New Orleans - Part 3

I know that when people think of New Orleans, they think of food, jazz, and Mardi Gras but for me it's all about the art. I've indulged my enthusiasm for the Ogden Museum of Southern Art the last two posts, I'm going to move on to The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at NOMA, the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Despite the intense heat and humidity I could only marvel at the 60+ fabulous works...here are some for you to enjoy.

You could sit alongside these folks.

This was a three-sided, tri-colored dog.

I YURNED for these...

There is NOTHING like a Claes Oldenburg to make me happy.

Leandro Ehrlich
Window and Ladder - Too Late for Help  2008

Well, after pondering all this great art and trying to discern the intention of all these great sculptors, one works up an appetite.  And since food does matter, I'll just say I was partial to The Milk Bar on S. Carrollton Ave and Slice Pizzeria on St Charles Ave.

If you'd like to find out about these sculptures and more, visit this link, or better yet, plan to make New Orleans a stop when YOU next travel.

New Orleans - Part 2

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art is a gem of a museum and one where you are sure to find something of interest.  My visit was a bonanza with a look at Self-Taught, Outsider and Visionary Art from the Permanent Collection on the top floor (hurry this exhibit is gone after July 21!) and then one floor down my eyes were opened to the works of William R. Hollingsworth, Jr — an illustrator and painter.  Hollingsworth was a Mississippi artist who was born in 1910 and began drawing and painting in high school and continued on very successfully, even winning national awards and recognition.  Despite being a successful artist, husband and father, sadly, Hollingsworth ended his life at the age of 34. [To learn more, read here.] Though the exhibit is now gone, here are some of the works that I was drawn to...this first one perhaps the most poignant for me — Hollingsworth's son, Billy and his fox terrier, Boy.

An illustration---sort of Rockwell-esque, isn't it?

His self-portrait

The Music Box 1942
Hollingsworth did this watercolor in exchange for new records from the music store!

Landscape # 35  March 1944
Painted toward the end of his short life.

Uncharacteristically of his time, Hollingsworth painted and drew "the daily life of local black people" in his native Mississippi.  He was the subject of a book authored by Eudora Welty and coincidentally (or not), the Ogden had an exhibit of Eudora Welty's photographs.  Who knew this famous writer was a photographer?  Not me.

The multi-talented Eudora Welty

Carrying Home the Ice  1936

Mardi Gras, New Orleans  c 1930s

In my neck of the woods, it's become popular to have a "bottle tree" in your yard.  They really are quite beautiful, bare branches capped with blue, green, brown or amber bottles that glisten in the sun.  It wasn't until I saw this photo of Welty's that I learned these decorative trees came from the past.

A House with Bottle Trees  1941

And finally, in this glorious museum in Nawh'lins, there was a delightful tribute to the commitment the Ogden has to educational outreach and the work introducing kindergarteners to artistically "translating" the books they've read.  From the exhibit, I wanted you to see their interpretation of The Room of Wonders — particularly inspiring to someone like me...

 

Though you may not see these specific exhibits at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, you are sure to experience something spectacular, just as I did.

Now that I'm back home, here's my own little Shelf of Wonders...

Miniatures anyone?

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Next post: Art outdoors in NOLA

New Orleans - Part 1

On a recent visit to New Orleans I was fortunate to visit THE OGDEN MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN ART university of new orleans and see their magnificent collection of Self-Taught, Outsider and Visionary Art from the Permanent Collection.  Though I'm still at a loss for words, I thought I'd let the images speak for themselves.  Hope you enjoy.
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This was a two-sided canvas...isn't it amazing?

Jake McCord (1948 - 2009)
Redhead with Blue Bow  1990

Big Al Taplet   (1934 -  )
Boots: Shine with a Smile  1993

Reginald Mitchell (1960 -  )
House of Blues  1992

This was about 7 ft tall and wonderful!

Archie Byron  (1928 - 2005)
The Slave: Like Father, Like Son  1992
This was larger than life and very powerful.

I have not included so many of the fabulous works, including all those of the Reverend Howard Finster.  

And now in honor of our recent Fourth of July, a glorious work of art by Ab the Flagman:

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My next NOLA post will share the art of William R. Hollingsworth, Jr
 and the photos of Eudora Welty...

Confronting Happiness

I guess what's going on with me is about confronting happiness.  Even saying it that way — "confronting" — speaks to the battle going on inside.  In my experience, whenever something good was happening, something bad came along to take it away.  It was a lengthy, sad road of now-it's-here-now-it's-gone — for as long as I can remember.  It happened to my cousin Linda, it happened to my sister, Donna, and it happened to my sister-in-law, Robin.  So my instinct is not to let me be happy cause, soon after, something's gonna take it away. AWAY.

The thing is — shit's gonna happen.  No matter what I do or don't do — bad stuff will happen and I can't stop it or control it. So I have a choice.  I can choose to be happy — or not.

This is a foreign concept for me.

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/10-Happiness-Quotes-We-Love

It seemed like the time to take stock.

I have a pretty-damn-good-27-year marriage and a husband who still loves and wants to be with me despite all the flaws and bones of contention.  

We have a son and a daughter who are compassionate, smart, funny, attractive, loving people that we like being around and being with.  

The roof over our heads houses some great contents — we have all that we NEED and loads more that we want.  

I am a really good cook (though NO baker) so the meals are wonderfully satisfying and express my love to those I feed.  

I left my job to embark on the next phase of my career as a consultant doing more of what I am terrific at and enjoy.  

With the time off I'm getting to clean out the attic (well, we're a third of the way) and slowly de-clutter all that is around me.  I'm finding letters from 30+ years ago which allow me to remember the good from the past and reconnect with those who knew me when.

My friend Maria says, I can choose to let my anxieties ruin this day or not.

My friend Maureen says, Finding happiness is about following the signs the universe sends you.

The universe is telling me loud and clear: 

You have done a lot.  You have always tried.  YOU can be HAPPY.

I'm gonna try real hard to listen.

Father's Day

Parents, for the most, do the absolute best they can for their children. That is what I believe.  But, often one parent or the other (or God forbid, both) is unable to give what the child needs.  I'm not talking about food, clothing, or shelter.  I'm speaking of love, support, emotional caring.  The loss of this love from a father has far-reaching effects and can create an emotional deficit that is hard to overcome.

One can fill this void with a loving partner or husband and luckily I have the love of a husband who has given me so much to balance out that deficit and, fortunately for our children, IS a loving and giving father…not what my father was able to be to me.

On this day I say, to my husband and all you emotionally giving dads out there…
HAPPY FATHER'S DAY and THANK YOU for making the most important difference in your children's lives!

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Here's a look back at my dad (and maybe yours too?) If you haven't read these already, I hope you will and you'll have some sense of why I started writing this blog...

Tales From Denise James

Father Didn't Know Best

Thrift

Missing (and Finding) Motivation

Haven't had the focus lately to do what I "should" be doing.  Been having trouble finding the energy to do much of anything and worse — at least to me — I fell off the writing bandwagon.  This blog.  The one thing I'd been doing completely for myself, the commitment I made to myself and kept, the thing that gave me such comfort and catharsis — I felt frozen and unable to write.  It didn't make sense, it still doesn't make sense.  

                                                   I have the time.  

                                                   I have the freedom.  

                                                   I have the stories.  

                            

                                                   Why has it become so difficult to write?

Part of me believes that I'm still hiding, wanting (and not wanting) to share with my readers what's buried inside — what's hard, what's sad, what's shameful.  My publishing friend Susan tells me that unless it's a misery-memoir, it just doesn't sell. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, to give you insight, here are the titles of some misery-memoirs:

Damaged      Hidden     The Saddest Girl in the World     Mummy Told Me Not To Tell

That isn't my story.  My story is ordinary and my story is extraordinary — just like so many others.

So while I try to find my missing motivation, the one thing I have been able to get out there to do, the activity that I never lack motivation for is thrift-store shopping. And what always speaks to me when I'm hunting for thrift-store treasures?   Art. I just have an urge, a calling to ferret out the great, hidden, discarded art that is waiting for a new home.

Art makes me happy and always fills me. Does it do that for you?

Last week while browsing I came across something that I didn't need and wasn't even tree art (which I collect) but it seemed old and finely done and I just couldn't leave it behind.  I picked it up, asked the price, put it down, and a millisecond later picked it back up.  It needed a home.  It was coming with me.

        

This is the image up close

The framed size is 13" x 18"

I came home — art in hand — feeling very guilty.  Did I need this piece of art?  Did I have a personal attachment to it?  Was it fabulous?  Well, I certainly did not need yet another piece of art.  And while I'd been to the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, I didn't have an emotional connection to it in any way and to be truthful while it was haunting and beautifully done, it wasn't drop-dead fabulous.  I was feeling I shouldn't have gotten it. I should be networking — not buying art!  But there it was.

Enough — I told myself, no more art!  Not until you've gotten some work!

Flash

NO flash

But then, when I was barely looking, in fact I was on my way out of the store and wasn't even going to look at the artwork, I just started a quick flip through the piled-up,on its side, stack of discarded art, ignoring the really ugly stuff, by-passing the junk, pushing aside the commercial, mass-produced art that's sold in every big box store and just as I about to escape empty-handed, there it was.  A piece so surprising it screamed out to me with its red metal frame and its gorgeous shocking emerald green lily pads crowded with sleek black-necked Canadian geese with their graceful and stream-lined bodies darting to and fro beneath these gorgeous two-toned green lily pads. 


I could not (repeat) could not leave without this stunning piece.  Income or no income, guilty or not, frivolous, undisciplined — call it what you will — art motivates me.

Matches the wall rather nicely but I think I need to
move it into the kitchen.  It measures 21" x 31"!

OKAY, now all you readers out there... guess what I paid for each...

If anyone can read this signature, let me know...
is it Chinese? Japanese?