I am taking off for Chicago tomorrow! Super excited!

Tonight there is a meeting for the local bloggers at  my offices at ArtSpace.  I am looking forward to that as well.  I found these people by accident, and they actually inspired me to start this blog (indirectly).  I had been looking for someone to blog about the opera for about a year, and I found consuminglouisville.com. I thought this might be just the place for me, and low & Behold there was a Social Media Club meeting that week. I was able to meet Michelle, and some other bloggers, and thought this is a good group.  They met at the Fox & Hound which was very loud and not good for discussions.  I offered the ArtSpace and after a preview by Jason Falls it was a done deal. 

I hope it  goes well tonight. 

I will actually be able to blog a bit in the windy city as K is bringing his lap top.  So I can tell you wether I make it through the full 8 course pre fix at Le Bouchon. 

Food is art

So K wanted me to make sure I mentioned the Art of Charlie Trotter.

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!

And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway.

on a sad note...
He mixed media, mixed formats, and mixed genres of art - Robert Rauschenberg died last night at age 82 in his Florida home due to heart failure. (This post's titleis a quote from Robert Rauschenberg)

on the up beat...

A robot named ASIMO will conduct the Detroit Symphony tomorrow night.

One thing about both of these stories, I learned about them on NPR. I have several sources for my art information, I get emailed every day, several times a day on various art subjects. I had heard about ASIMO through one of these emails, but the details, such as the Detroit Symphony and Yo Yo Ma and the Impossible Dream were not included. So while I link these images to other news outlets, the source for me, NPR - they have this news thing down to an art form...

We are going to Chicago to buy a piece of art. I am so very excited about the trip and the possibilities. K has purchased from the Mary Bell Gallery in the past and feels confident he will find the perfect painting there.

I have done a little searching for other galleries and found a good number in the area.

K is especially excited about the diners: we have reservations for Charlie Trotters but will not be sitting in the kitchen which has its own menu apparently and is the VERY COOL place to be. I am hopeful the 8 course pre-fixe will not be a huge and heavy meal. K assures me it will be fine. I have not been successful with pre-fixe dinners in the past, they are usually so heavy and I leave in pain and takes days to recover. In any case, I am sure Mr. Trotters will be a grand experience.

I will be talking about Chicago until I get there, so be warned...

Mothers Day

Went to the Art in the Arbor art fair today with my mom. We were going for mother's day but the weather is supposed to be bad tomorrow so we opted for the more beautiful eve of mother's day.

The fair was fair. 

There were a few good booths.  I did see Brad Devlin whose work is always fun and inspiring. We also saw Robbie Moriarty who is a charming charm artist. 

Mom's friends Cindy  & Michael Fess had a booth where her wire wrapped jewelry were well displayed. 

We both LOVED the kaleidoscope artist.  She used antique metal objects like old spoons and tray handles to decorate the stained glass. She used marbles, beads and crystals.  Very unique. 

It was a fun way to spend mothers day. 

Surreal Art Experience

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.

Photo exhibit at PYRO

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...