A tantalizing shooting star of an exhibit titled Great American Mug Show: A Love Story opened yesterday. It’ll be up for less than two weeks, so make your plans if you’re in range.
Like a salivatin’ monkey at the Bananas Galore Shack, I had to go look, touch, desire and consume. I decided one Best Mug is an impossibility. One requires a whole wardrobe for all one’s unique drinking and vessel-acquiring needs. Here’s my fantasy collection from this show.
So, I enrolled in a Philosophy class. With a taunting title like “Beastly Beauty: The Value That Astounds, Confounds, Perplexes and Vexes Us” how could I not? It’s basically an Aesthetics course taught by a scary smart über-organized professor. (Uh Oh…she means it and students must too.) And a lyrical comedienne. (Whew, we can relax and be real.)
a whole bunch of Sculpture and Ceramics students made a large freeform mosaic bench. It took four years and I was ringmistress for the last two of them. After another two years it was installed in its permanent location in the new Art Quad at Cabrillo College. That was seven years ago as of this writing. It’s weathered a few winters, droughts, preschool field trips, freeform mime-dance performances and hundreds of lounging students. It’s a landmark and a meeting place. A sentinel and a touchstone. And, one day, a tile broke off…
The HOME Exhibit at the Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery has closed. After almost seven weeks away, my “Homefire 1957” incinerator piece is coming home.
When it’s in transit, I have learned to handle my work myself whenever possible. (Here’s one sad, sad example of why.) I figure if I break it, I am pre-forgiven. Others, they feel terrible all by themselves and I can’t assuage it! Consequently, I am glad for any nearby opportunities to show my stuff because I can deliver and pick up in person. If I have a driver, I hold pieces on my lap, but when I drive, I need to either fully pad and pack pieces in a lidded container or buckle them in thusly.
The HOME Exhibit at the Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery just closed. Everybody’s pieces are going home – some to new ones. I have written about this exhibit for the past six weeks: the drop-off, its reception, three of the most compelling pieces in it, and my artwork in depth. (All the links you need are below.) We will close this Summer Blog-a-thon too, with a tiny glimpse of striking the set and beginning the new production. Over is OVER, as the deconstructed title wall serendipitously demonstrated when I showed up to get my piece.
After one gets over the news that it smells bad, it looks like the odor of Outer Space is hard to pin down. It’s reportedly a bit like burnt metal, welding fumes and seared steak. Acrid but slightly sweet; sulphurous and undeniable. The astronauts’ suits and gear, upon returning from space walks, stunk like they’d been camping at a celestial tire fire. It was such an unlikely surprise.
But at one time so was the discovery that smoke from earthly tire fires, oil refineries, automobiles and backyard incinerators probably was to blame for the continually bad air.
Let’s take a walk together, just down the block and back. We can marvel at the sky moving behind the trees. Feel the songs sung by skywires.
In this third-of-three looks at individual works of art in the Pajaro Valley Arts HOME Exhibit, (links to all the others below) we have the pleasure of spending time with Maren Sinclair Hurn’s small porcelain wallpiece titled “Central Coast Summer.” It’s as brief and brilliant as a haiku. Evocative. A sassy statement about HOME without mentioning the house.