Entry tags:
Drove out to the construction site
I got to look around at all the stuff that’s happened while I’ve been gone, and have opinions. Always fun!
It’s really crowded with drilling equipment at the top (they are drilling the geothermal well field), so I parked next to E.’s car by the well head and walked up. So when we were done, E., D. and I walked down, and D. kept going because he’d ridden his motorcycle and parked by the conservation area entrance. I talked their ears off for a bit about impressionism and looking at paintings from a different distance / angle. I mentioned the Sargent at the Clark, which E. hadn’t realized was there, and I figured later I’d send him a link to it. Apparently I wasn’t done babbling about art, but I figured if I was going to inflict this on someone else, I might as well save it for later here as well.
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https://www.jssgallery.org/Paintings/A_Street_in_Venice.htm
I don’t know if you have ever noticed the upside down tree outside the Clark, but it’s easily one of the coolest parts of a visit to the Clark.
https://www.clarkart.edu/exhibition/detail/penone
The commentary at that link is not what I think about when I’m looking at that. When I’m at the Clark, I’m always thinking about how weird it is to try to make sure that a bunch of art would survive a nuclear attack that destroyed both Boston and NYC. What’s the point of art without people? It does mean there’s an astonishing collection of art conveniently located near where I will be living, however, so it would be rude to complain. But that upside down tree captures perfectly all of the inversion and contradiction that I feel at the Clark. There’s life struggling, but on very shaky foundations.
Mass Moca’s amuse bouche (or digestif, I suppose depending on whether you spot it coming or going) is
https://massmoca.org/event/don-gummer-primary-separation/
I like that even better, and I generally enjoy Mass Moca much more, even tho I don’t care for the kind of art that is at Mass Moca. When we took A. there, I wondered if she was going to get anything out of the exhibits, but when we were looking at a really incredible pink exhibit about racism and spaces for having fun:
https://massmoca.org/event/ej-hill/
She asked, “who decides who gets to ride in it?”, which pretty much indicated that the message the artist was sending most definitely had been received.
When we were in Heerenveen, R. and I walked over to the local museum, not having any idea what to expect. It was much better than I would have expected (if I had expected anything), but the weirdest part of it was all the stuff about Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, who I had not previously ever heard of. They had a bunch of his library including the furniture, pictures, ephemera, you name it. Just learning about that guy was worth the trip, but the attic exhibit in the same museum was set up like a grandparents’ attic, but organized and with captions. Lots of Meccano. Oh, and another section of it was an escape room. (We did not attempt the escape room. Frysland can be a bit tiring, because often the two languages in use are Dutch and Frisian, and English can be entirely absent. I’ve thought about doing an escape room in another language, but haven’t yet gotten the courage to attempt it. We did one in Yorkshire a couple years ago that was fun, tho.) One of the temporary exhibits was by a young Groningen artist who makes things that look kind of like icons on a computer, but when you start to grasp what’s going on, it all looks more than a little naughty in a very characteristically Dutch way. They also had a 80 year retrospective about the end of the war. Small towns really want to make sure you don’t forget who cooperated with the occupiers. Sometimes I think museums in small towns and provinces are the best museums of all. They have nothing to lose, so they might as well do what they think is worth doing.
-=-=-=-
I got a really sweet message from the metal artist about how excited he is to be working on our project. I can definitely see how E. and S. have been friends for decades.
It’s really crowded with drilling equipment at the top (they are drilling the geothermal well field), so I parked next to E.’s car by the well head and walked up. So when we were done, E., D. and I walked down, and D. kept going because he’d ridden his motorcycle and parked by the conservation area entrance. I talked their ears off for a bit about impressionism and looking at paintings from a different distance / angle. I mentioned the Sargent at the Clark, which E. hadn’t realized was there, and I figured later I’d send him a link to it. Apparently I wasn’t done babbling about art, but I figured if I was going to inflict this on someone else, I might as well save it for later here as well.
-=-=-=-=-=-
https://www.jssgallery.org/Paintings/A_Street_in_Venice.htm
I don’t know if you have ever noticed the upside down tree outside the Clark, but it’s easily one of the coolest parts of a visit to the Clark.
https://www.clarkart.edu/exhibition/detail/penone
The commentary at that link is not what I think about when I’m looking at that. When I’m at the Clark, I’m always thinking about how weird it is to try to make sure that a bunch of art would survive a nuclear attack that destroyed both Boston and NYC. What’s the point of art without people? It does mean there’s an astonishing collection of art conveniently located near where I will be living, however, so it would be rude to complain. But that upside down tree captures perfectly all of the inversion and contradiction that I feel at the Clark. There’s life struggling, but on very shaky foundations.
Mass Moca’s amuse bouche (or digestif, I suppose depending on whether you spot it coming or going) is
https://massmoca.org/event/don-gummer-primary-separation/
I like that even better, and I generally enjoy Mass Moca much more, even tho I don’t care for the kind of art that is at Mass Moca. When we took A. there, I wondered if she was going to get anything out of the exhibits, but when we were looking at a really incredible pink exhibit about racism and spaces for having fun:
https://massmoca.org/event/ej-hill/
She asked, “who decides who gets to ride in it?”, which pretty much indicated that the message the artist was sending most definitely had been received.
When we were in Heerenveen, R. and I walked over to the local museum, not having any idea what to expect. It was much better than I would have expected (if I had expected anything), but the weirdest part of it was all the stuff about Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, who I had not previously ever heard of. They had a bunch of his library including the furniture, pictures, ephemera, you name it. Just learning about that guy was worth the trip, but the attic exhibit in the same museum was set up like a grandparents’ attic, but organized and with captions. Lots of Meccano. Oh, and another section of it was an escape room. (We did not attempt the escape room. Frysland can be a bit tiring, because often the two languages in use are Dutch and Frisian, and English can be entirely absent. I’ve thought about doing an escape room in another language, but haven’t yet gotten the courage to attempt it. We did one in Yorkshire a couple years ago that was fun, tho.) One of the temporary exhibits was by a young Groningen artist who makes things that look kind of like icons on a computer, but when you start to grasp what’s going on, it all looks more than a little naughty in a very characteristically Dutch way. They also had a 80 year retrospective about the end of the war. Small towns really want to make sure you don’t forget who cooperated with the occupiers. Sometimes I think museums in small towns and provinces are the best museums of all. They have nothing to lose, so they might as well do what they think is worth doing.
-=-=-=-
I got a really sweet message from the metal artist about how excited he is to be working on our project. I can definitely see how E. and S. have been friends for decades.