Art in music and art in paintings, art in literature, and even things like the art of kindness.
My dad helped us drink in nature. With things like “signs of spring” walks and writing poems about the intricacies of the miraculousness of this world of ours.
And I love that those two kinds of art intermingle and weave together in so many ways.
Just like my parents do.
But today I’m going to talk about the kind of art that you get to experience in museums, and I’m going to take you on a little tour of my favorite parts of one real quick right here on this post.
Because my sisters
(including sisters-in-law…all but one who was too far away in Switzerland to get there gosh dang it!…we missed you Anita!) and I, along with my dear mother who taught us all to love it so much, got to experience the
SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) last weekend.
And art is even better when you get to experience it in a sea of fellow art lovers.
Yes I’m skipping right ahead from the reason we were all there together in the first place to the museum because that’s all I have time for today…the rest is coming (which includes a deep appreciation of the art of nature, and an even deeper appreciation for those ladies I adore).
For now, let’s just take a moment to appreciate modern art.
Because it is pretty awe-worthy.
Granted there is some modern art that is dark to me. But the collection at the SFMOMA was quite grand and LIGHT, and I loved it.
This room was one of my favorites.
This is how the website explains it:
The Architecture + Design gallery has been overtaken by artist Tomás Saraceno’s site-specific project, a model for a utopian airborne city of the future that reconfigures humanity’s dependence on fragile ecologies and instead offers a network of inhabitable spaces formed like clouds above our heads.
…and I just thought it was so unique and almost like an “experience” to be in there and wonder how that artist’s mind came up with it all.
I loved that wherever you look in that museum is art.
From the plant wall outside that huge window (below) to the ways the stairs were set up and how the silhouettes of the visitors look against that whole backdrop:
Every window had a story to tell:
And the staircases, although a mite annoying to try to follow to get between floors (we were kind of on a time crunch), were so beautifully and artfully thought out:
See how you can see through to that other stairway through there?
We got separated in smaller groups as we tried to take in as much as we could before closing, but kept texting each other when we found something the others couldn’t miss.
We all loved this creative portrait gallery. I had to take pictures far away:
…and up close:
How in the world does that artist know what colors to put in there to make it look like a unified whole??
Here’s another from further away:
And up-close:
This one was cool because it was a watercolor that looked just like a photograph it was so beautifully detailed.
(Dang, no up-close of that one.)
But guess what the one below is painted with?
Fingerprints.
Again, how does that artist know from up close (these are huge), how to do the shading, etc.
I loved wondering.
And wished Elle was with me because she’s in a drawing class right now and would have loved to wonder there with me.
Another fingerprint one;
…that used whole fingers to to that flipped-out part on the hair:
Then there was this other medium:
…which up-close looked like this:
Super thick paper …or maybe even felt (??) that looked like it was almost ripped into shapes.
Here’s a close-up of one of the eyes.
Again, how in the world??
I loved this stack of wood:
Merging my Dad’s love of nature with my mother’s love of art.
It all comes together.
Artistic posing 🙂
I’m going to let the write-ups to the side of each of these next pieces tell their story because I’m out of time:
Close-up:
Isn’t it cool all those dots can be painted in different enough sizes to make it look like a crinkled paper?
This one was so beautiful and sobering too (again, described below):
Quite a creative idea here:
…and here:
And again, here:
Oh boy, I love to wonder about how different brains function and think of all these things. It’s so fascinating to me!
We were excited about this one because this sis-in-law and my brother Eli painted their own canvas modeled after this that hangs in their NYC apartment:
More art in the building itself:
I think my girls and I are going to do something similar to that one up there on our chalk board here at home 🙂
A folded metal circle:
More building lookout art:
Oh my.
A reenactment of a picture we did in this same spot years and years ago.
Oh man how I love those art-lover-sisters of mine and the creative juices that we experienced at the SFMOMA that day.
And especially that artist mother of mine who infused art into our hearts for all those years.
Beautiful art! You are lucky to have such a wonderful family! I ran into your mom at Indian Wells this year and asked her to take a picture with me. She was so cute. She was laughing because most people want to take pictures with the tennis players and I wanted a picture with her.
Can you guess what ones left an im"print" on me. Ha! Isn't that art amazing?!
Also, I had a question for you, Shawni. A "friend of mine" has a husband that feels that travel is the reason you go to get some place and then you're done. What may be some great ways I–er–she could tickle that travel bug that must be in there somewhere. –M
I love art museums! We are so fortunate to live right down the road from a beautiful one in Northwestern arkansas (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art) and because it's nestled in so much nature half of the "art", as you said, is the architecture itself and all the gorgeous nature around it. Thanks for sharing! Those portraits- WOW!!!!!