Mama's Visit

My apologies for the stasis of my blog lately....I guess I've been feeling a little word shy and otherwise preoccupied. I have been meaning to share these photos from my mom's visit, so getting to it:

One bright but grayish morning we drove into Seattle to visit the Seattle Art Museum and Olympic Sculpture Park. I get a little overwhelmed in museums (I think I prefer featured exhibitions and smaller galleries to museums with large collections on display) though I really enjoyed some of the Australian Aboriginal and Indigenous Northwest art. I thought these masks were really fun and might translate well into drawn characters.

Luckily the rain held off so we could walk down to the Olympic Sculpture Park. I think we were both impressed with how well the park is laid out in the landscape. I told Mom I wanted to call this series of photos "Everything's a seat" because that just seems so often to be the fate of modern public sculpture. And even when I can't sit there, it still visually registers that way. 

One of Dennis Oppenheim's Safety Cones

Perre's Ventaglio III by Beverly Pepper

Bunyon's Chess by Mark di Suvero

Mom looking at Eagle by Alexander Calder

Not art, just some nicely designed seats. Isn't the red cute?

Untitled by Roy McMakin 

(he's clearly joking about the seat thing too...pst...McMakin, really?)

Typewriter Eraser, Scale X by Claes Oldenburg

Wandering Rocks by Tony Smith

Stinger by Tony Smith

Louise Bourgeois' Eye Benches

 Seattle Cloud Cover by Teresita Fernandez

(Extra close-up detail of a panel of her glass bridge over the train tracks)

Love & Loss by Roy McMakin

Mom and I found a real seat at the bottom of the park--and Space Needle! (We're both kind of grimacing for fear my camera would fall off the railing into the water)

There are a few more sculptures at park, including a huge Richard Serra piece which was so cool to see up close! It is a very lovely space. A couple days before Mom had to leave, we headed back into Seattle to visit the Frye, a fantastic small museum that was showing three special exhibitions. One was a large collection of engravings and artifacts from Napoleon's conquest of Egypt in the 18th century, a period known as "Egyptomania"! I should also note that the Fryes were from Iowa, and the renovation was beautifully completed by my favorite Seattle architects Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen.

With Mom's company I finally got to see the infamous Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University by Steven Holl Architects. If I repeatedly hear about how wonderful a place is, I'm all the more nervous to see it in person. But it was truly a warm, intimate, and inviting building.

Besides the art and architecture forays, Mom and I did a little shopping about, walked along the lake, ate lots of delicious meals, visited the farmer's market and Seattle neighborhoods.....it was a real pleasure. Not just a vacation for her but for me as well in my new setting. It is comforting to have someone so familiar help you get more familiar with a new place. And that was September.