“The Pursuit of Everything – Maira Kalman’s Books for Children” at the High Museum Atlanta (CFFC 5+ Things)

There really is “everything” to see at the Maira Kalman exhibit at the High Museum. First up: Illustrations from her books for children — on view through September 15 2019.

Sojourner Truth — Maira Kalman, Illustration for Bold and Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote by Kirsten Gillibrand (Alfred A. Knopf). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist and Julie Saul Gallery, New York. © 2018 Maira Kalman.

It’s beautifully presented —

Text and pictures from ‘Max in Paris’ …

Beyond wall art… she didn’t just write and illustrate a book on Cake. She acknowledges the importance of celebratory moments, and yes, cake is often involved.

Lots of fun with the presentation – By all means, do sit on the cake.

Watch out for monsters…

Curator Jane Curley, posing with the big green guy.

Here’s a treat — selections from the wall behind the workspace in her studio – objects that inspire her and appear in her work.

If you’ve read this blog before you may know I’m always interested in shoes as objets d’art — did I get that right? I may not have got very far in French class yet but I’m as enthusiastic as Max in Paris.

The Shoes that Slow Down Time: she said she loved them but they’re too big, and it’s hard to go very fast in shoes that are too big. So – they slow down time.

Yes! More shoes.

More paintings —

Maira Kalman (American, born Israel, 1949), “He had a family that he loved very much,” 2012, illustration for Looking at Lincoln (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2012), gouache on paper, 15 1/8 x 22 inches. © Maira Kalman, courtesy of Julie Saul Gallery, New York. All rights reserved.

If you love humor and whimsey and wordplay, this exhibition is for you. Maira Kalman’s work encompasses cover illustrations for the New Yorker, books for adults, books for children as well as dance, music, and theater collaborations.

And if you love dogs, this exhibition is definitely for you.  Did you see the dog at Lincoln’s table? One more thing:

From Pete to Max and every dog between … “All Beloved”

Oh, and one more “one more thing” — the illustration from  Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote, written by Kirsten Gillibrand, art by Maira Kalman, photo provided by the High Museum —

Maira Kalman (American, born Israel, 1949), “Inez Milholland, 1886–1916,” 2018, illustration for Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote, written by Kirsten Gillibrand (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018), gouache on paper, 14 1/8 x 11 1/8 inches. © Maira Kalman, courtesy of Julie Saul Gallery, New York. All rights reserved.

The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children- at the High Museum Atlanta through Sept 15 2019

More on Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: 5+ Items

Bee Feet, Chocolate Shoes, Very Spiky Heels, and the CFFC Photo Challenge: Feet

There’s diversity of foot size in this post. Let’s go small-medium-large…

Bee feet. This one was snuggling the butterfly weed in Piedmont Park on Sunday morning.

 

What goes on feet (unless they’re bee feet)? — shoes of course. But I saw these in the window of a candy store in Asheville NC.

Not quite life-size, but almost. I say the bigger the better if they’re chocolate.

Moving on to real shoes…

Seen when window shopping in New York City. Candy-colored but not candy – would these be appropriate for a meal at a ‘Red Lobster’ — that is, if you ate lobster?

These are impressive too…

NYC again. These have a look of speed, ironic, for something that looks hard to walk in. If super-heroes wore spike heels (and *sigh* if they’re women drawn by men I suppose they do) then these might be just the ticket.

One more. Where else but NYC? These spiky ones remind me of the bee feet, and they could be a little difficult to wear if you can’t fly. 

There. I got my shoe-fascination taken care of for a while, thanks to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge.

What do you think – where would you wear shoes like these (well, except the chocolate ones)?

Pech Merle, Prehistoric Cave Paintings in France, and the CFFC Photo Challenge: Hands

What were we humans painting 16000 to 25000 years ago? — horses, bison, mammoths, sometimes people, and…  outlines of our hands.

It’s a poster in the entry lobby to Pech Merle, an ice age cave in Southern France, one of the few still open to the public.

Oh, and dots. We (our ancestors) were painting dots — dots that meander through the scenes and make us wonder about their meaning, and dotted horses that modern researchers have determined were not just another excuse for dots, but most likely represent ancient horses with coats in patterns similar to our Appaloosas.

Road sign – on the way to Pech Merle

A reproduction red hand-print on a sign in a village near Pech Merle, Southwestern France

Hand print, souvenir postcard

We assume illiteracy, but their visual language was rich, and still speaks to us. Who’s to say the patterns of dots and animal shapes weren’t a language of symbols we just haven’t found the Rosetta Stone for?  Or maybe, as one of our group suggested, considering some of the exaggerated female figures we saw here we could argue instead for teenage-boy graffiti.

But there’s also a relatively recent study of prehistoric hand stencils that argues many if not most were made by women. Could female artists have had an equality in ancient times that we don’t have even today? (hey, maybe those cave-men weren’t such cave-men after all)

Hand-print and horses – from the tourist brochure for the Pech Merle cave

It couldn’t have been easy to do — in dark caves, with flickering torchlight, at difficult heights in corridors deep underground.  But on a lighter note, here’s one thing our ancestors may not have seen when exiting the caves…

Exit through the gift shop – Pech Merle, with cute fuzzy mammoths and cave bats

And one thing we cave tourists have in common with the prehistoric world?  — no photography. And I understand that. I’m just glad they let us breathe (body heat, moisture and CO2 from our breath can be harmful to the paintings, with the result that only a few are still open to the public).

This was our favorite cave tour of our April trip to southern France. We thought it had some of everything — dots, horses, mammoths, reindeer, bison, and aurochs, some human figures, and of course, the outlines of hands along with incised drawings, and even fossilized footprints.

Do you have a cave tour to recommend?

 

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Hands

Pech Merle Cave  

More on Pech Merle

Who made those hand-stencils?

Squaw Creek/Loess Bluffs Wildlife Refuge, Midwest Flooding, Hope, and the CFFC Photo Challenge: Feathers

At Squaw Creek/Loess Bluffs Wildlife Refuge – sometimes there’s a chance to get (relatively) up close and personal with feathers…

Heron – autumn light

And sometimes, still lots of feathers, but maybe not so close…

Fall Migration – geese in the air & a few stragglers from the masses of starlings that swarm like nanoparticles. 

Squaw Creek/Loess Bluffs Geese – cold feet on the ice in winter.

I’ve been wondering if I’ll get a chance to see any birds when I visit the midwest this summer. Flooding along the Missouri River in March this spring breached many levees in the area. Not just the roadway around the wildlife refuge, but even the Expressway a few miles over had to be closed after damage from flooding.

There was a 500-year flood along the Missouri River in the 1990s too, the year our office was transferred from Kansas City to Atlanta. I remember flying back and forth for work, and seeing the river spread out like an inland sea below.

A few years earlier I’d seen a schoolhouse for sale in a small town near the river, and considered buying it to renovate as a home. I had regrets about passing on that plan, but during the flood, the roads leading to the town with the schoolhouse were closed. It would have been hard to sell my schoolhouse and move, so it was just as well my scheme didn’t work out.

Heron – Squaw Creek in summer.

Birds can fly to safety in a flood, but what happens to everyone else? Do they get swept away?

Squaw Creek/Loess Bluffs – froggy nestling in the mud – spring 2018

Squaw Creek/Loess Bluffs – swimming muskrat – spring 2018

And fish – what happens to them when the river rages through?

Fishing heron/muskrat mounds – Spring 2018

Here’s hoping all the creatures survived. I just called the office and found that, despite what the website still says, the auto-tour route around the refuge is open again.  I’m hoping (there’s that word “hope” again) it stays that way. You know about hope, right? — “Hope is the thing with feathers.”

Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all …

 

Squaw Creek/Loess Bluffs Wildlife Refuge

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge – Feathers

 

Amsterdam: Keukenhof Gardens (and the CFFC challenge: Eyes)

You may think I’m reaching, using Keukenhof Gardens for the CFFC “Eyes” challenge, but it’s hard to think of anything but our eyes — staring goggle-eyed and visually dazzled — when confronted with so much color and light and so many beautiful blooms.

Eye dazzling displays – rivers of tulips. And see the fellow tourists on the upper left? We were part of a river of people touring that river of blooms. 

When we first planned to stop-over in Amsterdam for a few days on the way back from a tour, I was thinking about art, not flowers. “But wait –,” I thought, “We’ve only been to Amsterdam in autumn. If we’re going in the spring, shouldn’t we see tulips?” Sam agreed to a tulip tour, so we booked early. After all, we were going to be there Easter weekend. There would be crowds. And so there were…

The fields alongside were full of color too…

Tulips and hyacinths in the fields alongside Keukenhof Gardens.

I’ve since read that there were a record 200,000 visitors to Keukenhof over the 4 days of Easter weekend. Compare that to 236,000 visitors in the entire first year the park was open – 1950. We were 2 of the multi-thousand there on Good Friday. It was “hot, flat, and crowded” (thank you Thomas L Friedman) but still drop-dead gorgeous. We took a tour bus from the Central Train Station, a ride of 30-40 minutes depending on traffic. I later read that by Saturday, traffic was so heavy that there were problems just getting to the Gardens, and tourists went into the fields along the way instead. We saw that happening on Friday too — here are some pictures I took out the bus window on the way back to Amsterdam…

Tourists in the tulip fields near Keukenhof Gardens – Amsterdam 2019 

Posing in the tulips

 

Snapshot out the bus window – posing in the tulip field near Keukenhof

Meanwhile, no flowers were harmed in the actual gardens — Is this peak tulip or what?

Iphonography – one more look before we go.

Keukenhof wasn’t exactly a bucket-list item, but now that I’ve been there I’m tempted to count it as such.  Tulips and other spring bulbs were among the first things I planted when I bought a house. Along with violets, irises, and peonies, they’re the plants most likely to evoke a sense of home and childhood memories. The graceful arc of a stem, light slanting through blossoms, or the heady scent of a large bed of blossoms in sunlight are enough to transport me.

I guess I qualify as a flower-fanatic… do you?

 

Keukenhof Gardens

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Eyes

Hoarding Coffee Cups (and Tea Cups) – Part 1 – and Last Week’s CFFC: Shiny

It’s easy to accumulate too many coffee (and tea) cups. First it was vintage collectible sets, scrounged one at a time in flea markets and thrift shops. Then industry conferences and meetings with vendors at work kept me well supplied with complementary mugs. When traveling, it’s even easier to acquire nifty souvenir cups from museum gift shops. But eventually, moving day comes and something has to go.

Before I moved, I gave away lots of the themed coffee mugs, but still held on to certain gifts and favorites from times past. Here’s a small selection of each category —

KEPT:  On the left: a travel mug from the Met Museum gift shop in NYC, purchased when we discovered our hotel room had a microwave… bonus! On the right, a teacup fitted with its own infuser.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: Harlequin cups and saucers – 1st cousins to original Fiesta Ware, Homer Laughlin Company, 1930s – 1950s, enthusiastically collected in the 1980s.

GONE: To a friend with granddaughters, my dolls’ tea set from my childhood.

GONE: Vintage Fostoria: American Clear. Here they in a quick snapshot taken when I was sorting what to keep and what to release. These were my mother’s, and remarkable because she still had the cups. Most cups eventually got broken… her go-to anger release.

GONE: I had these glass “beaker” mugs before Star Trek – The Next Generation’s Jean-Luc Picard did. (“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” -?- whatever he’s sipping here looks too dark for Earl Grey) I bought that set in Kansas City in the 1980s at a store called Function Junction. Sadly, they were fragile and didn’t last — and I didn’t have a replicator to make new ones. I’m glad to know the pattern survived until the 24th Century. 

I’m looking back at the cups-of-my-life now because I just broke my VERY favorite.

RIP the last coffee cup from a set of four  –  cherished through four moves. Two of them bit the dust years ago, but up until the last couple of weeks I still had two in use. Then I dropped one. After that, the remaining one cracked, perhaps in sympathy. Here it is in black, in memoriam.

GONE: My Goldilocks cup. See the crack along the bottom? — Glass coffee cup, also from Function Junction in Kansas City, c. 1980s. Some cups are too big, some are too small, but this one was “just right”…

Now I know how hard it is to find a good coffee/tea cup that’s…

• microwaveable
• glass (so I can see it in the microwave)
• mug-style
• large enough for greedy coffee drinkers – 16 oz please
• simple, and attractive
• and for an eco-warrior woman who wants to ‘buy locally,’ at least made in the same country I live in

So – now I know what I want. I’m still interviewing new cups.

Do you have an all-time favorite coffee cup?

 

Be still my heart, and thank you Google. I just saw that there is one remaining Function Junction store. It’s in Kansas City… something to find on my next trip. Shiny!

Shiny: Something that is great, wonderful, very cool – from Joss Whedon’s TV Series “Firefly”

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Shiny

The screen-grab shot of Captain Picard, above, from “Now pour the tea” An Aesthetic Evaluation of Picard’s Tea Sets

Missing Kusama: Yayoi Kusama at the High Museum in Atlanta, traveling on…

We’re in the Infinity Room at the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the High Museum last December – suspended in the cosmos while the “stars” above and below seem to go on forever. In reality, the little walkway we’re standing on is the center of a tiny room. But like the Tardis, or Snoopy’s doghouse, or Harry Potter’s tent, it seems much bigger inside than outside.

Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away. Yayoi Kusama – High Museum Atlanta GA

What’s outside Infinity? — the gate-keeper.  Only three can go in at one time… and for less than a minute, but we’ve happily stood in a long queue to get this far.

Another door to infinity, this time with Kusama’s signature soft sculpture forms with obliterating red dots. Peeking in the door at changeover time is almost as interesting as going inside…

That was December. The Kusama show closed February 17, a week ago yesterday. I’d bought tickets early on for November and December dates, not realizing how much I’d want to go again or how soon it would sell out. Then I saw the film Kusama: Infinity, and when the museum did a surprise opening up of ticket sales on the last week, of course I went online to get one. Problem:  I was number 29,593 (-ish) in queue.  I didn’t get a ticket.

So, today I’ll revisit my photos (and wish I’d taken more).

This small early piece was one of my favorites — Island in the Sea # 1 – Yayoi Kusama, 1953 – gouache and painted pastel on paper. 

Kusama came to the U.S. and moved to New York. Her soft sewn sculptural work inspired Claes Oldenburg to start his series, her early infinity spaces inspired Lucas Samaras’ successful mirrored rooms, and an exhibition in which she papered the gallery with copies of the same image over and over led Andy Warhol to the idea. But Kusama’s career did not take off like theirs, and she went back to Japan in 1974.

My Eternal Soul” – recent work – High Museum Exhibition 2018-2019

Kusama has said the main theme of her art is obsession, that her work is based on “developing her personal psychological problems into art.” When she returned to Japan in the 1970s, she found a mental hospital offering art therapy and checked herself in. She’s almost 90 now, still living in the hospital, going out every day to work in her studio nearby.

One of the many ways Kusama was ahead of her time is how her work expands to encompass us all. It seems made for today’s obsession: social media.  In this show, everyone got into the selfie spirit, even me.

This was a box to peek into, not to step into.

 

Forget “exit through the gift shop” — viewers got a chance to participate in the theme of obliteration when leaving the exhibition through (of course) the Obliteration Room. Given a set of six multi-colored multi-sized adhesive dots, we each chose where to place our own dot allotment in a room that started out all white.

Kusama Obliteration Room – the first week of the exhibition. High Museum, Atlanta GA

Here’s the room a month later…

.. by this time it was getting hard to find a place that didn’t already have a dot. 

The exhibition has moved on now. Installation for the next one must have begun – here’s what we saw when walking past the museum a few days ago —

Putting up the banner for European Masterworks from the Phillips Collection, opening April 6.

 

Now, late again for Cee’s Foto Challenge – CFFC: Color of Your Choice — what color shall I choose? I’m going with “Dot” – can you blame me?

Film, Kusama Infinity – trailer

High Museum exhibitions:

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors

Art from the Phillips Collection

Atlanta Pride Parade 2018 (Catch-up CFFC “Rainbow Colors”)

It’s hard to get more colorful than the Atlanta (LGBTQ) Pride parade, with its giant rainbow flag. In 2015 we watched the parade coming up Peachtree Street from an upstairs window on the front of the building. Here’s the flag approaching — 

We missed the next 2 years’ parades while traveling, but were in town for the last fall’s parade. This time I went down to street level — here comes the October 2018 parade.A little recent history (thanks to Wikipedia) In June 2015, The MoMA – the Museum of Modern Art in New York – acquired the rainbow flag symbol as part of its design collection. Later that month, the White House used rainbow flag colors for illumination to commemorate same-sex marriage legalization in all 50 U.S. states.

 

Rainbow colors were everywhere…

 I’m not usually a fan of crowds and noise, but energy and solidarity and goodwill were running high, and it was a joy to be there. Of course it didn’t hurt that they were serving rainbow-iced cupcakes downstairs in the lobby. 

… even pets came to show their support.

I have to admit that after years of seeing rainbow flags, it was just a few months ago — at the Rainbow Crosswalk at 10th and Piedmont no less — that I stared at the pavement and suddenly realized, “There are 7 colors in a rainbow but only 6 colors here! Why?” (if you’re curious, Wikipedia can help with that too)

When I was a child there was a song called “I Love a Parade” my grandmother and her friends used to refer to. Now that I live on a parade-street, I’m beginning to see what they were talking about.

Do you love a parade?

 

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Rainbow Colors

Atlanta Pride: History

Rainbow Colors: Symbolism

Winter Parks and Streets, Vacating Storage, and Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Colorful Monotones

Christmas week at Lake Anita, Anita Iowa State Park…

We didn’t have a white Christmas this year. The deer are hard to see until they move, and the white flags of their tails show up against brown and gold surroundings. 

We’ve had some sepia days in Atlanta too…

The end of a storm, with stop lights like little red eyes on the next street over. 

Segue to a cool palate — here’s my November triumph…

It’s my second storage bin and YES it’s empty!

With a lot of help, I’m now down to one storage bin. When I sold my house last year, the plan was to get one bin and keep an apartment’s worth of furniture. Then I found at the last minute I wasn’t quite as downsized as I thought I was. The only thing to do was get an extra (but smaller) bin for the overflow. Then at the very last minute, I needed yet another. Bin number three got consolidated in April, and bin number two by the end of November.

Here it is when it was almost empty…

What -? Doesn’t everyone keep a vintage mannequin around for decoration? Oh yeah, and a mineral specimen? And a 70s reel-to-reel recorder? And archived paper towels?

Now that I’ve sneaked a little color in, I’ll share one more storage view. Here’s the first bin this time last year. Some things are gone now, but it’s still packed pretty tight with boxes from the second bin taking the place of some furniture — there’s plenty more work to be done.

Always a dilemma – what should I keep and what can go? 

I have to keep the red wicker rocking chair. My great aunt gave it to her husband for their wedding anniversary in 1929. I adopted it in the 80s when they downsized from their farmhouse and moved to town. It spent most of its life as white wicker, but I went a little crazy and painted it red a couple of years ago.

It’s still an odd feeling to go visit my stuff in storage — sort of like a window into my past life. Soon (I hope) I’ll be down to just what I intended to keep.

Have you ever had a storage bin? I’d love to hear others’ experiences with downsizing.

 

More on Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Colorful Monotones

Amsterdam Bicycles (Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Bicycles, Tricycles…)

Bicycle wheels — where are we? Amsterdam of course. Where else can you go where you can’t even take a photo of the iguana-sculpture without getting bicycles in the frame?

When I looked up the name of the park – Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen – I found out the iguanas are gone now. They’ve been removed and, appropriately for this post, the area is now used for bicycle parking.

When it comes to bicycles, it’s hard to imagine more in any one place than there are in Amsterdam. I just re-discovered these photos from a 2014 trip. Here’s the bicycle parking lot near the central train station —

There’s parking on the bridges too. I liked this one, and wondered how long it had been there. Look closely: an enterprising spider was happy to set up housekeeping…

Bridge-parking: I think it’s been there for a while.

We were impressed to come upon this handsome wooden bicycle.

It even has a story…

“I am a wooden bike and my owner is the Banks Mansion Hotel behind me. Because I am made from wood, I am totally recyclable and good for the environment…”

Then, we saw this wooden one, which appears to have seen some good use.

It has a name!  — “Cool Endeavour”

I came home from that 2014 trip to more work on downsizing, trying to get to the point where I could sell my house. It took three years after that, but by the fall of 2017, I’d moved. Travel is so much more enjoyable now that I don’t have to worry about my house. Still, as a Hoarder, I haven’t quite come clean. But, a storage bin is more manageable than an entire house… and, hopefully I’ll downsize to smaller storage someday soon. I’m working on it.

And — Happy New Year!  Wishing everyone safe travels in 2019.

Previous posts: Amsterdam: Coming Home, and Amsterdam: Orange

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Bicycles, Tricycles, Motorcycles, Wagons