Halloweed dress-up comes early

Although it’s early October, everyone seems to be dressing up already.  As faeries especially.

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Take the Florence Griswold Museum, where I am a new docent.  This month, all over the 11 acre grounds of the museum, are tiny installations by artists on the theme of Steampunk’d Alice in Wonderland.  Yesterday, about 600 little faeries came to visit the 25 or so miniature futuristic-Victorian worlds that make up Wee Faerie Village.

 

 

Okay, but the day wasn’t just about ‘wee’ faeries.  Everywhere you look, adults are dressed up, too, at the huge, semi-annual Connecticut Renaissance Faire this month.

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I definitely felt like I was entering another world, thank you very much, m’lady.

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Except when I didn’t.  More about that in a moment.

Who wouldn’t enjoy a rowdy joust?

I came in at the tail end (all puns intended) of one joust, in which the victor was a woman!  But the man just couldn’t take it and challenged her again (for 2 hours later), so she riled up her backers.

2014-10-05 14.27.20Well, I couldn’t wait around.  I had people to see, like the Executioner, who was in a jolly mood.  He told me two jokes.  I laughed, because who would want to be on his bad side?

So, how about the cook who tried to poison his master?  He was given a choice of how to die–by the stake or the chop.

And the tailor who cheated his customers?  It all came out, off the rack.  You get it.

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So what could I do?  I immediately headed over to the stocks, where I wanted to help this poor ogre.  Not to worry,  With the aid of his companion, he made his escape.

 

 

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I especially enjoyed the music–madrigals…

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…and something a little rowdier, which I enjoyed with my Bee Sting, a mischievous, refreshing drink combination of hard cider and mead (a light honey wine).  Delicious!

Bee Sting with my new carved gourd

Bee Sting with my new carved gourd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a snippet of the promised rowdy music, perfect for dancing.

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You may have noticed the 21st century technology invading this low tech space.  Yes, that was everywhere, too.

Still for children who only know technology, this is the kind of day where they can dress up in a little bit of magic and try their hand at something other than a keyboard.

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City-Wide Open Studios Tour

Help spread the word about the “guided tour” I’ll be leading of four artist studios in and around New Haven on October 18 at 3 p.m. as part of City-Wide Open Studios.  Here’s the info from their site:

As an Americanist, Rena Tobey gives talks and leads interactive public tours for museums, as well as writes about American art.  Her particular interest centers on the development of and challenges to American identity as read through painting.  In addition to researching historical works, she also conducts interviews and collects oral histories with contemporary artists. Rena is passionate about resuscitating awareness of nearly-forgotten American women artists.

Rena’s tour is on 10/18 from 3-5 pm, the starting location TBA, and will visit the following artists:

Karen Dow

 

Susan Clinard

 

Stephen Grossman

 

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Bill Meddick

My plan for each studio is to let people look around on their own first, then join the artist and me for a dialogue in front of one work.  We’ll explore the artist’s process, intention, and underlying narratives in the particular work.  Everyone will have a chance to ask questions, too.  We’ll use the time on the shuttle bus between studios to draw connections and comparisons among the artists we visit and explore an over-arching theme for our time together.

Here’s the link for tickets.  Pre-registration is required.

Join me in meeting these artists.

WaterFire

Providence, RI makes a spectacle of itself (when it has funding), every other Saturday night in the summer and early fall.  That’s when the confluence of 3 rivers becomes a highly-witnessed ritual called WaterFire–fire that dances on water for many hours after dark.

2014-09-27 17.43.11Set-up happens early.  By the time we got there around 4, it was long-accomplished, and the crowds were already gathering, staking out their preferred vantage point.  And you can see the braziers, made up of baskets of wood, are ready to be lit, 86 in all.

 

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Providence becomes Venice for a night, with gondola rides for the fortunate few.  The rest of us are content with a stroll along the river banks to tents with crafts, cultural tidings, and food, then over to a park or two, before settling in for the show.

I was mesmerized by the reflections.

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But it’s what happens after dark that makes the magic happen.

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Volunteers, wearing all black to blend in with the night, process with torches–some lit, others not.

 

 

 

Boats slowly begin to disperse along the river.  Meditative music plays an accompaniment.  Here you see the river is still dark as one boat passes by, the torchbearer clearly visible, as if inspecting a parade ground.

Then the lighting begins.

Like the Olympics, the torches onshore are lit, one lit passing to the next, a chain reaction.  Here’s a tiny taste.

 

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The torchbearers onshore stand still like sentinels.  The braziers, fully lit, begin to leap and twist and crackle.

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The smell of a campfire.  Getting hot along the riverbank.

As if checking their work, the boats circle again.

The music calms and cools.

Taking a long view, we can see the circle of fire that extends under the bridge in one direction…

…and pointing to another in the other direction.

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There’s nothing to do now, but watch, breath in, listen, feel, and reflect.

Swarms of Swallows

Migrating tree swallows are gathering for a big party, before heading south, at the mouth of the Connecticut River.  So I jumped on board our birder boat, and we headed down river toward Long Island Sound.  2014-09-14 17.25.34

Along the way, we saw familiar sites, like kooky Gillette Castle…

…and several bald eagles, probably residents, not early arrivals for wintering over…

—and osprey, egrets, herons, cormorants, kingfisher…

it was a busy evening on the river.

Soon I noticed yachts were following us, and the number of kayakers was thickening.  By 6:10 p.m., we have found a spot with a good view of a channel where the tree swallows, along with their friends the purple martens and barn swallows, come to roost.  This means settle in for the night and go to sleep, after a day feeding to build up their weight to get ready to fly south.

A mature tree swallows weighs the equivalent of 2 quarters and has a wingspan of only six inches.  So they have to bulk up for their long trip, perhaps as far away as Mexico.

This is an especially pretty bird, with shimmering color that ranges from turquoise blue to iridescent purple.

 

 

Not long after we arrived, the birds did, too.  They swooped in and around from all directions, numbers increasing.

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If you enlarge this image, you will begin to get a sense of the swarm that’s about to happen.  As we looked through our binoculars, one leader said, “it’s like a spray of ground pepper across the sky.”

The swallows gather together for a sense of safety, congregating at night.  In the morning, they will burst from their perch and travel up to 30 miles before returning to just this spot at sunset.

The masses of birds begin to form in what has been called a ballet.  With the naked eye, I could see patterns forming and disbanding and changing and re-forming.  Sometimes a band would dive down, skimming the water for a drink or a bath-before-bed, then do a “fly-up” en masse.

I hope you can hear the commentary in this video.  This is the most birds the leaders had seen “in a long time.”

Estimated number of birds?  500,000.  Yep, a half a million.  And if you could see the swarm, you’d believe it.

Sunset.  7:01 p.m. The sky was so gorgeous, with different colors from each direction, that I put together this slide show.  What to watch?  The birds or the rapidly-shifting sky?

If these were paintings, they would be called fake, overly-sentimental, cloying.  But really.

Meantime, many birds are still flying overhead at sunset.  As if they had an internal alarm clock, in ten minutes, they had all found a place to roost.  But these little dive bombers did not go gently.  They literally formed a tight funnel, like a tornado, twirling and whipping, then plunging down.  I have never seen anything like it.

“Astounding.”  “Astonishing.”  “Amazing.”  The adjectives multiplied.

Then, suddenly, it was over.  We all burst out in applause.  What a performance.

 

 

Mash-ups

2014-06-29 11.14.02Today, I’m living juxtapositions.  My day started at the Bellamy-Ferraday House, where the Connecticut Chapter of JASNA had its annual Box Hill Picnic.  First, we had a private tour of the house.  What really stood out for me are the ironies.

The land was bought from the Indians in the 1720s, and the first English families came  in the 1730s.  Well, in the winter, it was too far to go the seven miles into town for the Congregationalist Church.  So now a newly minted parish, the farming area got its own minister, a very young Yale grad named Bellamy.  This house was pretty fancy for the era and the isolated location near Bethlehem (ahem, Connecticut).

Mr. Bellamy made money from his sermons and pamphlets, but what I found so hilarious is that he wrote a best seller, True Religion Delineated, which according to our tour guide is completely unreadable today, even for ministry students.  Bellamy made enough of a splash with the book that it became popular in England, too.  Positively an 18th-century Stephen King!

His wealth came from such an unlikely source, when in the Colonies, fortunes were usually the way from trade.  Bellamy lived really well, as did his descendants.  So it took the last owner of the house to appear the most big-hearted and service-oriented.  Again defying 2014-06-29 12.13.21expectations, Caroline Ferraday ventured forward as an actress, with a glamor shot showing her to be a gorgeous lady.  She contributed to the Victorian appearance and additions to the house.  Living the good life.

But I think she’s remarkable for taking the global lead on helping the Jewish women who were experimented on at Dachau concentration camp, when literally no one else would.  The details are too graphic and disturbing to include here.  Suffice it to say, she made a difference and even became friends with some of the survivors.

The minister seemed to savor his money; the actress used hers to help others.  Ironic.

Not being too far way, I then jumped on the Northwest Connecticut Arts Council Open Your Eyes artist studio tour.  I had a wonderful conversation with Anne Delaney.  For the tour, she luscious studies for works she may paint based on the particular tour setting.  Instead of in her New York studio, this tour brought people to the Harwinton Community Hall, which also houses a jail.  Delaney Anne Delaneydid graphite works of John Brown and other more abstracted figures along this theme.

I picked up this little painting from her Family Car series, loving the back-of-the-head invitation into the painting.

She also told me about a friend who has made a documentary film on the Baroque artist Artemesia Genileschi, juxtaposing the artist’s story with her effect on women today, including the filmmaker.

Here’s the trailer from the film “A Woman Like That.”  It’s on the film festival and university circuit, so keep you eyes open for it.

Judith Bird makes these lovely mash-ups of Mexican-style retablos and the fanciful color andJudith Bird, Wild Wood Bird magic realism of an artist like Florine Stettheimer.  Bird loves using birds in her work, as they touch both heaven and earth, soar and are grounded.  I love that!

You can see the artist’s sweetness in Wild Wood Bird.”  The painting definitely has the devotional feel of the folk art retablo with her own eponymous bird symbol.

The funniest mash-ups of the day came from 84-year-old artist Salvatore Gulino.  Sal was really why I went on the tour, and we talked for almost an hour about his work and his life.  He is extremely modest about his work and that I would go ga ga over it.  But really, what art historian wouldn’t?

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Forget Modigiliani, I”m turning over in my grave.

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A classical portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Ghirlandaio juxtaposed on a classic screen-shot.

 

 

 

 

 

For my 50s modern house, I couldn’t resist this mash-up from the Art Wheels SeriesNefertiti never had it so good!

Salvatore Guilino, Nefertiti

And neither will you, when you come to visit!

 

 

 

Arts & Ideas

Every year, New Haven explodes with every form of art and generation of ideas for the two  week International Festival of Arts & Ideas.  I’ve not been able to jump in until now, but my menu selections range from contemporary dance to walking tours to unusual therapy to performance theater works to aesthetic acrobatics.

Arguendo,” performed by Elevator Repair Service, arguably has an audience-pleasing premise: the Supreme Court’s weighs in on whether nude dancers, as in adult entertainers, are protected by the First Amendment.  Lifted from transcripts of the actual proceedings and montaged in a quasi dance-performance piece, the structure seemed promising.  But other than a manic five minutes (in which the attorney defending the dancers’ First Amendment rights argues his points in the nude, while justices toss papers gleefully overhead, all talking at once), I found the production surprisingly dull.  There’s a reason I’m not an attorney.

 

Celebrating a gloriously pleasant Friday afternoon with members of the Hamden Walks meet-up group and about 100 other people, my first walking tour strolled along classy St. Ronan Street with an architectural historian from The New Haven Preservation Trust.  Built mostly during the Industrial Golden Age for New Haven between 1890 and 1920, there’s nothing cookie cutter about the grandeur.  Each house is quirkily different, gently breaking architectural style rules.  The street has a coherence though.  A repeated motif of diamond-shaped windows, regular set-backs from the street, and consistent distance between each neighbor creates a pleasing harmony and peaceable splendor.

2014-06-20 17.27.30St. Ronan refers to a well or spring in a Sir Walter Scott poem, and the Hillhouse family who developed the street from their farm and estate referenced that Romantic work with the picturesque homes.  You have your 1903 12,000 foot cottage, not so different from not so far away Newport.

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And next door is this storybook house a third the size.  The house originally belonged to the women’s rights activist Agusta Troup, who along with her wealthy husband, was also a union activist.  Ironic advocacy for the uber wealthy.

 

 

Keep walking to see this gambrel-intense home of a “traveling salesman.”  Yes, a Willy Loman 2014-06-20 17.35.04type lives here now.  Hmmm.

Notice the funny mix of window styles, the emphatic asymmetry.  Very playful and fun.

 

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And what street would be complete without its mid-century modern?  Here it belongs to the widow of a former Yale President.

 

 

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The houses and stories go on and on, but like me, you are probably ready to pause and refresh.  You might want to head to the festival of food trucks in Hamden town center.  I did!  Along with the throngs mobbing about 25 different food vendors in the park adjacent to the library.  Two cupcake trucks had long lines.  This menu board might explain why.

 

 

 

A whole new day, and more adventures with Arts & Ideas.  It’s summer, officially, and the longest day of the year!  So an eleven hour day of activity began with a hike up East Rock, 2014-06-21 10.54.31that odd geological monument that serves as a marker and icon of New Haven.  East Rock and West Rock are volcanic cliffs caused by plate shifts and molten lava that cooled on the exposed face.  Weird vertical thrusts from the gentle hills of the area.

That geological phenomena created a sheer face of trap, or basalt volcanic rock.  The trap is so hard it has served as a building block, as seen on this house on St. Ronan Street.  Unlike the also local brownstone, which is soft and subject to erosion, trap is used in asphalt for durable support for intense weights or for building for the ages.

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East Rock Park was designed from 1882 to 1895 by Donald Grant Mitchell, a 19th-century pop literature author who took up scientific farming and landscape design.  Interesting combination.  This natural arch occurs right by a manmade bridge designed by Mitchell.  He2014-06-21 11.19.36 also created the paths, walkways, trails, and planting schema.

No matter what you see here, the earliest paintings of East Rock showed bare rock with no trees, so that the sandstone strata at the base was visible.  We just don’t use as much wood as they did for 19th-century fireplaces, so now New England is forested in a way it wasn’t then.

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Diane Reeves, with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, performed on the Green, closing off a great day.  But the real highlight for me was Bibliotherapy.

 

 

Bibliotherapy (for adults) is the brainchild of Susan Elderkin, who has moved from England to Hamden, my home town.  In her book The Novel Cure and the workshop today, she explained how we can be healed by a book, instead of with drugs.  Right on, sister!

To get started, she and her best friend and co-author Ella Berthoud parked a vintage ambulance in a field in Suffolk, England and put out a blackboard with appointment times.  Then they started dispensing prescriptions of books to read.

They had developed the practice on each other, addressing wallowing and romantic problems and I-hate-men moods, etc.  Susan explained that fiction doesn’t tell us what to do, but instead shows up by example (or dis-example), leaving us to decide how to proceed on our own.  She said, we could read self-help which tells us what to do–Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway— or read To Kill a Mockingbird.  You get the idea.

You know that feeling of being transported by a book.  Well, Susan studied how the brain works, so that being transported leads to transformation.  She articulated that when we read, we hear a narrative voice that displaces our own.  We “cease to be,” we “become the story.”  Reading is similar to actually doing something about the issue.  It is an “alternative form of living” that creates a vivid, shared intimacy with the book.  The book and its world keeps us from being alone with our issue, even if the plot line is wildly different from our own.

Susan says that recommending a book is “almost as good as writing it.”  She called for us to read so we can “give the gift of recommending,” which brought tears to my eyes.  When she called for a volunteer, guess who forced her way onstage?  Yep.

Through a prescribed set of questions, Susan got to know my reading habits and preferences.  Then I stated my issue simply.  Even though I’m “following my bliss,” “doing what I love,” I’m still waiting for the “money to follow.”  Susan tenderly probed, and then she filled out a literal prescription for me to read: Stoner by John Williams and to re-read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow.  I can hardly wait to see how my world might change through this focused reading.

But first, there’s more Arts & Ideas.  Tomorrow brings a rose garden, a Split Knuckle Theatre performance piece called “Endurance” that is a mash-up of office politics and the Shackleton voyage-disaster, and a tour of a 100 year old shul.  And then there’s more and more as the week progresses…not a dull art or idea in sight!

 

Subtlety

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There’s really nothing subtle about Kara Walker’s masterwork “A Subtlety” at the derelict Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn.  Before the factory, and its history, are removed for urban development (yes, condos), Kara Walker has contextualized and commented on the history of this factory and sugar manufacture as a whole.

The sugar-mammy-sphinx rises four stories high in the sticky sweet remains of the factory.  The architecture clamps her in place, and her noble bearing, with its inevitable comparison to  Egypt’s Sphinx, here is sexualized with enormous breasts, a distended rump, and visible vulva.  Her facial features, accentuated by the head cloth, are stereotypical, exaggerated, and bulbous.

She is at once vulnerable and proud, caged and powerful.

 

The construction armature is visible

The construction armature is visible

 

With this figure made of sugar-coated polystyrene blocks, Walker has pinned a biting statement on the cost of sugar and sugar production, in terms of slavery and the devastation of a people.  It’s her send-off for the blighted behemoth on the waterfront and its connection to the historical sugar trade.

And as a piece of art, it has a huge visceral effect.  I knew I was in the presence of something great.  Its here-ness also makes the issues it provokes seem topical and timely in today’s diverse and more tolerant society.  History is today, Walker seems to say.  Pay attention.

 

Kara Walker creating the monument

Domino donated 160,000 pounds of sugar for the project.  The figure sits in a nest of granulated sugar, and yet the sculpture diffuses over time.  The features are no longer as crisp as shown here.  Who knows how much will be left of it when the exhibit closes July 6?

The approach to the sculpture is via a long walkway, with the figure radiating at the end of the dark, molasses-stained corridor.

You walk past many sculptures made of molasses, showing children at work in various stages of production.

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You promenade past these larger-than-life-sized children, working for our sugar pleasure.  They stand in puddles of molasses as if melting away in anonymity, becoming one with the other key ingredient of the production process.

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So the figures, both the large and the monumental, are ever changing in this environment of continuing decay.  It’s as if Walker says these issues are not statically stuck in the past, but continue to effect us today.  They must be acknowledged, interpreted, and kept relevant so we can choose a different path.

Subtle this is not.  Compelling and haunting, it is.

 

 

 

 

The Environment, BIRI, and Suzan

New London, CT harbor

New London, CT harbor

Memorial Day weekend calls for the beach.  No matter that the ferry crossing to Block Island was cold and the indoor seats smelled of mildew.  No matter that the sun couldn’t find its way.  There’s nowhere quite as sweet on a late spring day as the seashore.

On the ferry

On the ferry

 

 

Lighthouses and painted rocks and bluffs and sand and surf and cat tails and shades of gray and green.  Junk shops and galleries and fried seafood and ice cream.

Check out the slide show below.

 

And then, there’s the alpacas.  Wait!  What?

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Yes, these alpacas are part of the North Light ( named after the lighthouse) Fiber production process.  From animal to textile, they do all the steps here.  I bought several skeins of alpaca for my new rigid heddle loom.  Wish me luck!
 

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I took an island taxi tour with Barry, who showed me his house and their Norwegian Fjord horses Orion and Jenny.  These are stocky work horses, living a pretty good life on BIRI, or Block Island, RI to you land lubbers.
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Barry lives on the west side of the island, the most isolated part of this isolated place.  Historically, roads on the 10 square mile island were so bad, the west siders had their own school.  Prejudice ran high.  West siders were considered “short, ugly, and inbred.”  Now, their houses circle $1 million.

The island is still covered by 300 miles of stone walls, used to separate fields of mostly 2014-05-26 10.19.52corn and potatoes.  But today, no longer part of a farm culture, the fields and hedgerow are mostly overgrown.  The Conservancy maintains this pasture to show what the island looked like since its European settlement in 1661.

 

 

 
An environmental theme also organizes my friend Suzan Shutan’s new show at the elegant Five Points Gallerie in Torrington, CT.

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I always love Suzan’s Pom Pom pieces, here documenting Connecticut’s well water in “Mapping Ground Water.”  The Pom poms are scaled to indicate the prevalence of wells, larger means more.
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Most spectacular is “Flow: Tarpaper Seepage,” one of a series Suzan has made from tar roofing and handmade paper.  It roller coasters through the gallery space, perhaps slightly visible through my inadequate pictures.  It belongs in a museum, so let’s help Suzan make it happen!

 

The whole installation of Suzan's work

The whole installation of Suzan’s work

 

Luck of the Irish

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I have never quite understood the phrase, “Luck of the Irish.”  Does that mean good luck or bad luck?  Well, I guess a bit of both were at work at New Haven’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade today.

The green stripe marks the parade route, which went right in front of my building

The green stripe marks the parade route, which went right in front of my building

 

The good?  Two full hours of parading bands, dignitaries, hawkers, skaters, truckers, beauties, bagpipers, politicians, noise makers, marchers tossing candy to the kids, and the guy in a weird costumes.

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A gryphon?

A gryphon?

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The bad: 6 degree windchill.  That’s hundreds and hundreds of red ears and ruddy cheeks of marchers choosing vanity over warmth.  Brrrr, the bare knees of bagpipers and bare shoulders of the St. Patrick’s Day Queen–?

 

 

Which brings me to the existential questions.

Why does a patron saint need a queen?  Or was this before strictures about marriage in the Catholic Church?  Or was Saint Patrick not a religious person (I’m showing my ignorance here)?2014-03-16 14.17.57

Aren’t bagpipes Scottish?  And who originated the fife-and-drum marching band?

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Why, in a parade devoted to the patron saint of Ireland, are most of the marchers military, along with every high school band?  What’s with all the American flags?  Bands playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic”…what about “When Irish Eyes are Smiling?  Is this really just July 4 in mid-March?

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Where are the Pope and all the bishops?  What about the monks and nuns?  Now, that’s a parade I want to see!

But who doesn’t love a drum band?

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Happy New Year

I hope you’re out celebrating the Year of the Horse–Happy Chinese New Year!  I celebrated by going to festivities today that were celebrations of Chinese culture.

Perhaps I’ve been most intimidated by Chinese opera, which seemed strident and opaque and made me feel very much the foreigner.  What a pleasure to have Barbara Chan, a noted performer deconstruct these mysteries.  Here are some highlights.

Chinese OperaThere are about 300 regional opera styles, although Peking is the most popular form.  Barbara performs a Cantonese style.  She explained that with royal beginnings, opera, over time, became more accessible by being performed in tea houses.  Soon dedicated opera houses were being built out of bamboo, springing up all over the country.  Families like Barbara’s would center on opera performance, and her uncle performed for 70 years until his death at 96.  He looked half that age, perhaps from the makeup described below.

Performers were required not only to sing (Barbara sings male and female parts, requiring her to lower her vocal range an octave), but also deliver speeches of poetry, like rap she said, act, dance, and do martial arts and acrobatics.  Pretty incredible.

Barbara explained that the opera only has four character types, though one actor might play more than one role and type in an evening.  Sheng-m is a male, old or young; dan a female, often a married woman; jing – who have painted faces, often a fighter; and chou – wicked characters or perhaps a comic figure also with painted faces.

Key props, costumes, and gestures tell character and advance the story.  Pom poms on the heads of men or women indicate a fighter.  A bit counter-intuitive for us, since pom poms seem playful or for cheerleaders.  Long stalks of straw on a stick, serving as a broom, might be a prop for a fairy, whose responsibility is to dust the clouds! Stage props are kept very simple, generally just a table and chair, so that ornaments, costume, and makeup advance the story.

Remember that a white stripe down the nose indicates the character is wic2014-02-01 12.59.29ked.  Red means loyalty, black courage.  Gold or silver suggests the supernatural.  Men always wear high heels, even when fighting.  Women fight, too, but may also perform fan dances, which Barbara demonstrated.

Hair on women–essential.  Generally, very long hair wigs are part of the make-up process.  The hair is divided into 7 equal parts.  Long sideburns can go down to mid-calf.  The central hair, instead of falling over the face, is wiped up to 30 times with glue made of sea cucumbers or tree bark soaked in water.

The glue smooths the hair and allows it to be put on a form.  Extensive pictures of Barbara’s makeup and hair being dressed showed her wig being formed into circles crowning her face, then ornaments placed in each form, before a piazi–a very large head ornament which also holds the hair bun–is placed on her head.

All this after the extensive makeup session.  Most notable: creating the “phoenix eyes” which are considered pretty.  Traditionally, a ribbon is wrapped around and around the performer’s head, very very tight.  So tight, that some performers fainted from the stress.  Regardless, the method is painful, says Barbara.  Now, transparent tape is used to achieve the same effect.

What effect, you ask?  Pulling the eyes up into intense slants, smoothing out the skin above and below the eyes, before red, oil-based makeup is applied and smoothed.  This standard of beauty is finished off with “cherry lips.”  You got it, bright red lipstick.  And perhaps the secret to the youthful, 96-year-old uncle’s face.

Needless to say, the makeup and dressing requires assistance.  The one face works for any parts the performer may play, so that only a change of costume is required.  Still…

Barbara slipped on this beautiful, but according to her, inexpensive costume, to perform for us.

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Men's shoes and ornamented hat

Men’s shoes and ornamented hat

I mentioned that men wore heels, to achieve height.  Women wore flats, often with tassels, as worn by Barbara, especially when their partner was short.  Other women wore heels.  What’s intriguing and disturbing is the way these heels are formed.  It’s placed in the middle of the shoe, so that when the costume covers the performer’s foot, all that can be seen is the performer toddling along on these very tiny “feet.”  Like bound feet, which had been banned, but was still a standard of grace and beauty in women.

Gestures are symbolic.  When you see a character leaning over and whipping his or her head around so fast that the hair starts to twirl, this means the character is frustrated or sad.  The act is so difficult, that the audience usually bursts into applause.  Other gestures are like mime, like the act of drinking, covered by a modest hand to politely prevent others from seeing.

Barbara performed a sampling of the talking style and freestyle song of placing words within a certain beat, plus demonstrated a bit of the dance and acrobatic style.  You can get a taste in this video.

Musicians playing instruments generally sit on the sides of the stage for opera.  At the pipa

The master is on the left

The master is on the left

performance, of course, the master and her student were center stage.  Pipa is the English name for the sound that results from plucking this stringed instrument that resembles a classical lute.

Min Xioa-Fen played traditional songs with her student, but also demonstrated a jazz piece inspired by Theloneous Monk and Kansas City Swing, which was very influential in China in the 1920s.  Who knew?  You can hear a bit of their new year commemoration on this video.

Finally, I gave calligraphy a whirl.  Oh my.  I can see how people practice for a lifetime.  First, the way you hold the brush.  Lightly between your middle and ring finger.  Vertical.  With you elbow off the table.  Try that for awhile, and see how steady your strokes are.  Hmmm.

Just so you know, you read the Chinese characters from top right down, then the next column down.  But you write your characters from the top left.  One explanation: the tyranny of right handers, taking over from traditional left-handed writing.

Calligraphy means beautiful writing, and the Chinese have it, whether from the earliest, “tall” form — geometrically carved from stone to the cursive “grass” style, so named because it’s “like grass blowing in the wind.”  Poetry is everywhere, except perhaps in my calligraphic attempts!

 

 

“Fu” means fortune.  May your new year be full of blessings and happiness!

First Snow

So hard for me to be in two places at once, but happily Matt was on the scene and captured the first snow…

… the garden

…and at the house in general.

Like fairy land!

Rear Window

On this Labor Day so wet and dreary, I was still deciding if it was a foggy day or just dawn, when color dotted the gray palette.

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Like Jimmy Steward in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, I grabbed my camera (phone) and started to snap.  But no foul murder was taking place.  It was the gathering for the New Haven Road Race.  The Green is one launching point for the run, taking place all over the city.  On this day, when the Long Island Sound isn’t even visible from my other view, I had a rear window seat for the race.

And they’re off…

The video is brief.  The scene went on and on.  Their efforts made me get into my own labors, at least before the band starts playing in the after-run party!

 

 

Delicious creativity

How’s this for a fundraiser?  CitySeed, which hosts all the farmer’s markets around the city, had a fundraiser tonight–a Pie Contest.  Colin from Taste of New Haven was one of the judges, for “most beautiful pie.”

Judges judging Colin is on the far end

Judges judging
Colin is on the far end

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Some pies are pretty.

Some pies are messy.

Some pies are delicious.

Some pies are too sweet.

Some pies are a little burnt.

Some pies are crumbly.

Some pies are seasonal.

Some pies are not.

Some pies are savory.

Some pies are just for fun.

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Happily, there was enough for everyone!

Beats volleyball on the beach

Today, I’ve been at summer camp–the Jane Austen summer camp.  Forget ‘capture the flag’!

Goodies and favors for all the campers

Goodies and favors for all the campers

 

We’ve had a very full day practicing our penmanship with quill pens, dressing our hair in Regency styles, sewing reticules and pocketbooks, and making the daintiest watercolors.  For geeks like me who despise dodge ball, this is the perfect way to while away a summer Saturday.
Check out the slide show for snaps.

 

Here are some things you definitely need to know.

Irene has a bunch of quills for us to choose from

Irene has a bunch of quills for us to choose from

 

When you’re picking out your feather–goose, turkey, duck and crow all work–for your quill, consider whether the feather came from the bird’s right wing or left wing.  Yes, feathers have sides, and you need to know this.  Victorians believed you match your handedness with the side of the wing.  During the Austen era, the Regency period, eh, not so important.

From another camper, I learned that the ink is very, very permanent.  Remember when Gilbert dips Anne of Green Gables’ braid in the inkwell?  No doubt, her braid would then have dripped ink on her dress, a permanent marker on what was probably her only garment until she grew out of it.  Sure enough, a camper got some ink on her Regency gown.  Sigh.

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We practiced writing some “moral maxims.”  My favorites are “Art polishes and improves nature” and “Content alone is true happinefs.”  Note the fs for our double-s.  f’s substituted for s’s at times and not at others.  All part of the very complex set of rules that went along with superlative penmanship, which by the way leans to the right at a 56 degree angle.  Good thing we had a guide to help us get that slope just right!

 

Henri-François Riesener (1767-1828) -  Alix de Montmorency, Duchesse de Talleyrand

Henri-François Riesener of
Alix de Montmorency, Duchesse de Talleyrand
probably early 19th century

We started with the “round hand” style, used by women and men, but I found myself preferring the “Italian” style–a precursor to our italic and favored by women.  Now your posture is very important.  Take a lesson from this young lady.

Note her beautiful uprightness.  Also she has turned sideways, so that her entire forearm rests on her writing desk.  She holds the quill with a delicate touch, like holding chopsticks.

You don’t want any blobs of ink!

Now this Regency lady had plenty of time to sew for pleasure and probably plenty of help dressing her hair.  We did some of both.

James Martin of
Abigail Noyes Sill
courtesy of
Florence Griswold Museum

 

Kandie showed us willing ladies how to make a butterfly curl, like you see on Abigail here.  You can find out how to do this on youtube, but the basics are to make a spit curt, then wrap your triangular shaped tissue paper around the curl, heat it, and wait.  You can wrap your whole head, so it looks like you are covered in butterflies!  By the time the tissue paper cools down, take it off, reveal your curls, and you’re ready to dance…

 

 

 

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Several of the ladies had their hair done by Kandie.  Do check out the slide show above for several examples.  Me, I’m a short-haired girl.  But I got a kick out of the transformations!

Thin hair becomes thick with a donut.  Thick hair can be tamed as it is here–elegant and beautiful!

 

 

 

I had some success with hand stitching my pocketbook, the Regency equivalent of a wallet.  Lisa was a huge help, of course.

Here she shows off reticules, replacing “pockets” worn under the skirt when dress styles changed to become skimpier.  The proper lady carried her reticule rather than bulk up her gown with a pocket.  Just the right size for all your essentials–your Regency cell phone included.

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Silhouette of Jane Austen

 

Originally for the rich, silhouettes became popular at markets and carnivals, bringing the uncanny form of capturing a likeness to the masses.  Although we didn’t get a chance to make them (working with watercolors instead), I know how to do a silhouette now and have the kit.  So call me and come over at dusk.  Let’s give it a try!

After all that hard work, I was ready for tea.  This tea came complete not only with scones, but also chocolate-covered strawberries and tea sandwiches.  And a performance.

Two campers put on a show–an extremely condensed version of the five acts of Lover’s Vow.  For those of you who know Austen, that’s the very naughty play that causes such an uproar in Mansfield Park.

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We were prompted when to hiss and even more importantly gasp at just the right moments.  The “Audience Gasps” sign was liberally used.  Thank goodness we all had our smelling salts.

smelling salts

 

 

I’m of a hardy constitution and made it through the play without fainting.  In fact, the whole day was a wonderful boost for the system.

Who says adults can’t go to camp?

A cinematic drama

  A cinematic drama unfolded on an early train into Grand Central today.  A young man sat in front of me and seemed to go to sleep.  The ticket taker came by shortly thereafter.

She asked for his ticket after punching mine.  I couldn’t hear the details, but something about a mistake.  Apparently, he had meant to get off the train several stations before arriving in New Haven from New York.  Maybe he missed his stop because he fell asleep…I’m not really sure.

Metro-North ticket machines photo
Politely, the ticket-taker explained his options: buy a ticket from her or get off at the next station and buy a less-expensive ticket for the next train.  He must have said he had a ticket, so she said she’d be back.

The next station stop came, and she had not returned.

When she did make it back, he talked with her again.  This time, she said, “we all make mistakes.  One or two stations would be okay.  But not five or six.”  Then she used her tiny computer and quoted him a ticket price of $12.

The guy must have taken out a large roll of cash, but refused to pay, again arguing that he already had a ticket and made a mistake.

“Everyone else here has bought a ticket,” she said slowly and with forced calm.  “You have to buy a ticket or get off at the next station” and paused.  I guess he didn’t respond so she said, “I’ll stand over there by the door, and you’ll get off at the next station.”

And she did.  The train pulled in to the station.

“Okay, now.  Let’s go.”

The man didn’t move.

“Let’s go,” she insisted.

He said nothing and sat very still.

“This train’s going nowhere until you get off.”

A woman who had just boarded groaned.  “I have to get to work!”

We all sat.

“I’ll have to get the police now.  We’re going nowhere,” the train ticket taker stated.

We sat some more.  The woman grumbled and made eye contact with me and rolled her eyes.

Over the loud speaker, the conductor called for the head car, meaning the first car where we were seated, to close its doors.  Another voice responded, “we’re waiting on the police.”

Probably only three or four minutes passed.  The car was silent.  The ticket taker came by.  She loosely gestured toward the man in front of me.  “The police will be along for you,” then she released the door, and the train started to move.

The next station came and went.  Then another.  People boarded, but the ticket taker didn’t reappear.

I thought, “well, he got away with it.”  I figured to save face, she was avoiding the car.

He seemed to fall asleep again.  When we got to his station, he was out.  I tapped the back of his headrest.  “Hey,” I said.

No response.

The louder, “Hey.  This is South Norwalk.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly, standing to exit.  He nodded his head, with another soft  “thank you.”

The woman across the way announced, “oh, there are the po-lice.”  I perked up and thought, “huh!  I guess she had a plan after all.”

The two cops entered the train through a different door, and the non-payer started in the opposite direction, opening the interior door to the next car.

One of the policemen must have seen, and said, “hey, you, stop!”

Both cops then picked up their pace and exited the train.

The woman across the aisle twisted around to watch and started a commentary.  “Uh-huh, they got his wallet.  His phone.  Oh yeah.  They snapped ’em on.  Yeah.”

The doors closed, and the train started rolling.

The ticket taker came in and apologized to the woman.  “Sorry, I was rude.  We had a situation here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Cuffed him.”  Pause.  “You gonna make your bus?”

“Yeah.”

A tough-looking man said, “you were real nice,” and tapped her consolingly on the arm.  “Real professional.  He had a wad of cash,” he declared in disbelief and looked at me.

“Stupid,” I said adroitly.

Then the ticket taker went up a few rows and turned around.  “It wasn’t fair to you,” she pointed emphatically at a woman. “Or him,” and pointed, “or her.”

Then she turned around.  “Tickets!”

Being Shot out of a Cannon

The International Arts & Ideas Festival wrapped up tonight after 3 weeks of performances, events, lectures, exhibits, tours, and general good feeling.  My last volunteer gig was with L’Homme Cirque–the one man circus.  Combining mime, clowning, tight rope walking, and bonne amie, this circus appealed to all ages.

David Dimitri has brought his act, his tent, and his high wire with him to the U.S., starting with New Haven.  If he comes your way, don’t miss him.

I saw something I’d never seen before–a man being shot out of a cannon.  You do have to see it to believe it!

Irreverent

Tonight, I dipped into the joys of New York Theatre Ballet, which does performances in small venues with live music–both a real rarity in the ballet performance world.  They also want to give under-served dancers a chance and introduce people to ballet and its great masters.  What a wonderful mission, so refreshing compared to the stereotypical, stodgy ballet of your grandmother.

The program tonight was “Legends and Visionaries.”  My two favorite works came early on.  Gemma Bond, a dancer with New York City Ballet, was written up in last Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section in the New York Times.  Her dance called “Silent Titles” was quirky and funny and fresh.  The men wore white tie, the women a sort of odd mix of the swans from “Swan Lake” and flapper style dresses, in black, gray, and white.  Like a silent film, get it?

The dancers, sans-costumes, in rehearsal.

Two older dancers then came on stage to talk about their memories of working with the choreographer James Waring in the 1950s.  I had never heard of him, but listening to these two poised people reminisce and then seeing the two solos made me long for more.

Legends and Visionaries: Program B

 

Quirky costumes were the order of the night, and here’s the dancer from “An Eccentric Beauty Revisited” danced to Erik Satie’s 1920 piece La Belle Excentrique.  The dance was adorable, irreverent, bratty.

She stopped at one point, center stage, and cocked a hand behind her ear and waited, until we got it and started applauding.  I could watch her performance again right now and be just as delighted by it.

 

 

 

If you ever have the chance to see dance up close and personal, no matter what kind, that is a special treat.  Add really good music and the visual pleasures of costumes, well, life is good.  It even made me want to dance again!

Flash Mob for Gun Control

My friend Cathie has been working very hard, especially since Newtown, advocating for gun control.  She told me about the Artists in Support of Gun Control, a Flash Mob performance piece at Times Square today.  My friend Penny, her daughter, and Sasha’s friends from Boston participated.

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While waiting for the event to start, I talked with Paula and her daughter Rosalee from Long Island.  They wrote the names of gun violence victims they were honoring with the performance on their hands.

 

I was already so moved.  In this slide show, you can also see the performers gathering, getting ready.

At 1:08 p.m., the performers raised their hands, in silence.  Then Lorin Latarro, the choreographer, gave the signal.

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Some performers sank to the ground, while others drew chalk outlines of their fallen bodies on the sidewalk.

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The fallen rose slowly, and the partner inscribed the chalked body remains with a word, a statistic, or in the case of Paula and Rosalee, a name.

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Here are a lot more images of the event.

 

When all were complete, the performers moved away, leaving the remains like a crime scene.  Here are some images of the scene.

 

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Seeing the chalked outlines was really powerful for me–maybe more so than the actual performance.  I stood and looked for several moments, watching as two children re-entered the space to add some drawings to one of the body outlines.

 

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Lauren talked to the press, saying “if even one mind was changed” then the event was a success.

 

 

 

And the event was officially over.  Penny and Sasha debriefed their experience, and here are Sasha’s comments.

Sasha’s Reactions to the Flash Mob

(best if you open the video in a new tab)

Here are Sasha’s friends Connie, Chloe, and Gaby posing by their drawings.

This slide show commemorates their experience.

The whole event took maybe 5 minutes, but it stopped Times Square for about that long.  Quieted it down.  Since the performance took place in Duffy Square.  You know the place: in front of the Half Price Ticket Booth, where tourists do the post-modern, self-absorbed thing of waving at a camera that is projecting their image on a huge screen.  So that moment of quiet is really something.  As Lauren said, maybe a mind was changed, too.

 

 

 

 

 

Ghostly Sightings

Halloween apparitions will most likely be stirred by Hurricane Sandy this year.  She seems to be a very angry spirit.  So yesterday, it was time to go meet a few ghosts.

With its loveliness, one wouldn’t think that Washington Square would be a vortex of Halloween energy.  But it was built on the graves of 15,000 yellow fever victims, and some say you can see the saffron yellow, linen-wrapped bodies, if you know where to look.

The Hanging Tree, last used in 1819
Click on this image to see its creepiness

But you don’t have to look hard to see the last Hanging Tree in New York, where Lafayette in his triumphal return to the U.S. was proudly taken to witness such justice.

So Justin Ferate told us on our tour of Haunted Greenwich Village.

As is typical of any tour with Justin, we went off on interesting tangents.  Do you know why walk-ups rarely go higher than 6 stories?  Because water pressure won’t go push water higher than that.  Savvy builders constructed new apartment houses to 15 stories using water pump technology.  Did you know that the best kind of water tower to have on the roof of your building is made of wood?  Justin wants to lead a tour of New York’s water towers.  I’ll be there!

And although not at all ghostly, those professional chess players in the park can get their supplies on nearby Thompson Street.

3rd and Thompson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So many places in the Washington Square vicinity are haunted, you’ll have to check out the slide show below.  Here are some tidy tidbits.  You know the phrase “getting sent up the river”?  That comes from moving the prison in Greenwich Village up the Hudson River to Sing-Sing (a popular tourist stop on a daytrip out of Manhattan in the early 1800s, per my New York Historical Society connections).

We saw NYU’s Brown Building, where the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire horrified all.  The 146 unfortunate women, locked in the workroom, who died on March 25, 1911, had work because of R.H. Macy who invented the pricetag.  A set price on a shirtwaist and black skirt allowed the Working Girl to afford the ‘uniform’ of her day.

In the myriad ways to detect a house of the wealthy is the type of column.  In this case a full, that is a complete, rounded column, was more expensive than a partial column or pilaster.  Makes sense.

Gertrude Drick supposedly haunts the small doorway she introduced to artist John Sloan and other ‘hoodies, when they climbed the 110 stairs inside the arch to go to the top and party.

Aaron Burr bought the carriage house at 17 Barrow Street, stabling his and George Washington’s horses there.  Now the famous restaurant One If By Land, Two If By Sea, Burr and his daughter Theodosia haunt the place.  She likes earrings, so be careful what you wear when you go there.

Anyone want to join me?

 

Washington Square is way too haunted to relay all the tales here, but check out this slide show:

washington-arch

Image 1 of 24

Then I rode the C train up to 163rd Street to visit the Morris-Jumel Mansion.  Eliza Jumel’s spirit, which regularly haunts the place along with other ghosts, was apparently so restless that she morphed into 7 manifestations, each haunting a separate room or place on the grounds.

[gview file=”https://www.renatobey.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Eliza-Jumel.pdf”]

To read more about Eliza, you can zoom to read the text on page 2 or click open the pdf.

Eliza was abandoned as a young girl by her parents and so turned to prostitution, before becoming an actress.  She married for money, perhaps killed that husband, and then her second husband Aaron Burr conveniently died on the day their divorce was finalized.

Eliza as an abandoned girl, in the kitchen

Eliza as a widow, with the pitchfork that killed Stephen Jumel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In her mad, doddering elderhood, she was a scary gal, and I have to admit that I jumped a bit when I exited the house to be screamed at by Eliza’s ghost from the balcony, “Get Out of My House!”  Okay, okay already.  So that’s when I went on the grounds to encounter the Eliza who may have neglected to care for her husband Stephen, after he was pierced by a pitchfork.  Hmmm.

Edith Wharton wrote in the introduction to her autobiography A Backward Glance, “To all the friends who every year on All Souls’ Night come and sit with me by the fire” (thank you, Justin for sharing this quote).  Since Sandy seems to be keeping us at home for the next few days, join me by my proverbial fireplace…well, everyone maybe except Eliza!

A fine day on Park Avenue

 

It was a fine day on Park Ave.  There was the tiniest evidence of leaves starting to change.  Notice the one fallen leaf on the left in this moment of color.

 

 

And what a pleasure to immerse in the International Fine Art & Antique Dealers Show at the Park Ave Amory, a place of great beauty itself.

The show offered a great range, from antiquities to contemporary art.  I enjoyed talking with the dealers about the challenges of working with antiquities in an era of cultural repatriation and major museum thefts.  Of course, to be able to see and touch such lovelies, with no vitrine in the way, is one reason to go to a show like this.

While the slide show below has many more images, here are a few of my favorites (you can click on any of the images to enlarge them, then use your back button to return to this post).

 

She called my name from a long distance, and we had a good talk, squatting together in the booth.  We reminisced about being on the western shores of Mexico, and she told me a thing or two.  I’m sure you can imagine.

 

 

 

This is a woman who knows her own mind.  You’ve just got to admire her!

 

Her Peruvian girlfriends came to join us.  They were utterly charming, even if they didn’t reveal the mystery of their upraised hands.  A delightful time was had by all!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess I was in a sculpture kind of mood.  Look at this Europa and the Bull.  Marvelous!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I must be learning something in my Renaissance and Baroque Women Artists class, because right away, I just knew this Virtue and this Fame were by a woman we want to know–Elisabetta Sirani.

 

Not the best photos due to glare, but you can still make out the elegance of the portrayals of the allegorical figures (figures that stand in for ideas) of Virtue to the left and Fame blowing her trumpet below.

 

 

Thank you, Elisabetta Sirani!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And some things just make me smile…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…or sigh with pleasure…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s more beauties from the day.  Enjoy!