• Tag Archives tour

  • First Titian Tour

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                         Full Bridgit Moon

    First Titian tour today.  If I examine my own touring skills, as I try to from time to time, I find that I’m better touring old master’s of Western art and Asian art than I am art of the Americas.  The Thaw collection, which I admired, found me at my clunkiest, a bit wooden perhaps, more didactic.  In talking with Allison today it occurred to me that it might be as simple as the fact that I know far more about Asia and Europe than I do about the native peoples of this continent.  It’s much harder for me to talk about historical context with art of the Americas because I just don’t know it as well.

    When I tour Western art or Asian art, I can draw on many years of reading history, going to museums, thinking, traveling; but, when I tour either art of the Americas or Africa for that matter, the context is just not in me, literally.  In that way then those objects do become more like ethnological artifacts than art objects.  As a result, I find myself a bit more distant from them, put in a more scholarly mode, not as engaged.

    At a different point in my life I would have wanted to fix this, to dive into native peoples history and ways, stuff I studied in college, but from an anthropological perspective.  The same situation with Africa.  Today I want to deepen, not broaden my knowledge of art history, so I’m going to continue working with Asian and Western art.  In those areas I still have so much learn and my passion is there.

    The Titian show is in my sweet spot though and a lot of fun.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • Camp Fire Girls

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                     Waning Grandchildren Moon

    Last night over edamame and potstickers I discussed gardening with a fellow docent who had just seen Ran.  We agreed it had been a peculiar gardening season with plants blooming two weeks to a month early.  We also agreed no one could care for our gardens like we do and produced examples to prove it.  Hers:  a $10 an hour weeder who took up Astilbe instead of the stinging nettles.  Mine:  ok, I didn’t have one since only Kate and I weed here.  August finds our gardening spirit on the wane, too, and we both look forward to the blessed onset of snow.  She plants no white in her garden because winter provides it.  Don’t have many occasions to discuss gardening with somebody else obsessed by it.  Fun.

    Kate has really done a knockout job on the orchard.  We’ll have it in tip-top third growing season form before the end of August with mulched paths, new plants for the guilds and mulch on the mounds around the trees.

    Finally back to resistance work and it feels good.  I need to get stronger, both for personal stability reasons and for ability to do the gardening tasks I want to do.  Bee keeping requires strength with full honey supers at 50 pounds and honey laden hive boxes heavier than that.

    Got a tour together for the Camp Fire girls tomorrow.  We’re going to look at how artists have represented women and women artists:  Woman of La Mouth (20,000 years old), Lady Teshat (the mummy), a japanese dancers garment from the Noh theatre called a choken, a Japanese woodblock print showing beautiful women, the Lakota fancy dress, the MAEP’s gallery with women artists and finally, if we have time, the clay and wood gallery, all by women artists.  Should be fun, too.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Asia Family Garden 📎and tagged

  • S.A.D.S.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                        Waxing Flower Moon

    Shopped at the Wedge.  Boy, have co-ops changed.  They’re no longer like buying screws and nuts at a hardware store where you have to know the price and quantity.  Barcodes, scanners, conveyor belts.  The selection includes meats and many items found in other grocery stores as well as drop-dead gorgeous produce, a large line of tofu and tempeh, shelf fulls of various rice products like mochi, sea weed and other sea plants in many different forms.  Impressive.   I picked up tempeh, mochi, sweet rice wine, nori, coconut oil and sunflower oil among other things.

    Made me feel like an aging hippy.  I realized there were a lot of folks in there who spent the sixties just like I did, smoking dope and fightin’ the man.

    Tour this morning had great kids and a game teacher.  We wandered around, stymied now and then by sudden art disappearance syndrome, SADS.  SADS happens when curators and registrars start getting creative with the collection.  In theory we walk our routes before the tours but I’ve become lax on that score and may have to start again, especially if SADS continues to interfere with my tours.

    Saw Wendy this morning, too.  I gave her hug and told her she looked great. And she did.  It was good to see her.  Breast cancer is scary.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Art and Culture Cooking Friends 📎and tagged

  • Scarlett, the Young Korean

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    62  bar rises 29.99 0mph E  dew-point 42  sunrise 6:42  set 7:38   Lughnasa

    First Quarter of the Harvest Moon  rise 3:16  set 11:22

    celadonbowl.jpg

    Back from the Korea tour.  We stayed mostly in Korea. I took the folks through the history of Korea, using objects in the MIA collection.  Scarlett, the young Korean, made excited noises during much of the tour though I don’t think she picked up much.  A cutie, though.

    Korea does not get a lot of love academically or art historically, at least in English.  That’s partly because Korean is a difficult language and not many read it outside of Korea.  Many folks also think Korean art derivative, a version of Chinese or, perhaps Japanese.  There is substantial Chinese influence in Korean culture and art, but the Koreans maintain a distinctive aesthetic.  In relation to Japan, in fact, they influence Japan far more than Japan influences them.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Asia 📎and tagged

  • An Appetite for Nutrient Fluid (not an alien)

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    56  bar steady 30.05 4mph N dew-point 43  Beltane, sunny and cool

                              Waning Gibbous Hare Moons 

    “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

    Less is more -always; and explore constantly.  Mario Odegard, Viking Explorer and Woolly Mammoth

    Up earlier again this morning to take advantage of the cool temps.  Amended the second tier bed close to the house where we have had problem after problem with growing things.  This time I added two bags composted manure and a cubic foot or so of sphagnum moss. 

    It’s too shady for sun plants and too sunny for shade plants.  Gotta find something that swings both ways and can tolerate our winters. 

    Meanwhile on the hydroponic front my tomato plant started from an heirloom seed now reaches close to the ceiling.  It’s a good 2.5 feet tall, headed toward its interior limitation.  It has several small yellow flowers, but no fruit as yet.  Yes, the tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable.  The astonishing thing is its appetite for nutrient fluid.  It’s going through about a gallon every four to five days.  When the fruit begins developing, I imagine its appetite will increase again.  The lettuce produces enough leaves every few days for a salad a meal for lunch and dinner.  Both the lettuce and the tomato plant are the products of one seed germinating, coming to maturity and growing its edible product.

    Outside, however, if we were pioneers and our lives depended on the crop, I’d be seeking part time employment.  To pay for food next winter.  The cucumbers and morning glories I grew inside so well atrophied and died outside.  The three tomato plants, on the other hand, have done fine outside.  After puzzling over the difference for a week, it came to me this morning.  The tomato plants were in soil in pressed peat moss containers.  They had a much larger soil contained root system.   The morning glories and the cucumber were in smaller, compressed soil seed starting clumps.  That meant their root system was much more exposed, having grown in the nutrient solution rather than soil. 

    The take away for me is this:  if I’m going to transplant it outside, start it in a larger ground ready pot with potting soil.  It’s a learning curve.

    On the other hand, we do finally have several germinated seeds in the garden, too.  The Country Gentleman corn has begun its skyward journey as have the Ireland Annie, Dragon’s Tongue and another one I can’t recall.  We also have beets, carrots, peppers and onions, lots of onions, doing well.  We need a stretch of hot weather to get these puppies on their way.  So far they’ve been sluggards.

    Though I’m signed out now for the summer, I’m headed into the art museum today for a noon tour.  Carol Wedin, a fellow docent who prefers Asian tours, called me, sick with a cold and asked me for help.  Sure.  She is a wonderful botanical illustrator/artist.

    Kate’s off getting her nails done; Lois is here cleaning house and I’ve got to get in the shower to get ready for my tour.  Bye for now.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Garden 📎and tagged

  • Sayonara, Weber Collection

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    79!  bar steep fall  29.62 5mph WSW dewpoint 35  Beltane, sunny

                           Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

    The final Weber tours.  A Japanese language class from Kennedy HS in Bloomington and a small group of stunned ladies of a certain age.  Neither tour was a flop, neither an engaging and vital time.  The Kennedy group had a few kids that were present the whole way, interest.  One young lady took out a notebook and started writing.  The second seemed timid, afraid to respond to inquiry, interested but reticent. 

    At the end a woman told me she’d seen a Bhutan exhibit in Honolulu.  “The objects came with five Buddhist monks.  They came to bless the statues with water each morning.  Since in Buhtan, they received this sprinkling directly, but were in cases like this,”  she indicated the Nara Buddha at the beginning of the show, “they had, oh, I don’t know, a tupperware container,”  she spread her hands out and formed a large sloppy rectangle, “It had water.  Then they had a mirror.  They got the objects reflection in the mirror and sprinkled that.”

    Sayonara, Weber collection and bon voyage.

    I have a long stretch of days with little planned.  No docent classes, no tours, no preaching, no social engagements.  The right time to garden and to write.

    Jon called while I was writing this.  They want to have the bris on June 2nd or 3rd.  Could I come?  I’m there.  I’m excited to see Gabe and Ruth, to see Jon’s garden and Jen with her new brood.

    On to the treadmill.  I try not to remember this, but apparently in Victorian jails, prisoner powered treadmills were a form of human as donkey labor.  I’m not sure but that may be where the term comes from in the first place.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Family 📎and tagged

  • He Who Dies with the Most Toys Wins?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    62  bar falls 29.85  3mph NNW dewpoint 29 Beltane

                 Waxing Crescent of the Hare Moon 

    “The capitalist bookkeepers’ theoretician was German sociologist Max Weber, whose 1910 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argued that the key feature of capitalism was that making money becomes ‘a calling’, an end in itself. The bourgeois worked for the sake of work, denying himself the fruits of his labour. The pre-modern man would have been flummoxed by this, says Weber: what is the point of this, ‘to sink into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods’? ”  from an article in Spiked

    I love this quote from Weber.  What is, after all, the point of sinking into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods?  None, as far I can see.

    I disagree with Weber though about the state of pre-modern people.  Many, many cultures not only thought this was a good thing, but literally did it. Those wealthy or high born enough took servants, food, furniture, money, painting, all manner of things to the grave.

    Two tours today.  Winnipeg kids on a band tour.  They had been to the Mall of America and Bubblegum, a restaurant there and had lots of other places to visit.  They didn’t think the Days Inn where they were staying were showing them very good hospitality, though they did admit that having that many teenagers in one place created a lot of ruckus.  This was a bright, attentive and thoughtful group.  We saw the installation with the children’s photos, Frank, Magritte, Van Gogh and Goya.  They were talkative and had many ideas.

    The Weber tour had three people, a couple and Stacy Pydych.  Stacy had to leave early, but the couple stayed on for the whole tour.  He had been to Japan when he was 24 years old and a serviceman.  They, too, were attentive and talkative.  We saw most of the exhibit because I skipped part of my usual tour in teaware and Tale of Genji.  They thought I was a professor of Japanese history.  I assured them the museum taught us what we needed to know.

    Got a thank-you card today from Robbinsdale Japanese language students.  The teacher wrote a nice note and each kid signed it and some offered comments.  Amazing, when you consider these are high school students.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Politics 📎and tagged

  • Something Famous, That They Might See in Books

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    57  bar steep fall 29.82 3mph SSW Dewpoint 31 Spring

               Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    A highlights tour today with kids from Hudson.  We saw Frank, the Chuck Close portrait, then the Promenade of Euclid by Magritte.  After that the teacher wanted to see “something famous, that they might see in books.”  That’s ok, so I took them to see Van Gogh’s Olive Trees, Goya’s Dr. Arrieta and Rembrandt’s Lucretia.  They had a theme of westward expansion underway in class so I then took them over to the Minnesota gallery and we looked at first, the long rifles, then the painting of Ft. Snelling with the Lakota camped on the opposite shore of the Minnesota River.  The kids were there, engaged.  Fun.

    On the way down and back I’ve continued listening to From Yao to Mao, the history of China.  I’m now on disc 17 of 18 and this is my second time through the series.  Mao has just begun to push for the peasant community in China as the vanguard of the revolution, replacing the urban worker, the industrial proletariat, whose communist members had been ousted in raids by the Nationalist Party and the tongs.  This will result in the long march and the eventual attrition of Mao’s forces by the thousands.  In this campaign Mao will create the modern guerilla war, sometimes called 4th generation warfare.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture World History 📎and tagged

  • An Everything-0-Meter

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    43  bar falls 30.27 0mph SSW dewpoint 12 Spring

              Last Quarter Moon of Winds

    Had a great time with the two Weber (Japanese special exhibit) tours.  Grace Googin was there for the first one and I had about 15 on the other tour.  Folks seemed to be into it and thanked me a lot after we were done.  This is the first tour in a long time where knowledge accumulated over time has begun to break through in the tours.  I know, for example, the linkage between Chan Buddhism from China and Zen in Japan.  Not like an expert of course, but certainly at a level that helps folks on the tours gain a deeper appreciation for both.

    After the tour I drove over to Interior Gardens where I picked up an everything-o-meter that will make the hydroponic part of the work so easy it will almost grow by itself.  Well, not quite.  It measures electrical conductance, ph and temperature, all three important data points for the reservoir of nutrient solution.  Also picked up 100 more pellets for starting seedlings and three bottoms for the other flats.  We’re in day three of the sprouting process.  Sometime in the next week we should see some shoots.  Fun.

    The woman at Interior Gardens I remembered because she had injured her leg in a running accident.  That was about ten months ago.  During surgery the orthopedist discovered that her cartilage had pulled a divot of bone out of the knee.  This made it difficult of reconnect everything and she’s still not fixed.  She’s a runner, too.  “Oh, well.  If they can’t fix it, I’ll get into biking!”  She has a cryogenic device she puts on it at night that takes the pain right away.

    On the way home I was, unfortunately, really hungry–back to back tours with no food in the middle–so I (you might want to cover your eyes for this part.) stopped at McDonald’s and got a McFish, which, also unfortunately, I like.  By the time I got home I was sleepy, no nap, and feeling guilty.  Guilt won and I just finished 40 minutes of aerobic workout on the treadmill. 


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Garden Great Work 📎and tagged

  • High-Tech, High-Touch

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    32  bar steady 30.37  4mph NNW dewpoint 27

                        Full Moon of Winds

    Out of the bronze age.  This was a splendid tour and a testimony to the high tech-high touch maxim of Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock.  This was 7 people, four Chinese and three Caucasian, who met through the Meet-Up website.  They had all indicated an interest in things Chinese.  Thus, this was a random group save for their convergence on Meet-Up through their interest in a far-off land.  Amazing.  There we were, more or less strangers, together to study the bronze tradition of ancient China.   So we did.

    We moved from the ceramic cases where we discussed the influence of Neolithic ceramic shapes on bronze vessels and the transition from ceramics to bronze as the primary artistic medium, then trekked over the bronze gallery.  There we started with the oldest object in our bronze collection, the jueh wine warmer.  After we identified some of the shapes from the ceramic cases:  hu, lei and ku for example, we dove into piece-mold casting.  This led to a conversation about design and the convergence here between technology and design.    

    We followed the t’ao t’ieh mask until it faded in the mid-Zhou dynasty and noticed the birds and more abstract designs that followed.  As the Eastern Zhou began we noticed the change in inscriptions and the shift from public ritual to private artifact until in the Warring States period the bronze vessels no longer had a sacred connotation primarily but had become objects of status. 

    To end we noticed the more modest bronze work of the Han and finished in the Sung dynasty ceramics with a celadon ting in miniature.  Bronze vessels had become a treasured objet d’art.   


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged