February, Week 5

I hauled this beginning
out of the mothballs recently.
I am spending more time staring at it,
and less time completing it...

Any suggestions?

January, Week 4

This week is a good week for arts and crafts inside the home! This morning we enjoyed a sunny 2º with a thick glaze of snow-covered ice. So I have spent quite a few hours in the art room playing with watercolors. Nothing to show just yet, since all I have been doing is playing with color and lines and such. If I were a more-advanced artist, I would say I have been been working on technique; but, no, I have simply been playing with color and lines and such.

One little watercolor exercise I have is a 365-page calendar of watercolor paintings that I am supposed to copy. Much like an daily paint-by-number except that it's paint-what-they-painted instead. It is oddly therapeutic for me...I can get lost in the painting.

Here is an interesting new site provided by the people at Google:

Art Project

We can tour museums around the world and view their art collections. This is pretty handy, especially for someone ice- and snowbound in rural Kansas. Here are the museums we can visit:

• Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
• Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA

• The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
• MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
• Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
• Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
• Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
• National Gallery, London - UK
• Palace of Versailles - France
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
• The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
• State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
• Tate Britain, London - UK
• Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
  

January, Week Three

This week I worked on a knitting project. Nothing challenging (but for the completion of it), but it was fun to make this scarf out of some sort of wild and woolly yarn I picked up a few weeks ago.

This photo is of the scarf perhaps 3/4-done. Tonight, the scarf is completed and packed and ready to post to its unsuspecting recipient.

And thus brings an end to Week Three,

Art Dilly-Dallying.

And, no, the photo was not an attempt at an artistic statement: my lens thing won't automatically open/shut anymore. But, hey, it makes for some interesting photos.

January, Week Two

This afternoon we went to a local gallery opening and wine tasting. How fun! I didn't expect to see many people we knew (that's optimism, to be sure) but both that Spouse o' Mine and I were happy to go see some art and taste some wine.

The Poppyfield Gallery is in the little town of Wamego, Kansas. It is also home to the Vin Vivante Winery. Yes, Kansas has wineries, believe it or not. I did not believe it so much in terms of quality, until last year when Niece Amy blew into town and announced that we were going to a wine tasting in this same town: I objected, she persisted, I relented, and off we went to the local winery to experience our local wine tasting. I have to admit, several of the wines were quite nice.

And so this afternoon, at this second winery/art gallery, we enjoyed the two wines we tasted. We enjoyed the artist's work even more: Susan Rose. Hmmm...there were oils and acrylics and a few watercolors, some sort of textured-paper paintings. There were lots of landscapes, and several works that made me remark, "This must be a horseperson." We had spent about twenty minutes looking at paintings and I came upon the artist's biography. I read through it quickly, and the last paragraph mentioned that she lived in Wabaunsee County. Hey! that's MY county!

And suddenly, a lightbulb in my head. Years ago, when we had first moved to rural Kansas, we met a couple who lived down the road (seven miles is "down the road"). She was a dressage instructor. Our kids were English riders. We had a couple of chance meetings, that couple and us, but we never seemed to meet up more than that.

We went over and re-introduced ourselves to the artist and her husband, and we had an enjoyable conversation. I really enjoyed her work. Heck, I didn't even know she painted!

So, small town living. In this small community, we seem to have an abundance of artist-types.

More on that, later!

January, Week One

For this new year, I did not make any resolutions, but I did set up a fun task for myself: my task this year is to do something artistic each week. The parameters for said task are very broad, and I invite anyone who chances by this blog to join in, either by activity or by comment. Or tutorial. Or suggestions.

Anything goes!

This week's artistic activity was planned last night: The Grad Student, hereafter referred to by her given name Gillian, is home for a couple of days. Gillian is a grad student of museum studies.

Well! That information simply points to the obvious: we must go a' museum-ing while she is in town!

So our plans were laid: hit the Beach Museum of Art, on the campus of Kansas State University, then off to the University Rec Center for some sort of exercise, and then off to lunch to offset any caloric loss we might have incurred at the Rec. (Gillian is the only one in this party who might need to address caloric loss and reclamation; I am in good stead in the no-need-for-reclamation-of-calories department.)

We drove to the Beach Museum, and lo and behold: Closed till January 11th, due to "budget cuts".

Well, that was a big boo, but we had a lightbulb moment (not really: my bank teller had mentioned the Goodenow Museum only a half hour before we read the Closed sign on the Beach Museum...) and we headed across town to the Goodenow Museum.

Guess what? The Goodenow Museum is also closed, for an unspecified time, while they refurbish and also wait for financing.

What to do, what to do? We walked across the parking lot to the Riley County Museum. It was open! And so we entered and spent "a spell" (because isn't that what one says when one is in a county museum?) viewing its exhibits.

The exhibits were not overly remarkable, although they were glimpses of historical Kansas. But they had a rolling pin. I have a rolling pin. They have lots and lots of china and crystal. (So do I, thanks to many generations of genteel descendants.) They have many pianos. (OK, I only have one piano, and it is electric.) But you get my drift. Gillian had some good observations as to what might improve the exhibits and she was not at all critical, she was just pointing out what might "work" better in this little museum.

And that sums up January Week #1 of my art world. Local museums: so-so.

Happy postnote: Andy Warhol Exhibit coming up next week at the Beach Museum.

When it re-opens.