The Visit

I took Maggie last Wednesday for her visit to an art museum. As I posted earlier, there is a Wayne Thiebaud exhibit currently on display at a local museum, and I thought it would be perfect for a five-year old because Maggie does love cakes and pies and all things pink and purple.

We arrived at the museum, and Maggie was thrilled with just that. I'm not kidding, she was all beside herself to be going somewhere alone with me, somewhere she'd never before been, somewhere full of promise. I love seeing the world through her eyes because it reminds me that life is still exciting and wondrous, and seeing her so pump
ed to go to our little museum made me feel badly for thinking I had to put this visit off until I could take her to a "real" museum in New York, San Francisco or even DC.

Well, we arrived and got our tickets and each wore a little blue square sticker indicating we had paid our dues.

Right off the bat, Maggie was full of questions. There was a large wooden sculpture in the entrance of the museum made into the shape of an animal - antelope, deer, etc. - and she was very curious about this. When I told her it was made of wood and that art can be made of many different materials, well she was all obsessed with this idea for the rest of our visit. We walked past the wooden sculpture. Then, she ran over to an African mask and some clay vases. She was running up and down the halls, before we could even determine where the Theibaud paintings were housed, asking me, "What's this made out of? How about this one Mom?"

We finally did get to the exhibit. We looked at a few paintings on display outside the main room, and Maggie was fine with that but it was hard for her to stand still for very long, which meant that I only got a cursory glance at each piece. We did stop and look at one painting, a man in a tree, in a park, at night. Maggie was curious about this painting, because she couldn't figure out why a man was in a tree, in a suit, in the middle of the night. But then, just when I thought we'd have some sort of existential conversation about the meaning of life, Maggie was gone, running up and down the exhibit and saying, "Mommy, you have to see this painting. It's totally amazing."

That was her phrase for the day: totally amazing.

She liked Thiebaud's art and especially liked his work done in pastel-colored paint. She kept thinking the paintings were still wet, because the paint was very thick and still glossy looking. I tried to explain the concept of oil paint, but really I think I was just talking out of my ass because I have no idea why the paint still looked wet, if his thick brush strokes mean anything and how his paintings come out looking like something when, if you look up-close, it's all just a smattering of this and that, all half-hazard.

Then, Maggie came to a drawing, and it was hung next to a painting.

Maggie: "What is this one made out of?"

MamaP: "Pastels. They're like crayons. What do you think of it?"

Maggie: "I like it."

MamaP: "Does it look different to you, different from this other one?" And I pointed to the painting.

Maggie: "Yes, it's different."

MamaP: "How is the crayon drawing different from the painting?"

Maggie: "Well, the crayons stick to the paper and stay there. The paint just kind of drips down."

I wanted to kneel down to the floor and bow my head in thanks: she's brilliant. It's true.

We breezed through the exhibit, and I was at times a little frustrated that I couldn't linger, read about the work, decide how I felt about all of it. But Maggie was running amok and some other patrons (there was a van drop off from a local assisted-living facility) were giving me dirty looks.

We wandered around the rest of the museum, and for some reason Maggie was totally enthralled with the elevator. Now, the elevator was quite large and seemed somehow really modern and cool, but really, she's been in a thousand elevators. Still, this was really "great" and "cool."

There were, as I said, a lot of "totally amazing" pieces of art, and each room we entered I had Maggie point out which painting drew her attention first. They were usually paintings of flowers, and I don't really like flower paintings, but whatever. It was very cute.

I have to say that a lot of California art looks a lot like paint-by-numbers landscapes. But hey...who am I to say?

Then, just when our visit was coming to a close, Maggie entered the modern art section of the museum, and she fell in love and was utterly taken and mesmerized by a sculpture of a cowboy riding a flying horse that was attached to another flying horse, and the horses' eyes were made out of red light-bulbs.



This was truly, truly "totally amazing." This was stop-and-stand, mouth open in amazement amazing. Maggie walked around the entire thing, oohhing and ahhhing and asking me if I was actually seeing this thing.

I was. It was horrid. Wretched. God-awful.

But hey, who am I to say?

Then, when I thought it couldn't get worse (there was a ceramic sculpture done in that blue-and-white Dutch tile kind of ceramic - and the sculpture was a semi-automatic rifle and a grenade), Maggie fell in double-triple-love with a sculpture that was depicting a death-row inmate being put to death, and there were a bunch of protesters with signs depicting each side of the debate. And to top it all off, there was a foot pedal on the floor, and if you pushed the pedal the whole thing started flashing lights.

Dear God, Maggie pushed that pedal a thousand times.

When we left the exhibits, we headed downstairs to the cafe where Maggie chose a cupcake and chocolate milk. We split the cupcake and she sucked down the milk.



I asked her later what her favorite part of the day was, and she said the paintings and the cool elevator.

I have to say, my favorite part of the trip was seeing her so excited about the modern art stuff. I call it stuff. I should call it art, but I can't bring myself to type that out. Sigh....

Anyway, I loved it because she loved it without any preconception, without any idea of what she was loving or if it was the right thing to love or what other people (me, for instance) might say about it. She just loved it, red lights for eyes, foot pedal, everything aglow. It made me look at all of the art differently, because I realized how much we like or dislike what we experience based not on our own taste but on what society says is "right," and (to be honest) how we like to think of ourselves.

All-in-all, it was a lovely day. Maggie bought a Thiebaud post card in the gift shop and drew a heart-breaking picture of herself and her father, holding hands underneath a rainbow to send to him in Afghanistan. I nearly cried when I saw it.

And then I thought: now that is art.

MamaP

Quote 10 of 52

This week's quote seems appropriate to me because I've been thinking lately of all the trips I want to take, all the countries I want to live in and the things I want to do when I finally get to these places - like development projects, rambling through the Cambodian jungle with my kids and horse-trekking in Iceland.

So, in light of these dreams, when I came across this quote, it reminded me that it's not just the destination that matters - something I know, of course, but a concept that is often difficult for me to apply to my daily life.

The quote is by Robert Louis Stevenson:

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

PS - the painting is of Stevenson and was done by John Singer Sargent, 1887. Wouldn't it be fabulous to have a painting of oneself by someone like Sargent???

Hope everyone is having a happy Monday. I'll be posting today about last week's fig - taking M. to the art museum for the Thiebaud exhibit. Good times!

MamaP

The Best

Last night, as I was putting Maggie to bed, I told her we are going to the art museum this week to see an artist who paints cakes and pies.

Maggie, "We're going together, just you and me?"

MamaP, "Yes, just you and me. To the art musuem."

Maggie, "Is it close?"

MamaP, "Yes, only twenty minutes."

Maggie, "What will we do there?"

MamaP, "We'll look at the paintings and talk about them and tell each other what we think."

She thought about this for a few seconds, and then she reached up, put her hands on my cheeks and said, "You're the best."

Fig #9 - The Art Museum

This week, I'm doing something I've wanted to do for a while now: I'm taking my daughter to an art museum.

My desire to do this began about two years ago, when I was sitting at the computer one day looking at art.com. Maggie came up to me, and I put her on my lap and we started looking at the art. I asked her which pieces she liked and which she didn't like, and even though she was 3 at the time, she had clear preferences and opinions. On top of just her likes and dislikes, I began to ask her about the art itself, about the paintings, and she started to tell me what she thought of them, why she liked them and what she thought about the subject matters. It was fascinating and enlightening and thrilling. We do it still; though I admit to being lazy about it recently. We do have a few Renoir books downstairs, and we sometimes flip through those, and Maggie tells me which ones she likes and why she likes them and what she thinks about them. It's all so wonderful because it makes me look at the paintings in a new light and I realize how powerful and compelling art is for all of us.

Maggie's favorite painting (thus far, obviously) is by Hopper. Her two favorite artists so far are Edward Hopper and Degas. She loves Degas because she loves ballet. But Hopper is her true love, and there hasn't been a painting of his that we've seen so far that she doesn't like. Well, but her favorite is entitled "Hotel Room."




I asked Maggie what she thought of this painting, and she said that the women in the painting looks sad to her. I think that's such an interesting observation and comment, and every time we come back to this painting, she says the same thing: that the woman is sad.

Interestingly, I was in Madrid a few months ago, and a friend suggested I go to see the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, a fabulous collection of art that is really staggering in that it was collected by one family. Anyway, I went, not knowing a thing about it, and low and behold, I walked up face-to-face with Hopper's piece, "Hotel Room."

I thought of Maggie and vowed to take her there one day, to show her the original piece of art and to see if she felt the same way about the painting in person.

So, this week I am taking Maggie to her first art museum. It's a small museum here in town, and I wouldn't have thought to take her here except for something that happened last week. I was getting the mail and I received a large envelope from a relative I rarely hear from. In fact, I'd not spoken to her in years. Inside was a small note and a newspaper clipping from the New York Times about a new exhibit at our local gallery from a famed local artist. I myself had never before heard of him, but when I read the article I was intrigued, and I vowed to take Maggie with me.

The artist is Wayne Thiebaud, and below I'll post a few of his pieces. Maggie and I are excited, and I think that while I'm there I'll sign her up for art classes. I can't wait to hear what she has to say about our visit, which I'm planning for Tuesday or Wednesday.

I think one of the best things about having kids is that you get to view the world through a whole new lens......









I'll post later about our big adventure...........

MamaP

Quote 9 of 52

This week's quote is a classic. It's Emerson, and it reminds me that I have some Emerson and some Thoreau sitting next to my bed, given to me by a friend years ago I would have least expected to give me such a book. Well, there I go....adding to my reading list. I'm looking at Siddhartha right now.......Sigh.

The quote:

What lies between us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Fig #8 - The Purge

I have finally purged my closet. It took some time. In addition to being busy with other things (two dead car batteries, a faulty transmission and my in-laws visiting), I think it's just emotionally hard for me to part with old clothes. Well, it's hard to part with old anything: clothes, furniture, books, relationships. I think we do a lot of what we do in life because of habit, because what is comfortable is comfortable, even if it doesn't work. At least we know the bad, which is better than gambling on the different.

For me, clothes have been a challenge. I keep my clothes from my old self because, after having two kids, I think that getting back into my old clothes is a sort of badge-of-honor I need to earn and then wear on my sleeve. See, I didn't go to hell in a hand-basket just because I created, housed, birthed and fed two small beings.

I know. It's silly. I get it.

The China clothes were the hardest, because that was my thinnest self, and I always like to hold out that I'll get back to that girl. The word girl is about right, too, because I was 25 when I left China, which means I was 23 and/or 24 when I wore those clothes, and why the hell am I competing with a 23 year old anyway? And of course, I feel that if I get rid of those clothes, I'm somehow closing a door on that chapter of my life. I suppose it would be okay to close that door. I returned home 10 years ago, a decade. So, I suppose it's time to move on........

Well, as you may recall from those many moons ago, I wrote about the idea of turning all those China clothes into a quilt. Normally, I would toss this idea around my head for a while and then give up on it altogether for whatever reason: too expensive, can't quilt, etc.

But, with all these 52 figs hanging around in my head, I decided to get right on it, which I did. I finally admitted to myself that I hate sewing (I tried to deny that for a long time and had some really bad experiences with my sewing machine because of it). In light of this acceptance of myself, I looked on Craigslist and found a woman who happens to love sewing and specifically quilting. I met her a week later, carrying in all my loads of silk and cotton qi paos and Dynasty-style jackets.

Three weeks later, I met her again, and she had transformed my clothes into a beautiful, queen-sized quilt.

I have to tell you, honestly, hand to my heart, this quilt makes me happier than any object has made me in a long time. Happy-happy. I sit on it. I sit under it. I finger it. And I think about all the days I wore this particular dress to teach in, or that particular dress out for dinners or that silk jacket out with the Madames, a pair of motley Chinese women with a penchant for liquor and married men.

Emily, the quilter, included all the buttons and details from the dresses, so I can see the top of one or the bottom of another. I look at one patch of the quilt and see the slit of one cotton dress that hit me just above my knee, where a red satin frog-button sat. I see the ruffled collar of a cotton sun dress I wore my last summer in China. I look at the sleeve of a black silk jacket covered in butterflies that I had made my first weeks in Chengdu, that I wore at my swearing-in ceremony.

Wearing those clothes again couldn't have made me any happier than having this quilt. So, even if I set out to purge myself of all these extra clothes, I ended up acquiring a piece of my own history that is full of memory, that I can sit on top of or crawl underneath, forever.

Okay.....here are the pics:

The blue outline below is the Chinese double-happiness character. I had a tin coffee mug with this emblem painted onto the side, and I used that coffee mug every morning while I taught class. I drank instant Nescafe coffee out of it, and I swear that one day I will find a packet of that stuff and make it again, for old-times sake. Until then, the remnants of that old electric-blue Dynasty style jacket now detail double-happiness for me on my new quilt.

That's it. I sleep with it on me every night, grateful that fall has arrived in Nor Cal and I have use for my new quilt.

I love that I set out to do one thing - purge my closet - and ended up with something else in the process.

MamaP

Back: Quote 9 of 52

I have been gone from 52 Figs for a month now, and in that time I've considered giving up on my little blog entirely. Here's the thing: when you blog, people comment on your blog. And sometimes those comments aren't very nice. Sometimes, those comments are sort of personal and wretched. So, I told myself that I would simply stop blogging. I was sort of going with the whole theory that I don't want to give someone the rope the hang me with.

But..........

In life, what would happen if we stopped doing what we love (and I love 52 figs) just because someone else didn't like it, had some awful comments about it or felt compelled to run it down?

So, I'm here and starting again with a fabulous quote from Robert Frost:

There is nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.