Friday - only 2 more weeks!

 The courtyard of the Swedish Cultural Institute yesterday. Too cold to sit outside, so we ended up having lunch at Le Tartine again. I really enjoy eating there as the waiter is quite friendly and jokes around. We had lunch with a couple who teach in the states, whom we met at the residents' reception on Wednesday. This is our first time meeting Americans since we're here. We had a nice lunch, then they went off to Bibliotheque Forney and we went back to look at the exhibit at the Institute. Since it's the 100th anniversary of the death of Auguste Strindberg, the exhibit was his life/work interpreted by several illustrators of B.D. (graphic novels.) It was really interesting, even if we couldn't read Swedish.

 The exhibits are always so interesting there. Besides the actual illustrations as in the books, there were these large cut-outs. I like how they did them flat and then the cross piece to make them stand up. Like I used to do when I was a child and would make cut-out dolls.

 After this exhibit, we went around to rue Thorigny to see several other galleries, here, here, and here. We saw work that we liked a lot, which was a nice change from the other day when we were unimpressed with work at another gallery. I the evening, we met up with friends at Lelia Mordoch Gallerie. We liked the work in show, got to see Lelia with her new son, drank nice champagne, spoke about art, and got to meet and speak (in Spanish) with an artist originally from Valencia, Spain. We had dinner afterwards with our friends, then, because we felt so full, decided to walk back to our place. It wasn't as bitter cold, we walked fast, and before we knew it, turned a corner and there was Notre Dame. Chuck said "I know where we are!" We were nearly back to our very warm atelier.

 Mail art using a show card as the base.

 This is a card that I picked up at Karsten Greve last week. I cut the card in half and made 2 pieces of mail art. You can see the complete card on the Karsten Greve gallery link. I added one new head and eyes. I wish I had another card like this so I could do one with new mouths.

Here are the little landscapes I've been working on. I'll have over 50 completed by the time we leave. When I get home, they'll be mounted on blocks of wood and sent off the the Art-o-Mat project.
I two weeks, at this time, I'll be in the airport, Charles de Gaulle, waiting for the boarding call. Hard to believe that this time has gone by so quickly. Now to get out there and appreciate the city. It's sunny!!(21F)

Art walk

 This isn't part of the art walk but it's art. I purchased this beautiful piece from a former student to give to a friend of mine. Here's my friend holding it. She'd been ill with a life-threatening illness, and she's well now, and I'm so happy about that.

 My honey and I went down to Broad St. tonight to check out a few of the galleries that we missed last night. We went to the new pop-up craft shop that is next to 1708 Gallery. There are tee shirts by Pop Idiot (always fun) and jewelry and more. They'll be open every weekend through December. Buy local,  in Richmond, or wherever you live.

 The window display at Quirk Gallery and shop. Fun stuff and a really nice Sparkle Plenty jewelry exhibit.

 There's a new gallery on Broad street called Candela Books and Gallery. Their first show is an exhibit of beautiful photos by Shelby Lee Adams.

 This is the glass necklace that I got at the pop-up craft shop, by Sibelle.

I met up with a few of the Happiness Coalition people who were handing out cards. I got two and passed one along to someone else. What fun. Happiness is always good. We enjoyed being out on a really nice night for a walk. Meanwhile, in another part of downtown, the illumination ceremony was taking place.

A walk to galleries in Saint Germaine and horses!

Yesterday, as we crossed over to Ile de la Cite, on our way to the Saint Germaine galleries, three mounted officers of the guard went by us, struggling to get my camera out, I ended up catching only their back ends. The horses were the tallest I'd ever seen in real life. I wish I could tell you how many hands! So big! Even Gita who rides horses in Norway said that they were very tall. We went into a number of galleries with the main destination being the one with the Kurt Schwitters collages on display. They were all for sale but prices started at about 105,500 euros. We bought the catalog for 25 euros. Chuck was so happy to see these originals. They were quite small in size. Some of our students might remember the short film we used to show about him. Here's a photo of the Galerie and one of the collages in the book, which of course doesn't show the true colors or size, but wow it was great to see it in person.

We stopped into a gallery with pieces made of fabric. Gita is a fibre artist. Here we are in the mirror.

Here's the image of the backside of the horses. The really neat thing this morning, is as I was in the post office getting stamps, we heard the clomping of horses hooves outside in the little street, and about 50 mounted officers in full dress of the Guard Republicaine went by. Neither Chuck nor I had a camera with us. Waaa! I asked the postal clerk what was going on, he said "oh nothing, it's normal," with a wink. Hardly normal! There are lots of videos on YouTube that show this group in action.

NYC, art galleries and food.

We're visiting our daughter and cousin this weekend. On Friday, we went into the Chelsea neighborhood to "do" art galleries. There was a Lee Bul exhibit, showing some of the pieces we'd seen in Paris last fall. Chuck is looking at one of the "chandeliers" while I was inside of a small black stucture. We came across a neat exhibit of older work by Ettore Sottsass and I couldn't resist a reflection photo. We, also, went into a small Japanese gallery/shop and we really excited by the work. We had lunch of a crepe (apricot preserves with banana slices) made by an Argentine man from Mendoza at his cart. We sat on the ledge by a window across from the cart and ate it. It was muy delicioso. After much walking, and stopping at a Japanese book store to look at wonderful books and have a coffee, we checked out Moma and the Design museum, which is closing and moving to a beautiful new space in September. We met Mica after work and had dinner at Morandi, with a literally cool dessert to end the day. Lemon-mint granita! A long but lovely day, and the weather cooperated, too.

More NYC fun

I spotted this water sampling station in Chelsea. I'd never seen one before and neither had the people I was with and they live in Manhattan. The Chrysler and the Empire State buildings! How's that for a NYC playground? Perfect! Here's the new Apple store? Building? on 14th Street. Last time we were in the city, this building was a grocery store of some sort. Now it's three floors of Apple showroom, playhouse, um, whatever.









We went to a lot of galleries in Chelsea last Saturday. At Eyebeam (I think that's where it was) I saw this video on the VideoBox, which is on the outside of the building, note my reflection. See the word "DO!" I loved the video being shown. It was by João Leonardo, a typographic video of a letter by Sol LeWitt, the one he wrote to Eva Hesse. I love that letter!