Month: September 2019

A Visit to the DIA

Leave a comment
I haven’t been to the Detroit Institute of Arts in about twenty years, even though I live within 100 miles of it! It’s a travesty. So, when my friend Carla pointed out they have a great exhibit featuring art by some big name Impressionists like Cezanne, Degas, Van Gough, and Monet, we snagged the opportunity to take an overdue visit to the incredible DIA!
Here are some amazing facts about one of the country’s best art museums (I’m not being biased! It floats around in ranking on all the “Top Ten Best Art Museums in the U.S.” lists.)
– It houses about 65,000 pieces of art (not counting the drinking fountains, which are works of art too, if you ask me.)
– It has more than 100 galleries, a 1,150-seat auditorium, 380-seat lecture hall, art reference library, and cute café that smells amazing.
– Van Gogh’s self-portrait is there, which is the first of all his paintings to enter a U.S. museum.
– Punch and Judy are retired there. More on this around Halloween.
We saw many of our favorite pieces (The Thinker, Portrait of Postman Roulin, Madame Paul Poirson) but the real joys were discovering paintings I hadn’t known about before. Just as I was telling Carla I wasn’t a fan of Picasso, we saw this painting from his early career, that I loved!
Before his portraits were all angles and cubes.
 It was placed directly beside these two and we marveled that they were all done by the same man.
Not my style.
No, thank you.
Here was another portrait we agreed was just beautiful by John Singleton Copley. The face was so realistic we could have sworn his eyes were actually watering.
“Head of a Man” You must go find this when you’re at the DIA!
We found a whole family of talented artists in the American gallery. The Peale family had art in their genes, the same way my family passes down the ear-wiggling gene (you’re welcome, daughters of mine!) Here are three works by three separate Peales. (Sorry for the crappy crop jobs, btw. I take all my pictures crooked, then don’t fix them. It’s just one way in which I like to express myself artistically.)
Rembrandt Peale- Self Portrait. With a name like Rembrandt, you’re bound to be good at art!
“Still Life with Wine Glass” by Raphaelle Peale. Another strong art name.
“James Peale” by Charles Peale. This one made me weepy.
Needless to say, we took one million pictures. Most of mine were in burst mode of my freckly arm, but I do have more to share if you tune in next week!

Below the Stacks: Above Par

Leave a comment

Yesterday I took my seven-year-old on a field trip to downtown Lansing. I don’t have reason to go downtown very often, but every time I do I think I should go more often. Currently, Below the Stacks is going on and I had to check it out. It makes me SO HAPPY when Lansing adds more art to its streets. Below the Stacks is a festival that takes place in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and now, Lansing! Painters from all over the world get a blank wall to do their thing, plus there are workshops, artist talks, and the kick-off event had breakdancing and graffiti classes. I am so sad I missed it because I feel like age 39 is the absolute latest I should be starting my breakdancing career.

We had a map of the mural locations, but if you know me, that was utterly useless. We mostly wandered around until we wound up on a street that was on the map and then I’d yell a building address to look for. It sounded like this: “Are we on Larch? We are! Yay! Look for 619!” I am a really great navigator and seven-year-olds love walking miles and miles with only a “Maybe it’s this way” to sustain them. Luckily, we had snacks. Always, always bring snacks.

We didn’t get to visit every single mural location, but of the paintings we visited, this was our favorite:

There is a sign by each location requesting visitors don’t ask questions while the painters are working, so I just yelled up, “It’s beautiful!” I couldn’t stop myself.

It is by Royyal Dog (aka Chris Chanyang Shim). a Korean artist based in Los Angeles. His most famous mural is “Peace to You” which features Rhianna in traditional Korean garb. This is typical of Royyal Dog- he often portrays black women in Korean clothing. The effect is stunning, don’t you think?

I think it was raining when he painted this. He had to stand under an umbrella-ella-ella.

The writing you see translates to a verse in the Bible: “…Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have.” 1 Samuel 25:6. Lansing is so, so lucky to have Royyal Dog and other incredible artists decorating our city! Next time you’re in the middle of the mitten, be sure to go look at some of our new murals. And don’t forget your snacks.

Mr. Brainwash

Leave a comment

When we got our dog, we immediately went to PetSmart to get all her things, as you do. She is a bird dog, so my husband insisted we get her a stuffed pheasant. The girls and I agreed and bounced up and down and decided to call it Mr. Fezzy. Jim did not love that idea and wanted to call it “Bird.” I listened to a podcast the other day that referenced the artist, Mr. Brainwash. I wonder if he wishes when it was time to come up with a moniker, he’d had a sensible voice like Jim to say, “No, how about ‘Jon’? Or even ‘Artist’?” Personally, I like his actual name: Thierry Guetta. 

Well, what’s done is done. Here is MoJo with Bird.



And here is Mr. Brainwash:

Doesn’t he look like a fun guy? He was discovered by none other than Banksy, and there are some theories that MBW is a cover for Banksy, but I wholeheartedly disagree. MBW’s style is much less political and a lot more fun, if you ask me. If you’re a Madonna fan, you’ve seen his work on the cover of her 2009 CD, Celebration. He’s also done work for big names like The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Avicii (RIP), and Michael Jackson. The piece of art I recognized immediately was his Rock the Vote illustration we see every election year:
As you can see below, his art is influenced by many different artists like, Rockwell, Banksy (he’s not covering for Banksy! Don’t believe it!) and Warhol, to name a few. 

He’s fun and funky, right? I thought he was the perfect blog subject after I imposed spooky art on you the last couple weeks. Nothing scary here (except Marilyn Manson, of course. Sorry.)
Lots of critics call him a sell-out because he’s gone a little commercial (he did a gig for The Sunglass Hut, for instance). Big deal. He was discovered when he was a security guard at a used-clothing store, so I say if he wants to make his millions designing sunglasses and doing boutique openings, he should go for it! His mantra is “Life is Beautiful” and I guess if you’re going to be Mr. Brainwash, that’s a good message to send.

Twinning

Leave a comment

Don’t you just love a long weekend? We didn’t have school last Friday or Monday, so it was an especially extended Labor Day weekend for us. My whole family went up north and it was even more fun than I thought because my mom’s twin brother and his wife came unexpectedly and they are a blast! 

My mom and her brother are the very best friends. They talk on the phone every day, have rhyming names, are both redheads, and every now and then, when they are really twinning, will say something at the same time and we laugh and clap and beg for another party trick. 

Naturally, their twininess got me thinking about twins in art. Here are a couple tips, gentle readers. If you do a Google search on this, no matter what word combination you type in, you are going to get information about the Kaplan twins’ butts. It is how the internet works. More than anything else, Google wants you to read about their butt art. Resist. Here is my second tip. Once you dive past the $1,000 butt paintings, you will get to actual twin art and then you will be sorry, because twins are only portrayed as the creepiest people in the entire world. 

Case in point:

Stephen King did not paint this, as I would have expected. The artist is Jana Brike. Which sort of rhymes with “fright.”

Speaking of Stephen King, artist Beth Conklin has based some of her art off quotes from his books!

It’s raining spooky twins!

The sucker is a nice prop, no? I’m sure they stole those from their latest victims.

I’m happy to say none of the twins I know are in the least bit creepy, but you would never know it to look at the art world!