Sunday, April 30, 2017

pearl concerned skip

Dear paranoid people who check behind shower curtains for murderers: 
If you find one, what's your plan?
(Internet question)


Squirrel Taxidermy, bet you thought I was finished with that, eh?


Couldn't take the terror of facing the unquilted quilt 
today so I played hookey and went to the MAUL to see the giant Lego displays.  Well, I was blown away by the life-size models of superheros and cartoon characters and little kids getting their pictures taken...and a giant open room through the whole mall covered with tables full of Lego and games and racetracks for Lego cars.  
It was really fun~ until the mothers with the little kids got wary of me talking to them. It was innocent enough since I didn't know which character was which and asked for clarification.  Apparently that's akin to walking into the mall with a shotgun because the moms completely freaked at some old glasses-wearing lady talking to their kids from maybe 15 feet away.  Unarmed.  Sigh.  It wasn't like I asked to show them a puppy in the stairwell.

My fave, loved that he was coming off a life-sized roof top.  Check the tiny hand reaching out the window to touch his foot!  I'm surprised I didn't get arrested for taking a picture of this hand without permission-  Really I was sensitive to that but she popped up just as I clicked.

still don't know which one this is, my source of that info got pulled away by his shirt, meanwhile he was taller than I am, and his mother outweighed me by maybe 200#s.  Weightism, so sue me.

Big guy, little kid.  This one looked more like a topiary than a superhero.

Not Batman.  Your guess.

Maybe AssssMannnn?  What's the A stand for?  

There was only one 'woman' I saw, Snow White-  a direct take from Disney.  There was a little girl posed with Scooby Doo, and other cartoons and I'm sure I missed a lot since I only did half the mall before loosing interest in this and trying to find a sun visor.
So, that was the sum of my Sunday.

Closing shop now and going to find an ARTY PARTY for you before I get the vapors and need to lie down.  Had a few too many chili peppers tonight and my lips are burning, might need some EMT's.  You know what?  This is the perfect place to talk about Marisol, my very first art hero.  

Marisol Escobar, whose penetrating and playful, large-scale wooden sculptures were their own unique blend of Pop and folk art, died on Saturday morning, April 30, at the age of 85.  Marisol was a star of the New York art scene in the 1960s, breaking through with a 1962 solo show at the Stable Gallery that featured her bright, boxy sculptures of people representing a range of American life — everyone from the Kennedys to a dustbowl farm family to the artist herself. The works, which combined painted and minimally carved wooden figures with found objects like shoes and doors, were funny but incisive, simple-looking but expertly made. They helped launch a career that included great artistic success and stardom, followed by decades of obscurity and, more recently, a revival and renewed appreciation of her exceptional work.  When I was a kid took art classes on Saturdays at the Albright Knox and while I was waiting to be picked up I would wander alone through the galleries and find out who was there-  this woman was by far my favorite.  I also fell for Charles Burchfield's watercolors and Clifford Still's abstract expressionism and still love both of them.  They taught me how varied and wonderful contemporary art could be before I even went to college!
Marisol Escobar, whose penetrating and playful, large-scale wooden sculptures were their own unique blend of Pop and folk art, died on Saturday morning, April 30, at the age of 85.  Marisol was a star of the New York art scene in the 1960s, breaking through with a 1962 solo show at the Stable Gallery that featured her bright, boxy sculptures of people representing a range of American life — everyone from the Kennedys to a dustbowl farm family to the artist herself. The works, which combined painted and minimally carved wooden figures with found objects like shoes and doors, were funny but incisive, simple-looking but expertly made. They helped launch a career that included great artistic success and stardom, followed by decades of obscurity and, more recently, a revival and renewed appreciation of her exceptional work.
The renowned Venezuelan-American artist Marisol bequeathed her entire estate to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.
(announced today via the New York Times)
On Tuesday, the museum announced what it described as the largest gift of art in the institution’s history. Marisol, a major pop artist who infused her work with folk imagery, died last year at the age of 85. She left her estate to Albright-Knox, which was the first museum to purchase one of her works. 
The artist (born María Sol Escobar) trained in Abstract Expressionism under Hans Hofmann in New York, later shifting her practice in the early ’50s to incorporate a combination of pre-Columbian folk influences and assemblage, in part as a response to her mother’s suicide. The estate includes 100 sculptures, over 150 works on paper, thousands of photographs, her archive, and her Tribeca workspace. The gift is a major addition for the Buffalo museum, which will name a gallery in her honor.

          

Go read about her, her work is wonderful and can be enjoyed on so many levels.    I found pages and pages of her work on Pinterest too.



1 comment :

Janet W said...

Captain America