When Cute Is the Kiss of Death

 Art, Gardening  No Responses »
May 072012
 

Art is never supposed to be cute. If you called the Mona Lisa cute, I bet she’d slap that grin right off your face. Art should fill you with serenity or rage, with beauty or horror. But never the warm, cuddly cuteness of babies and kittens.

Cuteness in art is the kiss of death.

Every year I attend the “Art in Bloom” exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This is a must because, by April, I am coming off two gray months and four white months of Minnesota winter, and my eyeballs are jonesing for color and flowers. Art in Bloom provides both. It also sometimes serves up a sickening dose of cuteness.

The idea of Art in Bloom is for an artist to select a piece of artwork and then interpret it in flowers. It is open to both professionals and amateurs so I try not to be too critical. My problem is when the floral artist gets too representational—or cute. And some years all cute minds think alike. This year it was shoes. At least three interpretations included shoes in them: a painting of a bronco rider (the artist used a cowboy boot vase), a painting of a Dutch girl (yes, there was a wooden shoe tucked into the greenery), and a sculpture crafted of nothing but footwear.

My daughter thought I should give that last arrangement, which was constructed of white carnations and a pair of black sequined heels, a free pass since the sculpture itself (Willie Cole’s Ann Klein with a Baby in Transit) was made entirely of real shoes. Something to consider, but remember, this is coming from a gal who never saw a pair red stilettos she didn’t like.

This year nearly 160 floral artists participated and some 26,000 color-starved, garden-loving Minnesotans visited. The four-day festival is wildly popular. This is good. Filling a museum any day is good. And I wouldn’t miss Art in Bloom for all the world, even if next year someone sticks a miniature John Deere (or, heaven forbid, a work boot) in the middle of floral interpretation of a farm scene.

Here are some of my favorite Art in Bloom displays from years past:

Santos Dumont's The Father of Aviation II

 

Vincent van Gogh's Olive Trees

 

Egon Schiele's Portrait of Paris von Gutersloh

  

 
 Posted by at 9:57 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

Drawing on the Walls

 Art, Creativity, Maud's House  2 Responses »
Feb 052012
 

This is a story of a woman who drew on the walls and the stove and the breadbox. Her name was Maud. And I fell in love with her spirit.

Folk artist Maud Lewis of Nova Scotia was a wee woman with such a great artistic spirit that her entire house has been preserved in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. The diminuitive dwelling doesn’t take up much space; it was only a 10 x 12 foot fisherman’s shack to begin with. Yet it was bursting with life when Maud lived there.

“Once this house was covered in tattoos.” That was the first line I wrote for my novel Maud’s House, after reading about Maud Lewis and seeing her artwork. Although my novel has nothing to do with Maud Lewis or her life, I hope it is imbued with her unquenchable desire to create. I couldn’t help but name my character Maud because she came to be as driven as the real Maud.

Pictures of Maud Lewis nearly always show her smiling and hiding her hands, which had begun to curl and become misshapen when she was 15. Her art is always joyful: brightly colored flowers, oxen with large curling eyelashes, glorious butterflies and birds. These were the things Maud saw from her window every day.

When I get stuck and consider complaining about how lousy the writing is going, I think of Maud and kick myself. She was a sickly orphan passed around from one poor relative to another until one day, in her thirties, she walked down the road from Digby to the isolated cabin of shy fish peddler Everett Lewis. Everett was impressed that his dog didn’t bark at their uninvited visitor. Apparently, Maud had passed some kind of test. Within weeks, they were married and living in their closet of a home.

Everett encouraged Maud’s love of painting and scrounged paints for his wife. Soon she was riding along on his fish route in the Model T selling hand-painted postcards—five for a quarter.  In the 1940s, Maud put out a roadside sign, “Paintings for sale,” and began selling small paintings to tourists for $2.50. By the time she died in 1970, at the age of 67, her paintings were being shipped to collectors all over the world.  

These are the things you should remember about Maud Lewis:

  • She never took a drawing lesson, read a textbook, or saw a work of art.
  • She contracted polio as a child and later was afflicted by arthritis. She lived in constant pain. By the end of her life, Everett had to lift her out of the bed in the morning, dress her, and set her by her easel and paints. And still she painted: everything in her house (even the windowpane), driftwood, cookie sheets.
  • In her final years, in the hospital with a broken hip and no longer able to control a paintbrush, she made Christmas cards for the nurses with felt pens.

When she was creating her art, Maud Lewis escaped pain, poverty, and the Nova Scotia cold.

She proved that the creative spirit makes everything seem bigger—life, love, even a painted doll house with no insulation or running water.

____________________

Visit the Painted House of Maud Lewis. 

 

 Posted by at 8:45 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

The College that Censored Firefly

 Art, Censorship, Reading, Writing  No Responses »
Dec 292011
 

I entered the Best Tweet About the College that Censored Firefly contest today. My chances of winning are looking about as good as my chances of using my new snowshoes in Minnesota this brown winter. I never win anything, which is fine by me. I am the Rodney Dangerfield of contest winners. So don’t vote for me and ruin my record.

I put my silly tweet in the pot just for fun, but also because I really hated what the University of Wisconsin in Stout tried to pull on theater professor James Miller. In September, Miller posted a quote from the television show, Firefly, outside his office door: ”You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.” The sentiment is about standing for a certain set of values, of being straightforward and honest with your fellow humankind. No threat was intended.

But campus police were having none of it. On September 16, they removed the “unacceptable” poster because it referred to killing. In response to this censorship, Miller launched a second salvo poster, which read: “Warning: Fascism” and included a cartoon image of a silhouetted police officer striking a civilian. The poster warned, “Fascism can cause blunt head trauma and/or violent death. Keep fascism away from children and pets.”

Again, the university responded by removing the poster. Quickly, the incident blew up into a public relations nightmare for the university, fueled by tweets, blog posts, and articles by Firefly fans, free speech advocates, the media, celebrities such as Adam Baldwin and Nathan Fillon, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). On October 4, the university put out the publicity wildfire by reversing its decision to censor Miller.

This may sound like old news, but a similar incident will likely surface somewhere in the world tomorrow or the next day. Censorship seems to never go out of style. And so, FIRE is sponsoring the tweet contest to draw attention to a new video on censorship featuring author Neil Gaiman.

Now, I have a few disclaimers: 1) I am a Firefly addict and take umbrage at people messing with this rag-tag crew; 2) I am a free speech nut; and 3) I have written a novel about a town that censors books called Book of Mercy. Even if you are or have done none of these things, please watch the video. 

Oh, and my tweet? Here it is:

Son, if you don’t know #censorship is wrong, you just don’t get it. #Firefly in a jar w/no walls. http://bit.ly/tGzd0o

My way-too-literal friend complained, “How can a jar have no walls?”

“It’s about freedom,” I explained.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

This is why I will not win this contest. I suck at jingles.

Feel free to RT in the name of Browncoats, TV shows cancelled before their time, and the way fireflies make you feel on a summer night.

 Posted by at 8:41 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

Dreamy Wind Chimes

 Art, Creativity  2 Responses »
Sep 092009
 

As anyone knows who has read my novel on art and creativity, Maud’s House, I am a sucker for art in unusual places or unusual art in expected places. The Twin Cities is full of such wonderful surprises. Here’s the story of just one. I wrote this article in 2009, but I recently revisited the sculpture garden and was delighted to find a few wind chimes still left, wooing us with their musical whisperings.

The lovely thing about taking a blind man to a sculpture garden is that he can touch all the artwork—something frowned upon by most museums and galleries. I should know; a security guard almost tackled me once when he thought I was trying to shake the hand of a sculpture in the Rhodin Museum in Philadelphia. That was ridiculous, of course; that sculpture had hands the size of hubcaps.

The troublesome thing about taking a blind man to a sculpture garden is that the art is humongous—and often modern. So on this Saturday afternoon, I found myself in the Walker Sculpture Garden trying to make sense of modern art to someone who could not see it and had a heck of a time wrapping his arms around it

Then we came upon the grove of trees across from Minneapolis’ most famous outdoor installation, a cherry balanced in the bowl of a reclining spoon. And suddenly art made sense. A wonderfully crazy artist named Pierre Huyghe had the idea to hang 50 wind chimes in the trees and let the wind play music. The chimes project was inspired by John Cage’s 1948 score “Dream.”

The chimes included wind pipes that seemed to hum in different tones as they jingled gently in the wind. I felt surrounded by praying monks in a temple in some exotic land. Surely, this was the true sound of OM. Huyghe made a pipe for each note of Cage’s composition. So as you walk under the trees you hear the hum of the pipes sprinkled with the laughter of the chimes, and each moment is different according to the wind’s whim. The randomness is so Cage and so enchanting.

As I watched one person after another enter the grove of wind music, I realized we were all reacting in a similar way. We lift our chins into the breeze, close our eyes, and smile. The air bathes us in music, a sound so natural that it seems part of the trees and sky and us. When the wind shifts, we feel spray from the “Spoonbridge and Cherry” sculpture fountain in the center of the garden. We are happy.

My blind friend Neal, who will record about anything anywhere, immediately bemoaned about leaving his recording equipment behind. The bells of the Basillica of St. Mary nearby sounded and, for the first time that I can remember, I grew impatient with that usually pleasant song. I wanted to hear the wind music—not church bells, not speeding cars on Hennepin, not people talking. I never wanted to leave that vortex of soothing sound.

I love the sounds Minnesota makes with wind and trees, with pines that roar and aspens that clack. It makes me think I am lucky to live here. And now there is another reason, 50 of them, in fact. When the wind chimes come down, as they eventually must, this grove won’t be the same, ever again, for many people. We will walk through here and remember a Saturday afternoon when nature serenaded us and a blind man heard art.

 Posted by at 10:21 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

A Wright Experience

 Art, Travel  No Responses »
Jun 292009
 

I have always liked keeping journals of my vacations, even day trips. And it seems that is the way it was meant to be. Once on a weekend geo-caching journey with my husband, I forgot my notebook. But guess what was in the first cache we found—a sweet little notebook with hearts and roses on the cover. Perfect for a young girl’s secrets or a mature woman’s meanderings: “Garrison, MN, has a giant fish guarding 200-square-mile Mille Lac. I like giant animals. May have seen first gopher, regular size.” or “Willow River State Park, Hudson, WI: Grateful Dead quote in cache: ‘Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.’”

When I started taking mini-vacations with my daughters, I converted my travelogues into lists. The key to travel lists is to pick a word and let the memories flow. Here is the journal list from our trek to Madison, Wisconsin (June 27-28, 2009).

  1. Bee balm: In late June, I-90 and I-94 from the Twin Cities to Madison are bursting with wildflowers— daisies, day lilies, bird’s foot trefoil, chicory. But the flower of the trip is bee balm at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison.
  2. Baraboo Chocolate Store: pose for a picture in the lap of a cow (a low-cow seat) then head inside for some definitely not lo-cal chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. We see sweets we haven’t seen in years like Pop Rocks, old favorites like Cow Tales, irresistible meltaways of every flavor, and the ridiculously sublime Udderfingers and Moo Chews. But Baraboo’s signature item is the Cow Pie, of course. No throwing, please.
  3. Chazen Museum of Art in Madison: renaming the artwork or, in the case of untitled works, christening them. What do you think this is?
  4. Rain and snow: At the Chazen, we saw an exhibit of Kawase Hasui color woodcuts. Amazing lone Japanese figures struggling against the elements in snow laden or soggy scenes. Powerful landscapes delicately rendered.
  5. Thai Garden at the Olbrich: red is for compassion, green is for healing, gold is for mindfulness, water jars for hospitality. Sala is a shelter from the rain or heat in Thailand. The pavilion is only one of four located outside of Thailand. The others are in Germany, Norway, and Hawaii. It was built in Thailand, disassembled, and packed in shipping crates. Seven weeks by sea, then rail, then truck to cold Wisconsin where it was reconstructed in three weeks and survives thanks to plantation-grown teak and weather-resistant ceramic roof tiles.
  6. Pasqual’s: best margaritas ever. They come from a tap in the wall, mixed (according to my imagination) in huge hidden tanks by margarita experts. So strong that by the end of the night I was simply calling them “tequilas.”
  7. Michael’s Frozen Custard: named “Best in Madison” 18 years in a row. No argument here. Delicious frozen custard, cookie dough, and fudge in a cup. What is not to like?
  8. Detours: Ah, summer in Wisconsin and Minnesota. We have winter and detour season. Does anyone like these? We got lost only once on the two-lane backcountry detour from Madison to Spring Green, Wisconsin, but it had the potential to ruin our timetable.
  9. Cat spirit: Unfortunately, a black cat crossed our path on the detour. He was either too fast or not fast enough, just trying to get from one hunting ground to another. We swerved, honked, cried but alas the black cat was bound for a better world. Namaste.
  10. Taliesin: A visit to the former home of Frank Lloyd Wright was the highlight of our trip. We toured the house and school, saw the Romeo and Juliet windmill, met Sherpa the lucky cat that gets to climb all over all those wonderful horizontal Wright lines instead of dueling with traffic on county roads. (Photo of Taliesin garden.)
  11. Tension/release: The compression of the low ceilings and narrow hallways opening into high-ceilinged, window-wrapped expanses in Taliesin always makes me feel as if the house is breathing.
  12. Nada on the bathrooms and closets: Apparently, these bored Frank. He thought no one needed to collect that much stuff anyway (thus the few and small closets) and one should do one’s business (thus the utilitarian bathrooms) and get out into the rest of the house, which is breathing and waiting for you to get on with living.
  13. Circumspect guide: The guide kept to the dates and the architecture and downplayed the personal aspects of the controversial Wright—not much on Mamah the mistress, murder, and mayhem.
  14. Rock everywhere: Wright wanted to bring the local materials inside using limestone and rock on the exterior as well as many interior walls and floors. Not a barefoot-friendly place. Hard and impossible to heat. For a man so intent on creating spaces to live in naturally, Taliesin is incredibly unlivable.
  15. Aliens and top secrets: On the way home to the Twin Cities, we swung through the Wisconsin Dells to find a restaurant named Moose Jaws. The Dells now resembles Myrtle Beach or Cancun or Vegas with big theme parks, water slides, and resorts elbow to elbow. The one that had us pulling over and gawking was Top Secret, a fun house in a structure that is the exact replica of the White House if it had been abducted by aliens and tossed into the Dells upside down. I asked what the tour was like but was only told, “It’s a fun house; we can’t tell you anything else.” Not usually one to avoid poking the government in the eye when it needs it, I found this image oddly disturbing. Almost a desecration. I prefer my crass entertainment in the form of the Trojan Horse or the Roman Coliseum. Maybe I’ll just stick with Ripley’s Believe or Not.
  16. Finally, family: What a wonderful invention, telling secrets over dinner, singing in the car, hugging at every rest stop, wondering when we can do this again.
 Posted by at 5:02 pm
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