photos during the five minutes between Masses, but not many. There was not much light, anyway. But I loved this church: loved it with a completely different kind of admiration than the soaring, trembling attachment I’d felt to Sagrada Familia the day before. The old cathedral is quiet, somber, majestic, heavy with the prayers of millions who have passed through its doors. It is full of a peaceful resignation, a grave courtesy, a sense of comfort in the familiar, the time-tested, the faith that endures.
I loved the old-world feel of the narrow alleys outside
and the ornaments, like this unicorn
and the windows, especially the windows. I took a great many window photographs.
The cloister was a serene place full of shrines for many saints, connected around a courtyard by high-roofed walkways.
My favorite statues were up in the main sanctuary: Our Lady of Happy Childbirth was a particularly lovely one, and I lit a candle for a friend there.
My pictures of the famous “Black Madonna” did not come out very well.
I loved the Immaculate Conception shrine very much.
After a very long time, I tore myself away from the cathedral. I wandered over to La Rambla, the wide pedestrian walkway lined with flower vendors and shops.
La Rambla is famous for its “living statues.” Can you spot the one in this photo?
It was hilarious to watch him startle scrutinizing passersby by whipping out his pistol when they came close.
More art! A Miro mosaic in the sidewalk.
Outdoor cheese stall down a side street.
I was amused, later, to find this same photo (only better) in a guidebook. Because, you know, I didn’t read any guidebooks until I was on the plane coming home. Brilliant!
The rest of my Gothic Quarter pictures begin here at Flickr.
Barcelona, cathedral, Gothic Quarter, La Rambla, Spain
April 27, 2008 @ 6:37 pm | Filed under: Art,Barcelona trip
Friday night there was a party at the hotel for all us comic-convention guests. It was an award ceremony in Spanish for Spanish artists, and there was a lot of very loud music and giant video screen and inscrutable finger foods. Certain shameless ingrates tried to slip away from this party for a romantic evening out, just the two of them, all alone in a foreign country halfway around the world from the five children they had never ever before left for more than a night, but these ingrates were caught and picked up by the scruff of the neck and deposited back in the middle of the very loud music and the fish-flavored rice.
Honestly, the nerve of some people.
After the party, a group of artists went out to a club, but these particular ingrates had had their fill of shouting small talk in a noisy setting, so they hatched an alternative plan with certain British chums and slipped stealthily downstairs to the piano bar. Unfortunately it turned out the British chums hadn’t actually been able to hear the whispered plan above the party din, and the smiling and nodding and exclamations of “Brilliant!” was more of a general amiability and not so much an assent to The Secret Plan. The two ingrates, therefore, found themselves alone in the empty and quiet piano bar; and though the British lads were missed, quiet solitude was not at all a distressing turn of events.
Eventually the charming Peter Bagge strolled in and joined the contented couple for a drink and some fine conversation. Just another lovely evening in the Barcelona Catalonia Plaza.
The next morning saw Scott back at his desk in the editors’ corner of the convention hall. I fitted my camera out with fresh batteries and headed out to see, at long last, Gaudi’s cathedral-in-progress, La Sagrada Familia—the Temple of the Holy Family.
This enormous church was begun in the 1880s and is still under construction. There is a long way to go. I walked in thinking it was a pity about all those cranes and all that scaffolding, and I sure hope they get this thing finished up soon. I walked out believing in my bones that it doesn’t matter how long it takes to finish. The work is part of the artistry. The making is part of the magic. This is a magnum opus taking shape before our eyes, like the raising of the great cathedrals of old, when generations of craftsman devoted their lives to creating something magnificent for the glory of God. Here, too, we have families of artisans in which the craft is passed down from grandfather to father to son: sculptors and stonemasons, glassworkers and engineers. It’s a grand work, an epic work: and there is love going into every inch of the cathedral. Every small detail has significance, has been pondered and planned. You could spend a lifetime ‘unpacking’ the symbolism.
Gaudi was quite a young and relatively untried architect—but already his genius and vision was obvious to his peers—when he was hired to replace the cathedral’s original designer, one year into construction. The crypt had already been dug, but the rest of the design is Gaudi’s, every arch, column, window, and spire. Through the decades that followed, even when he was taking commissions to design other buildings, the work of Sagrada Familia remained close to his heart. In 1914, with most of his loved ones dead and gone, he devoted himself full time to the church. He knew he would not live to see its completion and wanted to leave a complete and thorough record of plans and models for those who would follow him. He poured the last 12 years of his life into this labor of love, and even though many of his plans were destroyed in a fire during the Spanish Civil War ten years after his death, his plaster models and other records survived.
He envisioned an edifice with 18 spires rising high above the city, the tallest (and as yet unbuilt) tower high enough to be seen from anywhere in town—and yet a little bit smaller than Montjuic, the mountain from which I first glimpsed Sagrada Familia’s spires. Man’s creation, Gaudi said, ought not to pridefully surpass God’s.
The church will have four facades. Two of them are completed, and a third seemed well along, but it was hidden behind scaffolding. The fourth and final facade will be the Glory Portal and Gaudi’s vision for that entrance is breathtaking. The two facades that I saw were on opposite sides of the building: the Passion Facade and the Nativity Facade. Both are stunning and it’s hard to know where to begin talking about them.
Here’s how I saw it first: head tilted back in awe.
You will not be terribly impressed by my photos. There are better images all over the internet. I really need to go back: that first day I was too blown away to think like a photographer.
Nativity facade, left and center porticos. (Left is the Joseph portico; center is the Jesus portico. Why oh why didn’t I get a shot of the Mary one?)
(Because I didn’t know until later what I was looking at. I read all about the church on the plane coming home.)
Detail, Joseph facade. Jesus brings his foster-father a wounded dove; his grandparents St. Anne and St. Joachim look on. Note the rosaries hanging beside them. There is a wealth of beautiful detail here. The Nativity facade portrays scenes from the birth and young life of Christ.
Gaudi intended the cathedral to be a visual Bible of sorts, portraying the entire gospel on its stone walls. And one of the strange things for me was to be viewing these scenes in the midst of a comic book convention: I’d had the same sensation in the mural rooms at the Museum the day before. All of this is sequential art, stories unfolding in panel after panel, just like modern-day comics. Gaudi’s “stories” even contain a good deal of text, like comic-book captions. Words are carved all over the stone, ribbons and banners proclaiming “Hosannah” and “Gloria in excelsis deo” and such.
Scene from Jesus portico, over the main doors. Joseph and Mary present the infant Jesus while the Magi and angels look on. The big column on the left separates the Joseph and Jesus porticoes. There’s another on the Mary side. At the base of these columns are two large tortoises: one a sea turtle and one a land tortoise, the former facing the sea and the latter facing the mountains, to signify unchangingness and eternity.
Also note the JHS symbol inside the crown of thorns on the wrought-iron cross.
Another rosary is draped over the top of the window.
You see how I could easily keep this up all day. There is too much to show and tell!
Atop these spires are bunches of fruit made of sparkling Venetian glass—fruit to symbolize abundance and fertility. Gaudi’s work—all of it, not just this cathedral—is full of images and motifs from nature. The gargoyles on this church, instead of being monsters and demons, are reptiles and amphibians, creatures associated with evil. Gargoyles are meant to siphon rainwater off the roof; Sagrada Familia’s gargoyles are salamanders, serpents, lizards, frogs—all facing downward, fleeing the Mary symbol on the “Star of the Sea” spire which is yet to be built.
There will be 18 towers in all: 12 for the apostles, 4 taller ones for the four gospel-writers, 1 taller still for Mary, and the tallest of all for Jesus. At a projected 170 meters, it will be taller than the great cathedral in Cologne, Germany, which I had the good fortune to visit at age 14—and, as I mentioned above, one meter shorter than Montjuic.
Four of the apostle spires above Nativity portico.
The church is shaped like a Latin cross, rounded at the top end. The cross arms are the Nativity and Passion Porticos, facing east and west respectively. The Glory facade will face south. The north end, the nave end, is dedicated to Mary with a special chapel.
That end, though, was the one covered by scaffolding. I walked around to the west side and paid my entrance donation to visit the interior through the Passion portico.
The Passion facade. I listened to an audio recording by the sculptor who designed these figures. He said he didn’t want to try to imitate or duplicate Gaudi, but rather to create something in keeping with Gaudi’s vision which was also true to his own work, his own vision. My pictures come nowhere near to conveying the power and solemnity of these stark, sorrowful figures.
The skulls at Christ’s feet really got to me.
Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss. Note the serpent uncoiling from beneath Judas’s robe. On the wall behind them is a crytogram; can you figure it out? To the right, the scourging at the pillar.
Here’s a better look at the cryptogram.
The columns holding up this portico are like bones.
There is a particularly horrific depiction of the slaughter of the innocents. I was sure I had a photo, but I can’t find it. You can view an image here, but be warned: it’s pretty brutal. Um, I guess that would be obvious from the subject matter. That poor mother’s anguish will be burned into my heart forever.
Oh my, this is a very, very long post, and I haven’t even gone inside yet. And inside: oh, the beauty! But I think I will end this now. Perhaps I’ll write about the interior later. For now, let me leave you with just a few last pictures: a rose window from inside, and columns rising on the Glory facade without.
Art in progress.
Art in full flower.
April 27, 2008 @ 7:15 am | Filed under: Art,Barcelona trip,Beauty
Thursday evening, after I returned to the hotel from my first art museum visit, I met Scott in the lobby with a crowd of artists and writers. That evening set the tone for the rest of the trip: each night we gathered in the piano bar around seven or eight (there was a piano but no pianist) for lively conversation until moving en masse to the dining room at 9:30. Dinner stretched to midnight every night, and then the party usually moved back to the piano bar until the wee hours of the morning. I loved the opportunity to swap stories with all these other creative folks.
I guess it was Thursday at dinner that we first met Andy Diggle and Jock, the former a British writer and the latter a British artist who have collaborated on many projects. Jock is the studio-mate of one of Scott’s very favorite artists (and people), Lee Garbett, who pencils Midnighter. Scott was bummed that Lee wouldn’t be at the con (but for the best of reasons; he had a one-week-old son at home), but was looking forward to meeting Jock and Andy, whose work he loves. The four of us hit it off right away, and the truth is we liked them both so much that I’m in danger here of gushing in the most embarrassing manner. So let me just say that they are two of the nicest, smartest, funniest guys I’ve ever met (reminded me of Scott’s brothers, if Scott’s brothers were artsy and had cool accents), and we loved them to pieces and I’m dying to meet their wives and children, and I hope our families will be best friends forever.
(Good thing I decided not to embarrass myself with the gushing.)
Friday morning we meant to get an early start. Scott didn’t have to start portfolio review until 5—his one free day of the week. But when dinner isn’t over until 12:30 in the morning, the words “early start” are relative. It was close to eleven, I think, when we finally set off for the elevator, intending to seek out some Gaudi architecture. After almost 48 hours in Barcelona, it was high time.
My plan was to visit La Sagrada Familia first. But in the elevator lobby we bumped into Tim Sale and his friend and translator Diego, who sold us on a section of town called Park Güell (we thought he was saying Parkway, so now you know how to pronounce it).
He mentioned a salamander sculpture, and I pulled out my guideboook and pointed to the cover. “This one?” “That’s it,” he said. He told us we could get there by subway and there would be a short walk “up to the Park.” With moving staircases, he added. We hopped into the elevator and stopped by the front desk to ask for subway directions. There’s a station directly outside the hotel, and the line we needed makes a stop there. The hotel clerk told us which stop to take. There would be signs, he said, pointing the way to Park Güell.
A nice Cockney man (whose father, he told us, lives in Alaska) helped us navigate the ticket machine and subway gates. We found our train and enjoyed the ride. Once out of the subway, we did indeed see the signs pointing us toward the Park. But it seems Diego, who is by all accounts a brilliant linguist, one of the best translators in all of Spain, had nevertheless omitted some tiny little words from his description: he should have said “up A VERY STEEP MOUNTAIN to the Park.” And those moving staircases? Half of them were out of order. We huffed and puffed our way to the top—
Going up
Looking down
—and were rewarded with excellent views of the city.
At the summit of the hill are stone steps leading up to three stone crosses.
From this perch we could see the spires of La Sagrada Familia, and the green lanes of the avenue known as La Rambla leading down to the sea. It had begun to rain by this time, but only a drizzle. I had my pricey pink umbrella. Scott got wet.
La Sagrada Familia on the right, and the building called Torre Agbar on the left
The wider green belt on the left is La Rambla, a pedestrian walkway lined with shops.
From far below us floated up the strains of trumpet music: the song selections amused me. Raindrops Are Falling on My Head, Singing in the Rain…I wondered if the musician was playing at a restaurant somewhere on the streets below.
Despite the rain, this was a beautiful place—but where was the Gaudi? After some uncertainty over which path to take, we tramped through dripping woods and down a dirt lane. A ripple of brightly colored mosaic railing told us we’d found the right place. The path took us to a wide, flat terrace with the undulating mosaic rail curving round.
And there too we found the trumpet player: a busker leaning against the curved wall just out of the rain. I dropped a euro in his trumpet case, and he smiled wide and thanked me. He was from Cuba, he told us, and has a cousin in California. He’s been in Barcelona for six months. “Do you know the song I was playing?” he asked me, and I said, “No, but when I was up on the hill I heard you playing “Raindrops Are Falling on My Head,” and it made me smile.” He grinned broadly and said, “You knew!” Then he said he’d play a song just for us, a little Sinatra. It was “Fly Me to the Moon,” which I sing to my kids all the time. I laughed and clapped and he bobbed his trumpet up and down in reply, adding a little blast at the end to startle some children who were seeming a little too interested in his heap of change.
We walked to the edge of the terrace and looked down upon two buildings that were unmistakably Gaudi designs. A tall blue-and-white mosaic spire rose from a house right out of fairyland, or maybe candyland. Gaudi’s use of mosaic to ornament his structures is at once whimsical and breathtaking. (Scott, reading this, snorts: “Fairyland? More like Dr. Seuss on acid.”)
I wish the colors were true in these photos. The overcast day dulled the pictures, but even through the drizzle the real mosaics gleamed bright and vivid as jewels. Rich blues, greens, golds, crimsons…Everywhere we looked, we gasped. Every tiny detail is original and magical.
Scott thought the blue-and-white spire looked made of fabric.
Eventually we tore ourselves away from the view and followed some more steps down to a lower level, where we discovered we’d only just begun to see the wonders of Park Güell.
Below the terrace we were standing on is a…I don’t know what to call it. Domed area with many columns. The terrace forms its ceiling. That ceiling is like nothing else on earth. Concave circles side by side, like an Escher painting, circles done in mosaic. Most of them are a sort of iridescent tile, with here and there a dazzlingly bright ring of jewels.
Another staircase leads down, presided over by my old friend the salamander.
The main staircase. The big walls on either side are ornamented with the most beautiful tiles that have been broken and reassembled as mosaics in a repetition of the undulated surface used all over the park. Each colorful square has a concave shape, irresistible to the hands and soothing to the eyes.
You can find much better pictures on Flickr and elsewhere. My camera batteries died partway through this visit, and the light was against me, so I didn’t get the perfect shots I wanted. But it’s a gorgeous place. It was intended to be a housing development of sorts, designed by Gaudi. The development never got off the ground, but later Gaudi bought one of the houses himself—not one of the ones in these pictures, which aren’t full-scale houses; there are two other buildings on the park grounds, designed by other architects, and it was one of these that Gaudi bought to live in with his elderly father. We toured it, but they didn’t allow photos. Not that it mattered for my camera at that point. I recharged them in the room, though, for the next day’s big outing: La Sagrada Familia.
More Park Güell pictures on Flickr
April 26, 2008 @ 9:42 am | Filed under: Art,Barcelona trip,Beauty
While Scott worked his evening portfolio review shift, I headed back up the many many steps to the Palau Nacional.
Don’t be fooled. These are only some of the steps.
The admissions clerk told me my ticket was valid for two days, which was a good thing because that first evening, I only had time to visit one floor. I began with the upper story, the modern art wings. This museum, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, is one of the best art museums I’ve ever visited.
The building is a work of art in its own right.
Ceiling.
Auditorium.
Main gallery, looking up toward the dome.
Main gallery.
I wish I could post images of all the paintings and sculpture that blew me away. Artists new to me were Nicolau Raurich and Lluis Rigalt, both of whom had a way of painting luminous skies that reminded me of Maxfield Parrish.
Ruins by Rigalt
I had heard of Fortuny and Joaquim Mir, but had never seen much of their work. Fortuny’s The Battle of Tetuan filled an entire wall and was overwhelming in its scope and detail. Hundreds of small stories are being played out there in the larger battle scene. I loved the wealth of detail in his Spanish Wedding, too. You can view images of these at the MNAC website, but the images (even when you click to enlarge) are too small to show off Fortuny’s genius.
There were a few small Picassos (I never did make it to the Picasso Museum, alas) and one Dali sketch. A larger Dali painting was on loan to another museum. I loved this sculpture by Llimona:
First Holy Communion
And this one by Claraso:
Eve
I knew my girls would love this dreamy painting by Joán Brull:
Reverie
Let me jump ahead now to Friday evening, when I returned for a few hours. This time I wandered through the rooms of religious art on the ground floor. Oh my goodness. Incredible sights to see there. Entire rooms are devoted to murals (or fragments of murals) recovered from old churches across Spain. These once vivid paintings are now faded and patchy, but you get a good sense of their majesty. The museum has replicated the size and shape of the interiors the murals once inhabited: room after room of domed ceilings and arched entrances. Hushed and full of shadows, these are solemn, contemplative spaces, illumined by scenes from the life of Christ in dusky blues and faded golds.
Other rooms contained ornate triptychs and gold-embellished paintings. The collections of Gothic and Romanesque religious art are world-famous, apparently. I can’t begin to do these collections justice, so I’m not even going to try. One image that I saw reprinted all over the place on postcards and book covers was the Christ figure from this twelfth-century altar frontal:
Apostles Frontal from La Seu d’Urgell
My favorite piece of religious art was this magnificent Counter-Reformation painting by Juan de Zurbarán.
Immaculate Conception
In the bookshop I bought a museum guide that contains images of almost everything in the museum, and it’s a good thing I did, because I’d have forgotten most of it already. I hope to track down prints of some of the paintings I loved, but I have to say a preliminary search has not yielded much fruit.
I tore myself away when the museum closed at seven. I knew Scott would be just getting off his shift at the con on the avenue down below. And now comes one of the most magical moments of the whole trip. I started down the first long flight of steps, marveling at how golden and beautiful the evening was and yet a bit wistful that there was an avenue of fountains ahead of me and all of them stilled. And just then, as the stairs took me past the highest fountain—it whooshed into life. Really. It was a waterfall, and as I traveled down the next few steps, the second tier of the waterfall burst over the ledge in a glittering spray. A few more steps, another waterfall—the awakening of the fountains keeping pace with my steps each time. It made me laugh out loud, it was so gorgeously serendipitious. It was like I was a Disney princess. I reached the broad flat level halfway down the hill, where the huge “Magic Fountain” fills the space. A small crowd had gathered round it and as I drew near, there was a sound like the intake of breath and then shhhh, up it came, the water arcing high above our heads from dozens of jets. And not just water, but music and lights. It opened with Clair de Lune, and I was not the only person there who got choked up.
But I didn’t have my camera with me. I know, I know. I had already been up Montjuic four times by this point and thought I’d snapped everything I could possibly snap. But here’s a YouTube clip from two years ago.
Magic fountain indeed.
Barcelona, Magic Fountain, Montjuic, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Palau Nacional, Placa Espanya
March 11, 2008 @ 7:43 pm | Filed under: Art,Photos
Remember how y’all thought my water-spotted windows gave the nasturtiums photo a nice impressionist look?
Alli took it to the next level. I admit it: I would seriously hang this on my wall. Oh my goodness. She did a Van Gogh version too, and I’m totally torn.
I’ll never look at a dirty window the same way again.
November 18, 2007 @ 4:10 pm | Filed under: Art
In response to the question about paints from the other day (on Lilting House), my pal Joann writes:
C’s favorite media are Prismacolors and
acrylic paints.Acrylics are water clean-up, mix nicely. She likes
them.She uses Daler-Rowney acrylics from Dick Blick or and they are made in ENGLAND! Not China! Not sure about the lead content. I
would think that oils would probably be prone to have heavy metals in them as
some of the pigments are from earth minerals. (I don’t remember why I know
that.) BUT I did see in a Dick Blick catalog some "H2Oils" that are water
cleanable.I LOVE oils for myself. The richness, the
thickness, the globs. LOL
We love Prismacolors too—the soft creamy feel when you’re coloring with them, the gorgeous hues. I bought a huge set almost ten years ago (!) from Timberdoodle, and we are still using those pencils! (I do think I replenished with a smaller set several years later, because the kids had used up their favorite colors. But those pencils really do last a long time.)
November 17, 2007 @ 8:02 am | Filed under: Advent & Christmas,Art,Best Gifts for Homeschoolers,Books,Comic Books,Fun Learning Stuff,Holidays
Here’s another topic I’ve written many posts on, both here and at Lilting House.
Books We Love, Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Signing Time DVDs
More about Signing Time
Yet more about Signing Time
Showcase Presents comic book collections
Family memberships to zoos, museums, etc.
Each of the above link is a longer post on the subject.
Other people tackling this topic:
Alicia at Love2Learn
Jennifer at As Cozy as Spring
Danielle Bean
(List lifted from Karen Edmisten—thanks, K!)
Note: these are old posts and may contain links to my Amazon Affiliates account.
November 13, 2007 @ 7:09 am | Filed under: Art
I have a question…
Why use watercolors? Do you also use other art mediums for painting?
Oils? Pastels?
Also what about lead in the pigments? After all the issues with products from China, I’m being more vigilant about this and it’s nearly impossible to find non-china art supplies in my price range!
thoughts?
Wow, good point about the question of where our art supplies are coming from. I’ve been on the toy watch for a long time, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to me to look at where our paints were made. I know you can get German-made watercolors from Stockmar, but as you say, those are pricey, and I have an uneasy feeling about Stockmar anyway. (Edited to add: There’s a long story here! This is a shift for me. I have enthusiastically recommended Stockmar many times in the past.)
Hmm, this bears looking into.
As for “why watercolors”—for me, there are lots of reasons. I’ve never used oils, but my sense is that they’re expensive and messy and harder to clean up…don’t you have to clean your brushes with turpentine or something? You see how ignorant I am on that subject.
We do use tempera paint sometimes, and my kids love the little jars of acrylics for painting those unfinished wooden things you can pick up cheap at Michael’s. (More made-in-China stuff? Probably. Sigh. Hadn’t occurred to me.)
But we like watercolors best for painting pictures, because of the luminous, swirling colors, the easy blending, the pleasure of watching the heavy paper absorb the translucent paint.
Oil pastels are a rare treat: again, their mess factor is too high for regular use.
My three oldest girls are taking an art class right now, and the medium for many weeks has been chalk pastels. They are really enjoying using them, and they’ve learned an awful lot about tone and shading and texture. I think chalk pastels are an easy medium to use for experimenting with shading techniques. And the cleanup is a snap.
(You can see where my priorities are.)
On the same post, Amy asked another excellent question.
Where and how do you store/display the finished artwork? I find this even more daunting than the creative process. How do you (any of you) respectfully manage the output of your oh-so-productive junior artists? I’d love to hear any thoughts.
Ha! On this topic, my thoughts amount to a dull buzzing in the head. Our current storage method is: pictures hung on the fridge, and a large and ever-growing pile of beautiful finished work on the laundry-room counter, waiting to be hung or stored or something.
When we moved last year, I had to sort through boxes and boxes of such treasures. I tried to pare down to the best or most adorable work, but it was sooo hard to part with any single painting or drawing, you know? The masterpieces that made the cut are now languishing in a box in the closet, most of them.
So I’d love to hear other people’s answer to this question.
October 19, 2007 @ 2:17 pm | Filed under: Art,Family,Fun Educational Stuff
Yesterday my three oldest kids went to a workshop at the San Diego Museum of Art. A docent gave a short talk about elements of art—line, shape, color, etc—and then they split into small groups and went to look at four paintings up close. Afterward, they did an art project focusing on copying details from the paintings they’d viewed. I missed most of the workshop, because I was outside with the little ones. The girls had a splendid time, and Beanie was especially impressed by the dead chicken.
“Huh?” I asked her, ever so articulately, upon receiving this report.
“A dead chicken! In a painting! I saw it, and I drew it!”
I do remember seeing a painting with a dead fowl in it when we first visited the museum. I think it was a duck, not a chicken: Merganser by William Michael Harnett. (I don’t know if that link will work—the URL says “index.” I don’t think the SDMA site has direct URLs to the paintings. But if you’re really interested in seeing the deceased bird, you can click around to get there. Beanie thinks it is worth the effort. Me, I prefer a nice landscape with haystacks.)
During the workshop, a couple of the other mothers and I walked down to the Science Center with our little ones. There’s a kiddie room upstairs where a mama can park herself on a bench and watch her younguns play with all the interesting toys. Wonderboy loved the air chute made for putting balls in: whoosh! Up goes the ball and pops out the top of the tube. Rilla enjoyed filling the toy shopping cart with plastic fruits and vegetables. It was so easy and pleasant to sit there chatting with my friends while our toddlers and preschoolers bustled around. I remember when I thought tending two little ones in a children’s museum was a tiring day’s work. Now it’s a mini-vacation.
One thing I’m really enjoying about our proximity to Balboa Park is that we can drop by for short, frequent visits without feeling like we have to do and see everything all at once. We’ve barely begun to explore all the park has to offer. After I picked up the girls, we were strolling back to our car and we passed the little Timkin Museum, a small, free-to-the-public art gallery next to the big SDMA. Erica had mentioned that it’s an incredible collection. Jane and I noticed a huge sign advertising a special French Neoclassical exhibit, which is exactly the movement we’ve just been reading about in Young People’s Story of Fine Art, so that was a pretty exciting discovery. We’ll have to squeeze in a visit sometime soon.
Jane is also keen to see the Journey to the Copper Age exhibit at the Museum of Man—she wondered aloud whether her daddy could take a day off and take her. And I’d like to get to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Natural History Museum while it’s still there…but tops on the girls’ wish list is to go climb a certain enormous, low-branching tree they spotted on the way into the park. And when I was watching how happy my wee ones were yesterday in the kiddie playroom, I made a little mental note to remember that as important and wonderful as all this cultural stuff is, it’s even more important to allow ample time for Climbing Very Big Trees and Dipping Fingers into Fountains. Sometimes the dead chicken really is the best part of the art museum. Even when it’s a duck.
October 18, 2007 @ 7:09 am | Filed under: Art
Remember how much fun my kids had at Mark Kistler‘s drawing class this summer? Mark has begun to put free 8-minute drawing tutorials up at YouTube. Very cool!
