Allyson Johnson

Pieces of my Mind

Archive for the tag “arts”

23 Apr 2024

Airport Oddities

When forced to spend entirely too much time in airports, you have time to notice how things have changed. I don’t believe I had ever seen this convenience offered in a airport before:

If the print is too small for you, it reads “Privacy for pumping and breast-feeding.” Wow! There are times when that could have been really welcome to me and mine!

But it’s not only nursing mothers who might crave privacy, or at least a respite from the constant murmur of the airport crowd and announcements of their arrivals and departures. So here’s another accomodation which struck me as novel:

This pair of cubicles was nestled in an out-of the way corridor. One of them was already in use, and the other about to be.

If you think that the world of whimsy is far removed from the hard-edged world of airline travel, be assured that Austin, at least, has allowed its weirdness to seep into its Airport. Here’s Arrivals at Gate ∞ (see above for the entire installation):

You can even print a boarding pass to Narnia or Neverland or any of 118 other fantastical destinations.

But good luck looking for a post card at DFW, SFO, or PHX. The old-fashioned “Hello from [your state here]” way of letting folks know you are on the road is almost dead. You can still find them at AUS, though, another friendly form of Austin weirdness.

Posted in Airports, Arizona, Texas, Travel and tagged , , | Leave a comment
20 Feb 2024
2 Comments

Graffitti – Gritty, Ubiquitous, Affirming

The railroad tracks from the Coliseum to Jack London Square – everywhere the trash and debris of homelessness… rusted out cars, plywood shanties, abandoned chairs, strollers, buckets, tires, tarps…. But everywhere also the triumphant gaiety of graffiti – a rainbow of indecipherable words adorning every available concrete surface – amazingly no pornographic or obscene drawings or postings, only an occasional sad face, Raiders logo, anime girl in a sarong, a smiling blue tiger.   Some of the artists have mastered techniques that I have failed to grasp in art classes – shading, three-D effects. Odd that these artists don’t express more anger and frustration.  Every tag, every angular or curvilinear phrase (some out in the water on pipes, some twenty feet high) expressing “I am here!”

Some businesses have given in to the graffiti and put up their own murals using the curvilinear or anime style – these seem to be respected.  It is very bad form to paint over another artist’s work. And now at Jack London Suare the graffiti disappears amid the apartments and banners and “public artwork” of the respectable and established world.

Per Wikipedia,Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view.  Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.. Modern graffiti, focused on tagging, probably began on New York City subway cars and spread like a living cloak flung across railway cars, freeway overpasses, and abandoned buildings. When I first visited Japan in 1997 I remember my colleague remarking on the lack of graffiti . When I last visited in 2011 graffiti was everywhere. In some eyes, graffiti are acts of vandalism. In others, they are works of art.

We leave the Square, with its up-market businesses including a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, a BevMo, a Cost Plus World Market… and then abruptly we are into the Port area and the graffiti erupts again. Dingier here, as though the artists lacked the energy to walk this far from warmth and people.  A huge recycling center.  Stacks of shipping containers, A row of black oil tankers, oddly un-graffitied, unlike the box cars and flat cars on the next track over. Is it hard to make the paint stick on the curved surfaces? The cattle cars and box cars are painted as high as a man can reach. Of course – why paint a lowly concrete barrier when one can send one’s aspirations across the country?

Posted in California, Freeway Free, hidden treasures, Train travel and tagged , ,
01 Aug 2023

Freeway-Free in California – Salinas is Steinbeck Country

It would be easy to breeze past Salinas on your way to the Monterey Peninsula, San Francisco, or San Jose, but that’s a mistake. Salinas is Steinbeck Country, the thinly disguised locale of “East of Eden”, “The Red Pony”, and “The Long Valley.” The National Steinbeck Center is a modern, manageably sized exhibition space right at the end of Main Street in the middle of “Old Town Salinas”, with easy access off 101, and a sizable parking garage on the same block. 

If you’ve been traveling up California’s Central Valley on 101 on a hot day, it’s worth the stop just to get out of the car and sit in the luxuriously air-conditioned theater (on the right as you enter) to watch the 15-minute documentary about Steinbeck’s life. Across the lobby space from the theater is the exhibition space, which includes displays and discussion covering each of Steinbeck’s novels, a number of movie screens showing excerpts from the movie versions of “East of Eden”, “Grapes of Wrath”, “viva Zapata”, and videos of Steinbeck’s Nobel prize winning speech and various interviews. 

And the rest rooms are lovely.

If you happen to be stopping near lunchtime, stretch your stay and your legs by walking two blocks down Central Avenue to the Steinbeck House Restaurant, run by volunteers in the renovated boyhood home of John Steinbeck. The menu features local produce and an eclectic selection of dishes, including of course “East of Eden Pasta”. During the summer you can also take a tour of the home from attic to cellar (location of the gift shop).

Posted in California, Freeway Free, hidden treasures, Travel and tagged , , | Leave a comment
09 Jul 2020
1 Comment

Life in a COVID-19 Hot spot – Week 17 : the Doldrums

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I’ve hit the wall. I feel as though the General Confession I learned in my innocent childhood has come to fulfillment:  I have left undone those things I ought to have done (like getting this blog entry out on time) and I have done those things I ought not to have done (like completing 199 rounds of Word Play in three days). And there is no health in me (although I passed my Covid-19 test with flying negatives.)

Maybe it’s Post Project Depression – I had been working on a fun project for one of my favorite little girls (see below), and happily I was able to gift it in person last weekend,(socially distanced, air hugs, but in person!) and see the gleeful reception first hand. Now it’s finished, no more figuring and contriving and eking out, and there is a vacuum where that flicker of creativity glimmered, and no glee to look forward to.

Maybe it’s the general flatness of my social life.  Other than the week-end’s distanced visit, my calendar is a panel of blank days punctuated by periodic Zoom and Skype encounters.  The trouble with Zoom and Skype is that they are so darned flat!  No body language is visible in those postage-stamp-sized video clips, no signals that the other person has something to say,  it’s like being in grade school where you have to raise your (digital) hand to be recognized.  By the time I figure out where the Hand icon is, I’ve forgotten what I meant to contribute to the discussion.

Or maybe it’s those rounds of WordPlay and Spider Solitaire that are slowly eating away my brain. Even with a sparse calendar, I find myself forgetting Zoom meetings and Skype appointments, doing my classwork (yes, I’m taking an online class) haphazardly at the last minute.

July is a big Birthday month in my family.  I have eight birthday cards to mail.  Hope I don’t forget anyone!

An article in the paper gives me some hope that it’s not just me; even people who normally have proved to have total recall are finding it difficult to distinguish one lockdown day from the next. If only, like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day”, I could feel that I was learning to live my day better with each repetitive cycle.  At the moment, I don’t guess that I could say I am.

Posted in COVID-19, Memoir and tagged ,
10 Mar 2020

Freeway Free in California: A Serene Escape from COVID-19 Stress

20200310_123757webI live in a COVID-19 hotspot – 43 cases and one death since the beginning of March – and public and private events are being cancelled left and right to prevent transmission.  So what is one to do if you are healthy, not in one of the “vulnerable” groups, and needing some relief from the stress of it all?  Maybe it’s time to visit a local museum.

The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco is one of my favorites.  I visited this week and found plenty of parking in the Civic Center Garage ($12.00 for 5 hours), two featured exhibits of great interest, no crowds, and decent food at the museum restaurant.  And if you are looking for stress relief, Asian art is all about serenity.

20200307_121146webThe exhibit that drew me to the museum featured Zhang Da Qian (Chiang Dai-Chien in traditional transcription) who was the Pablo Picasso of 20th Century Chinese art.  His work spans styles ranging from impeccable copies of venerated Chinese master artists of the past, to modern splash-ink impressions worthy of Jackson Pollock.  He lived in mainland China, Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, and California, and in each venue did his best to promote appreciation of Chinese art.  One of the featured works in this exhibit is titled “Scholars on a wilderness path”, but the giant monolith in the background must be Half Dome.

Other paintings include a marvelous white gibbon, a black horse grazing in a blue-green pasture, a Tibetan dancer, several giant lotuses, and landscapes formed from giant splashes of ink enhanced with a few brush-strokes to define space, foliage, light, and dark.

After studying Zhang’s various works, a stroll through the adjacent Korean gallery offers a different range of experiences.

You can admire a glowing white “moon jar”, pristine on its wooden shelf, and discover an Asian precursor of the classic patchwork quilt, made from silken scraps.

Or perhaps you will spend some time in another featured exhibit, called “Awakening” which walks you through several centuries of Buddhist tradition, juxtaposing ceremonial vessels made from human skulls, many-armed monsters intricately carved and painted, and dainty gilded bronze sculptures celebrating sensual tenderness.

Or maybe some of the more modern pieces will appeal to you, like this sculpture by Liu Jianhua formed of letters and Chinese characters on view just outside the Korean section. 20200307_121012web

The museum restaurant,Sunday at the Museum, features Asian style street food such as Vietnamese Pulled pork sandwiches, Japanese ramen noodles,  and Chinese dumplings.  You order at a counter and the food is brought piping hot to your table.  Of course you could get better Chinese food in Chinatown, better ramen in Japantown, but the setting attractive and the service is fast and friendly.

If you have children tossed out of their school/daycare, the museum usually has some activities geared toward children set up either in an activity area or  in the Shriram Learning Center on the first floor.

Posted in California, Events, Freeway Free, hidden treasures, Uncategorized and tagged , , | Leave a comment
11 Feb 2020
2 Comments

Freeway Free in Oregon: Exploring Astoria

[AKA “Travels with a Tiny Teardrop Trailer – Day 4 (cont.)”]

20191020_132703docAstoria is way out on the furthest northwestern tip of Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River. It is the oldest city in the state of Oregon, founded in 1811, and named for John Jacob Astor, the New York investor whose American Fur Company founded Fort Astoria at the site. (Yes, the Waldorf-Astoria in New York is also named for him.)  In bygone years Astoria was a bustling harbor, with schooner after schooner fighting her way past the dreaded Columbia River bar to pick up timber, fish, and furs, dropping off supplies and merchandise for the well-to-do families of  trappers, fishermen, and lumberjacks.

The Victorian heart of the city was demolished by fire in 1922.  This happened to coincide with the peak population – above 14,000 – so there were resources and energy to rebuild in the Art Deco style of the 1920’s.  Fortunately for architecture buffs, the population began a steady decline shortly after rebuilding, as port activity moved inland to Portland, and northward to Seattle.  The last fish cannery closed in 1980, the last lumber mill closed in 1989, and the railroad service was discontinued in 1996.  This left Astoria with a population of under 10,000, no funding for demolition/modernization in the town center, and plenty of warehouse space for the brewpubs and artist cooperatives which began to move in.

20191020_154102webWe stopped for lunch after our museum visit at the Rogue Public House, a brewpub located in a re-purposed fish cannery out on a pier just down from the museum.  We enjoyed their boutique beer, plus an excellent pizza and salad.  Then we took advantage of a temporary cessation of rainfall to stroll the delightfully un-restored, un-modernized, un-redeveloped downtown.

The downtown is haunted by the ghosts of retailers past:  the signs for JC Penney and Sears still deck the storefronts, though the shops underneath are now boutiques such as Garbo’s Vintage Wear, Purple Cow Toys, and Arachne’s Hand-Crafted Yarns.  Our favorite was FinnWare, a wonderful collection of Scandinavian design and décor, made even more special by a flotilla of Christmasy items sparkling and spinning on display.

We also stopped in at several of the art galleries which line Commercial Street, just to gawk at the creativity on display and wonder who actually puts these things in their houses.  The Riversea Gallery was particularly comprehensively amazing.

20191020_134111webAt one end of Commercial Street is the wonderful wedding cake-like Liberty Theatre, located, of course, in the Astor Building.  (See photo above.) We were visiting in October, so the Box Office was spectrally staffed.

After an hour or two of strolling and shopping we had had enough retail therapy and headed for the beach.  The sun was actually shining as we hit the sand at the tip of Oregon.  We could see the remains of the Peter Iredale rusting peacefully in the distance, one of the victims of the treacherous Columbia River Bar.

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Will the sunshine stay?  Will we be able to use the outdoor kitchen on the Titanic ?  Or will we head back to that cozy brewpub as refugees?  Stay tuned!

 

 

Posted in Freeway Free, Oregon, Travel and tagged , ,
22 Oct 2019
1 Comment

Freeway Free in CAlifornia – Adventures on the Empty Coast (Day 1)

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What’s the empty coast? Where Highway 1 clings to the cliff faces south of Carmel, with basically no left turns and few habitations until it regains civilization and a few crossroads south of San Simeon.

We needed a fall getaway, so D and I headed lickety-split down US-101, aiming for a calm coastal stay in Cambria, followed by a visit to Hearst San Simeon National Monument, and a scenic trip back up through Big Sur and the stretch of California Highway 1 that had been cut off by landslides and fires for several of the past years.

We stopped for lunch in Paso Robles, one of my favorite pauses for trips south and north on Historic El Camino Real. There are several good restaurants in Paso. This time we stopped at the Berry Hill Bistro, where the paninis are huge, the salads ample, and the servers slim and smiling. (I always think it’s a good sign if a restaurant’s waitresses are thin. It means they are running off the calories serving customers as fast as they can, rather than sitting around eating the leftovers.)

Just past Paso we found our exit on CA Highway 46, and sailed along a well maintained road through San Luis Obispo wine country. Acres of grapevines in fall colors cloaked the dry hills, and each winery seemed to be vying with the next to have the most oddly memorable name (my favorite: Tooth and Nail Winery.)

Only a half hour later we were cruising along Cambria’s Main Street. To our delight, we discovered that the entire month of October in Cambria is devoted to a Scarecrow Festival, and each retail, educational, and many private establishments compete for the notice of passers-by. There were Mexican-themed flamenco scarecrows for the Mexican restaurants, a Victorian lady in blue and white next to the blue and white Chase bank logo, and my favorite Raggedy Ann and Andy from my childhood next to a toy and gift store.

After checking into our beachfront motel, the Little Sur Inn,  we walked along the boardwalk bordering Moonstone Beach to check out the Moonstone Beach Bar and Grill as a dinner prospect, but although it has a lovely front veranda with a stunning sunset view,  and seemed to have a lively patronage, we would have been walking back in the dark, and it seemed a bit far.

We has our traditional champagne on the balcony of our room, looking out over Moonstone Beach. The sunset looked like a banana skin shading around the curve from pale yellow to golden brown.   We lingered until we both thought we saw the green flash accompanying the last rays of the sun. Lovely.20191001_190339web

As long as we would be getting in the car anyway, we decided to try Robin’s Restaurant in Cambria’s east village, a recommendation from a friend. It is a beautiful adapted home just a block from the Main Street, with a quiet ambiance, excellent service and good food (roasted Brussels sprouts with pine nuts and blue cheese, miso sea bass, firecracker shrimp).

One caveat: As we watched, there were maybe three younger couples coming in or leaving during the evening, but this is definitely a quiet restaurant for an older crowd.  D and I are used to upping the average age of the customer base by 10 years when we enter a restaurant. In this case we were right on average. D observed thatRobin’s does not have high chairs or booster seats, but they do seem to have an ample supply of walkers and supplemental oxygen bottles.  I guess the younger crowd was still quaffing brewskis on the Moonstone Beach Bar and Grill veranda.

IMG_0247webWe took the remains of a bottle of local Pinot Noir back to our balcony to finish off the evening with the complimentary chocolate chip cookies from our check- in desk. We sat on our balcony again to watch the crescent moon setting near where the sun had set before our dinner. Suddenly stars! The Milky Way! D even saw a shooting star. Only one spotlight shining on the entry sign for our hotel spoiled the dark sky.

 

Posted in California, Freeway Free, hidden treasures, Travel and tagged , ,
08 Oct 2019

Freeway-Free in Spain: Old Bilbao Explored

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When you are tired of looking at indoor and outdoor art along the Abandoibarra between Bilbao’s two world-class museums, go for a different vibe in Bilbao’s Old Town and Warehouse District.

On a weekday, you can browse the Mercado de la Ribera, one of the largest and oldest indoor markets in Spain. (I was there on a Sunday, but I did get to see some of the lovely stained glass windows in the guild hall.)

In the Warehouse District you will find the Alhondiga a multi-story public library  built on pillars within an old warehouse, with a glass-bottomed swimming pool on the roof.  It’s a wonderful re-imagining of how to use space. (Notice that no two of the supporting pillars are alike.)

In the Old Town are the usual medieval cathedral, narrow cobbled streets, and slightly skewed medieval buildings.

And if you explore the side streets, you will find some amazing, funky shops offering  exotic (and painful-looking) piercings, gothic wear, and many other oddities.

If you want an overview, don’t omit visiting the park atop Mount Artxanda, the hilltop overlooking Bilbao, for a panorama which takes in both old and new Bilbao. 20190528_124541doc

And then maybe you’ll want to take in the art scene just one more time before you leave.

 

Posted in Freeway Free, Memoir, Spain and tagged , , , | Leave a comment
01 Oct 2019
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Freeway-Free in Spain: A Tale of Two Museums

Bilbao’s Promenade along the Estuary is anchored at each end by a world-class museum.  The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum looks like a traditional museum from the outside – a blockish building with a fountain courtyard,  a lobby with a gift shop.  Ho hum. But the museum has re-invented itself in competition with its more famous colleague at the other end of the promenade and its exhibit space, when I visited, was among the most interesting and inventive I have seen.

20190526_160456webAt the time of my visit, the museum had thrown the traditional chronological arrangement of its art right out the window, and had rearranged its El Greco’s, its Goyas, its Gauguin in alphabetical order by subject.  So the Gauguin was exhibited under A for ART, taken out of its frame and put between glass panels so you could see the paint smudges on the edges of the canvas, and some scribbles by the artist on the back of the canvas.  In the same room were examples of art by paleolithic artists as well as moderns ones.  It made me think about the Gauguan in a completely different way.

Here’s a sample of the many pieces of Spanish and European art on view at the Fine Arts Museum:

(The picture on the lower left was taken, of course, in the room labeled “P for Portrait”.)

It was a rainy day when I visited, and I could have happily stayed for hours.

The next day I visited the other end of the Promenade, the Guggenheim Bilbao.  This museum is really all about the building.  The architecture inside and out is so curvaceously fascinating that the art pieces serve as much to enhance the building as to display themselves. Here’s a sample:

Of course, Bilbao is more than the sum of two museums and a promenade along the estuary.  There is an old town. There are modern buildings. I’ll give you a glimpse of that Bilbao next time.

Posted in Freeway Free, Memoir, Spain, Travel and tagged , , ,
24 Sep 2019

Freeway-Free in Spain: Bilbao Re-Imagined – Day 1

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All I knew of Bilbao before arriving was what I learned from Andy Williams in the song about “that old Bilbao moon/I shan’t forget it soon…/While Tony’s beach saloon/Rocked with an old-time tune”.

Whatever Bilbao Andy was singing about has gone, if it ever existed. For one thing, there is no beach at Bilbao; it gained its success as a port because it was situated on a wide river inlet, well away from storms AND sand.

Bilbao was the Pittsburg of Spain, a busy port located near iron deposits, and thus steel mills and manufacturing plants. Like Pittsburg, when the iron gave out, the city verged on collapse.   The warehouses emptied, the port facilities were allowed to become outmoded, and manufacturing jobs left for cheaper labor pools.

City visionaries hit on the idea of re-positioning Bilbao as a cultural center, and reclaiming its idle port as a riverside sculpture park and promenade. Someone heard that the Guggenheims were thinking of establishing a satellite museum in Europe, and Bilbao pulled out all the stops to secure this prize. The result: a voluptuously curved Frank Gehry–designed building which is a destination in itself, supplemented by The Museum of Fine Arts (the second largest museum of Spanish art in the country after El Prado in Madrid) at the other end of the promenade,, and between them a lovely open green space bordering the reclaimed river, studded with sculptures, bridges, fountains, playgrounds, and outdoor performance spaces.

Sculptures vary from realistic to very abstract:

The fountains bubble graciously from traditional to naturalistic:

And the playgrounds are well-used (note: the red-capped youth on the rope net are the same ones you can spot starting their school field trip in the first photo above).

20190526_172636webSo – come to Bilbao for the walk, the outdoor art, the architecture, the parks… and that’s only the first day!

Posted in Freeway Free, Spain, Travel, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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