A watery day

Posted on April 27, 2015 by admin

On a blustery spring day, I visited the charming Colonial town of Essex, CT. I started at the delightful Connectic ut River Museum, celebrating all things about that river. I had always heard it was terrific. No understatement!

While I’ll share my favorite part in a moment, the American history that touched the riverbank at Essex makes the museum worth a visit. In the Revolutionary War, Connecticut’s war ship (all 13 colonies were asked to build one), the Oliver Cromwell, was built here in 1776. An 1814 skirmish with the British, part of the War of 1812, was likened to Pearl Harbor for its surprise and devastation. At the unmanned fort, 27 ships were burned, and the town’s economy was blasted apart.

Artist rendition of how the Turtle worked

But, oh boy! The best part was climbing into a replica of the first submarine, called the American Turtle. Now this thing is small. I can tell you because I smacked my head on it getting in. Ouch!

The idea was to take a bomb in the submarine and hook it to the bottom of a British war ship, and bye bye ship. Well the submarine worked – the propeller was a huge innovation. The bomb was ready. But drilling through the submarine to attach the bomb to the warship hull, not so much. So even though Yale graduate David Bushnell made a great case to Benjamin Franklin and made three attempts, the submarine was scuttled and the original eventually lost.

Two replicas at the museum were built off detailed plans that survive. Climbing inside — it’s worth the price of admission.

I also really enjoyed the special exhibit on Connecticut artists working under the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. The pieces are small enough that maybe they served as studies for the ultimately larger works, like murals in post offices and schools.

You know I want to know all about women artists and women’s lifestyles. Here’s a glimpse from this exhibit.

Cornelia Vetter, Haddam, Looking East, n.d.

At nearby Haddam, Cornelia Vetter began working for the government arts project after her husband died in 1933. She did 18 paintings for the Federal Arts Project.

Grading the Tobacco, Harold Barbour, 1938

Harold Barbour, Grading the Tobacco, 1938

Harold Barbour painted a series of watercolors, on work in the tobacco barns. Here, woman work in the sorting shop. After the tobacco leaves cure in the hanging shed, the leaves are sorted into grades. During the Depression, sorting and transplanting, as seen below, proved to be great jobs for women.

Harold Barbour, Transplanting, 1938

Look at this beautiful charcoal.

Beatrice Cuming, Tuna Boat, n.d.

So many women artists to discover and enjoy.

Then I strolled down the street, from the gem of the little museum to the country’s oldest, continually operating inn, open 239 years. The 33-room Griswold Inn was build in 1776, a busy year in busy Essex.

Inns were central to Colonial and early Federal life, and the Boston Post Road was essential for information flow between New York and Boston. How did information flow? Over the communal tables at inns like the Griswold. We all sat around one such table to hear the owner Geoff Paul tell great stories about the art collection in the inn.

Owner Geoff Paul, an enthusiastic speaker

Geoff spoke about the origins of the steam-powered ship in Connecticut, long before Robert Fulton, and the intricacies of ship portraits, that owners were pickier about than paintings of their wives.

Like a good art historian, Geoff taught us what makes a great marine painting. Flags show the wind, so create movement; the more flags the merrier (and more expensive). Angling a boat toward the viewer enhances that sense of power. Geoff favors works made at the time the ship sailed, not nostalgic works painted later. Paintings of the moment often are celebrations of American ingenuity and prowess and could be coupled with the Brooklyn Bridge or highlight new installations of electricity–other technological marvels that allowed ‘man’ to get the sense of ‘triumphing over nature’.

Antonio Jacobsen, The Connecticut, n.d. c 1880s

And steamships, Geoff pointed out, represented the birth of the cruise ship industry, providing pleasure outings for the Connecticut middle class. Board the City of Hartford steamer in that city, steam overnight, spend the day in New York, before returning with another overnight ride.

Once, when a steamer hit a part of a bridge that wasn’t made to open en route, maritime law changed, requiring all bridges to have red lights as markers, distinct from lights on shore. No one was hurt, so the happy ending was that the passengers got to spend the night nearby and see a show at the Goodspeed Opera House, also written about in this blog. Plenty of other steamer accidents were deadly, borne of races and other mishaps, leading to the founding of the Coast Guard for monitoring and rescue.

Who wouldn’t love the mural that, when the switch is flipped, rocks like the waves on the Connecticut River? Apparently drunks, that’s who. They’re not too fond of a suddenly rolling room. It’s a really ingenious feature that came with this 1960s mural.

Yes, this mural actually rocks back and forth, like waves

You can probably make out the wake at the center. This perspective puts us on the back of a steamer, viewing our own trailing wake in the wide river. What fun this whole experience is!

The Inn also has a fragrant, evocative taproom–a busy place on Sunday afternoon. And then, there’s this room.

It’s another Wow, in a day full of them. Hung truly salon style, the paintings and ephemera jam every inch of wall and ceiling space of the Bridge Room. My most favorite were the posters of the women fighting for Temperance. Starting in the 1820s, women advocated against the reckless drinking that was notoriously tearing up families in the young country. Recognizing that total abstinence could be difficult when both religion and medicines used alcohol, the petitioners sought moderation.

Great Sots Temperance - cleaned up and frameless

The women marched. The inn keepers agreed. Men signed the pledge to take care of their families and stop drinking to excess. If a man signed his name with a T, then he pledged total abstinence, or to become a T-totaller. I always thought it was tea-totaller, as in being a tea v alcohol drinker. Geoff tells otherwise.

Of course, these women went on to fight slavery and advocate for the vote. Get this. As late as 1969, women could not stand at a bar in Connecticut. Yes, really. So a woman, yet another protester, came in demanding to be served. In cahoots with the innkeepers, she demanded her arrest. The case went to the Connecticut Supreme Court in Griswold Inn v State of Connecticut, and the Inn won!

Geoff made clear that the Inn relies on drinking for its sustenance. And Prohibition didn’t stand in the way. It is located right on the river. Sailors knew how to navigate in the dark. The inn did just fine during those years. About fifteen years ago, when renovations were being done in the library, Geoff finally learned where at least some of that rum was hidden. In the ceiling of the library was an 8′ long copper container. In the ceiling!

Don’t ever be shy about looking up in historic places. Who knows what you’ll find?

Looking up at a beautiful fan window on Main Street in Essex

Keeping Up with Time

Posted on April 6, 2015 by admin

A display of wood parts

For hundreds of years, clocks were made from wooden parts. Connecticut jumped into the clock-making world with an innovation by Eli Terry that kicked off the Industrial Revolution here. Yes, Terry made clocks out of wood parts, the traditional way. In 1802, he made 200 clocks. Slowly, by hand. Then he invented the mass-produced, interchangeable brass part.

Woo hoo! The cost of clocks plummet, and now every parlor can have one. Good thing, because everyone now had to be on time for that factory job. You had to ‘punch the clock’. Of course, you could take your chances, relying on the factory bell. But with New Haven and Bristol and Torrington and Waterbury and a number of smaller towns all churning out timepieces, why not have one of your own? Bristol alone had 275 clock-related businesses. Horology run amok!

You could get a New Haven Clock, the Wayland style on the left, say, for $25.50 in 1923, before it’s price zoomed to $32.10 in 1925. If you didn’t hurry though, you’d be out of luck. The Wayland was discontinued in 1930, making way for new styles.

As a woman, you might get a job with the clock world, too. Using a stencil to paint the clock face. And they are charming indeed! Every style you can think of and more you haven’t.

And I think there’s at least one of each style clock at the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol–with its 6000 timepieces. A wonder, when the hour strikes and so do all the clocks.

A Braille Clock, which I touched to feel the braille

You’ll get a history lesson there, too. Some clocks wouldn’t be so okay today.

I finally learned how a sailor’s clock works. The ship’s bell strikes one bell at 12:30, 4:30, and 8:30, both a.m. and p.m. Then an additional bell is rung each half hour until 8 bells (the max) are rung at 4, 8, and 12, then the process repeats. I finally know what 8 bells means! My literary knowledge of Moby Dick feels one step closer to completion.

The little mouse was the first.

You probably know I’m a huge fan of wind-up toys. I had no idea that these toys were invented in Bristol and are based on a clock’s gears and key.

Glad there was time for some inventive fun.

All those clock companies. What happened to them? Many burned down. Shellac used in the factory, highly flammable. Others went bankrupt from poor management. But go to Bristol and visit this unassuming, big-ticking-heart of a museum to get a flavor for its heyday.

1845 Whistle Pipe Organ clock, that played one of seven tunes each day at noon

Up and Down

Posted on April 6, 2015 by admin

Reginald Marsh, "Wooden Horses" [detail], 1936, tempera on board; 24 x 40 inches, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, The Dorothy Clark Archibald and Thomas L. Archibald Fund, The Krieble Family Fund for American Art, The American Paintings Purchase Fund, and The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 2013.1.1. "Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008"

With two exhibits and an entire museum, I’ve been thinking a lot about carousels. Yes, the Wadsworth Atheneum has its Coney Island exhibit mounted, the same one I worked on 15 months ago. And the Yale School of Art has the “Side Show ” exhibit, as a literal side show about the freaky side of the carnival. In the Reginald Marsh painting from the Wadsworth, the women seem be deadly serious about racing to the finish line, beating out the man in the red bowler. No simple up and down ride for them.

I learned at the New England Carousel Museum in Bristol, CT that carousels didn’t even go up and down until 1907. In fact, carousels started as a training tool for knights. Um, yes, medieval knights. They would practice spearing rings with lances.

Maybe you’ve ridden a carousel where you tried to snare a ring. In the Golden Age of carousels, that is the 19th century, that’s where we got the idea of “grabbing the brass ring.” A winner on the carousel, and in life, grabs the brass ring. But liability put a stop to that. Now we have to be content riding up and down. No killer scenes like Marsh gives us.

Who knew there are different styles of carousel horses? The first permanent park carousel was in Philadelphia, and the Phily style is oh so graceful. Moreso than the solid and chunky Country Fair style. And then there’s the Coney Island style, showy and pretty.

The menagerie animals are great fun. Hard to believe they fell out of favor for the more popular horse carousel. Who wouldn’t want to ride a rooster, a giraffe (who’s eyes follow you no matter where you move), a tiger, a hare, or a camel? If not a horse, then why not a zebra or a seahorse?

The horses are completely wonderful, too. I’ve never seen a three-dimensional carved flower on a carousel horse before. Tres elegant!

Or what about a bulldog or a leprachaun, hidden under the saddle?

The museum shows how the animals are constructed form wood and in pieces, even if they appear whole. Also the animals get smaller closer in to the center pole, an attempt aso the most elaborate carving is saved for the outside ring. Notice that when you next ride a carousel. Or maybe, you want to go to Bristol and ride one there!

This slide show will further introduce you to its glories…

[Show picture list]

The Eye Man

Posted on March 21, 2015 by admin

The Museum of Arts and Design is a happy source for sparking new ideas.

The current exhibit of Latin American artists, like so many of their shows, mixes unlikely materials with functionality. Like the chairs made out of lace cloth by Diana Cabeza.

Sebastian Errazuruz from Chile. has a shoe-art wall. Love it! For me, the show stopper is his commentary on labor and consumerist excess. The Atlas with the world of the golden stiletto on his shoulder. This in a time when women are spending well over a thousand dollars for glass slippers.

At my personal time of questioning/questionable vision, I particularly enjoyed the exhibit of Richard Estes‘ paintings, watercolors, silk screens, and photography. He’s a photo-realist who has long depicted pop culture with his stylized muscle-car paintings and other scenes with hyper-realized reflections. Here are his street scenes of New York.

Richard Estes, Sunday Afternoon in the Park, 1989. oil on canvas

Look at the vantage points he plays with. Overhead at the automat. Straight on with a couple lounging on a rock at Central Park, with the distorting city panorama.

Richard Estes, Automat, c1971, oil on masonite

In several works he distorts viewer understanding of reality and vision. His confusing self portraits like this one with his reflection on the Staten Island Ferry. His presence is a shadow, a reflection. He’s really inaccessible. More like a mirage.

Richard Estes, Self Portrait, 2013, oil on board

You might not be surprised that my favorite is “The Eye Man” from 2014. Look at how he plays with reflection, being able to see, signs, windows onto another world. “Use It or Lose It” one sign at the lower center reads. Ain’t that the truth?

Richard Estes, The Eye Man, 2014, oil on canvas

Family Photos

Posted on February 14, 2015 by admin

Two really sweet exhibits at Yale made me think about my family and family photos and family connections. No, these shows aren’t at the Beineke or the Art Gallery or the art school. One is at the Hillel and the other at a center for emeriti faculty.

My friend Julie grew up in a Yale family, her father a professor, her mother a Dean. Now retired, her father still teaches the odd course here and there and engages with the Koerner Center, named for Henry Koerner, the artist, who after fleeing Europe and famously illustrating the Nuremberg Trials, taught in the Yale art department.

Now, Alan Trachtenberg has an exhibit of his black-and-white portrait photographs at the Koerner. Each tells a story, not just of the sitter, but instead the relationship with the photographer, and in his absence, with us as viewers. These are not easy conversations. Who is the stern woman? (Turns out, it’s his wife!) The quizzical young man? How has the photographer interrupted the couple, and does that explain why they look at us the way they do?

The exhibit at the Slivka Center, No One Remembers Alone, is surprisingly touching, telling the story of a love affair and the family that surrounds it. It’s a Jewish story, of Abraham and Sophie, who are separated when she immigrates first, to Brooklyn.

They really fall in love through postcards–even the poor could afford the one penny stamp. A portrait photograph was cheap enough, too. Like a great love letter, these cards were saved over the decades. Found in a suitcase and translated from Yiddish, the cards are displayed chronologically at Hillel on a round wheel-like display, where the back is visible, as well as the front.

7 sisters

Chava in 1910

While I loved that story, there were also the stories of their siblings. Chava makes the trip to the U.S. in the place of Gitel, her sister, who fell in love with a young teacher Velvei Schapoachnik. So much for going to the U.S.

So Chava travels under Gitel’s name, and the ship’s manifest is on display. But then, in the U.S., she’s an illegal immigrant. She was terrified of being deported, until she was finally able to naturalize as a citizen about thirty years later, in 1940.

Then there’s her brother Abram. In 1899, when he was 13, he walked 3 kilometers to the farm school funded by the Jewish Colonization Association. He wasn’t admitted because he was considered too weak and malnourished for the accompanying farm labor. But this didn’t stop Abram. He went again the next day and was turned away again. He went every day for a month, until his tenacity got him a place in school.

Abram at school

Abram was the only member of his family to be educated, and his career came as a result, cultivating flowers and plants.

And so the love of learning moved through his world, as it does mine. And I’m grateful to my family, who made similar choices as this family of strangers, who really don’t seem strange at all.

Caravaggisti Joy

Posted on January 9, 2015 by admin

The Calling of Saint Matthew - Caravaggio - www.caravaggio-foundation.org

Caravaggio’s The Calling of St Matthew, 1599-1600, with chiaroscuro — contrasting darks and lights

The followers of the Baroque artist Caravaggio were a serious lot. Dubbed the Caravaggisti, they delved into explorations of deep shadow and the metaphors of light, following the master’s path. Of course, they mostly lived in the 1600s in Holland and Flanders, as well as Northern Europe.

Georges De La Tour, Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, c. 1640, a Caravaggisti

But you may be surprised to learn we have a Caravaggisti in our midst–Joy Bush.

Caravaggio as Sick Bacchus, 1593

Now showing at the Da Silva Gallery in New Haven, you, too, can immerse in her inky blacks and note the extraordinary color that emerges in the light. She’s not fascinated by religious iconography or even Caravaggio’s scenes of debauchery.

No, she’s interested in toys. Me, too!

She gives them serious names; she treats them seriously. I’m sure you see the religious significance of this stuffed elephant.

But really. These photographs are just plain fun. My kind of Caravaggisti!

Museum of Curiosities

Posted on December 29, 2014 by admin

Old State House, Hartford

P.T. Barnum was an elected Representative to the Connecticut state legislature, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the refined, Federal style Old State House has a Museum of Curiosities, inaugurated in 1797. Now, this exhibit certainly doesn’t attain the level of the bizarre that Barnum promoted. But how often do you get to see a two-headed calf?

In this, the first capitol building in Connecticut, where the no-doubt somber, initial trials of the Amistad’s rebellious captives took place, before moving to New Haven; where representatives from around New England gathered to decide whether to secede from the U.S. in 1814, in displeasure over the war with England; in this august hall with its Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington…

…you can bet that people flocked instead to see giant tarantulas, an alligator, a whale bone, a shrunken hand, and yes, even a two-headed pig. How did this come to be?

First, Charles Willson Peale had already done something similar at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Peale Museum was the nation’s purported first museum. Here, at Connecticut’s State House, portrait painter Joseph Steward was given the right to have his painting studio in the building. There, he could capture the likenesses of the important political dignitaries working below.

He also had quite the collection of oddities and whatnots from his world-wide travels. And his museum was born. He advertised in the Connecticut Courant newspaper an inventory of just what you could see if you visited, and the exhibit remained in place until 1810.

One advertisement, click to enlarge and read

Why did such a popular exhibit close? Think about it. The two-headed pig wasn’t preserved, and it disintegrated. Ewww. Same with the other organic specimens. So it took restoration of the building in the 1990s for the museum to be recreated. The only original items are the portraits that Steward painted, including of the ubiquitous George Washington, as you can see in the photo above.

Now the challenge. How do you find a two-headed calf, or for that matter a two-headed pig? The curators checked auction lots. No luck. So a little known farm fact came to bear. Apparently, two-headed-farm-animal births are not all that rare, and in the midwest, a still born, two-headed calf became the museum’s highlight, this time appropriately preserved.

This isn’t fake. It’s not a Barnum & Bailey manipulated display. Stuff happens.

At least I spared you a picture of the two-headed pig fetus in a jar. Ewww.

If it all becomes just too much for you, you can always take a seat at one of the original Legislators’ desks, catch your breath, and reflect on just how good you’ve got it!

Memory (and loss)

Posted on November 30, 2014 by admin

I had a busy day in New York today with four museums, a three-mile walk, two plays, and one friend. No partridges or pear trees, but easily 100,000 tourists.

The most memorable painting was Velazquez’s Old Woman Cooking Eggs at the Frick. We don’t see too much Velazquez here in the U.S., so make a point to see it while it’s visiting from Scotland. You’ll also get to see a luscious Sargent I’ve only seen in the books. You could eat it with a spoon. Both brought back the pleasures of study, as another gallery visitor and I talked about Foucault’s essay on Velazquez and Las Meninas. Ah, the good ol’ days.

Piwyac, the Vernal Fall, 300 Feet, Yosemite

The theme of memory, and it’s concomitant idea–loss–started to tie my disparate day together. At the Met, Carleton Watkins‘ remarkable 1861 and 1865 albumen prints capture a Yosemite that really only exists in memory now. Imagine carrying huge glass plate negatives on the backs of his dozen mules to reach the vantage points he made famous. And those silken photographs are almost other-worldly beautiful.

While Annie Liebowitz is known for her evocative photographic portraits, she too has made landscape prints, now at New York Historical. These are basically memory pieces, of places that are significant to her. But her printing manipulation left me cold in a way her portraits never do. Even as she may be commenting on the tendency of memory to exaggerate, the over-saturation of color feels unnecessary and inauthentic.

My favorite image from the show; Niagara Falls, 2009

Not so the deeply touching, wrenching really, performance of xx, the mother in The Oldest Boy, a play by Sarah Ruhl in the intimate Mitzi Newhouse at Lincoln Center. Intimacy is important, as we enter into the sweet, mystical storytelling complete with Buddhist monks, chants, and Chinese Opera dancers. The beautiful staging opens up from a living room to Dharamsala in India, the refuge of Tibetans.
James Saito, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jon Norman Schneider

What if your child were a reincarnated Lama? This mother, a philosopher of religions and student of literature, suffers the loss of her teacher, as does one of the Lamas. His teacher has been reborn as her son, passing remarkable tests of memory across lives, as a three year old.

At times, the writing is a bit pedantic. Religion is easy until it becomes inconvenient. We want our able-bodied mom to take care of our children, until she’s not, and then we put her in a home. Americans always want choice and to have it our way. The irony of using “attachment parenting” when Buddhists believe in non-attachment.

Still witnessing the raw-emotional process of this mother, played by Celia Kennan-Bolger, letting go of her child moved me more than any theater I’ve seen in an age. It was tender and genuine. Beautiful and old fashioned in a way you wouldn’t expect of Ruhl.

The poetry of the set

As are the 40 years worth of annual photographs of the four Brown sisters, taken by Nicholas Nixon, the whole series now on view at MOMA. Hot tip! You don’t have to stand in the horrible lines, pay the highway robbery entrance fee, or tolerate the beast of a crowd for Matisse’s cut-outs. These gems are in the lobby–granted probably the most challenging place imaginable for a meditation, I bet even for a monk.

1975

But do. Meditate. Watch these girls grow up, face life (and the camera) or not, lean for support, stand defiant…and survive. Poignant, real, memories made tangible. You may even feel a kind of loss as you let them go. They are women you want in your life.

2014

Freedom from Want

Posted on October 25, 2014 by admin

As you know, my argument is that we’re in another economic depression now, and my day in New York made the comparisons to the 1930s striking.

Thomas Hart Benton
Instruments of Power
America Today mural series
1930-1

America Today

I started at the Met, where I finally got to see America Today, the murals by Thomas Hart Benton that have been re-homed from the New School. Over the years there, students had rammed chairs into the murals, and they were otherwise degrading. Now revitalized in glorious color, made richer through the darkened exhibition space, the murals tell the story of America in a moment–1930-1, when the Great Depression was just sucking away the country’s vitality.

Reginald Marsh
The Bowery
1930 an artist also known for pulsating energy

Benton celebrates though. America’s pulse, its chaos and determination, its strengths and its smarts.

Certainly compared with Reginald Marsh’s nearby The Bowery from the same year, 1930, the murals are propagandistically optimistic. The glory of work, the ingenuity of technology, the voice of entertainment, all punctuated with clarifying red.

Benton loved red.

America Today

America Today

Pieter Coecke van Aelst
Conversion of St. Paul
1563
Look at that red and those gestures!

While the curators draw connection to Baroque painting as an influence on Benton’s energetic compositions, I was also taken by the drama of the Renaissance tapestries, a newly opened, scintillating exhibition at the Met. Surely Benton was influenced by the Renaissance body and borrowed from religious ecstasy for his modern passions.

Jackson Pollack
Pasiphae
1943

Detail America Today

And where would Jackson Pollack be if he hadn’t been under the influence of his teacher’s, Benton’s, quivering, pulsating storytelling? And Benton was completely modern, as you can see here.

But the art historian digresses.

Back on point, we, too, today crave celebrity entertainment and the refuge of technological wizardry to forget our troubles with work and the sour economy. We like to think of America’s strength, even as evidence shows the contrary.

From the Met, I walked over to the newly-open-for-tours Roosevelt House. After Sara Roosevelt’s death, in 1942, Hunter College bought the house and has been using it for classrooms. Just about the only thing left from the quiet wealth of the Roosevelts is the staircase bannister. I ran my hand up the rail where Eleanor may have, too. I haven’t washed my hand since!

I joined a tour/lecture, led by a history doctoral student. As he told us about FDR’s and Eleanor’s accomplishments, I was most taken by the Four Freedoms speech, so relevant today. Only the names have changed. Have we progressed at all?

I was interested in the speech’s afterlife. Norman Rockwell had a hard time getting support to make his monumental paintings of the same name. Finally, the Saturday Evening Post printed the series, which became phenomenally popular, driven by a Bentonesque vision of America. Then the war bonds office came up with a program. For an $18.75 war bond purchase, you would receive a set of the four posters. And the rest is history.

Or is it? How much do we tolerate freedom of religion post 9/11? In light of a string of natural disasters and Ebola, how free from fear are we? In an era of political correctness, changing mores, and lax gun laws, are we really free to speak our minds?

And freedom from want? That issue was actually secondary in “Grand Concourse,” now at Playwrights. Yes, it takes place in the Bronx today in a soup kitchen. Yes, one of the four characters is a homeless man who teeters on the ability to get and hold a job and function well, but I think playwright Heidi Schrek uses her setting as a metaphor, a rumination on the nature of giving and how generosity of spirit can get twisted. People younger than I am, though, may see the play through different eyes. Check it out, and see what you think.

Regardless, may you be free from want this harvest season, on all levels of body and being.

Remarkable Minds

Posted on October 20, 2014 by admin

Being in the mind of the boy with Asperger’s Syndrome from “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” is amazing, nightmarish, poetic, angry, funny, noisy, harrowing, despairing, and remarkable–sometimes all at the same time. I wondered how the book would get staged, and it’s a thing of chaotic beauty and wonder. The staging with its ever-flexible grid set and the acting are breathtaking. We are inside his mind, and his mind becomes his body, lifted, swung, tumbled, hurtled, crouching, collapsing.

My seat was on the left center aisle on the first row. I saw the goosebumps on the boy’s arm and could have stroked that arm as he squatted right in front of me, in a quiet moment. Close enough to see a tear smear his eye. This boy wasn’t acting. He was Christopher. At the end when he asks, “can I do anything?” three yearning times with no answer from the other actor before the blackout, I wanted to scream “yes!”

This is some piece of theater, and if you want to amplify the experience, take in the powerful show of Norman Lewis and Lee Krasner at the Jewish Museum.

Norman Lewis, Twilight Sounds, 1947

Their calligraphic paintings especially work like Christopher’s mind. Lewis’ lines are almost dainty in their expression, while Krasner deliciously glopped and carved the paint on her ironically carefully-constructed compositions.

Lee Krasner, Stop and Go, 1949

Many think she taught her husband Jackson Pollack a thing or two about painting.

Lee Krasner, Noon, 1947

And given these works from the late 1940s, before Pollack’s breakthrough paintings in the 1950s, you can see how. Like so many others, she back-seated her career for his craziness, and we’re not better as a result.

TJM_KrasnerLewis_F30_KrasnerUntitled1949_hero

Lee Krasner, Untitled, 1949

Still you can revel in the works of this small show and enter the worlds of all of these remarkable minds.

Lee Krasner, Self-Portrait, 1939

Leaf Fall Season

Posted on October 16, 2014 by admin

This autumn is proving to be startlingly colorful, and what better way to celebrate than with a drive. So a group from the Florence Griswold Museum ventured first to the Smith College Museum of Art and then to Historic Deerfield. But first, some trivia. Did you know that the seasonal term ‘fall’ comes from the old phrase ‘leaf fall time’? The leaf fall was our backdrop as we set off on our journey back in time.

Our current exhibition of three Connecticut women artists includes Mary Rogers Williams, who taught under a dominant male artist presence, at Smith College for over 20 years in the 1880s and 1890s. When she asked for recognition for her teaching service with a promotion to Assistant Professor, she was basically fired. Even a woman’s college might not be so enlightened back in the day.

But it was fun to see her teaching domain and hear a sophomore talk about her research on Williams. Of course, her source was the same as the exhibit’s–Eve Kahn‘s research through Williams’ papers and a trove of paintings found in a Connecticut boathouse. I’m not kidding. The paintings were ‘stored’ there and kept by the descendants of an artist friend Henry C. White, who inherited the works from Williams’ also unmarried sister. Had he not safeguarded, in his way, those works and her letters, well, like so many others, Williams would have been basically forgotten.

Although we had a tour of the museum with a women artist theme, including a lackluster Lilly Martin Spencer, I was much more attracted to other women artists displayed there.

Florine Stettheimer Henry McBride, Art Critic, 1922

Florine Stettheimer doesn’t show up in too many museum collections, outside of the Met and PAFA, but one surprised me here. Her style is unmistakeable, and I’m always delighted by her sense of color and her take-no-prisoners attitude about art and being a professional and living her life her own way. Right on, sister!

I sought out the works of Smith alums. Just loved the monumental jelly doughnuts by Emily Eveleth.

Betye Saar, Ancestral Spirit Chair, 1992

This particular Betye Saar work just makes me happy. The back story is she was slated to speak at Smith, but that inner-flea-market- dumpster-diver took hold of her, and she went off to explore for treasure. She bought a whole bunch of salt shakers, seen at these branch ends, like a different season’s leaf. She was also two hours late for her talk. What was Smith to do, except acquire the work.

Saar typically captures some folkloric, cultural, or puns on African American stereotypical content in her work. Here the shakers stand in for a rural Southern tradition of putting bottles in tree branches to capture spirits. The docent in the gallery said she thinks of this as a chair we can sit in and dial our ancestors. I would have loved to have a sit in this spiritual phone booth and dial out.

Not to be missed are the “artist-designed” bathrooms. Here’s a slide show to give you a sense of how it looks.

[Show picture list]

Historic Deerfield didn’t have a compable “historically-designed” bathroom, but its designs are equally inspiring. I hadn’t really thought through that there were two waves of Colonial Revivalism. One spurted off as a reaction to industrialization in the late 1800s through the 1920s or so, spinning off the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco.

In the 1940s, a second wave exploded, in response to the Cold War. Interesting. Moguls wanting to leave their legacy in the latest fashion built historic villages, with the Rockefellers

The docent told me that this door frame is “bogus”–too ornate for the 1734 home of a minister.

reconstructing a Disneyfied Colonial Williamsburg and the Flints making their own mistakes with existing structures in Deerfield.

What’s fun is on “The Street” are the actual buildings for the post office, school, and two working farms as they existed in the 1700s. Probate records and dendrology (using tree rings to date wood and hence structures) have helped more recent historians correct earlier mistakes, like stuffing rooms full of things, more like a gallery than someone’s Puritan home.

Probate records indicated that 360 panes of glass were bought for this house, and at 9 over 9 panes, we know there was glass for 20 windows.

The Deerfield houses have these double doors seen above, because originally the houses all had a center hall chimney. You wouldn’t have room to swing open a single door, so double doors became the style, as well as the practical solution. Even later, when center halls were valued for entertaining and the chimneys were moved to the sides of houses, the double door style can still be seen.

Besides small gardens associated with each house, several farmers shared acreage in a common field, where they could grown various grains. These were used to feed the really money maker for Deerfield–stall-fed oxen. You gotta love this oxen toy shown in the museum.

Who wouldn’t love this Colonial form of marketing? It’s all in the unrelievedly blue paint. Every bit of this facade–the dentils, the eyebrows, the pilasters–are all painted this robin egg blue. Paint was very expensive. Most of the houses left the cedar bare to weather. The 1747 house has been painted this blue since 1801. Why? If you went into the tavern to get help resolving a dispute, you would ask for a lawyer. The tavern keeper could then direct you to the blue house. Unmistakable bill-boarding. Like the leaves that fall every year, some things never change.

Sauntering in the Footsteps

Posted on October 13, 2014 by admin

This has been a weekend of sauntering–through luscious Stitches East, where those who knit, crochet, and weave are in paradise, to the creative paradise of City-Wide Open Studios at New Haven’s Armory to the cultural paradise of New York City, whose heart was captured momentarily by Oscar Wilde.

Stitches East is the huge show that takes place somewhere in the western US and for the eastern half in Hartford. It’s a place where everyone is your friend, and the textural stimulation and color palettes can be pleasurably exhausting. I went home with yummy cashmere to work up.

Site-specific installation at the Armory

Julie and I tasted a different kind of yummy at the Armory. Rather than try to see it all, we lingered with just a few artists to hear their stories. Wonderful museum educator Jaime Ursic also makes enchanting prints. Hearing her talk about her work makes the abstraction come alive with narrative. We sauntered along with Jaime on the streets of Florence and the beach and…

Jaime Ursic
Santa Monica Mountains
2010

Jeanne Criscola makes family recipes as way to connect to her family stories and identity. Love how she shot a close-up video of the recipes being cooked and blew up those grainy photos of our childhoods. She told us how many people and experiments were needed to get an Italian sugar cookie just right. Just like my grandmother’s humantashen, although no one has ever captured it. Jeanne’s cookie was dime-sized and melted on my tongue.

Jeanne Criscola & Joan Fitzsimmons
Oral History: A Recipe for Memory, Food, video, online database

She calls the work an oral history project, but that’s really more for the future, as she and her art partner Joan Fitzsimmons grow the project to include all of us interactively, with photos, recipes, and stories. Too delicious.

Current art in Madison Square

Oscar Wilde sauntered his aesthetic way through New York City, and we followed in his footsteps through Madison Square, Gramercy, Union Square, and the West Village. Along the way, we met Washington Irving and lingered by Pete’s Tavern, where O’Henry wrote “Gift of the Magi.”

Perfect framing of the Chrysler Building, in Gramercy Park

Edwin Booth in Gramercy Park

But Wilde was our focus. That ‘Midwife of Modernity.’ Only intending to stay for a few months, his lecture tour was such a smash that he stayed a year, in 1892, spreading the aesthetic of the aesthete. His long hair and smooth cheek were avant garde in bearded Gilded Age New York. The trip was sponsored by D’oyly Carte, promoting their new show Patience and its aesthete character.

Wilde cultivated his look and image, basically inventing the modern celebrity–famous simply for being famous. On his trip to NYC, he had a series of 30 photos made by Napoleon Sarony. Thievery of those photos for ads for cigarettes and clothing and postcards in shop windows, all capitalizing on Wilde’s fame, led Sarony to sue. This wasn’t the first time for such piracy of Sarony’s works, but Wilde’s fame helped his cause. When the Supreme Court found in his favor, copyright protection for creative works was born.

Although he had only self-published a book of poetry at this point, Wilde’s lectures sold out. Although we undereducated Americans apparently couldn’t understand his lecture on the English Renaissance and how aesthetics affect all forms of art. I don’t think he cared much, although he did deliver a dumbed down version. At $1 admission each, and an audience size of a thousand, Wilde got rich.

Newspapers tracked his movements and published his poetry and selections from his talks. Cartoons made fun of his effete manner. At the male bastion Century Club, he was called a charlatan, a slur as a Charlotte Ann.

Yet he dined at the most fashionable houses, a man with “simple taste in food, satisfied by the very best.” Bessie Marbury became his literary agent, and first woman agent, who also had what Henry James called a Boston marriage with interior designer Elsie DeWolfe. So another literary connection, as the latter was launched by Edith Wharton’s wildly popular book, The Decoration of Houses. New York is so tiny.

Mark Venaglia, Pastures

Wilde made the lily and sunflower the emblems of the aesthetes. What fun to meet artist Mark Venaglia on the tour. He’s famous for his sunflower paintings, selling to Julia Roberts and Wall Street types. Today’s aesthete?

Photos of the day:

There’s no day when the Flatiron fails to please…

Flatiron, 10-12-14

From the Flatiron to irony:

New York City, 10-12-14

Halloweed dress-up comes early

Posted on October 6, 2014 by admin

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

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.

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

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.

Well, 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.

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.

I especially enjoyed the music–madrigals…

…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

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

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.

Printing Food

Posted on September 26, 2014 by admin

Well, here’s another fun show to add to your fall exhibition schedule! Julianne Biehl, dear artist friend of my mother and me, has a print in the tasty new show at the Newport Art Museum: Palate to Plate: Prints & Recipes From Members of The Boston Printmakers.

So what’s a Dallas/Colorado artist doing in a Boston print show in Newport, RI? Well, the Boston Printmakers is an international group, and the 99 high-calibre artists in the Newport show are from all over.

What brings them together is this theme of food and printmaking, or prints of food accompanying their recipes, collected in this charming cookbook/catalogue.

In this era of 3D printing, where the printer can make a plastic car or a gun that shoots, there’s something refreshing about an exhibit of ideas on paper. But no worries, there’s lots of variety in the visual interpretations. Each print is its own surprise, its own story. Julianne’s is quite typical of her painterly style and passion for color. Here’s my not-so-great image of her page in the catalogue.

Vegetable soup is Julianne’s favorite soup. Some kind of hot, wowza!

To read her recipe, click to enlarge the image.

Julianne’s and my mother’s paintings talk color together with great verve. Here’s the painting “Joyous Song” by Julianne that I get to enjoy.

So if you’re heading to Newport for a day of beauty, make sure to catch the scrumptious exhibit. Although you do take the risk of leaving very hungry!

Industrial Revelation

Posted on August 19, 2014 by admin

Alice and I adventured to Lowell, MA on Saturday. I had recently read The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott. Whereas the author succumbed to romance-novel tropes, I loved her description of the daily life of the mill girls. I wanted to see for myself, and Alice was game to visit the National Park Service site there.

We started at the beginning, with the building of the power canal. This picturesque trolleyman, Thomas Tucker, took us along the railroad tracks to our boat.

There we got our first glimpse at the managed waterway.

Clever businessmen, wanting to harvest timber for ship building in Newburyport, figured out how to maneuver a 32′ drop in the Merrimack River, turning it into a highway for the transport of goods. Through a series of locks.

In 1796, farmers sold part of their land and then provided the labor to dig through the massive rock layers and open up trenches for the canals. Lock chambers were constructed to manage the rise and drop of water levels that ranged from 2′ to 17′. Our own lock experience: a 5′ water level change, after a particularly heavy rain, when it would normally be about 2-3′.

Headed toward the lock chamber. See the lock keepers on top? They will manually open the lock for us.

Butt power opens the lock

You might get a kick out of the import rates on the canal. Manure cost 50 cents per boatload. Uh huh. Manure was imported into Lowell, not the other way around. Some clever experimenter found out that a chemical in manure set dyes to prevent fading. Imagine that smell!

click to enlarge

Perhaps you’d rather import white oak pipe staves. 100 cents per M.

We bumped our way through the lock system, away from the mills toward the open river.

This portrait of Mr. Francis hangs in the Whistler birthplace home and museum

This portrait of Mr. Francis hangs in the nearby Whistler birthplace home and museum

We learned about the Chief of Police of Water, James Francis. This clever engineer invented a flood gate system (you’ve heard “opening the flood gates”) to protect the town during wild weather. He was given a parade and a tea set when he saved the town from flooded catastrophe in 1848, with the first use of the 4 1/2 ton, wood gates.

The other side. A marvel of the wide canal and nature!

In 1816, the original canal system was expanded from the initial 10′ width, opening up the waterway to larger boats and more traffic. The timing was perfect for Mr. Lowell, who, in 1810, traveled to England, well into its own Industrial Revolution, to study its mill system. Returning in 1817, he began to invent Lowell as a mill town, but more importantly as an “industrial laboratory.”

Used to be farm land. Now mill after mill, powered by the canal generated lock system. A small lock here.

Ironically, with the farmers looking for short-term cash, they in essence brought their way of life to an end. In less than 30 years, the farms were gone. The pastoral was replaced with the industrial.

By the 1830s, Lowell was a showplace of industrial prowess. And a new labor force was created–the daughters of those nearby farmers. Now, the girls and young women could become financially useful to their families by working for wages and living by the “clock and bell,” instead of the sun.

Boott Cotton Mill

First bell, 4 a.m. Work at 4:30 a.m. The girls would take a 35 minute break for breakfast, and later, their other meals. They would rush from the mill back to their boardinghouse, shared with 25-40 other girls.

A typical mill owned some 70 boardinghouse blocks, some reserved for men, who performed the awful tasks of carding the wool–a lung-killing job. After the Civil War, mill owners were less “paternalistic” and workers could live wherever they chose in the city. But initially, it was a factory town system.

Boarding house dining room

Part of worker wages were garnished to pay the “Keeper,” who could then skimp or over-indulge as she pleased. One daughter complained about her mother who couldn’t make ends meet as a Keeper, being too generous in her portions. Some made up the difference, breaking the rules by serving non-mill residents. Tension over pay spilled beyond the disgruntled mill girls, who in 1847, made $2 per week, after room and board was deducted.

Still $2 was enough for financial autonomy. After sending money home, they still had some left for themselves and became instrumental in creating a consumer economy of readymade products geared toward women. Inexpensive jewelry, hat decorations, even a book, all became desirable treats after working their 73 hour work week. 13 hours Monday through Friday, 8 hours on Saturday. In their free time, they might ride the trolley to the end of the line for the amusement park (which encouraged the trolley use on non-work days; always thinking how to make a $).

Spinning Jenny, 2nd generation technology to speed up the spinning process

One child who was hired to “doff the bobbins” (taking the empty bobbins to the spinners and full bobbins to the weaving floor) said that, at first, the job seemed like play. But after doing the same thing over and over, all week long, well…

And the noise. Perhaps the most evocative part of the day was hearing just a few weaving machines running at Boott Cotton Mill. Incessant bang, bam, bang, bam, bang, bam. Really Loud. You’ll notice in this video, that the “mill girl” is wearing ear plugs.

Not so back in the day. No surprise, the girls only lasted 3-4 years on average. The job was a path to independence or marriage or … illness. This is one aspect the Alcott novel explores pretty well, as does Elizabeth Gaskell’s amazing North and South.

The size of the room. Imagine if all the machines were running. The cloth made here is sold in the gift shop.

With such efficient production, supply soon exceeded demand, and the manufacturers wanted to cut wages. After all, the mill girls were making more than teachers. The workforce started to shift to immigrants, desperate for the work even at lower wages. Irish, Greeks, French Canadians, Jews, and more took over from the moral “mill girl,” and Lowell began its slow descent.

The mills lost money during the Civil War, and the genteel boarding houses for the mill girls were replaced by tenements.

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While the first protests were conducted by the mill girls, in 1912, a wage reduction led to a massive union strike. Continuing financial strain prevented investing in the latest technology, too. After World War I, “Spindle City” couldn’t compete with the mills in the South. Some moved, others were abandoned, many torn down. Some became artist lofts.

After the river was cleaned up. Lowell had grade D water according to the 1972 Clean Air and Water Act. The canal water would turn bright yellow or hot red, depending on the dyes dumped in it. Now, the water is a B. Technically, you can fish and swim. Hmmm.

By 1960, it was basically over. Some who volunteer in the museum mill, worked for the real deal in the 1980s. But that was a last and dying breath. For a town that prided itself on a motto like “Art is the Handmaid of Human Good,” Lowell “sacrificed its workers for dividends” and its fresh, clean environment for expediency. “Sounds familiar,” Alice mused, referring to today’s repetition of history.

Whistler's father James McNeil Whistler may have hailed from Lowell, but he saw fit to lie about it, claiming Baltimore or England as his birthplace. But the house is in Lowell, and the Art Association is working very hard to restore it. We were given a private, detailed tour by the director, before looking around at its small, nice art collection on our own. After all, where else could you see Whistler’s father?

Weaving Personal Stories

Posted on July 31, 2014 by admin

While the crowds were at the crowd-pleasing Madeline exhibit, I lingered in the New York Historical Society’s thoughtful and thought-provoking show of Civil War textiles.

Click in and then zoom in for the patriotic theme

In a time when a show of patriotism in a dress fabric or handkerchief could be dangerous to flaunt in the street, politics play throughout the era revealing a complexity that defies any North-good/South-bad dichotomy.

Commemorative handkerchief of people and battles

And exhibits like this help me look behind the war news to how people lived everyday.

Eastman Johnson
Knitting for the Soldiers
1861

Women knitted stockings in every spare moment. Your son or brother or husband was marching through a pair a week. And the war went on for so long, with endless marching. Hand knits were valued over cheaply made mill products.

But soldiers seemed to hate havelocks, even when handmade by women at home. This cap inspired by soldiers in India, protects your beloved’s neck from being sunburned. The men didn’t care, using them instead as bandages or rags.

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But all the men, enlisted and officers alike, carried a Housewife, like a little sewing kit, and here is the camp bed made by General Thomas Hubbard. Everyone had to be crafty and resourceful for meager comforts.

Back home, if bereaved, you could order your mourning attire and black bunting for your windows, doors, and mirrors from a sample book, complete with a range of shades of black. The book on display from Jordan Marsh in Boston made the reality and prevalence of death as powerful as any battlefield photograph.

Women in the South made quilts for the war effort, as a correlate for the Sanitary Commission in the North. Fantastic artistry with fabric was sold to fund the building of a gunboat or other war needs. Politics was ever present. The Arkansas maker of this quilt put nine stars on her flag because hers was the ninth state to secede.

The quilts were often buried to protect them from Union soldiers, who also took them home as souvenirs. One Georgian woman watched her quilts be torn apart for use as saddle blankets for Union horses. A need and sign of disrespect at the same time.

The explosively rising cost of cotton was a boon for Northern mills, which could temper prices through manufacturing efficiencies. Here’s a Northern quilt made from the scraps of mill-made uniforms.

Many hands worked on this story quilt from 1875, advocating for Women’s Rights- the cause that took a back seat to abolition. Post war, women didn’t want to retreat into the background, another war casualty.

In 1881, some clever recycler used souvenir ribbons from the war to make her quilt.

One object was actually terrifying in person. The KKK formed in1866 after the war, to reassert white supremacy in the South. Quashed by Federal forces by 1873, it reemerged with force in 1915, in reaction to immigration. The hood on display, with its tiny tear and stain (which I couldn’t bear to be near, much less photograph), demonstrates that women were admitted to the KKK. It was cherished enough to be preserved by its owner, a woman from Vermont.

I put this story together for you, a select few of many from the show. It’s so much more. There’s beauty large and grand, hand-held and quotidian. A slice of war life through textiles that makes it all seem so timeless, timely, and present.

Mesmerized

Posted on July 13, 2014 by admin

Garry Winogrand is getting the full treatment at the Met, with an exhibition of previously unprinted images. Regardless of the controversy about that (what was the artist’s intention?), his work has all the freshness, immediacy, sadness, and irreverence it ever had.

El Morocco, 1955

What a way to see New York in the 50s through the 70s. How did he get those shots? Did he zoom from a distance? He has a right-fhereness sensibility. He puts us on the scene.

Central Park Zoo, 1967

What do you make of this image? Of course, this is one of his more provocative works. I’m immediately reminded of Karen Joy Fowler’s remarkable sibling novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. But that’s not how most have seen it. The wall text argues that because the man was a famous animal handler, this is more an image of love than miscegenation.

Los Angeles, 1969

I find this image more disturbing. Winogrand refuses to discuss the content of his images, saying this one is about light. Boy, is it! Look at how the light tells this particular story. How do you interpret the boy’s thoughts and experience?

State Fair of Texas, Dallas, 1964

Of course, Winogrand is wry and funny, too. I liked the implied commentary in this image of my Dallas hometown. I couldn’t agree more, on every level.

Las Vegas, 1957

Some images are just beautiful…

New York, 1960

…many are wistful

New York, 1960

…and empty

…and mesmerizing.

1964 World’s Fair

The way the Jeff Koons exhibit at the Whitney mesmerized me was a surprise. They’ve given the whole building over to him, the swan song show for their Upper East Side location. Well, I gave it 15 minutes, which is all the fame I think he deserves.

What fascinated me was the number of children, little children, there. You don’t see children at most exhibits, none at the Winogrand show. An unknowing visitor could think you were at a children’s museum.

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Here, the children responded with unrestrained glee at the Koons oversized toys and balloons, while the uber-sophisticates were trying to make his readymades into high art. I put my Winogrand lens on and started taking images of the people.

Balloon Venus

Koons gets the last laugh. His balloon antiquities, like this riff on the Venus of Willendorf, and over-sized pop icons sell for millions, even if the only people who seem to really enjoy them are the very young.

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The best moment? “Let’s go look at the train, Grandma!” That’s how I think Koons will live into posterity!

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Such a serious young man.

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) Biennial–yes, they are doing one, too–comes out of the same sensibility as Koons. Appropriation, twists on the readymades. But even in this jumble of a show, there’s more inventiveness, wonder, and genuine delight.

I couldn’t move from the Noa Zilberman video where the woman was applying wrinkles that were strands of gold.

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Like Koons, many of the artists play with materials. Todd Pavlisko uses retail tag fasteners to create his huge portrait of Richard Pryor. Can you make out the texture?

I’m partial to MAD chairs. Every exhibit has them. Here are three I really liked this time.

The terrarium room is mesmerizing. I felt like I was underwater, swaying with the rhythm you may hear in this video.

Chock full of wonders

Posted on May 9, 2014 by admin

And you thought the Pez Factory Tour was fun. Before opening, the Pez people came to the Barker Character, Comic and Cartoon Museum for advice. No wonder. It’s incomparable. Take the wonderful Laurel and Hardy Museum in Harlem, GA and multiply it a thousand fold and you begin to get a sense of the vastness of the Barkers’ collection. It’s all located in a tiny, 3 room museum in tiny Cheshire, CT.

Herb Barker has a special affinity for Popeye, since they were born just 5 days apart in 1929. Barker thinks of the cartoon character as his brother. His collection of all things Popeye is eye popping. Here’s Popeye Heavy Hitty, from 1932 and worth over $14,000, which apparently still works.

Remember that spinach made Popeye strong enough to ding that bell? Curator Judy First is concerned that one of the cans of spinach in the collection will explode some day!

Of course, I have a special fondness for Olive Oyl. My brother nicknamed me after her, not such a compliment. Tall and skinny. Ah, those were the days. Did you know that Popeye is actually Olive Oyl’s second boyfriend? Her first was Ham Gravy.

I also got to meet Jeep, Popeye’s very powerful pet. He could bring characters back from the dead. He was considered such good luck that the Army named a vehicle after him.

Barker and his wife began collecting, and still collect today, even as they live in Florida, nowhere near their Cheshire museum. Showing me a recent collection bought online via Hake’s, Judy told me that Barker doesn’t play with his toys after he buys them. She does though when she can, especially while dusting!

The Barkers collected toys–wind up, tin, stuffed, friction that spark, and yes, Pez dispensers. They also collected cereal boxes, games, viewmasters, and lunchboxes.

In 1950, the first steel lunchbox featuring a character decal was introduced. Hopalong Cassidy. Wildly popular over the plain red or blue steel can, the new lunchbox concept was a smash. By 1951, a new innovation of stamping a lithographed image over the whole surface the steel lunchbox was introduced. Every year, we kids needed a new lunchbox with the latest hot character. That US marketing ingenuity. Well, until 1987, when steel boxes were outlawed. A kid could crack another kid’s noggin with one, after all!

I loved seeing the Frito-Lay lunchbox strung up overhead, just like the one on top of my refrigerator. Not only did I carry one as a child, but my current, vintage iteration came from my tenure at the company.

What did I love? So much. Here are a few extra special items.

The 1931 Krazy Kat band.

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The Harold Lloyd squeeze toy from the 1950s; squeeze the tongs i 2014-05-08 15.47.08 n the back to open his mouth, move his eyes up and down, and ding the bell.

Other squeeze toys would send sparks from the figure’s eyes–kinda spooky.

Superman wrestling with the Soviet Army Tank. Really.

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Topo Gigio, a favorite from the Ed Sullivan Show. Eight men operated the mouse, including one that focused on his fingers. Beyond cute.

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club Bead-O-Rama craft by Hasbro

Bead o Rama, a game where beads are placed in holes over an image. Like a coloring book, but with beads.

The original Gumby and Pokey clay figures and the tool wielded by Art Clokey to fashion them. Clokey called them claymation. I wonder what he would make of claymation today. Every wonder about Gumby’s lopsided head? It was a cartoon version of his father’s side-parted hair style.

The 1873 cast iron Ramp Walker elephants, the oldest toys in the museum, produced by Ives Company of Bridgeport, CT. Put them on a ramp, and they will walk down it. I would really like to see that.

Elsie, the robot cow, the spokescow for Borden Dairy. If every robot were this adorable, we’d live in a very different world. People lined up to meet Elsie, the real Elsie cow, at her debut at the 1939 Chicago World’s Fair. Elsie was so popular that when Borden’s introduced a glue, they wanted to use her brand name. But then they considered that people would think the glue was made of/from Elsie! Yikes! So they named it after Elmer, her husband. Over time, Elmer and Elsie had kids, too.

The Mickey Mouse Milk of Magnesia toothpaste. Really! It was recalled because the container was lined with lead. Oh well. This item is so rare that Disney contacted the museum attempting to buy it. No luck. Go to Cheshire to see it.

These buttons with The Yellow Kid came with cigarettes

The Yellow Kid, one of the oldest comic strips in its current modern form. Not only was heused in the comics, but also in advertising, with the words drawn on the character’s body. Dating back to the 1890s, this strip was targeted to “people living in the ghetto.” The character wears a yellow hand-me-down and is bald because he had lice!

Vintage Mod 60s Gidget Fortune Teller Card Game Sally Field

The Gidget Fortune Telling Game. I certainly would like Gidget to tell my fortune!

I can tell good fortune will favor you with good humor if you visit this wonderful, jam-packed, story-filled museum.

The old long-billed Donald Duck

Old Mickey and Minnie

Gotta love those cowgirls

Knots of Science and Art

Posted on May 3, 2014 by admin

Several of the New Haven museum exhibits have changed over for summer. So on this luscious spring day, I visited three.

The day was so pretty that I took the opportunity to stroll into the woods behind the Eli Whitney Museum. I had never walked through the adjacent covered bridge, proclaiming on a sign that Hartford is 32 miles away, and then Boston beyond.

The A. Frederick Oberllin bridge was erected in 1980, but seems like it could be much older. It spans the heavily rushing Mill River. After crossing, I ventured on a little hike along the far side of the river bank. I’m so happy to know about this picturesque place, so close to my house.

from inside the bridge

Inside the museum is the 20th Leonardo Challenge. The theme this year is Knots, with artists riffing on “Knot What You Imagine.” The challenge is about applying Leonardo-type thinking to a problem. Using science and art in imaginative ways. This year’s inspiration are the knots from the “Mona Lisa” bodice.

What do they mean or represent, asks the exhibit curators. They are intricate and specific, demonstrating the artist’s command of detail in that field of sfumato (smoky atmosphere). Is this merely about the artist’s bravura? Do they represent a brand for ‘da vinci’? Are they a mathematical code? Do they represent his exchanges with Islam via Istanbul? These are the knots art 2014-05-03 12.33.44 historians tie themselves in.

So why not challenge artists to do the same? My favorite of the works is “Gordian Knot” by Brad Conant. He perfectly represents how my brain feels right now.

I also liked the Conceptual word play of “Not, Naught, Knot” by Group C (Brad Collins/B. Whiteman).

Makes you think a little, eh?

Hannah Clark’s proud grandmother showed me the secret of “Not a Knot.” From most angles you see the pieces suspended in the box, then in just one spot, the pieces cohere.

a very clever mind at work

Knots of a very different sort took me to the New Haven Museum, and its moving exhibit “Nothing is Set in Stone: The Lincoln Oak and the New Haven Green.” Again blending science and art, the exhibit commemorates a peculiar event resulting from the October 2012 Hurricane Sandy super storm.

On the New Haven Green, the “Lincoln Oak,” planted in 1909 to commemorate the centennial of Lincoln’s birth, was blown over by the storm. Intertwined in the roots of the tree were human skeletal remains.

The Green had served as an unregulated burial site for about 175 years. Then in 1796, the new nation’s first chartered burial ground was incorporated and is still in use today. You may remember an earlier post about the Grove Street Cemetery. Meantime some 17,000 bodies were buried under the Green, expanding to both the Upper and Lower portions, and was still used up until 1812. That New Haven history, ever revealing of something quirky and interesting.

So when the venerable Lincoln Oak toppled, it exposed some bones knotted up with it. The New Haven Museum, itself founded during the Civil War in 1862, then came up with a remarkable idea. They offered local artists branches and parts of the trunk of the toppled tree to work with any and all of the ideas in this complex knot of natural and civic history. The results are powerful.

You can read the Gettysburg Address carved into pieces of the Oak’s trunk. Click on the image to enlarge it. Each chunk of the address is carved on a chunk of the tree, knotted together to form a spine in Erich Davis’ “Backbone.”

I choked up reading these familiar words carved into a tree that had come to represent New Haven and its history, a kind of backbone for this old place. Plus Lincoln’s own strength of will served as backbone for a country divided.

Look at this split–where the oak remained joined at the base, but split toward the top, as if recognizing a history that was unified and a divided present of the Civil War. Here, Lincoln heads the attempts to reunify the discord. This sculpture is Susan Clinard’s “A Nation Split.” She used clay to add the head and hand of Lincoln to the Oak remains.

So beautiful and elegiac–of Lincoln, of the loss of innocence of a nation, of a grand old tree that symbolized a city and the glory days of its past.

Michael Quirk, self-described as an artist, antique collector, and treasure hunter has created a work that blends history and the present. He overtly references layers of human and natural history and creates a kind of time capsule with Lincoln memorabilia, coins, an arrowhead, news articles, and detritus from Hurricane Sandy.

Quirk references a Cabinet of Curiosities, so popular in the 19th century for blending two passions–science and art.

At the Beineke Library, a new exhibit featuring small collections (when the large ones are splashier, more researched, etc.) has just the kind of objects that might make their way into a such a Cabinet.

Consider this “game” for glass blowing. Really? Yeah. Before we coddled children, we allowed them to use blow torches and furnaces to blow glass.

Well, so it seems, with the Gilbert Company’s highly gendered toy: “Gilbert toys bring science down to the level of boys.”

If any of you, boys or girls, actually “played” with this toy, I’d like to hear more about it!

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And imagine the knots lesbian woman had to tie themselves into to fit in a less inclusive world early in the 20th century. But they could go to Chez Moune in Paris, the Cabaret Féminin, to be themselves, some dressing in tuxes to escort their lady friends.

They could commemorate the experience with personalized matchbooks. I have never seen anything quite like these and immediately wanted one for my Cabinet of Curiosities.

Untangling knots like these made for quite a day.

“The Candy that Dares to be Different”

Posted on April 26, 2014 by admin

Only a little less “Disney” than the Hersey factory visit in Hersey, PA, the self-guided Pez factory tour in Orange, CT is a wildly popular tourist stop. Remembering fun Pez dispensers and the somewhat blah candy of my youth, I made my way there, too.

It’s really a case study of American marketing brilliance. The candy, named based on the German word for peppermint, was actually invented in Vienna in 1927 by Eduard Haas III as an adult breath mint and alternative to smoking. Really.

The dispenser first showed up in 1949 at the Vienna Trade Fair and was a straightforward device, with no marketing ploys. The candy didn’t make its way to the US until 1952, when it started operations in New York City. Then the ideas started generating.

One of the first American dispensers was this space gun in 1956, shown with the hgihest selling dispenser of all–Santa. I happen to really like the alien. In fact, aliens seem to be one of the popular dispenser themes, along with Disney figures, animated movie characters, animals, sports heroes, Elvis, and the Presidents of the United States.

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Yes, POTUS. A teacher I talked with said she plans to use them in her classroom. Really.

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And also, check these out–I think that’s a policeman and a nurse.

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In 1991, the first Pez Collector Convention was held. Given the crazy things people collect, Pez dispensers are actually pretty darn appealing.

Moreso than the candy itself, when you find out how little food value it contains. A truckload of sugar gets dumped into a silo that holds 70,000 pounds, and this factory goes through 100,000 pounds of sugar per week. I’m weak in the knees from the sugar rush just thinking about it. Add a little corn syrup and flavor and you’re ready to mold some candy.

One computerized machine, displacing what was done by hand historically, can generate 500,000 candy tablets per hour, to the tune of 12,000,000 for the factory per day. It’s been well over 40 years since I had a Pez candy. They are pretty disgusting. But I guess the world doesn’t think so. Or maybe, like me, they just like the dispensers.

I had more fun looking at how marketing genius created the pin-up Pez Girl and branded fans as Pez Heads.

The vintage Pez vending machines are pretty awesome. I’d love one for my retro kitchen.

Rena Tobey

Lively Mind

Category Archives: Exhibits

A watery day

Keeping Up with Time

Up and Down

The Eye Man

Family Photos

Caravaggisti Joy

Museum of Curiosities

Memory (and loss)

Freedom from Want

Remarkable Minds

Leaf Fall Season

Sauntering in the Footsteps

Halloweed dress-up comes early

Printing Food

Industrial Revelation

Weaving Personal Stories

Mesmerized

Chock full of wonders

Knots of Science and Art

“The Candy that Dares to be Different”

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