Recharging

It's been a very busy year for me so far - both onstage and off - and, you know, sometimes you just need a rest.  Artists especially, I think, need to refresh and recharge their creative batteries.

Luckily, I now have a bit of a lull in theater deadlines.  A break.  So, rest.  Yay!

But recharging?  How do you do that?

Well, what I've found helpful before is as follows:

1) Take better care - eat and sleep better, exercise more, catch up on doctor's and dentist's visits etc.  Buy new socks or underwear... and maybe a few cool summer clothes.

2)  Have fun.  Some of that exercise might be at the pool or beach!  Watch movies.  Goof off.  Do something different...

3)  Do  / see / read / hear / experience something different.  Like visit a museum.  The Kimbell in Fort Worth has a terrific show about its original architect Louis Kahn right now.  Lots of drawings and models, including a full scale mock-up of part of one house.  (Plus, of course, the museum building itself.  More HERE.)  And the neighboring Amon Carter Museum has an interesting exhibit of Polaroid photography.  More on that HERE.  

I visit museums with a sketchbook... 

you can't always photograph what interests you

After the sheer wonder of the BIG Polaroids I never knew were possible - 20"x24"! - the images I found most interesting were two by James Nitsch that incorporated both the actual object - a razor blade, a leaf - and its image.  Fascinating to see the passage of time separate these objects still further... the razor blade rusts and its photo ages differently, the leaf dries and turns brown while its photo stays green.  Time physically trapped in Art.

The most touching image was a Polaroid by astronaut Charles Duke during the 1972 Apollo 16 mission: a family photo (protected in a plastic baggie) lying on the dusty surface of the moon, a surface rumpled by astronaut footprints and the tire tread of a rover.  That little snap-shotted American Family (kid in a tie!) lying there so long ago so very very far away...  realizing that that kid's grown up now, yet that photo still lies there...  

Photo by Charles Duke / NASA - public domain

See it in more detail HERE at MFA Houston

So.  

There's a new thought and image to store up.

Artistic restocking is all about new thoughts and images stored up.  Gathering!

So I'm reading, web surfing (is that still a phrase?), listening to podcasts and TED Talks (artist Dustin Yellen's work, wow!  HERE).  To someone who works in collage, Yellen's 3D collages caught in glass are amazing phenomena.

I'm going to the library again, now that I have time to actually bring back the books on time.  

I've also traveled, briefly, to the Pacific Northwest - a beauty I hadn't seen before - and to today's Waco and HGTV's hot interior design Magnolia Market - a beauty I had not wot of.  A marvel of marketing certainly.  More travel soon!

Is it time for you to take a refreshment break too?

ADDENDUM:  Found and added that great moon-snapshot.

Art Museum Visits

Lately I've been popping into museums.

The Dallas Museum of Art has instituted a new free-entry policy which I think is wonderful... and probably good business too.  Until recently there was a charge to just stick your head in any of the galleries of the permanent collection, plus an extra charge to see any traveling exhibits.  Now those traveling shows still require a ticket: a hefty $16 to view three, I think, shows... one of them of Greek statues from the British Museum however, so cheaper than the usual plane ticket to see the Discobolus.

But now the permanent collection is FREE.  A price anyone can afford.  Museums, supported as they are by civic money and centers of civic pride, really should be accessible to all citizens.

There did now seem to be more people in the museum than has been true.  (Once inside the door, I bet more end up paying for the traveling exhibits too.)

I took my intern 'round a few weeks back to see the DMA's furniture and decorative arts.  The DMA really is a great teaching aid!  Their furniture collection got a serious start with the Bybee Collection of early American furniture and for years they've been adding pieces from other periods and places.  Recently they revamped a room of Craftsman and Arts and Crafts objects that includes a spectacular Tiffany stained glass door and sidelights (almost) looted from Greene and Greene's Blacker House.

Now that these collections are free, folks like me or my student can afford to visit and revisit to really study these objects.  This past weekend - having a little extra time - I visited the Dallas Museum of Art just for fun and said hello to all my favorites.

Love, love, love the new free entry policy.


The most exciting traveling exhibit I've seen lately - for free yet - was yesterday at Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum of American Art.  This museum has had an interesting development too, from its start with a collection of excellent Western art (The Old West, like cowboys), adding/building a serious photography collection, to its present impressive collection of American art (like N. American).  The permanent collection is well worth a visit.  And always free.

The traveling exhibit?

Poseidon by Romare Bearden - believed fair use as this is a review 

and for educational purposes, image found HERE.  Copyright, of course, Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey.  Now I have to admit to a shameful ignorance of Mr. Bearden until almost ten years ago when the DMA had a show of his collages.  Since I make collages myself, I was absolutely fascinated with his work.  The colors!  The shapes!  The meticulous craftsmanship.

He goes about his art differently...  Where I use "found" pictures to create my narratives, he sometimes does that - usually to create human figures - but mainly uses cut/shaped colored paper in a Matisse-like, mosaic-like way.  One technique that intrigued me was that he sometimes sands the glued down papers to abrade and soften colors and edges.  The work in that show concentrates on the history and experience of African-American life, often with an urban flavor, and always with an emotional sound-track of jazz and blues... music which the artist said inspired his collage technique.

The show at the Amon Carter featured Bearden's ink drawings inspired by Homer's The Illiad and his images, both collage and later watercolor, for The Odyssey.  These are not exactly illustrations of Homer's story so much as a retelling of the legend, emphasizing and underlining elements that spoke personally to Bearden, who had long studied the story.  The first, most obvious, difference in interpretation is that Bearden has made the characters black and often specifically African, like his impressive Poseidon.  (All kinds of societal/historical commentary with that choice... also much bolder graphics, having crisp black cut-outs instead of wimpy pinky-tan ones.)  The Odyssey becomes here a metaphor for the African diaspora.  Another striking re-emphasis is the strength of all his female characters.

There is little use of found images, instead Bearden uses those strongly Matisse-like fragments of paper but in colors even Matisse might not have dared.  Gorgeous!

There's a quote in the explanatory film about use of color in Bearden's career: "He wouldn't let himself use color until he could use color 'that would walk around like the big men.'"

There are big men and women in his Odyssey.


The Smithsonian's explanatory film is a You Tube video HERE.