Museum Momemts

The computer is being a #$!@X%^!!! again. I uploaded some photos from our excursion in Mesa yesterday. The pictures will not show up on the browser to upload to the blog. The last time it did this, the pics showed up on the browser a few days later, huh? Dumb...but if I know the pics will show in a day or two, I'm not going to freak. It's annoying, though...Two weeks ago we gathered a few of the Girl Scouts to go to the Heard Museum. We've been very fortunate to attend some Girl Scout badge workshops there so the girls are familiar with the museum. Or so we thought! Somehow we'd never made it to the lower level.The Heard has free children's activities and admission fees each Saturday in July. We started out with a scavenger hunt.We were all over the museum which is how we ended up in the lower level. It had a Northwest Coast/Arctic theme. Long houses, button blankets and Inuit felt applique.I'm a museum freak. Years of textiles and art history classes have filled my brain with stories of art and cultures. Passport, please. I'd love to travel the world...In lieu of packing my bags, we have some local culture. The Heard sponsored the Mariposa Dancers. The Shawl Dance...The hoop dancers were amazing. Amazing is only a beginning. It's a visual treat that we'd never seen before. Wow!On our way out... Perfect dancing shoes!Which ones would you wear? Which do you think I would wear?
Marissa

Around and About

Sometimes my powers of observation fail me. Good thing I've trained the Chicklet. "Mom, the Palo Verde is blooming." It sure is! It was the one 24" tree planted among the other 15 gallon trees. It's growing and thriving. I feel like a proud Mama. I'm just plain happy everytime I come home and have my garden to enjoy.Lantana is now loved, not maligned...Same could be said for my cooking. The Chicklet helped me with forming the meatballs for a big pot of albondigas. Mmmmmmmm, it was unanimous, they came out yummy. Been a long time since I've made some. Thursday is getting to be home cooking night. Tonight RV Guy is coming over and making us dinner.
This was my Friday last week. I have a short walk to my car and I often enjoy the blue sky, the clouds and especially a good sunset. there's a big empty field on the drive home. I kicked up a little dust as I stopped to capture the colors in the sky. I love to end my work day this way....
I'd been looking forward to this event for a month or two. I expected to have the company of the Chicklet but she had a sleepover with a friend and I had the morning to myself.
All of a sudden Autumn arrived last weekend after another week of high temperatures. I was able to wear pants and long sleeves. It was partly cloudy on Sat. but the sun came out enough, casting shadows.Spanish market at the Heard Museum. This is my second time to go to it. There was lots of fun, vibrant, art to look at. I missed last year but it was easy to find my way around. From what I could tell, there were the same artists in the exact same places as two year ago. Not sure if that was a good or bad thing. It did make finding artists easier. I made a beeline to find the work of this artist. Hey, I have some of those jarritos! The same little ceramic dishes from when I was a kid. Pack rats. We're a treasure and a disaster.Jorge Eagar.... I love his shrines/assemblages. I almost took a workshop with him but my schedule didn't mesh. He's going to offer workshops again starting January, he said. I'll be first in line! he had so many cool ones and he was fine with me taking pics. All the artist were really cool about that. Love the layers, the color, the imagery. He does it well... I can't wait to learn from him.
Here's my attempt at layers and glitter. These are my Rolodex cards for this months' swap with the theme of "Bling." I'm not a blingy gal but I own plenty of different colors of glitter glues, Stickles, etc. As always, I look to see what's on the table that I can throw into a project. Not too many recycled materials here but the red and purple flowers are made from Hershey's Kisses' wrappers.
Meanwhile, back at the Spanish Market..."Flowering Exocticas Alum Cactitus" what a crack up. Love the way the artist, Jose A. Benevides, describes himself, his card business read, "Artist/Engineer."Alright, now I have to try this! Weaving with strips of aluminum cans. Did you catch the use of the hubcap for the base?Another Benevides piece. This one has to be seen in person. It's a larger than life Madonna on a car chassis. At one time, it did raise to the vertical position but now it's exhibited prone only. The piece is covered with overlapping license plates. This sculpture was at the Mesa Arts Center during the low rider exhibition earlier this year. Pictures/touching/getting too close, weren't allowed. Different story here.I took a few shots in this area. My two home states, California where I grew up and Arizona where I'm growing....Another found object art piece. These are my favorite kind of pieces. Corn kernels outline the door shapes. Discarded jewelery, wooden clothes pins... Food for this junk lover's soul.I stopped to admire these vines on the wall on my way out. Organic lines, dots....OK, I'm sucked in! Pictures are a must!
Parking was jam packed from the start of the event. I was parked on the street and encountered a few feathered friends...

Some "Artologist"

That would be me... where's the art???? While I must admit that there isn't a whole lot of of art making going on in my studio, I've had some opportunities to get out there and see more of what's going on.

Two weeks ago I broke my streak and attended my first Phoenix First Friday since 2002. The date is easy to remember. It was the last exhibition in the history of MARS-Movimiento Artistico del Rio Salado. It was an artist cooperative with a focus on Hispanic and Arizona artists.

When I've spoken of MARS to a few people, they refer to it as something they've heard in passing. Like some kind of mythical dinosaur of long ago. I've felt ancient....Crowds make me nervous but I focused on going to see these two exhibits. First we visited Chaos Theory X. (Sorry don't have the address info here but google it and it's sure to come up). The gallery was located on 5th Avenue south of Van Buren.

Great space, big, well lit. It was a good show. Plenty of quality art to look at. Good food for thought. I'm so far removed from the art seen but it felt good to be in it again.

We also saw "Wonderland." An exhibition at (merz) Project located south of the Phoenix Art Museum. The New Times invited artists to make art reflecting the theme of Phoenix as "Wonderland." The pieces were smaller than I'd anticipated but they invited the viewer to take a closer look. Some pieces were just fun, some made me scratch my head. Overall, in my humble opinion there's a lot of good work generated in the Phoenix art scene. I'd had an experience that left me really wondering about that. Relief!
The Chicklet had an all day Girl Scouts event at the Heard Museum the following Sat. Six hours was a long day to be sitting around so I wandered. I wandered on the grounds and took pics. I wandered to McD's and bought coffee. I wandered off as the girls toured the museum. I wandered into the Berlin Gallery...

Oh heaven! The Berlin Gallery is a treasure! I missed seeing it last time we were at the museum over the summer. Wow, so much cool art to describe. Just go see it for yourself. (Perhaps it's cheating but since it's off the Museum Store, entrance to the gallery is FREE).

After my visit, I'm looking at brown paper bags in a whole new way. Isn't that just perfect? Don't I have enough crap as it is??????
Marissa

Weekend Wrap-Up

I'm a bad mom. Carmen came by my bed for a visit-Yes, I blog from bed.... and she got a couple of potato chips. OOps, I guess I'm giving away that I'm munching while parked in my room. Oh well, I'm human. I'm surprised Freia hasn't come out from under the bed for some goodies. Maybe I should check the couch...

More views of the yard. Meet Punk. We're naming some of the plants. "Punk" was inspired by an encounter on the main drag in Huntington Beach, CA. The Chicklet and I were making our way back to the beach to our friends' bead shop. Our attention was captured by a young man, completely punked out with a spiked haircut consisting of a mohawk sectioned off into 5 spikes/triangles like rays from his head. Although this took place about 5 years ago, The Chicklet can still describe the guy to a "T."Our Palo Verde. Imagine my surprise when th 24" Palo Verde turned out to be smaller than the 15 gal. Tipu trees. It turns out some trees grow just fine in containers and others will thrive better in the ground. My, (yet unnamed), Palo Verde will catch up soon.My rose colored, flagstone pavers arrived. Talk about excitement!This was the absolute best. Installation for the front patio began. Only about 9 left to set in place to finish the 12' x 12' courtyard patio. Can you guess where I was hanging out Friday night?This is going to be my view. I plan on parking myself next to our Palo Blanco tree and just taking this in. This is what I saw when I looked up Friday afternoon and it was all good.Sat. came around and I had plans. Go to water aerobics, get paint, go to the nursery for the sharkskin agave and later in the evening experience the Flashlight Tour at the Desert Botanical Garden with a friend.

I arrived at the paint store within 15 minutes of closing. I didn't realize they closed at 3pm. Too late to get my color matched. Struck out there. The Sharskin Agaves that were free of the cured bug infestation are still not available. Struck out there!

We didn't strike out at the Heard Museum. Whew! I watch Good Morning Arizona on the weekends and I heard about free admission to the Heard. We'd driven by it a few days ago and thought to go. The timing was just right.Entering the museum took awhile. We enjoyed walking on the grounds. The shadows of the leaves showed through another.Not sure what made these marks on the leaves but there were quite a few. These are just as intriguing as the play of light.More for the "shadow" file. It was still hot enough to probably fry an egg on my dark hair but the courtyard of the museum had a lot to for us to see.We finally made it in. First stop:"La Casa Murillo," an installation piece by local artist, Kathy Cano-Murillo and her husband. It was the ultimate in Mexican kitsch. Can I say "cheesey" and make it sound like a compliment? It was over the top, sensory overload and a ton of fun. I came away with an abundance of inspiring ideas.A painting by artist Henry Fonseca. His iconic wolf...With legs like that....the Gillette company should be in business for a long time to come... Oh the shoes! Almost makes me want to get me some. Straps like these do not look good on women like me. Must be a tall wolf... How could I not take a picture of glittered, pink shoes to show the Chicklet?We walked the galleries. Printmaking from artists of the Arctic.Carved stone from the Southwest. The textures on this one are beautiful. It took restraint to keep me from running my hands along the hard stone.With so much to see it sometimes seems impossible to focus on one piece but it happens. Something captures the eye. In this case a gourd/basketry piece inspired by waves of water. You can sense the motion of the rippling water.The indigenous art gallery. This one is from Oceania. Gorgeous!Just inside the main entrance-this garden of handblown glass and ceramic totems. If you see yourself in this picture, don't forget to say "Hi!"We closed the place down. More plants to admire in the gardens. The red tips caught our attention. There were rows and rows of these.Next stop...food! Macayo's downtown...long time since I'd been there. A close-up of the mosaic outside the restaurant.We spent some time by the fountain at the museum on the way out. Rocks, leaves, water, sky...Then more sky but in a whole other prt of town
We haven't done this all Summer...visit our favorite sunset viewing spot. I picked up The Chicklet, we ran some errands and we caught sight of a colorful sunset.The Chicklet said her skin was turning pink. We came upon 3 cotton tailed rabbits as we pulled up. They disappeared into the desert. We were within 5 minutes of home. This is what I love about my neighborhood.We passed the camera back and forth. The Chicklet took some pictures, I took some. She did good!One week left of summer break for both of us. The Chicklet begins school in a week. Teachers report back in my district the day after. We're going to cram in plenty this week. Stay tuned!
Marissa