LA Fitness Spin Sign Up Sheet

She really tried to approach it nicely, the spin instructor that is, as she asked who forgot to sign up for the 5:45am spin class at the LA Fitness in Ballard. It’s okay. It’s easy to forget or not know you need to sign up if you are new to the gym or really sleepy.

The situation was this: the class was full – all bikes taken – yet two people who had signed up didn’t have a bike. The instructor asks several times (with everyone’s attention) but eventually is forced to go bike to bike and check the person on the bike with a name on the list. And, lo and behold the last two riders she checks had not signed up. Why did these two folks wait until the instructor came to them and asked them to give up their bike? It is a question that bothered us well into the namastes of the subsequent yoga class.

Brush McCoy and Dry Late Summer Flowers

Three Brush McCoy Pots With Flower Arrangements

Onyx ware was a line of pottery produced by Brush-McCoy Pottery. The history of the company is a bit complex with all its name changes and mergers throughout the years. The company started in 1848 as “W.F McCoy” and the pieces shown here were probably created probably sometime in the 1920s (a guess…exact dates we’ll leave for the experts) when the company was called Brush-McCoy. At The McCoy Pottery Collectors’ Society, there is an article on the technique that gave the pots their “onyx” look. There was an earlier and later technique onyx technique. The earlier technique involved introducing additional glaze colors with a brush at intervals around the piece. This produces a stippled appearance which the vases shown here – to our eye – seem to have.

Green Brush McCoy Pot is flouting some English lavender.
The green pot contains Lavandula angustifolia, but, possibly a subspecies, we don’t know. Sloppy record keeping is to blame.

Brown Brush McCoy Urn (with two handles) is sporting Phlomis russeliana of Jerusalem Sage.
Dave's Garden says that this mint family (Lamicease) phlomis is named“[f]rom the Greek word for mullein, perhaps due to the similarity of the leaves.” And, well, ruseliana is named after someone called Russell. What a great smell these dried leaves and blossoms have.

This pot was a gift of Wild Dingo.

Blue Brush McCoy Pot is holding spent Butterfly-bush blossoms.
Butterfly-bush is quite common in Seattle. The best specimens seem to grow uninvited, along roadsides in the unlikeliest of places. This intentionally planted Butterfly-bush is Buddleja davidii ‘Back Knight’. It was named for Adam Buddle (1662 – 1715) and Father Armand David (1826 – 1900).

Brush McCoy Onyx Pots

An Outdoor Table Setting of Brush McCoy

Arum Italicum and Orient and Flume

Arum italicum in an Orient and Flume Vase

When we purchased our house oh so many years ago, we didn’t realize how much Arum italicum was in the yard. Over the years, we’ve pulled up plants (making sure to get the bulbs) where we didn’t want italicum and generally allowed other areas of the yard to have clumps of it. Our neighbors don’t have any italicum in their yards so we are guessing that the movement of dirt around our yard has been the main spreading mechanism. Neighbors don’t exchange dirt typically – hence no italicum in our neighbor’s yard.

Right about this time at the end of summer, the spike inflorescences – called a spadix – and its dozens of bright orange berries are all that is left. The leaves have given up the ghost for the season. Italicum is part of the Arum (Araceae) family and is commonly called Cuckoo Pint and Italian Lords-and-Ladies. The genus name we are guessing refers to the fact that this plant grows quite well in Italy. The spadices are shown here in a late 1970s (?) Orient and Flume Tiffany-styled vase.

Ironically, we purchased this American-made vase in Venice of all places. The further Italian link to the italicum (and completely coincidental as well) is that behind the vase is a piece of the painting: Padre e figlio (1997) by Alessandro Gambetti, an Italian artist. We purchased this piece in Castellina in Chianti, oh some many years ago.

Arum italicum Leaves


Arum italicum Green Berries

The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art

Interviewer: “So why do you want to work at the Bureau of Surrealist Research?”
Interviewee: “I’ve always dreamed about working here.”

The existence of the Bureau of Surrealist Research was just one of the interesting tidbits we learned about at the The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery May 28, 2011 – October 2, 2011. (On the drive up from Seattle we came with the interviewer/interviewee joke.) The brochure features Claude Cahun (1894 – 1954) in Self portrait (as weight trainer) (1927). The other iconic imagery used as part of the promotion for the exhibition includes Edith Rimmington (1902 – 1986) The Oneiroscopist (1947) and Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves (1925). Oneiroscopist means a specialist in looking at dreams – appropriate for the surrealists - and Miró’s piece, with the translated title this is the color of my dreams, is the source of exhibition title.

Edith Rimmington – Oneiroscopist (1947) and Joan Miro (1925) Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves

So what is surrealism? Surrealism is a cultural movement (not an art movement or style) that began in the early 1920s and that the Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) describes as “[p]ure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.” And, that “[s]urrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substitution for them in the solution of the principal problems of life.” Automatism is spontaneous creation such as a drawing or writing with no conscious censorship. People, other movements, and events that came before surrealism like Freud, Dadaism, and World War I guided how the surrealist movement developed. It was a time of change and the surrealist motto was “Transform the World – Change Life”.

It is interesting to note that initially painting, as a surrealist activity, was emphasized very little in the manifesto; yet, it is painting that comes to mind most readily when talking about surrealism, especially the works of Dalí. Some early surrealists thought that the trouble with painting was that the expression (i.e. the mechanics) would get in the way of the automatic response so sought after as pure surrealism. The idea of letting automatism take hold and guide your creations is an intriguing one for those (like us) so used to executing a certain degree of control over our output – for work or pleasure.

A theme explored in the exhibition is the connection between First Nations art of the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska and surrealism. The surrealist artists Kurt Seligmann and Wolfgang Paalen visited the Northwest in in the late 1930s. Others like Andre Breton and Max Ernst purchased Northwest art. The surrealists were by accounts moved by the indigenous ceremonial art, drawn to the authentic nature of the work. However, as the essay Scavengers of Paradise by Colin Browne that appears in the exhibition guide points out: “…the surrealist relationship with the ceremonial objects of North America was complex, fluid and often naively idealistic. Many surrealist artists became collectors of primitive art but were unaware of the provenance or function of the objects they acquired …”.

The exhibit was broken into themed sections: Revolution by Night; The Colour of My Dreams; Behind the Screen; Spaces of the Unconscious; The Surrealist Object; Myths, Maps, Magic; The Lure of the Pacific Northwest; and Anatomies of Desire. On display there are several types of media: publications, photos, paintings, collage, sculpture, film, and objects. But, we confess it was really the paintings that grabbed us the most as can be deduced for the list of what we found interesting. Though, we do have a newfound appreciation of Man Ray (1890 - 1976); a number of his photographs and rayographs (really photograms) are included in the exhibition.

What we found interesting at the exhibition:

- Georgio di Chirico (1888 – 1978) was an important figure to the surrealists, a “haunting father”. The exhibit starts with de Chirico’s La cerveau de l’enfant or The Child’s Brain (1914). As a side note, it is interesting (for us) to see our reaction to di Chirico’s work in an exhibition in Palermo, La Metafisica continua. We did not like it.

Georgio di Chirico (1914) La cerveau de l’enfant or The Child’s Brain

- Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1873) seemed to flirt on the edges of surrealism.

- Kurt Seligmann (1900 – 1962): Seligmann’s The Four Temperaments (1946) or The Meeting of the Elements (1939) could have been easily at home on a Yes album cover. Roger Dean is the artist behind the Yes album covers. We wonder if he was influenced by Seligmann’s biomorphic forms.

- Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) Miró’s work Photo: ceci est la couleur de mes rêves. (1925) lends its name to the exhibition title. Such a simple and elegantly conceived work.

- Claude Cahun (1894 – 1954) was a woman. Not until after the exhibit did we realize he was a she.

- André Masson (1896 - 1987): Masson’s Meditation on an Oak Leaf (1942) is a crazy, contorted study. The information card describing the work said that Masson called it a “triumphant tellurism” style. Tellurism has to do with the hypothesis of animal magnetism put forth by Dr. Keiser. Masson’s The Metaphysical Wall (1940) was in the last room of the show and is a beautiful work.

- Wilhelm Freddie (1909 - 1995). Part of the Dutch surrealist movement, Freddie’s The Prayer (1940) is a stark, simple painting with a deflated figure praying at the very bottom of a dark purple canvas.

- Leonora Carrington (1917 – 2011). Carrington’s The House Opposite (1945) is a dreamlike scene not so different than the number of Renaissance domestic scenes we saw in Florence, just a little more surreal.

Leonora Carrington (1945) The House Opposite (detail left and right)

- Yves Tanguy (1900 – 1955). His work seems to have its own symbolic language, fragments of the symbols scattered here and there about eerie landscapes such as in The Doubter (1937) and Death Watching His Family (1927) – both in the exhibition.

- Exquisite corpse. Le cadavre – esquis – boira – le vin – nouveau or “the exquisite corpse will the drink the new wine.” is a method the surrealist used to create collaborative work. The works in this part of the exhibit were fascinating. Related methods included dessign collectif or collective drawing. An interesting example is the work Le jeu de’oie (1929) – The Game of Goose. The circular board game was created by André Breton, Suzanne Muzard, Jeannette Tanguy, Pierre Unik, Georges Saboul, and Yves Tanguy.

Le jeu de’oie (1929)

- Joseph Cornell (1903 – 1972) and his “poetic theatres” like The Crystal Cage (Portrait of Bernice) (1943 – 1960s). A fictional heroine Bernice, a young girl who performs ingenious scientific experiments inspired by the sights and sounds of the world.

- Hans Bellmer (1902 – 1975) and his arranged, life-sized, pubescent poupées (dolls) evoked a bit of wincing on our part and that fact alone made us wonder about the punch of his work.

- René Magritte (1989 - 1967) – L’Anniversaire (1959) or the rock in the room, from a distance is wonderfully deceiving.

Magritte (1959) L’Anniversaire

The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art – Brochure

Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration

Albert Bierstadt: Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870) [SAM collection]
 

The exhibition Beauty & Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration is at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) from June 30 – September 11. We popped in Thursday night to catch it before it closed and had a good time. A well-spoken and engaging docent led a 7:00 pm tour that was awesome.

The exhibition includes landscape paintings and photos from the last half of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century that focus on how American artists reacted to and recorded nature in the still relatively new country of America. Nature and in particular, the West were sources of wonder, solace, and opportunity. Even as the country struggled through the Civil War (1861 – 1865), artists kept exploring and depicting nature. Several of the artists were key figures in the westward expansion of the United States. Many were instrumental in the formation of natural parks such as the landscape painters Thomas Moran (1837 – 1926), Albert Bierstadt (1830 – 1902), Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823 – 1880), Federic Edwin Church (1826 – 1900), George Inness (1825 – 1894), and John Frederick Kensett (1816 – 1872) – of which you see works in the Beauty & Bounty. One artist that stood out for us was Martin Johnson Heade (1819- 1904) and his salt marsh landscapes of the East Coast. Heade seemed to stand apart from the other landscape painters in his approach and we couldn’t escape being reminded of Andrew Weyth ever so slightly.

Martin Johnson Heade: Sudden Shower - Newbury Marshes (1865-1875) [Private collection]

Sanford Robinson Gifford: Mount Rainer, Bay of Tacoma – Puget Sound (1875) [SAM collection]
 

John Frederick Kensett: Naragansett Bay (1861) [SAM collection]

The first few rooms of Beauty & Bounty prepare you ready for the high point (or maybe low point for some) of the exhibit: Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific [1870] (shown at the head of this post). This large oil painting though it is titled Puget Sound was painted with Bierstadt never having seen the Puget Sound. Instead he relied on other’s writing and imagery (especially of Northwest tribes) and a dollop of imagination to create the work. This fact later caused a bit of a dimming of his artistic star.

We were impressed by a painting by Emily Inez Denny (1853 – 1918), the eldest child of Seattle pioneers David and Louisa Denny. In the painting, The San Juans and the Olympic Range (1888), she really captures the particular grey light of Puget Sound.

As a companion exhibit to Beauty & Bounty, SAM is also presenting Reclaimed: Nature and Place Through Contemporary Eyes. There are many interesting pieces in Reclaimed, two of which are Whiting Tennis’s Bovine [2006] – a camper made of found plywood (and a little bit of Hank Williams) - and Susan Point’s beautiful and sinuous carving The First People [2008] - made of red and yellow cedar that pays homage to her Salish heritage. In contrast to Beauty & Bounty, the pieces of Reclaimed instead of depicting nature like Moran or Bierstadt did, comment on the bounty of nature and often use raw materials in that commentary.

Whiting Tennis: Bovine (2006) [SAM collection]

Susan Point: The First People (2008) [Photo from www.susanpoint.com]

Thank You Fremont - Cat Found in Fremont

 
We couldn’t pass up mentioning this sign. So often you see a poster for a missing pet and you don’t know if the pet was ever found. The loop is never closed. You are left wondering. Well, here is proof that at least one pet was found and the owner wanted to thank Fremont and close that loop.