The Write-Up, as Promised

UGH UGH UGH, had a run-in with swarms of love bugs on the trip up to Melbourne.  The windshield got so glopped up with their squashed bodies (and smashed egg sacks apparently according to the internet!), that we had to stop at a rest area.  Lines of people were working on their cars trying to clear the windshields with wiper fluid, with water held in plastic shopping bags and slopped out on a long trip from the restrooms!  But I was with Laurie who seems to be somewhat of a love-bug genius so she went and bought a Sprite from the soda machine and I bought a pile of sex newspapers from a vending machine and we went to work on the sticky mess.  The Sprite worked pretty well, certainly better than the water attempts!  Whatever, the further up the coast we got, the thicker the bugs.  By the time we hit Melbourne, they were everywhere making both of us itchy and scratchy just knowing they were around. We amused each other with our own personal hideous bugs-in-Florida horror stories.  And they were numerous.


So, we made it to the Brevard Art Museum where we met up with about ten SAQA members specifically to see a show called Transformations which was a series of collaborations between an artist and a poet.  I thought the concept interesting, but the execution was somewhat lacking.  The art piece was on the gallery wall with the poetry beside it so one was forced to either look at one or the other.  It's my personal feeling that both should be able to stand alone, and having to study each piece separately took away from both.  One of the other viewers had an interesting idea that perhaps the poetry aspect should have been recorded so one could listen while looking at the art aspect.  I liked that idea.  It was difficult to see which part of the collaboration informed the other.  Maybe it doesn't matter but I was always looking to see which was describing the other.


Fortunately all was not lost for me at this museum, a lovely small space that also was housing an exhibit I very much enjoyed called 'Just Suppose: The Otherworldly Art of Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor'.  Taylor and Uelsmann are a married couple who deal with different aspects of manipulated photography-  Jerry is old school, using the traditional darkroom to add images and print large silver gelatin photographs with a surreal feel.  It was fun to see his repeated images used over the years.  Taylor, on the other hand, is strictly digital.  Her photoshopped inkjet prints computer colored dreamy collaged images utilizing vintage photos and costumed subjects, mostly in a square format.  A very interesting juxtaposition of the two working methods.








We walked a block or two to a restaurant on the water and had some time to find out about each other before we were off again to an art supply store.  It was somewhat overwhelming to all descend at once on a small shop but somehow we got checked out quickly.  And on we went to the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts.  This was most interesting- a brand new small museum on the FIT campus that was featuring a show that originally appeared at the V&A in 1987 of a series of silk scarves commissioned by the Ascher studios in London and designed by early 20th century artists like Derain, Calder, Matisse,  and Henry Moore.  It was wonderful to see pre-war Modernism as translated into these beautifully framed and displayed silk squares.  It was a small sampling, but each scarf was powerfully representative of both the artist and it's time in history.  


I'm glad we didn't miss it in our drive to find a car wash!  The bugs weren't nearly as bad on the way home, but the car was pretty much a mess again.  If you can avoid love-bug season in central Florida, do so.  It aint' pretty.  I'm exhausted.  And itchin' like a man on a fuzzy tree!