Communing with balloons

Took flowers for Dad's vase after lunch.  He'd been pretty sharp in the morning, just uncomfortable being folded wrong in his bed.  Dad doesn't weigh much these days, but still enough that I need an aide's help to scoot Dad up toward the pillow.  Then I can raise the head of the bed so Dad can sit up to drink coffee, always important!

After lunch I stopped back with the bouquet.  Dad was still sitting up, eyes wide and unblinking, mouth agape, and hands tracing the route of the suspended ceiling's grid.  He looked like a flight attendant pointing to the exits during the safety demo.  Oblivious to me, I arranged the flowers, chatted about lunch, took off his glasses and cleaned them.  He grabbed the glasses back and returned to communing with the ceiling.  Pair of L lines receding toward the horizon.

Spur of the moment, I headed to downtown Dallas for free admission First Saturday at the Nasher Sculpture Center.  I needed art.  I needed free.  I needed driving directions!  "You cain't get thar from hyere" should be the Mavs welcome to Heat fans.  Downtown is a massive detour due to construction on the Woodall Rodgers deck park that will change the freeway into a tunnel with a giant urban park above (take a virtual fly-through at the link).   For now you cain't fly through.  You cain't exit.  You cain't backtrack.  You cain't find the parking garage at the Dallas Museum of Art to save your life.  Not even from the three-point line.

While I was struggling to get off of Woodall Rodgers to circle back to the Arts District, I got a view of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, also under construction.  The bridge is the first of a proposed trio designed by Santiago Calatrava for the Trinity River Project.  It would be nice if the construction went as quickly as this time-lapse video.

While it looked like I might be stuck on the Interstate all the way north to Denton, I was able to exit at Victory Avenue.  This was as up-close as I've been to the site of tonight's game three of the NBA Finals.  It figures that I was lost at the time.

This is not a map of downtown Dallas with detours, but there's a resemblance to my completed Worm Knot textile project.

The good news is that my auto travails were completely worth it.  The Nasher Center has an outdoor exhibit, "Statuesque" with very fun works by Aaron Curry in blazing pink and lime green.

The bright colors contrast with the dark figures of  Thomas Houseago.  (Both these artists were born in 1972).  Hut, hut, hut!  The works resemble football centers from this angle.

And Curry's "Horned Head Trip" looks a bit like my new "CollageMama" Chinese chop:

What about the balloons?  What about the communing?  That's a whole different exhibit on the lower level of the Nasher Center.  "Whole different" doesn't begin to describe the experience of "Sightings:  Martin Creed".

Walk down the stairs, and the balloon-filled room grabs your vision.  But, wait, these are musical stairs.  Each step plays a tone.  You and everyone else is making the strange music filling the museum.

Wait in a long line with anticipation building for your turn inside the balloon room.  A few people lost their nerve, as I would have in my anxiety days.  When you get to the arrangement of cacti you are on deck.  No eyeglasses allowed in the balloons.  It would be easy to lose them.  You begin to anticipate the static effect on your hair before you even enter.  The atmosphere is that electric.

You are in!  You are pushing your way through balloons.  You push them up for a glimpse of the ceiling.  It takes surprising effort to move.  You push until you find a wall, then turn.  It's loud.  Kids are shrieking with joy.  You push through balloons to find a person pushing toward you and both shriek with surprise!  It is cool, and not as humid as expected.  There's plenty of air, of course in all the spaces between balloons.  You breathe and fill with joy.  All other thoughts are gone.  You are IN ORANGE BALLOONS.  What else could there be?

Your five minutes are ending.  You find the windows, and then the door.  People are taking photos of you through the windows, documenting reactions.  You are pleased to emerge without letting any balloons escape.  You feel a bond with everyone who has been inside.  You may never be quite the same.  You have been on a very odd detour!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Tiffany butterflies with my youngest

The Malachite butterfly flitted to the leaf and settled to pose for my camera. It's irridescent wings shone in the late afternoon sunlight inside the Sammons Butterfly House. I'd seen many larger, totally uncooperative Blue Morpho butterflies. This green gem wanted to be photographed, and then wanted to show off its underwings. Once I caught my breath again, the Malachite waited for me to fetch the Woolly Mammoth and his lady friend to appreciate the sight.

The underside seems to be fashioned of the thinnest slices of jade pieced together with copper in a lapidary jeweler's creation. "Metallic oxide" popped into my head along with "Louis Comfort Tiffany". This butterfly may have inspired Tiffany's glass designs.

I was fortunate to share the Dallas Museum of Art's splendid exhibit of Tiffany creations with my Woolly Mammoth son in 2006. Sharing an afternoon at the Sammons Butterfly House in Fair Park will be another wonderful memory. I am grateful to have this special connection with my son, nature, art, and with his new friend.



© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Tut, Tut, it looks like rain

My compelling visual memory of the blockbuster King Tut exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art is the thirty dollar Kleenex box cover on sale in the gift shop (and online, of course). You too can be the first kid on your block to have the Made in China pseudo-experience of wiping your nose on unwinding mummy linens pulled out through the Boy King's nose. Dang! If only you could extract your Kleenex with a crochet hook the way the ancient Egyptians removed Tut's brain through his nostrils!

I wanted to love the exhibit, and expected to buy tickets for my sons and their friendgirls to see it at Christmas. I really, really wanted it to be as mind-blowing for them as my trip to the 1977 "Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago was for me.

The "King Tut & the Golden Age of the Pharoahs" exhibit is spaciously arranged to allow for the movement of six hundred visitors per hour. It flows pretty well, and individuals aren't impeded by clusters of audio tour users. It has more objects overall than the late-Seventies Tut exhibit, but fewer important objects. The final room of the exhibit about autopsies performed on Tut's mummy feels like an overhyped History Channel segment where Geraldo Rivera might pop out.

This exhibit moves to San Francisco after the Dallas show. A second exhibition called "Tutankhamun the Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" just opened in Atlanta. It will move to Indianapolis in June 2009.

Perhaps I've been to one too many blockbuster Egyptian exhibits. Like the "Treasures of Tut" in 1977, these all shined far brighter than the current Dallas show:

• "Ramses II" exhibit at Dallas' Fair Park in 1989
• "Egypt's Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and His World" at Ft. Worth's Kimbell Museum in 1992
• "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt" at the Kimbell in 2003

I'm home from work today with a head cold, but I still don't want a Tut tissue box. And, please, no Geraldo!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Flipping fan failure

Even if I could carry a tune in a bucket, I would never make it as an opera diva. Sad, but true--I can't flick open and flutter my folding fan in a flirtatious manner. Rats. I can't flick it open at all. I'll never sing the title role of Bizet's "Carmen" or flutter in "Turandot".

We had a school demonstration of Tai Chi with fans this week. Tai Chi is a slow, soft martial art best known for relaxation, meditation, and range-of-motion exercise. I'd never seen Tai Chi done with music and fans before. The children were anxious to get their hands on one of the fans. Some of them were instantly able to mimic the motion required to open a fan with an impressive, loud snap.

When it was my turn, I was hopeless. "It is easy," the Tai Chi master said, "just like using chopsticks!" Go ahead and rub it in. I'm just as inept with chopsticks as I am with a curling iron.

My great aunt gave me a fan decades ago. I got it out of the cupboard and tried to get a grip on the fan flip technique. The tricks seem to be in flicking down to open up, and letting gravity do the work.



Some interesting links about fans:

A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection of the Dallas Museum of Art.

The Language of Fans--While use of this language is a forgotten art, when we see it in a painting or opera the meaning is usually obvious.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

$295/yard

The air is just faintly crisp. Fall has officially arrived. My creative energy is coming back, but sadly, the hummingbirds have left the patio.

Back to the design problem of the Kansas car window storm quilt blocks. I have decided to use two or three of the blocks as stand-alone wall-hangings to work out design and technical questions. I received some great input on fabric and color options, including using headliner car fabric or trying a batik pattern.

Although I've worked near Kay's Fabric Center in Richardson, Texas for a long time, I'd never visited the store. I don't sew clothes for myself any more, and no longer make childrens' theater or Halloween costumes. Still, I felt like I'd entered Aladdin's cave when I found the incredible designer fabrics in this thirty-eight year-old, family-owned store at 518 W. Arapaho Rd,. Suite 113, Richardson, TX 75080.

Maybe a more timely analogy would be Howard Carter telling Lord Carnarvon that he could see "wonderful things" as he peered into Tut's tomb in 1922. These were fabrics fit for pharoahs, fairy godmothers, overpaid professional athletes, and Mozart's Queen of the Night. King Tut's treasures will be on display at the Dallas Museum of Art beginning this month.

When I reached visual stimulus overload, the store's staff led me on a tactile tour of luxurious wools. Like a tasting of fine wines, this experience took me far beyond my station in life! These fabrics were finer than those sewn for the Emperor's New Clothes. Even my inexperienced fingers could tell the difference between $150/yd. wool and $295/yd. wool. Three and a half yards would make a suit for a normal-sized captain of finance. It could take six or more yards to create a suit for a Dallas Cowboy or Dallas Maverick.

Sadly, I had to admit I was looking for a flat-fold remnant priced near $1.99/yd. to test color and construction techniques for my Kansas blocks. My price range is closer to Laura Ingalls Wilder's dugout on the banks of Plum Creek than Aladdin's jewels or Michael Irvin's closet. It was on up the trail to the sewing/craft chain store for me.


This gray quilting cotton could pass fairly well as the interior of a slightly rusty '96 Buick. It wouldn't detract from the intense colors of a July thunderstorm over lush green Kansas fields.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Center for Creative Connections

Feeding the artist's soul is sometimes tricky. The artist's soul doesn't always admit it could use a new plate of inspiration. When it does, it has to overcome the power of afterwork inertia, the tendency for a body that has taken off its shoes to keep its shoes off, and pocketbook depression.

That's why I renewed my Dallas Museum of Art teacher's membership this week. A teacher's membership is only forty dollars, but it lacks the frills of a regular membership. Still, it gets me to put on my shoes and take a three dollar DART ride downtown to refuel my artist soul and teaching spirit at least once a month.

The new Center for Creative Connections exhibit, "Materials & Meanings," is inspirational fuel for teachers and artists. It is in the space formerly taken over by the children's exhibits at the DMA, but now shared. The 12,000-square-foot interactive learning environment lets visitors of all ages experience works of art and artists with a focus on the Museum’s collections. Two walls of the center were designed by architecture students and faculty at the University of Texas-Arlington, and they got me really pumped. My favorite was the wall divider below:


From the DMA website.

The glowing white section on the far left is made of clear drinking straws poked through all the holes in a metal grid like an oversized window screen. The grid has been curved, and then lighted. It's similar to the idea of sticking Dixie cups in a chain link fence to spell out "We support our troops," but more aesthetically pleasing.

The second panel from the left is made of shiny nuts linked together with copper wire to make an interior decorating version of chain mail. My hardware store fantasies are reignited.

Third from left is a panel of sea anemone in a vertical tide pool until you look close. Bunches of heavy duty white plastic zip ties have been attached to the metal grid resembling an albino Pebbles Flintstone's hairdo.

Fifth; a latchhook shag carpet made of one-inch wide strips of splattered painters' plastic dropcloths. Sixth; a splendidly simple divider of folded paper. Next; curtains of paper clips, walls of binder clips, rainbows of wrapped thread...

I am reenergized! True, I want to go immediately and rent a large former industrial space with large windows, exposed ductwork, concrete floor, and go crazy building and weaving my own screens and dividers from recyclables.

So why isn't there a Sims: Artist Studio Loft game?

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Walk and talk, Suzy

Since the 1995 installation of Dale Chihuly's colorful glass swirls in the Hart Window of the Dallas Museum of Art's atrium, I've imagined the pieces as swirling flowers and sea creatures. They usually remind me of the amazing twirling plates act on the Ed Sullivan Show in the Sixties. Last night, for the first time ever, I contemplated square dance skirts and petticoats, Dr. Pepper and Shiner Bock bottle caps while staring up at the art.


Image respectfully reproduced from the Chihuly website.

The DMA was celebrating Texas bluebonnets and swing music, and showing the classic movie, "Giant" with James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor. Grandpas in western shirts were twirling little bitty granddaughters on the dance floor to the music of Maurice Anderson and his band, "The Dukes of Western Swing". The event had pulled in a different demographic for a Friday evening of special activities. Sharp marketing!

My companions were adamant about their allergies to "country music," and afraid they would break out in itchy rashes from prolonged exposure. Once upon a time I would have rejected it without listening, too. Now I just wear a great big smile, and never do look sour.

Sitting around the table and watching the dance floor, stages of life twirl before me. How wonderful to be those lucky little girls dancing with their attentive grandpas. Party and dance in the evening, and have a dish of butter brickle ice cream, too. Swirling in your dance skirt, you are the center of the known universe, pulling everyone into your personal movie with your amazing gravity!

Another guy, hopefully a gentleman, holds your elbow on your first encounter with inebriation. It's a funny dance, but the steps are tricky. He makes you a cup of Folger's freeze-dried instant coffee and sings softly, "Oh, walk and talk, Suzy; walk and talk Suzy. Walk and talk, Suzy; walk and talk Suzy." How does he know this incongruous dose of Bob Wills is the best way to sober up?

Three sons and a freeze-dried if not instant-divorce, it is time to get out of Dodge. A solo road trip to Caprock and Palo Duro canyons in the Texas panhandle yields and unexpected connection to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Spend a little time in Turkey, Texas where Wills was a barber by day and musician by night.

When the boys were little we had a cassette tape of railroad songs, truck songs, and songs about Oklahoma and Texas. It had "San Antone" and "Take Me Back to Tulsa" by Bob Wills' band. They probably don't remember it at all, amidst all the "Wee Melodies" and singing multiplication tables we listened to on road trips. Maybe a little fondness for Texas swing will show up in their eclectic music tastes eventually. And, psst! Their mommy still says they are too young to marry!

Take Me Back To Tulsa - Bob Wills/Tommy Duncan

Where's that girl with the red dress on? Some folks calls her Dinah;
Stole my heart away from me, way down in Louisana.

Take Me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry;
Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry.

Oh, walk and talk Suzy, walk and talk Suzy;
Walk and talk Suzy, walk and talk Suzy.

We always wear a great big smile, we never do look sour.
Travel all over the country, playing music by the hour.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Attracted by the Duplos

Enjoying my leisurely visit to the Dallas Museum of Art, I wandered into the children's area in the Gateway Gallery. My inner child's peripheral vision had spotted a huge pile of Duplos, those preschooler chunky Lego bricks. I can't resist Legos, and these were the pure, basic, clean Duplos with no little people or trees.

Just the other day I did a little lesson with my students about building stronger, sturdier Duplo walls by overlapping like real brick-layers. The phrase that really got through to them was, "put the Bandaid over the cut." We worked together to make Duplo structures that could be picked up without falling apart, and they were purdy amazed. We also made a domed Duplo igloo, and talked about interior space. This seems obvious to you and I, but preschoolers tend to build by piling things up in a dense mound, instead of surrounding and roofing a space.



So I wandered into the Gateway Gallery to see what kids and parents were doing with all the Duplos, and found that the museum was asking visitors about how they connect to the art. There was a questionaire to mark, label styles to rate, and two pieces of art to write our responses. One section of the research asked the visitor (me) to sit in an armchair and put on headphones while I looked at a landscape painting. The audio asked me to focus my attention on different sections of the painting (top, bottom, sides, middle), then close my eyes and see what I remembered in my imagination. The next section involved seeing the foreground, middle-, and background, and then placing myself in those areas of the painting with my eyes closed. Another section asked me to choose the color I was most drawn to in the painting, then imagine being bathed in that color, and recognizing other personal associations to that color. That's an audio tour I could appreciate.

I signed up to receive emails about the results of the study. Participating enhanced my visit. Things to consider:

• Do you like to view art by yourself or with others?
• Do you like to listen to audio tours, attend lectures, or have a guided tour?
• Do you enjoy having music and performances to enhance your appreciation of the art?
• Do you like discussing art with other people?
• Do you feel comfortable explaining an art work and its meaning to other people?
• Do you read labels and explanations as you view an exhibit, or just react to the pieces themselves?
• Do you like interactive computer programs to enhance your understanding of an exhibit?
• Do you read reviews and critiques of exhibits?
• Do you like to write your responses to the art?

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Fabulous Fans

Feeling warm? Take a little mental break and fan your imagination with the current exhibit of Eighteenth century painted fans on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. The twenty-five elaborate fans are part of a collection given the museum by Wendy Reves.

Painted by primarily female artisans looking at an example in front of them, the watercolor and gouache* images include political, biblical, bucolic, wedding, mythological, and travel scenes of great beauty and detail. Fan leaves are of silk, vellum, or parchment. Fan sticks of carved ivory were either imported from India and China, or made by the guild of comb makers and inlayers in Europe. The fan sticks are inlaid with mother-of-pearl, brass, glass or rock crystal, paste gems, tortoiseshell and silver foil. Clearly, these aren't the fans of simple folk. The pamphlet that accompanies the exhibit says a fan like this cost five to ten times the amount of a linen shirt.

A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection
June 17–October 14, 2007 Focus Gallery II

My own fan collection consists of one given me by my Nebraska great aunt, and probably about ninety years old. Its sticks are painted wood. I can't tell what kind of paper the leaf is made of, but it has an opalescent sheen. The design is painted or printed with watercolors and metallic paints.



*Gouache is similar to watercolor, but with chalk or gum added to the mixture of ground pigment and water, making it more opaque. Allegedly easier to control than watercolor, it has a livelier look than tempera. Tempera is also basically ground pigment and water with an egg or egg yolk addition to bind it together. Poster paint is tempera with a binding of gum Arabic or glue instead of egg. Casein, a milk protein, can also be used as a binding. The definitions and boundaries between these paint types are variable.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Bringing in the sheaves with Vincent

Woke up at four a.m. again, with this song in my brain:

Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
Goodness how delicious, bringing in the sheaves.

Glad I could go back to sleep, and didn't have to put on my sabots to walk to the wheat field for a day of reaping, binding and gleaning. The powerful images from the Dallas Museum of Art's current exhibition, Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat, played a slideshow inside my eyelids to go with the song.

The exhibit was crowded on the day after Christmas, of course, but it was a rare chance to see it with my son. The show ends January seventh.

Because we are so bombarded with reproductions of Van Gogh's paintings on everything from slick magazine ads to umbrellas, his raw drawings are more commanding. The women workers in the charcoal drawings have the mass and strength to challenge John Henry and his hammer. In contrast, the pen and ink landscapes with repetitive strokes and delicate detail look like patterns for embroidery.

The exhibit puts Van Gogh's wheatfields in context with lovely works by Millet, Breton, Gaughin, and Pissaro. I've never heard of the artists of two of my favorite pieces. I quote Gaile Robinson from the Fort Worth Star Telegram:

Threshing Machine-Loiret (1893) by Gabriel Rigolot is a rare example from the late 19th century that depicts the first piece of mechanized farm equipment. Before its invention, the process of removing the chaff from the grain was done entirely by hand, providing painters ample opportunities to find laborers in the fields.

Inclusion of the threshing machine called to mind the DMA's exhibit of Charles Sheeler "Power" Series. We take just three steps:

1. Van Gogh's monumental women working in the field, bending over to bind the sheaves by hand.
2. The Rigolot painting of the threshing machine.
3. Charles Sheeler's paintings of monumental machines in which the human figure has almost disappeared.

I've never heard of Rigolot or Ernest Bieler. The DMA label reads "Ernst Bieler" on a work that stuns me again this visit to the exhibit. My son is equally impressed by this large painting of two girls plaiting straw. It looks like a Japanese poster composed with the girls' faces almost lifesize and disconcertingly near the top of the picture. It resembles the German marquetry pictures my father and uncle brought home from WWII--very linear, and graphic, but within each outlined shape is a subtle pattern like wood grain in cut lumber. I haven't found much information about Ernest Bieler, but he was Swiss, and lived 1863-1948. After studying in France, and exhibiting at the Salon, he went to the Swiss alpine villages to paint.

So I found an image of a Bieler painting very similar to the one at the DMA. I Photoshopped it with peanut butter to make it look like inlaid wood. It's so close to the wonderful marquetry pictures that hung on the walls at my grandma's and great-aunts' houses. Those images were my childhood concept of, "Once upon a time..."


Peanut butter.

Peanut butter...

A peanut sat on a railroad track.
Its heart was all aflutter.
Round the bend came Number Ten.
Toot, toot, peanut butter.

Peanuts...

Sheaves...

Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,

Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;

Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

Refrain

Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,

Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

Vince and I are eating, eating goober peas.

Power of black and white

Must have prayed for a black and white answer within three days. My life has been all pixelated in shades of gray for too long. The answers weren't clear cut. I received three days in black and white. Maybe it was a bad idea to shake the Magic 8 Ball before asking the question.



Was fascinated by the hundreds of beautifully composed black and white photographic portraits of Andy Warhol on the first half of the PBS show "American Masters" late Wednesday evening. My thoughts turned to Whistler's mother, the Arrangement in Grey and Black. Sometimes life seems more like a disarrangement in grey and black. Form, order, and composition are difficult to see. Reminded of the Joseph Cornell films I saw at the DMA last year...

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra's program this weekend celebrated Shostakovich's centenary by piecing selections from his symphonies into an accompaniment for Sergei Eisenstein's famous 1925 silent movie, "Battleship Potemkin". With the musicians all in black and white, and the projected movie in grayscale, the effect was dramatic.



Arriving home quite late, I found a package on my doorstep. My cousin had sent a box of photos that once belonged to my great aunt Emma. The images of four generations, identified or unknown, faded or stark, led to another day of powerful black and white. Not owning a scanner, I photographed the photos with and without flash, often dappled by the late afternoon sun on my living room floor. I have just begun working through the collection. Perhaps my answer awaits within. Until then, some photos from my son conclude this post.

Transparent Society

Seems like just yesterday I was writing about glass houses and privacy. Well, maybe just last weekend! Now the President has announced that we live in a "transparent society". Maybe there's no point to either drapes or vertical blinds in the impending condo-pocalypse.

My day began with transparent glass, and will probably end the same way. No, I haven't been out on the street picking up the shards of broken auto windshields for mosaics. Haven't done that since my oldest finished his mosaic of the Alamo for middle school Texas History class ten years ago.

The right way to begin a day is with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice at the Frontier Restaurant in Albuquerque, but that wasn't the start for this day. I was actually reading about Dale Chihuly suing two former glass-blowers from his studio. He accuses them of imitating his glass designs inspired by the sea. Timothy Egan, writing for the New York Times, reports:

The glass blowers say that Mr. Chihuly is trying to control entire forms, shapes and colors and that his brand does not extend to ancient and evolving techniques derived from the natural world... Andrew Page, editor of Glass: The Urban Glass Art Quarterly, which is published in New York, said that Mr. Chihuly deserved a high place in the pantheon of glass artists, but that the suit could hurt his reputation by igniting countercharges and opening a window into how a celebrity artist works on a mass scale. "I think Dale Chihuly is a pure original," Mr. Page said. "He has a tremendous sense of color and composition. And he has done a tremendous amount for the field. But this lawsuit may have been the worst thing he could have done."

Egan reports that Chihuly, Inc. has ninety-three employees, and that Dale Chihuly has not actually blown glass himself for twenty-seven years. "Still, Mr. Chihuly said, he works with sketches, faxes and through exhortation. Nothing with his name on it ever came from anyone but himself, he said." I don't know how many employees another famous glass artist had. Louis Comfort Tiffany is the subject of the current exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Together with his studios of artists, glassmakers, stonemasons, mosaicists, modelers, metalworkers, wood-carvers, potters, and textileworkers, Tiffany heralded in America the notion of continuity of design, orchestrating pattern, texture, color, and light to produce a single aesthetic expression.

The Tiffany exhibit is much more varied than I expected. The DMA has done a nice job of arranging it with lots of room for visitors to move around the display cases. Changed viewpoints let light reveal new aspects of each piece. It didn't take long for me to overcome my notion of Tiffany as lamps over pool tables in rec rooms of the Seventies. I was particularly impressed with the natural forms in the glass and ceramic pieces--lily pad, milkweed pod, morning glory, pansies, ferns, shells, and seaweed. Tiffany was combining a reverence, or at least an appreciation, of the natural world with numerous chemical processes to create his signature effects. I wouldn't want to sit on the chairs he designed, but his fireplace screens and stair balustrades are very groovy.



Many of my favorites in the Tiffany show were inspired by the sea. The same sea that inspired Chihuly. Nature's influences are beyond counting. We artists must bring our own ideas and skills to a project. I am fond of the Chihuly works at the DMA and at the Joslyn in Omaha even though I know they were created by a studio of craftspersons. A Metropolitan Museum online source is useful for learning about Louis Comfort Tiffany:

Tiffany combined his talents as a colorist, naturalist, and designer with the technology that he had developed for his windows to produce blown glass with surfaces, hues, and forms that were totally new. After manipulating the varicolored glass, the final form was often fumed with metallic oxides to achieve rainbow iridescence.

I get bogged down wondering if Jacqueline du Pre performing Elgar's composition is an artist interpreting an artist, or the musical equivalent of a glass-blower working from sketches, faxes and exhortations. Is the actor an artist, or only the playwright's gaffer?

Thank heaven and His Vader Darthness Dick Cheney that real life is such a dewy iridescent spectrum. Bush's label, "transparent society", doesn't refer to the Saran Wrap over the rainbow marshmallow Jello salad at a church social. "Transparent Society" refers to the choice between privacy and freedom created by new technology. The NSA wants to know if you happen to call Domino's for a sausage/green pepper/black olive. Bushie's lips were moving today, so it's a safe bet varicolored glass, smoke, and mirrors were used to create a utopian over-the-rainbow bubble over our critical thinking skills. I'm sure this administration will see a clear explanation for Haditha:

President Bush reiterated his pledge today that the results of the inquiries would be disclosed. "One of the things that happens in a transparent society like ours is that there will be a full a complete investigation," he said. "The world will see the full and complete investigation."

Ah, yes. That would be opening a window into how a celebrity con artist works on a mass scale.

Collage boxes

Sometimes the CollageMama even collages. It doesn't happen often enough. My efforts this winter and spring have been three-dimensional efforts inside and outside cigar boxes. A crazy art teacher friend gave me the boxes last fall, along with many more for my students' Louise Nevelson projects.

Of course seeing Joseph Cornell's films and boxes at the Dallas Museum of Art's "Dialogues" exhibit in September also got me thinking about boxes. Seeing Ellen Tuchman's beaded art, such as her matchbook pieces at the Dallas Theatre Center this spring, always reconnects me with my love of beads and buttons.

I'll write about my other inspirations on the Anchorwoman blog in a day or so. I'd be glad to hear what you think.

Evening with a Yink

Seussian evening in the Dallas Arts District tonight with a bit of Mayan art, the Dallas Museum of Art's Thursday Jazz in the Atrium, and the Nasher Sculpture Center's Third Thursday program, this time in conjunction with the Dallas Opera. Good golly! That's an all-you-can-handle buffet of culture with free parking.

The Nasher's signature color is Green/Eggs/Ham green. Sitting on the green chairs that match the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bandaid over my hot glue gun burn, with my purple thumb from a week of art projects with stamp pads, I listened to the iconic British textile designer, Zandra Rhodes, and Dallas Opera's maestro Graeme Jenkins discuss the process of costume design for opera. Several folks in the audience were dressed head to toe in Nasher green, while others showed off jingling and clanging fashion accessories made of antlers and mirrors.

Zandra Rhodes designed costumes for the San Diego Opera's 2001 production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute". The Dallas Opera's "Magic Flute" opens Friday night with those costumes. Rhodes has designed royal looks of both Princess Di and Queen's Freddie Mercury. Rhodes' Yinkian pink hair and Louise Nevelson-style heavy eye makeup are her trademark looks. She talked about those looks as a costume she wears, an easily recognizable caricature of herself that she can "be inside". Interesting to ponder if the rest of us are wearing caricature costumes of ourselves...

Ms. Rhodes let us in on a secret of forming the fabric feathers, scales, and petals for "Magic Flute"--weed whacker line! In Nasher green?



This one,
I think,
is called
a Yink.

He likes to wink,
he likes to drink.

He likes to drink, and drink, and drink.
The thing he likes to drink
is ink.
The ink he likes to drink is pink.
He likes to wink and drink pink ink.

SO...
if you have a lot of ink,
then you should get
a Yink, I think.

Power Series

In the last two weeks I've had the great luck to see paintings of powerful machines. The Dallas Museum of Art is showing paintings by Charles Sheeler known as the "Power Series". Sheeler made the paintings on commission for Fortune magazine in the late 1930's to celebrate mankind's attempts to harness nature. The images are of an old-fashioned waterwheel, a coal shovel, a steam turbine, a hydroelectric power turbine, an airplane propeller, the wheels of a locomotive, and electrical power transmission towers at Boulder Dam.

Sheeler referred to himself as a "Precisionist". His paintings show no brush strokes, and are closely related to his photographs. They are completely unlike my own artistic tastes, and yet I've always been fond of them. This piece is owned by the Dallas Museum of Art, and always holds my attention:



As the daughter of engineers I visited construction sites, industrial plants, hydroelectric dams, and noteworthy architectural sites as a child. I was well aware of the construction of Interstate 80 across Nebraska. The highlight of any trip to McCook, Nebraska, with the Interstate construction detours, was a visit to the bridge over the railroad tracks at the train station. Watching trains pass beneath the bridge was as much fun for me as it was for Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham. I thank the Out of Lascaux blogger for these images of Sheeler's paintings.



Now it's time for a different Power collection, painted by a five-year-old boy. Here are two tempera paintings from Sam's "Three Machines" series. How terrific that his concepts of machines include both grid structures and radiating energy!

Quick Acting Peter Doig

Expected to spend the whole weekend being miserable, waiting for the antibiotic and decongestant to cut through my evil ragweed allergy turned sinus infection. Shazam! These drugs work much faster than the ones I got back in Oklahoma in the late Eighties! Twenty-four hours of moaning and trying to sleep sitting up, then 10-9-8-7-6- blasting off with cleared eustachian tubes and a mega-fix of pseudoephedrine!

The Peter Doig: Works on Paper exhibit at the Dallas Museum of art is not only rich, luminous, immediate, romantic, expressionist, and haunting. It is also a visit deep into the working process of an artist using color, composition, excellent figure drawing, and a collection of glorious influences. The DMA sneaks a peek at related paintings in the southeast quadrant gallery with Rothko, Stella, Motherwell, Still, and Gorky. The Doig works bring Diebenkorn and Thiebald, Winslow Homer, and Gauguin to mind. Doig cites Hopper, Munch, and Matisse as major influences. I laugh, thinking Gauguin has done a study of frisbee players on the beach. And there's even a pirate under a palm tree!

Click on the Refresh icon

Checked out a cd at the library last night while waiting to attend the condo association meeting in the library multipurpose room. Glenn Gould playing Haydn's piano sonatas, HOB xvi: nos. 42, 48-52. I'm sure listening to the music is making me more calm, focused, smart, creative, and witty. I may have to renew it beyond the due date!

Our condo complex recycling effort is picking up new converts. The recycling carts were full for today's city collection. We may have to increase our collections to weekly. What a wonderful problem!

The new "Dialogues" exhibit was my big refresher today. The Dallas Museum of Art has assembled an exhibit exploring the shared artistic themes and vocabulary of Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. My collagemeter is charging, and my tank is nearing full.