I'm late, I'm late- can't catch my feet! I have been awol lately I know, but I have been knitting and one cannot knit and blog concurrently, ya know. When I am not knitting I am on the road it seems and have gotten out of my cocoon even to see the Hopper show and a show about immigration down in New Bedford. My reviews of both are excellent. The Hopper show at the MFA was enlightening- you think you *know* an artist but when you see the whole life's work stretched from room to room you realize what a small percentage of the work you have even seen before. I was quite surprised to see that he went from watercolors to oils before he achieved his acclaim, then sorta coasted in his later years as he revisited themes from his peak, none too successfully. He did become more abstract in a way, but it might also be interpreted as achieving a sort of schema and being less involved with the subjects and therefore using almost a shorthand to define his thoughts. Um- lunch was good too, and TY really enjoyed his day of being in my world for a change.
The other show, at ArtWorks in New Bedford was engaging too, but more for the stories each piece told. Apparently the parameters were loosely defined on the call for entries and could be dealt with from many angles. I knew my friend, Nancy Crasco's, piece which deals with the raid on immigrant workers and their incarcerations and deportations, in at least one case leaving young children unattended. A very powerful piece about a recent local incident making this a particularly good venue for her work. Other pieces dealt with the loss of life on the long boat trip over, where dead bodies were routinely buried at sea, the feeling of being caught between two worlds by children of multi-ethnic immigrant parents, the loss of life of the Mexican workers as they illegally cross our southern borders, on to celebrating the various customs from all the immigrants who have come before us. Each piece needed close observation, so it took a long time to get through a small show. And again, lunch was good, as was the company.
As we were leaving New Bedford we unintentionally pulled up to the chapel that was in the 1957 movie about Moby Dick. How could we NOT go in! Seems that Melville described the prow-shaped pulpit in the book and the film company sought out the chapel but then had to build the pulpit to better fit the description. (They overdid it! I would have rather used my imagination.) So we got a bit of a historical education too.
I kept finding themes in my web crawl this week- first is travel:
1. Here's a guy who had to visit ALL the Starbucks in NYC in one day, I guess simply because they are there.
2. And here's a couple who turned into a family on their *fun* car trip from Argentina to Alaska. They really didn't address the *why* of it, or even how they managed to continue with a brand new baby. Ugh.
3. And finally, another quest, but this time on foot with a mule and a wagon. This site follows an older couple ('older' is a scary word since they are about my age!)out of Alabama and north where they winter over at various farms. I've heard of hell-on-wheels, but this is hell-on-foot for sure.
And then YouTube has interrupted my serene life with this series on Dancing. One led to another, the another, and another. You don't have to watch them all through, but please do sample each!
Lego Thriller
Inmate Thriller
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