Tuesday, March 21

Another day gone by so fast! I was able to get off work early on Tuesday so that I could make it to this week's art event on time. I had to leave right after a meeting at 4:15 (I LOVE MEETINGS) and head over to the Contemporary Museum of Art up on Chicago Street. I stopped for a Dunkin Donut on the way :) and was a bit early for our check in time of 5pm.
That museum is so industrial-looking. It reminded me of the Contemporary Museum we went to in Ottawa this christmas...very open, almost empty, artsy, up-to-you interpretation. The main exhibit was the Andy Warhol prints exhibit.
A few projects caught my attention, the first was the huge baby. It looked so real, except for the hair! but it was about 3 feet tall. I read that parts of it were enhanced/enlarged for emotional effect. It was made of mixed media materials (fake hair that looks "real," etc.) I couldn't figure out if the baby was made of porcelain or clay or what, but it was cool.

There was also another human-like statue thing upstairs that was the body and head of a boy, but the face was Hitler. The exhibit was called "HIM" and that's all it was. We walked through three rooms of emptiness before coming into a room with this one boy kneeling befrore a wall. You walk in and see the back of the boy, expecting to see a cute little boy kneeling, but you walk around and see the face of Hitler. Kinda creepy.

My favorite exhibit was the simplicity pictures on the main floor just before going upstairs. They were so simple at first, yet if you looked at them longer you could see more and more detail. That's the kind of photography I'd love to do if I did still shots. I like taking pictures of people, but that kind of scenery appeals to me too.
Other things at the CMA that stood out to me: Light room (Pink and Gold lights set up in random bars across the walls), different mobiles, video with just the mouth and teeth of someone talking, cool steps, the naked man statue, the rug-looking painting of different weights of paint dots in the pattern of a spiral, the original prints with which Andy Warhol did his art, different ways words can symbolize art, the vast whiteness and simplicity of the inside. the mixed media room exhibit with strings across the room and tiny town in the corner, and right as you walk into the museum you see cool white shiny box-like squares on the wall. (Sorry-I can't describe them better than that...I could draw them though)

I was amazed at how people could describe their art. One of the canvas paintings was a black border with a red line border just inside of that. Nothing but white inside of the borders. Then they went on to describe how the black line keeps going and what that represents and other bs about the white space representing something else. I could do that! I could paint that exact painting with no training whatsoever.

I wonder what it takes for such simple art like that to get into this prestigious museum. I could just put a black dot on a page and explain it as something significant and it would probably sell for hundreds of dollars if the explanation was crazy enough. Amazing.
We stayed at the museum until around 7. The bookstore was funny and had sweet books like "50 boyfriends worse than yours," "50 things to do with a wife", CD of noises for a nosy neighbor (ie, screeming baby, party of over 200 people, full-fledged fight, banging pots and pans, etc.) Humorous stuff but also artsy books and texts as well.

Again, I went to bed early and didn't go on the computer. Hence, the lack of blogs and emails in the last few days.