With all my events done, I'm free to wander and find art....had missed the Minnesota Art Institute last time I was here and was absolutely amazed at the excellent and varied collection there, from Japanese buddhas and brush paintings to Classical sculpture, European painting and a great contemporary show called Art in the Age of Globalization
Luis Gonzalez Palma
Do Ho Sub (completely made of soldiers' dog tags)
Wendy Red Star
Lots of amazing Japanese stuff...Murakami, etc.....
this link is for Chiho Aoshima's work, which mesmerized me for a good half hour:
John Singer Sargent, "Crucifixion" (love this one...that's Adam and Eve under each arm)
Max Beckmann, who was exiled to Holland when his art was deemed decadent in the early years of the Nazi regime
William Cole, "Ann Klein" (completely made of Shoes...this one's for you, Loretta..the Imelda of Waterbury, CT)
Walter Kuhn, "Sandy"
It rained quite a bit the last half of my stay here...caught in a downpour, I wasn't about to buy another umbrella after having scuttled Christian's back in Toronto...what is this..my cheapness? (nah I'm just thrifty). Or am I just unwilling to cop to having jettisoned the umbrella a tad too soon?....Or is this the curse of Christian who is no doubt sore he threw away 99cents on the earlier one and was so shocked at my callous ingratitude, he hexed the clouds?...Truth is, I'm traveling ever the lighter, having sent back yet another box with books, clothes, etc, knowing I'll be back to flying soon...when I saw this saran wrap style poncho, and considered the lost space of another awkward-to-pack umbrella, I jumped on it and splurged, laying down my $2.99, thrilled that I now had rain gear that would pack down to the size of a dental floss container and had cost me less than a burrito
Undaunted, I journeyed to the river as the rain soon ceased
That's the old stone bridge which was once a rail line and is now a walking path. The whole river area is being refurbished as the mills have long since moved elsewhere...so it's now as you'd expect: lofts, high end restaurants....
....but also galleries and theater...including the Guthrie, which is pretty impressive...3 or 4 big theaters (there is a lot of theater in this town)
In the gift shop, I found no Jane Austen duct tape (see last blog), but they are now hocking tea and trivia in her name
St. Anthony Falls, named by Fr. Hennepin in 1680, member of the French expedition that founded the city...can you imagine there were French explorers wandering around here just decades after Plymouth Rock?
the locks, so ships can navigate upriver beyond the falls...the Mississippi's source is not far north near the top of the state
The old mills, powered once by the falls themselves, then later by the hydroelectricity generated from them (you can see the Guthrie 'blue tongue' [my name for it] at far left)
This city is great, but every once in awhile some Americrassness shows through....the yellow thing is a pedal bar ...I kid you not...people pedal and drink at a bar and propel themselves through the streets...the driver does not drink, or so they say...lots of hooting and waving of course, sort of like those horrid rolling cable car drunkmobiles in SF
Below is Nicolett Island, owned by the Parks board, with houses rented out to artists....a lovely bucolic little island in the middle of the river insulated from the urbanness of the riverfronts on both sides
Discussing poetry for hours over dinner...this is my kind of town...Vaughn and Jim, pictured at top, are lobbying for me to relocate here...they've been loads of fun and have taken me all over, adding to Mark's already legendary generosity (Mark and I at bottom)
People will seriously do anything to fundraise
We all headed over to Nordeast, the arts district across the river, which is historically Slavic...Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, Russian
My photography skills continue to deteriorate along with my camera, but sometimes art emerges. I call this one Manhattan (those are large galaxies shimmering above it)...start humming Rhapsody in Blue, and the effect will be complete
Next morning, I headed off to the airport (Minneapolis has a light rail that runs right into the airport, as did Seattle...adding them both to my list of city's that work...sadly LA is not one of them....and I didn't look for this news story, but as John Bickerson once said to his nagging wife "a mousetrap doesn't run after a mouse, but it catches him all the same".....yet more reasons to leave California, esp. Southern CA http://on.aol.com/video/top-five-most-polluted-u-s--cities-517782507
My fantasy at this point is to move to NY for a year or two, then Minneapolis for a year or two, then Seattle for a year or two...then who knows...back to South America perhaps...please send job apps/connections as that's the sticking point
Farewell my lovely Mark
and soon it will be hello to Art and Keith who run the inimitable Antebellum Guesthouse in New Orleans's Treme district
They are complete antebellum south aficionados, both hailing from Richmond, VA
Even the food is antebellum era....
I'm considering pre-emptive open heart surgery to make room for the cholesterol.
My flight got cancelled and they tried to push me into the next day, but I rallied (as you always can with air travel) and secured another flight via Chicago instead of Dallas (tornado weather is wreaking havoc right now). Thank you airline employees who are generally a good lot and helpful.
Chicago's O'Hare has no free wifi (embarrassing and another reason to hate O'Hare).
Another good plane companion...Damon, a student at U of Minn, who goes to China each summer to teach English because he makes more money doing that than the jobs available to him in the states.
Got to New Orleans by midnight and hopped in a cab driven by a Haitian women who put Neal Cassidy to shame..and who I quickly dubbed Leadfoot Lafitte
And what greeted me as I entered the Antebellum Guesthouse?.........
Fauns!
Trebor, you know I want you in NYC! You can temporarily relocate to Minneapolis, but I want you within a short distance so that you are more closely huggable!
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