Had a fabulous time browsing exhibits with a CA native, M (one of my first friends here in CA from almost 30 years ago) whom had never been. Our next jaunt will be at the Claremont gardens where she volunteers.
Tangata Restaurant inside the Bower’s Museum offers contemporary indoor and al fresco dining overlooking the courtyard.
Y3 – Day 49 – Tangata Restaurant
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Monthly Archives: February 2015
Y3 – Day 48 – Tuesday Quote
Knowing what to look for and appreciating it today.
Y3 – Day 47 – Monday Thought
Y3 – Day 46 – Sunday Thought
Therefore, I guess you have to walk through the fear, have courage.
Y3 – Day 45 – Tulip Time
It is Tulip Time !!! At least for some lucky gals!! I have received gifts of tulips and am reveling in their color and deep throats.
Y3 – Day 44 – Open Eyes
Opening my eyes to opportunities and possibilities has helped me to build strength of character, anticipate work and study twists of fate and has given me immeasurable insights. It has led me to see with arms outstretched not crossed, smell my own and another’s fear, partake of once in a lifetime chance meetings and feel the world’s synchronicity happening.
Yesterday I had Open Eyes and I took Cindi to what looks like an abandoned pile of rubbish with a trail to walk her.
On this trail there are discarded water drainage pipes standing up about three feet high and two feet in diameter. Some have painted art and it would have been remiss of me not to mention and show the ones that spoke to me.
This dark-skinned woman holds a sphere in her left hand. Her hands are in a receptive meditative pose. The sun beams behind her like a fiery halo of light. Rays spike from the held orb. Is she Mother Earth or Pachamama? Is she the embodiment of all women as goddess? There is a pyramid of stairs rising up to her pelvis where a child or extraterrestrial steps out. I am not an art critic or interpreter but it has a strong visceral, spiritual, almost other worldly tone to it.
On this deserted tube of cement, a man seems to be outstretching his hands inside a lighted teepee during a full moon. Again, I felt drawn to its indigenous flavor and mystic quality. Is he thanking or beseeching the moon? Who is he?
In this signed piece (look at bottom of tree trunk), The pond or lake is rounded, the colors suggest sunset and it has an extremely restful, albeit fishbowl presence.
“Once you’ve been given the torch of awareness, all sorts of dark bends in the road begin to appear for you to illuminate.” – Cecilia B. Steger
Y3 – Day 43 – Biodynamic Organic Gardening
And the experiment begins!!! I have used and encouraged organic methods to garden and now we are taking it to the next level. By using the moon, the zodiac and additions to the soil, biodynamic farming has attained stunning results. I hope to do the same on my own plot of earth and look forward to sharing the results as I read, learn and do more sowing, transplanting, pruning, cutting and harvesting this coming year.
To start, I sowed flower seeds and planted ranunculi on flower days which fell on Saturday and Sunday. Apparently the solar/lunar aspects and Gemini, Libra, Aquarius or Light constellations are more favorable on these days. It doesn’t have anything to do with the sun sign as much as the Moon’s trajectory through the sky. I added a few crushed eggshells (organic) and used coffee grinds (organic) around each bulbed bloom. Both of these deter slimy, crawly pests, add nutrients and aerate your soil. Used in the compost bin, coffee adds nitrogen to your pile of organic waste that would otherwise be tossed in a landfill.
I am still trying to figure out the calendar and all its notations but I at least determined when to plant what. Thankfully, Maria Thun and her son Matthias have a handy color coded guide for the uninitiated and serious followers alike. The groups of plants are divided into four groups: Root crops, Leaf Plants, Flowers and Fruit. It seems a little wacky but I am willing to give it a try. Not only is there nothing to lose, I feel like I actually have a schedule and it seems a bit more organized and manageable. I am not gardening in one fell sweep as I am used to, exhausted and in pain because of the exertion, but instead everyday, a little.
I planted lettuce and mint on leaf day which was Monday. Make sure you plant mint in a pot or it will spread like wildfire. I decided to plant the lettuce not in the garden below but right outside my kitchen in pots. Leaf days are suitable and supposedly best for sowing and tending herbs, lettuce, all green plants. It seems leaf plants do better if planted during Water constellations such as Pisces, Cancer and Scorpio. Hopefully the rabbits won’t start chomping on them. Usually, I toss red pepper flakes all around the top of the soil to deter them but I forgot before I took this picture. I used organic soil and bought organic lettuce and chocolate mint. I will be harvesting curiously enough not on a leaf day, but on fruit or flower days as recommended.
It will be interesting to see if the predictions, preference times and concoctions I will be using will work and we can see obvious, positive results. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I am enjoying sharing the interesting procedures that hail from lectures given by Rudolf Steiner back in the early 1900’s. I will be perusing his book of lectures on biodynamics and ecology compiled by Hugh J. Courtney and hopefully get an understanding on this philosophy based on improving the Earth’s soil.
Y3 – Day 42 – Bower’s Lecture 2
Today, we spent quite a bit of time learning about Alfred Stieglitz (photographer) and Mardsen Hartley (a self taught painter). The American Modernist movement begins.
At first Stieglitz tried to make his photographs look like paintings or as our Professor of Art History, Kristin, describes it as “he tried to give his photographs a painterly quality”. We viewed the photograph, Winter 5th Avenue, 1897, as an example alongside a painting. But then in 1907, he starts to depict straight photo shots without manipulating, adjusting or changing them in any way in the dark room. He starts to embrace the medium of photography for what it has to offer. He shows mood, feelings and experiences using shadows, shapes, light and dark contrasts. His 1924, Equivalent Mountains and Sky, and From the Shelton, 1932 were shown as examples.
In 1913, Modernism in the US takes off with the Armory Show in NYC. This is the first large scale exhibition of Modern Art and at the time, critics were harsh, confused and complained there was no narrative or realism in the paintings. An interesting fact is that artwork used to be displayed stacked from floor to ceiling till then. The modern aesthetic hung artwork spaced out and at eye level.
Kristin touched upon Matisse who used bold colors and deconstructed his nudes and settings, Picasso with his cubist leanings and Marcel Duchamp who created distinctly new and different art in the Dadaist style – to explain the influence of Europe’s art expression onto our American creatives.
There are two more important things I came away with today from Kristin’s lecture: Although I do not personally like some of these paintings, the goal of the Modernists was to break down reality, stop reflecting or mirroring the classics but instead to opt to demonstrate a new point of view, a different perspective, even if it was disturbing or not pretty.
And the second tidbit of information I related to was that this was the beginning of conceptual art which really didn’t flourish till the 1960’s. Therefore, the Modernists ARE important, even if it was a bit radical and off putting, so as to make way for future artists that profited from their (modernists) breakthroughs.
I also started to relate it to the use of food deconstruction on the gourmand plate in the last fifteen years or so…or avant-garde artists like Lady Gaga.
I also couldn’t help wondering, with a wry smile, if Duchamp’s painting of a mustache on the Mona Lisa wasn’t just making a point and questioning the validity of respected work, but rather a predecessor of Monty Python.
Dadaists believed that reason and logic led Europe into the first World War and they wanted to change the way we usually think about everything by introducing us to the world of the Abstract.
In this lecture series we are learning not just about the art, but WHY the art. Fascinating.
Next week: Harlem Renaissance and Social Realism
Y3 – Day 41 – Pretty Snow
How wonderful to have just fallen snow gleam with evening lights. It may be cold outside but the innocence of a fresh blanket of white crystals clinging to pine needles and horizontal surfaces is beyond compare.
Y3 – Day 40 – Groundhog
It might be groundhog day but it is also my anniversary for coming to America.
A little girl of three, flew for the first time with an adult stranger who was her guardian for the trip. I still remember the lady’s name, it was Betty Poll. I remember the engines were loud. I had no idea what was going on. All I remember is I was coming from the summer (southern hemisphere) and for some reason I had a coat and I hadn’t seen my mom since before Christmas (two months to be exact) and I didn’t even remember I had a father. I missed my aunt ( whom I stayed with back in Argentina ) and I knew I was to behave. That was the extent of it. I am sure I tried to make the best of it and I probably acted as brave as I could.
The reunion at the airport (which wasn’t yet named Kennedy in NY) is a story to be told another time.
And here we are, over a half century later. I still hate to fly. Could this be why? I wonder.