Travel!

Oh lovely spring has come at last, and the geese are mostly gone from our little fountain lake, and the trees are blooming. So pretty.





Mary, of Uncustomary, has asked us to write about Travel this month, but I forgot to post on the date that she assigned. So it goes.

I did, however, think about it a lot.

Here are a couple of photos from a couple of our trips, and my thoughts that this topic prompted.

I grew up in a neighborhood and a family where people didn't plan to go to Europe because they CAME from Europe. But I wanted to go travel there. I don't know why, but I did.

I wanted to learn lots of different languages and travel. I can remember thinking about this when I was 10 or 11 years old. Meanwhile, my friends were yelling at their mothers, "Speak English, Ma!"

I never thought I'd get to travel anywhere, other than our car trips to the neighboring state for my father to fish in some new lake or river, or when I was a bit older, cross half the country by train to see my older sister and her husband in California.

But by chance, I got a job that permitted me to go to far away places, and then later, my husband and I got to travel together.

We went to Denmark and Portugal, off the beaten path back in the day. And then we got to France, and Spain, and England, oh my. I loved it. Even later on we were fortunate enough to travel with our kids and spend weeks in a foreign city, soaking up the new and different, and other languages.

My husband received residencies and we were able to return many times to a wonderful studio in Paris, where we met artists from all over the world. We learned that we're all the same, not that we didn't know this, but we really got to experience that. I still think about it and how fortunate we've been to have had this. Amazing memories, and friendships that continue even over great distances.

Now I've added to my traveling in a different way, by sending out Mail Art

all over the world. 

This piece went to Marseille, to an exhibit about Mermaids.

If you've never left home, traveled some place different, I highly recommend it. You don't have to cross the seas or continents, just go to some place new nearby even, and just enjoy the experience. Or even, send Mail Art to people far away. Whatever you decided to do, it'll expand your mind.

A bit more of Bilbao & Mail Art

 Spotting this man in the water cleaning the Guggenheim museum was interesting as it gave the building scale, though that's not so evident in my close up shot.

 This Louise Bourgeois spider is on the river side of the Guggenheim. It's called Maman. There are other versions of this elsewhere. Have you seen any of them?

 Jeff Koons Puppy is on the plaza by the entrance to the Guggenheim. He is so cute, I mean it, really cute. The people liked it so much that the city bought it rather than having it be removed at the end of the exhibit time. The plantings change with the seasons, I believe. Big, this puppy is BIG!

 We were sitting on the wall on the river side of the building one night, just looking at things, when a HUGE noise jolted us! What the heck!!! The fire sculpture had come on behind us. I turned around and got this shot of it.

 This is one of the things I'm doing besides the tiny watercolor landscapes and mail art. I'm altering Mona. Can you spot the changes?

 This is #817, which I sent to someone in Paris.

This is #818 which is going further away. I used show cards as the substrate for these two cards.


And now a special announcement: My honey is putting more images on his blog. He got some fine photos while in Bilbao. Check them out here.

Images from Bilbao, Spain

 We returned Saturday evening and it's like Bilbao was a dream. We had 3 1/2 days there and, in spite of rain, did lots of walking. Our main objective was to see the Guggenheim, and we did, but we found out that there was more to Bilbao than that. To prove it, here is half of the dessert table at our hotel buffet (smile.)

 We took endless photos of the museum. You can, of course, see them on the internet in abundance, because the building is seductive and it's impossible to stop taking photos of it. This is our view on the first day, our first walk, though we did see it coming in from the airport in the taxi the evening before.

 Here's bit more of the building. I'll be posting my multiples views on Flickr should any of you be interested in seeing them. Again, I'll say it, I couldn't stop taking photos, and neither could my honey. To the last moment, in the taxi on the way to the airport, I was snapping photos through the window.

 We also went to the Museo de Bellas Artes, where we caught the final days of an exhibit of work by Antonio Lopez, which was very good. We'd not heard of him, as we aren't very knowledgeable about contemporary Spanish artist (other than Tapies.) This is a view of the museum cafe. I was sitting on a bench and noticed the reflections, how the people inside seemed like a painting, and the passersby, a blue of movement.

 Here's a view of the Guggenheim at night. Pretty amazing building. The exhibits were also very good. We enjoyed seeing the Richard Serra installation, the exhibit with Richard Serra and Brancusi, and works by Georg Baselitz. The 3rd floor was not open, which worked out great as we were pretty full seeing what we did see. Satisfied and happy that we had the experience of being at the museum. We returned another day to take more photos (only the outside can be photographed) and to visit the bookstore, where we found some books on sale. Who could resist? Not us. We got a book of Rauschenburg works and a photo book.

 What a surprise to come upon this bust of John Adams on the Gran Via. The 2nd U.S. president made some positive comments about the Basque people, culture, and language, which were included on the plaque.

 We had our umbrella this afternoon, though we'd forgotten it another day, when it was sunny and we'd assumed it would stay that way. We took refuge in a big indoor market in the Casco Viejo (old city) which was dicey for me as I don't eat meat and there were lots of butcher stalls. We hung out by the mushroom stall! Once there was a bit of a let up, we dashed out to continue our walk. Soon the rain let up and we could take more photos.

A nice view of the pedestrian bridge designed by Calatrava. Our hotel was just up a bit on the right so we had views of the bridge and part of the Guggenheim from our hotel window. We walked across the bridge in the daytime and the night, quite different experiences visually.
All in all, we were happy to have gone to Bilbao, where we celebrated our wedding anniversary.