Elijah’s Kite is a morality tale that deals with bullying and school violence. It is written with tenderness and humour, and explores the issues of friendship, loneliness and self image. Nine year old Elijah feels alone in the school yard and is often bullied by Big Billy Brett. For comfort, Elijah brings his favourite kite to school and dreams of flying away. One day, Elijah meets a
His dishes are more than filling for your mouth. They are exotic visual creations that tantalize the senses beyond most visual art.
Some of his "pieces" are essences rather than digestible food bits. I hope we have some of that in our 8 courses. K assures me that its only 5 because 3 courses are deserts. That somehow doesn't make me feel better, but I will be brave. 
I also wanted to say we will be going to Le Bouchon. A Parisian cafe which features Jean Claude's Onion tart. K says (in a romantic and nostalgic kind of way) "You step off the mean streets of Chicago and are immediately transported to Paris!"
Looking forward to both dinners, and a nice rainy day to hang out in the Art Institute. Apparently we will have a few rainy days to choose from... This will be my fourth visit. It's been a while, and I may have to review some notes (if I can find them in my relatively unpacked condo.) I believe I have a cataloge which can help our direction, I don't know that I will be able to put my hands on it.
We are going to try to find a jazz bar my brother told me about (PK if you are reading this, you will need to refresh my memory). There is a piano player there that he likes a lot.
I will not be blogging on my trip. I will take notes though and give a full report when I return.CHEERS!
on a sad note...
I had the unexpected pleasure last night to visit the studio of Barry Motes.
Barry does very interesting surreal abstractions in oil. He creates ethereal backgrounds with great movement and places iconographic line drawings floating in space. His palate is almost neon in hue, bright pinks, blues and greens. The effect is a bit disturbing and alluring at the same time. I had a sense of Miro but with a bit more realism in his figures and more movement & color in his backgrounds.
I saw pieces from a previous show, Heaven & Hell, where devils and angels did battle on backgrounds that seemed other worldly (not like where the hobbits live, more like where the aliens mêlée). The juxtaposition of the human ideas of metaphysical creatures, who in our construct reside in the clouds or the fiery pits of the underworld, interacting in the strange environments of space create a dizzying complexity in his large scale paintings.
He carries a similar yet opposite theme in another body of work, whose title escapes me but has something to do with disease on the cellular level. He takes an image of say cancer cells magnified so a single cell is about the size of a softball. Again he uses intense and bright palate and then superimposes a black and white image of his parents. In this series, he has gone from the macro (grand space like backgrounds with universal and iconographic figures) to the micro (cellular backgrounds with very personal themes). He is moving from the grand talk to every one to the intimate talk to me…The people in all these images are known to Motes, yet they have the quality of universality in a personal way. His parents could have been my grandparents, his mother died of the cancer that Motes used in the background and, my father died of cancer… these concentrations are extremely personal to some if not most of us, and even more so for the artist himself.
I wasn’t supposed to see what he was working on currently, so I will only say that he has moved into the third dimension and is flirting with Magritte-esque qualities of space, light and themes.
It was a delight to stumble on such a great opportunity, another reason to be grateful.
Hanging Together
Poverty, Prosperity, Portraiture by John Fitzgerald
Hanging Together is a collection of portraits of individuals representing a wide range of socioeconomic status. While society and reality may treat these individuals quite differently, the photographic technique of this project seeks to view each individual much the same as God would – with absolute equality. The artist’s objective is to challenge the viewer to approach poverty and wealth through a more divine and personal lens than what their human perceptions, stereotypes, and experiences may allow. Photographic intimacy and a minimalist simplicity of artistic style are the means by which I attempt, - not to obscure, but to transcend the inequalities between those who are included in a wealthy, consumer culture and those who are left out. Learn more...
If you had to pick a pair of musical genres furthest apart from each other, opera and hip hop would be a fairly safe bet. One thing they do share is sizable purist fan bases, which, whether they use the phrase or not, prefer practitioners to keep it real. Nonetheless, these star-crossed genres are coming together in a performance called The Hip Hopera, a new collaboration by the Canadian Opera Company and the Royal Conservatory of Music. read moreKudos to this collaboration that blends genres.
Journalists try to stay away from quoting marketing materials. But what to do when those materials are on the money? "Opera less ordinary," proclaims this year's COT brochure. "Less inhibited. Less predictable. Less expected." read more
If Chicago Opera Theater's ( COT's ) new production of Don Giovanni was a movie, it would be slapped with an “R” rating for sexuality and violence. Thank heaven for that. read moreIn any case, both of these stories exemplify the way opera is trying to appeal to a younger audience, the question now, is it working? By modernizing Mozart & merging contemporary music styles, is this changing the art form into something else?
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