“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

Advertisement

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?

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

Winnie-The-Pooh: Exploring a Classic, at the High Museum, Atlanta (Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge: CFFC)

Step up Atlanta – there are only three days left to see the High Museum’s exhibition Winnie the Pooh, Exploring a Classic. It’s an immersive exhibition with many original drawings by illustrator E.H. Shepard, plus a room full of Pooh memorabilia, photographs, play-spaces, and reproductions of the toys.

To me the drawings were a revelation. I’d seen (and loved) the books, but the preparatory drawings are on a whole new level. There’s more depth and detail in the drawings than in the modern editions of the books.

“Do you think it’s a Woozle?” – Winnie the Pooh: Exploring a Classic – “Pooh and Piglet go hunting,” Winnie-the-Pooh chapter 3, pen and ink sketch by E. H.Shepard, 1926. From the collection of Clive and Alison Beecham © The Shepard Trust

We see Pooh and Piglet (above) from behind, but they’re still individual personalities. I hadn’t seen Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and company for a while. Modern anime eyes and googley Disney eyes and exaggeration are so intrusive that I’d almost forgotten the joys of subtle expression, compact movement and economy of line.

Another revelation: the trees. The subject may be Piglet in the flood or three friends discovering Roo, but the forest is a character too.

“It’s a little anxious to be a very small animal entirely surrounded by water” – E.H.Shepard, 1926

E.H. Shepard, Winnie-the-Pooh, Exploring a Classic, High Museum Atlanta

The Three Pine Trees – High Museum, Winnie the Pooh, Exploring a Classic, High Museum, Atlanta

Re-reading the first book, I found only one written description of the trees. The illustrations carry it after that.

It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out. Little soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in front of the sun as if they had come to put it out, and then sliding away suddenly so that the next might have his turn. Through them and between them the sun shone bravely; and a copse which had worn its firs all the year round seemed old and dowdy now beside the new green lace which the beeches had put on so prettily.

They’re a little bit of ancient Britain shining first into the 20th, and now the 21st Century, a remnant of enchanted forests.

Here’s a photograph of E.H. Shepard…

E.H. Shepard, photograph by Howard Coster, 1932, given by Mrs Norah Shepard © National Portrait Gallery, London. (High Museum, Winnie-the-Pooh, Exploring a Classic)

… and A.A. Milne, Christopher Robin Milne and Pooh Bear, by Howard Coster, 1926 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Photograph of A. A. Milne and Christopher Robin
From: Correspondence and other material relating to the illustration and publication of ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and ‘Now we are six’, 1925-1926.

 

And at the end, wall-sized “Good-Bye”… 

“Of course it isn’t really good-bye… the Forest will always be there, and anyone who is Friendly with Bears can find it.”

And one more thing, for a little color, and a little fun, (and in case you’re wondering how I can possibly work this post into this week’s Cee’s Photo Challenge: Teal/Aqua/Seafoam/Turquoise)… who doesn’t love picture cut-outs?

Today’s question: are you Friendly with Bears?

Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge

More on the exhibition: High Museum

Using my Car as a Storage Bin, Missing my Truck, and Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge

 I’m still downsizing, even though I sold my house and moved last October. At least I’ve gone from three storage bins to two, but I seem to be stuck getting to one. Here’s what happens when I take stuff out of storage but I don’t want to bring it into the condo where it will be in the way…

My car – my movable storage bin – and this is just the back seat. The trunk is full too. That Ohaus scale is a real oldie, once used for measuring out photographic chemicals. 

I got into this mode of movable storage when I still had my (beloved) truck. While parked in the garage at the house it was also handy for accumulating donations and recyclables, then for delivering them. I bought the truck in 1990, before moving to the Atlanta area. It was not so easy to drive in the city, but I still couldn’t seem to give it up even after buying a car in 2005.

Here it is last fall, parked in its foster-care driveway, waiting to be donated. It’s gone on to a new home now.

I need to get over the bad habit of car storage. On the night before I left town on a trip last week I noticed I’d sold a book on Amazon. Where was it? Oh yes, it was in my car. In the trunk. Somewhere.

Oops, where are the books? — a classic case of “Hello! This is the Universe; you really need to get organized.”

I trekked down to the parking garage at 10PM, pulled everything out of the trunk, found the book and took it along with me the next morning to mail on arrival.  What was the book?

Droodles – “riddles expressed in visual form”

Here are some examples…

The next page assures us it could also be “Total Eclipse of the Sun on a Stick,” ” Family of Worms Stuck in a Caramel apple,” or “Frightened Mop.”

I think this one looks more like a turtle. Of course, that may be because I spent a good part of the morning watching and photographing turtles in the lake at Piedmont Park.

… or a turbolift, if you happen to be a Star Trek fan.

Now it’s time to start answering the call of the Universe and sort out some “stuff”. I’ve been trying to get organized for years now, so wish me luck on that?

P.S. Now, what’s stored in your car?

 

More on Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge

Murals, Art and MARTA, and Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge

A sunny day last May, a walk to the neighborhood grocery store, and a discovery when passing the MARTA train station (that’s “Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority”) — there’s painting going on — it’s not just MARTA now, it’s MARTA.

Midtown MARTA Station mural artist – Andrew Catanese

Yes – the wheels are off the ground.

And, it’s not just a one-side-of-the-door thing, there are several murals… and more painters.

Painter’s helpers – just starting out

The murals were commissioned by MARTA’s Artbound program. We watched as the weeks went by and the details got filled in… here are more recent photos.

I like to think of this next one as “Sheep may safely graze” but maybe they’re goats (they are across the street from the Dancing Goat coffee shop). A nearby sign tells us that the mural “celebrates Midtown as a diverse and collaborative community that welcomes all” – so I’m thinking safely grazing is accurate enough.

Details are lots of fun…

“Picasso eyes?”

Goose with glasses…

Peeking parrot, or bird with hands?

I see now that there were volunteer days — I wish I’d known, it would have been fun to go and help paint.  Meanwhile,  there’s a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the station on Monday July 23, for dedication of the murals. I’m putting that on my calendar. And, after looking at the page about the Artbound program, I see I’m going to have to get busy and tour more MARTA Station Art.

More about the Midtown MARTA Murals 

and MARTA’s Artbound program

 

The High Line, the BeltLine, and the Weekly Photo Challenge: Lines

The High Line: on this year’s trip to New York, we finally got to see it greening up for spring.

From a balcony at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The High Line: a 1.45 mile long park in New York City, created on a stretch of elevated railway that was no longer used. 

Looking back toward the Whitney. I love it that pieces of the old railroad track are incorporated into the landscaping. 

The daffodils were blooming. That’s a first for us, after the last two years when we traveled in March and were blessed with snow.

At home in Atlanta, we have the BeltLine, not elevated like the High Line, but destined to be much longer. It’s a proposed loop of around 22 miles of trails planned to connect 45 neighborhoods. Here’s Sam on a rainy day last fall. It was one of the days with lots of hurricane-engendered rain, and for a while we were the only ones out braving the storm.

The BeltLine already needs a new lane. It’s often mobbed. Between speeding bicycles and people with dogs on long leashes making trip-wires, it can be difficult to walk safely.

There’s lots of art along the way, and landscaping is coming along nicely. These are from a sunnier day — 

Turning disused rail lines into walking trails is not a new idea. Years (decades) ago, when the trains no longer came through my small hometown, there was a plan to remove the rails and ties and make the railroad line into a walking trail. I’d already moved away, so I’m not sure what became of that, but I think it would have been hard to keep the trails going. For example, they were fragmented by the removal of two of the three railroad bridges. Here’s one that stayed,  (I think it’s still there) —

The bridge on the other end of town is a background in this next photo, a family history photo now — the girl wearing glasses is my mother at 16.

When I was growing up there, we walked on the railroad tracks, played on the bridges (gasp!) and along the way, picked berries and asparagus that grew beside the tracks. With all these railroad track paths, it sounds like I’ve spent my life walking railroad lines, doesn’t it?

Do you have a favorite rail line path?

More on the Manhattan High Line  Wow – I see you can adopt a plant. I’m considering… I’d want to see updates on mine though, and maybe visit it each year to check on progress and be allowed to give it a little compost treat.

More on the Atlanta BeltLine

More on the Weekly Photo Challenge: Lines

MoMA, New York, and the Weekly Photo Challenge: Favorite Place

How can I pick one all-time favorite place? — I have too many. But, “a favorite location I return to again and again?” That I can do. March weather has been unkind in the Northeast, so we’re glad we planned our New York trip for April this year. Here’s some favorite viewing from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) from last year’s trip…

The Prophet, 1964. Bronze on wood base. By Parviz Tanavoli, an Iranian/Canadian artist, born 1937.

The Mosque, 1964. Oil on canvas. By Ibrahim El-Salahi, a Sudanese artist, born 1930. In 1964, he received a Rockefeller grant to travel to New York.

Laminations (Les Lames) 1962. Gouache,metallic paint, and stamped ink on paper.  Faramarz Pilaram, an Iranian artist and proponent of Iranian Modernism (1937 – 1982)

What do these pieces have in common? MOMA posted the following beside each —

‘This work is by an artist from a nation whose citizens would be denied entry into the United States according to recent presidential executive orders. This is one of several such artworks from the Museum’s collection installed throughout the fifth floor galleries to affirm the ideals of welcome and freedom as vital to the Museum, as they are to the United States.”

On a lighter note, moving outside, here’s what was blooming —

Crocus – Central Park March 2017

What’s your favorite place for travel?

More on the Weekly Photo Challenge: Favorite Place

Coming up at MoMA

 

 

Joris Laarman Lab – Design in the Digital Age, at the High Museum (Photo Challenge: Tour Guide)

Come see the future: Joris Laarman Lab – Design in the Digital Age encompasses a search for beauty as well as functionality, art in addition to technology, and includes maker-chairs, a bio-luminescent lamp, and yes, an exhibit on start-up company MX3D’s 3D-printing project to build a pedestrian bridge across an Amsterdam canal.

These elegant chairs were cast in 3D printed molds. They were designed using computer software based on the work of German professor Dr. Claus Mattheck, utilizing growth patterns of bones and trees to provide minimal structure for maximum strength.

Bone Rocker, Beige Noir marble and synthetic resin, 2007.

Bone Armchair, Carrara marble and synthetic resin, 2007.

As beautiful as they are, I have to admit, the first thing I thought was “What about the dust?” The second thing I thought was “The spiders would love these.”  Apparently I am too plebeian to have lovely minimalist chairs. They are gorgeous museum pieces, and if found in a home, it would be the home of someone with maid service.

Then I wondered about comfort. When I was in my 30’s (like these designers) that didn’t worry me at all. I loved my Arts-and-Crafts oak furniture with square sides and hard seats, and scoffed at comments about discomfort because who cared? — it looked good. Now I put pillows on everything, even one of Sam’s Eames chairs, to his dismay.

This robotic arm is building three “Digital Matter” tables from metal cubes that are 3D versions of pixels, large, medium, and small. (they’re “voxels” — volumetric pixels)

Joris Laarman Lab – robot assembling Digital Matter Tables – photo still taken from exhibition video – High Museum exhibit, Atlanta GA, 2018

The three “Digital Matter” tables were commissioned by the High in 2011 and are now in the permanent collection — if soaked in acetone, the pieces separate and can be used to build something new. “Wow,” I thought, “that would have solved so many of my downsizing issues.”  It’s been slow work to clear the hoard while honoring my quest to be environmentally correct, and get stuff reused or recycled instead of taken to a landfill. 

With three sizes of cubes, the tables have graduating resolution. 

Here’s a detail of the middle table —

The ornamentation is a tribute to “Super Mario”, but up top, there’s a tip of the hat to Pac-Man…

And here I go with “Art Museum Eyes” again — leaving the exhibition I saw this view out the window —

There’s far more in this innovative (and fun) exhibition than I can communicate in one blog post, so if you’re near Atlanta, come and see it for yourself. If you can’t make it by closing on May 13, come anyway, the High’s permanent collection features more work from Joris Laarman Lab than any museum outside the Netherlands.

High Museum of Art, Atlanta GA, Feb 18-May 13, 2018.

I wonder how many reconstituted tables it would take to make a building? We may find out. There are projects afoot …

 

More on the Weekly Photo Challenge: Tour Guide

More on the exhibition

 

Lofts, Stairs, Castleberry Hill, and the Weekly Photo Challenge: Ascend

One of the things I love about lofts is that they can be so, um, lofty. That means they have stairs, and in many and varied forms. Here are a couple of my favorites from an October outing to the Castleberry Hill Loft tour.

The ascending view, with a spiral staircase, colorful art, and a fabulous gallery wall above.

Here’s the descending view. I’m always leery of tumbling down, so I like to lurk about until Sam goes first, then I stop, catch my balance, and take a photo of him. 

Here’s another staircase, from another elegant and art-filled space.

 

… and the descending view.

In transit between homes, we encountered this chicken, who had just crossed the road.

Chicken in the road: no word on why he crossed it….

Do some lofts have a view from the top? Well yes. On this rooftop, Sam pointed out that we could see the building where he lives… here, it’s a tiny spire in the distance.

Now in an up-and-down-again, there-and-back-again, across-the-road-again way, the next photo is Sam’s view back toward Castleberry Hill. The stadium building (with the Mercedes sign, on the left in the photo above) is barely visible on the horizon in the lower right, below. It’s just above the red V-for-Varsity sign.

View south from midtown Atlanta

So we’re back again and ready for next year’s Castleberry Hill loft tour.

Do you have a favorite local homes tour?

 

More on the Weekly Photo Challenge: Ascend

And, some information on next year’s Castleberry Hill Loft Tour