A Night At the Art Museum

In Indianapolis we have the pleasure of a wonderful art museum that is free to get into. The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is amazing on many levels but I think what I like most about it is it a good museum to just hang out in. There are plenty of places to sit and sketch or take notes or just zone out. It is a very people friendly museum and I think that is an underestimated characteristic when it comes to public space in general.

I took my creative writing class to the museum to do some writing and while they looked for art that inspired them, I got to walk around and look at my leisure. Here are two paintings I wrote about in my journal:

Hotel Lobby by Edward Hopper


The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Erangy by Camille Pissarro

These are the journal entries about the two paintings. They’re pretty fragmented, but I think there are some poems brewing in there somewhere. From The House:

1886, Camille Pissarro, oil on canvas. When I think of Pissarro, I think of green. All different hues of green: yellow green, forest green, spring green, light (almost white) green & blue green. In this painting, green dominates. It is clearly the point. Trees, grass, shrubs, very few flowers. The woman is small, deaf to the rustling of all this green. Hunched over, knees deep in green, hands hidden. Weeding? It would be pleasant to feel if you could not hear. Could you feel young, new, sun, grass, green? Could you feel green? There is a belfry and a belfry equals bells but she cannot hear. When she lost sound, she lost God? Is she trying to find God again in the green? Is she trying to find life? She seems so far away from the church. Isolated in this field of green.

From Hotel Lobby:

Oil on canvas. “Though this looks like a scene from a story, it’s not clear there really is one.” Two women and two men. Two older and two younger. Point of view seems to be from the doorway. Hopper’s paintings are always “busy” in terms of people but they are so lonely because the people always seem to be ignoring each other. Even in conversation they are lonely. Women are always young, blonde. There is a darkness in terms of color that seeps into the atmosphere as if something horrible is just below the surface.

Saturday (Winter Farmers Market) Musings

The Ming Dynasty exhibit at the IMA was awesome. We were not allowed to take pictures but we bought a book especially created for the exhibit, which showcased all the items in the collection. They had the exhibit divided into three phases and it was interesting to see the change in color and subject matter as you moved between the different sections.

We went to the Winter Farmers Market this morning and bought some goodies. I was lucky enough to get the last Parmesan baguette. Delicious.

We are watching our neighbor’s dog, Bam Bam, this weekend. Here is a vid (courtesy of RJ’s phone) of Bam.

Friday (Cards and Art) Musings

RJ spent most of Wednesday downloading new software to his blackberry. One of the new functions is a video camera, so he took this short vid of Nimbus purring.

We live about ten minutes from the Indianapolis Museum of Art and we’ve only been once. I consider this a disgrace, especially because general admission is free. It so happens that one of our friends was given two free tickets to an exhibit featuring art from the Ming Dynasty. The exhibit is called Power and Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty. Below are some pictures from the exhibit. I’m looking forward to it.

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It’s all there in black and white: a poet’s pain, her suffering, her emotional distress. Turn the page and find secrecy, shock and disappointment. But don’t expect passionate verse. These are lawsuits, not poems.