Inspired by Art

One of my go-to sources of inspiration is an art gallery.  I am fortunate to live 30 miles from Washington, DC and a trek to the city is always the shot-in-the-arm I need. During my latest trip downtown I had the pleasure of visiting the Renwick Gallery on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few doors down from the Blair House and the White House.  I have only been there once before, some 30 years ago, and this is now on the top of my list!

The Renwick Gallery, which opened in 1874, was Washington's first art gallery and was referred to as the American Louvre.  It is part of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum and houses a collection of contemporary craft and decorative art.  It has recently undergone a two year renovation bringing it up to more contemporary standards.  

The current exhibit "WONDER" runs through May 2016.  Parts of it will remain open through July while some of the art will be added to the Renwick's permanent collection.  Nine artists have created large scale installations which beg the visitor to experience each artwork in three dimensional space; walking around it, almost touching it, experiencing the sights and smells (yes the giant rubber tire sculpture by Chakaia Booker emanates a smell I have an aversion to). 

 Here is a preview of some of the beautiful installations:

Tara Donovan's pillars made from paper products:

Gabriel Dawe's string installation:

Patrick Dougherty's woven sticks:

Mya Lin's clear glass marble installation:

John Grade's beautifully recreated wooden tree:

Leo Villereale's moving light display:

For a great view of the exhibit through Instagram, follow "#renwickgallery". 

 The photos above are courtesy of The Renwick Gallery. 

 [Sadly, my photos were lost in a technical glitch.]

I hope you get to see this fun, tactile and inspirational exhibit if you are in the DC area and that it inspires you as much as it did me!

Art tour in DC for Mother's Day

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and Mother's Day.  It has been a while since I've been to art galleries, so that is what I wanted to do yesterday with my kids.  We went into DC and toured the Hirshorn and National Galleries of Art. The Hirshorn is one of my usual favorites, but this time it was sparse as they were doing some renovations. 

The BELIEF & DOUBT exhibit by Barbara Kruger had bold graphic statements often taken for granted.

The sculpture garden is always my favorite.

It was fun having Bethany along, as she is not my usual art gallery companion.  We scrutinized all the wall colors and trims at the National Gallery of Art. Versions of gray predominated but subtle deep olive and mineral greens were so delicious!

Here was an installation at the East Wing that makes any gallery wall we've seen pale in comparison.  There were no images inside these painted wood blocks, just black in the center. I would have loved to see them hang this!

It was a great weekend highlighted by a spanish tapas dinner at Jaleo.

Ready for the week? I'm still relishing the weekend!

Art tour- The human figure

I haven't been to art museums outside of DC in quite a while, so I enjoyed finding inspiring art online, and wanted to pass on some great findings.  I love the human form as art, like these two pieces by Portuguese artist Christina Troufa,

and these two nudes by Crawfurd Adamson.

or this  drawing by Michael Jon Angel.

 This  Bernini marble sculpture takes my breath away.

I love the paragraph I found with this sculpture : “ I hope you, too, thought this was a picture of an actual human being.  The fingers that slightly indent the flesh of a woman look real, but it is a 400 year old marble sculpture” Bernini Sculpture – Pluto and Proserpina (1621-1622).

My son, Michael, is an accomplished artist in his figure work like this favorite of mine done with pastels, conte crayon and charcoal on orange paper.

Bethany loves this piece of Michael's art and asked him if she could have it to hang in her house.  But, she said her eyes kept only going to the enormous nipples, so he altered them slightly for her benefit. 

How do you feel about hanging nudes in your home?  Would you, could you?