Month: January 2022

Visiting Randyland

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If you read last week’s post, you know I was in Pittsburgh for a long weekend for my daughter’s hockey tournament. Saturday, she didn’t have a game until 5pm, so we had plenty of time to visit the Warhol Museum (for more on that click here), grab lunch, and find the mysterious and whimsical… Randyland.

Randyland! It’s hard to miss.

A friend heard about this museum from a Pittsburghian friend and when I Googled it and found it was just minutes away from the Warhol Museum, I vowed to go. I don’t like to do too much research on a place before I visit because I like to be surprised, but there was very little information on the internet about Randyland even if I did want to know more. Like, the hours for instance. The hours are basically: Mon-Sun: Maybe we’re open, maybe we’re not. We went Saturday at 1pm and the outside portion of the museum was open, the inside was not. I counted that as a win.

The outside is open! Yay!

Randyland was created by artist Randy Gilson, who is “a master in the art of making something worthwhile out of the worthless.” He began the project as a funky sort of neighborhood garden by painting giant barrels and making vegetable gardens out of them. He wound up buying a house in the Mexican War Streets district of Pittsburgh, collecting things, and curating a wild, vibrant exhibit extaorinaire! When I say he collected “things” I mean all the things. Think antique shop meets junkyard. When I showed pictures to my youngest daughter she said it reminded her of the Memory Dump in the movie Inside Out. Incredibly accurate.

There is a surprise every single place you look around Randyland. Colorful chairs in an arch above you, bright bricks and hopscotch below you; a tree with lemon juice lemons dangling from it, stuffed animals, slides, trikes, tables, mannequins, mirrors, ornaments, umbrellas, the world’s biggest wall of international welcome signs…the list goes on and on!

Bienvenue! That’s the wall of welcome signs behind us.

Once we took in all we could take in, Adrienne and I started to exit and saw the most exciting part of all! Next to the entrance gate, beside a shovel, end table, and baby gate, was an old Magliner! Magline is the company my husband works for (and I used to work for). The Magliner was pretty roughed up from sitting in the elements for who knows how long, but there it was in all its glory as part of the exhibit. Definitely the highlight for Adrienne and I.

It was impossible not to be cheery and excited at Randyland, all for the low low price of free! Definitely worth the stop if you’re downtown Pittsburgh. Make sure to look for the Magliner!

A Trip to the Warhol Museum

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My middle daughter and I road-tripped to Pittsburgh this past weekend! She had a hockey tournament and I’d been dying to go back to see more of the city (I’ve only ever been there once before). At the top of my list was visiting the Andy Warhol museum, which fit into our schedule beautifully on Saturday morning.

Somebody kindly tipped me off that we have to buy tickets ahead of time, which I did minutes before somebody else kindly tipped me off that the Warhol Museum is not kid-appropriate. Oops. I told Adrienne she may have to go through the museum scary movie-style, with her hands over her face, fingers cracked. It turned out to be a non-issue. I think there were two things that were “gross” for a seventh-grade girl, but nothing she couldn’t handle. We moved swiftly past, both of us pretending we didn’t see anything unusual.

We bought the earliest tickets available (10am), which was perfect because we pretty much had the place to ourselves. For eight bucks we parked in a small, but almost empty lot across the street. There was no time limit, which was great because we spent the whole day downtown. The staff was lovely at the museum, but be prepared to put your purse in a locker and mask up. They were very, very strict about masks. They even tied back the curtain to the photo booth, so they could be sure people left their masks on in there. (Adrienne and her friends pulled theirs down and were immediately scolded. Definitely skip the photo booth.)

The art though! The Warhol Museum is seven floors of chronological art, starting with Andy’s early work (aka, my least favorite stuff) on the 7th level. Everyone knows Andy for his soup cans and his Marilyn Monroes, but he is an artist of many, many mediums! In addition to screen printing, Andy worked in painting, sculpture, photography… even taxidermy! And he was an avid collector of tons of things. Teeth molds, for instance (something I wish I had known when I wrote this post!) and correspondance (all of which he put in various time capsules.)

This drawer was his teeth mold collection, another drawer had shoes, another had something else I can’t remember, and so on and so on!

I was there with three middle school hockey players and their dads, and we all found things we loved in the ecclectic exhibit. The girls loved Warhol’s interactive exhibit, Silver Clouds. It was so kid-friendly, I assumed it wasn’t a real Warhol, but it was! It debuted in 1966. The “clouds” are filled with regular air and helium. They float softly around the room waiting to be caught or pushed or poked. How fun is that?

The girls’ other favorites were the elephant (note the little people- I just thought it was a random pattern until the twelve-year-olds pointed them out to me!), the taxidermy lion (not pictured, please see stuffed Great Dane instead), and randomly, an adorable dauchsaund.

  • This was a Warhol-Basquiat collaboration piece. It was my favorite.
  • Little people!
“Cecil” was a multi-ribbon dog show champion in the early 1920s. It looks like he was pretty full of himself.
Adrienne loves hockey and dachsaunds.

That’s your Andy Warhol Museum review! Grab your favorite hockey players (or whomever!) and go the next time you’re in Pittsburgh!

Bonus: Here are some other random pictures from our visit.

    Who Painted it Best- Take Two!

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    Last June we looked at a few scenes and subjects that have been created several times over the years, in an artsy version of “Who Wore it Best?” It was so fun and there are so many popular scenes artists have painted, it seems like a shame not to check out a few more. Kourtney Kardashian and Brittany Spears, move over! We have some new (old) matchers to compare!

    Helen of Troy was the most beautiful of beauties in Greek mythology. An absolute icon. All the men wanted to marry her and the women wanted to be her. And artists? They wanted to paint her. And so they did. Tons of painters depicted scenes featuring Helen: Gavin Hamilton, Peter Paul Rubens, Renoir, and about a million others. It wasn’t uncommon to paint her abduction, but that’s not cheery. Instead, let’s look at two portraits.

    • Grumpy Helen.
    • Everything is better on a balcony.

    The portrait on the left was done by Frederick Sandys, circa 1867. He actually wasn’t a popular painter. If memes were around in his day I think he would have found his niche. This Helen could have been an internet sensation of Grumpy Cat proportions, right?! On the right, we have a much happier Helen (what a little sunshine can do for a person!) painted by Evelyn De Morgan in 1898. That’s right- a woman painted this. Female artists didn’t get much credit in the 1800s, so I think we should note her! Plus? I mean, she clearly wins right? Her Helen is way better?

    ***

    Below are two paintings of the infamous beheading of Holofernes. Caravaggio’s painting is on the left. He loved a dark, depressing project, didn’t he? Some would argue this is his most famous painting. It certainly is one of the most disturbing, in my opinion. But nobody does disturbing as well as Caravaggio. It looks like it could be a scene from a Broadway performance- the background is dark, the faces alight. It gives me shivers. On the right is… another painting by a woman! Artemisia Gentileschi did this portrayal roughly a dozen years after Caravaggio did his. It seems clear she was influenced by his work, but her female perspective comes into play. For example, in her painting Holofernes is struggling more, her Judith enlisted help holding him down. Delightful, I know. What do you think? Who painted it better?

    • There is another figure in the painting to the right of Juditrh, her elderly maid is providing emotional support.
    • It’s not easy to look at, is it?

    ***

    Just for fun let’s pit Paul Cezanne against… Paul Cezanne! This is Mont Sainte-Victoire on the left and the right. He painted it a bunch of times in between too. I always have mixed feelings when artists paint the same thing over and over. I mean there are so many great landscapes, models, and beheadings they could paint instead! But I’m probably just making a mountain out of a molehill. What do you think? Does 1895 Cezanne paint it better, or turn of the century Cezanne?

    • 1895. Oil on canvas.
    • 1904. Still at it, nine years later.

    That wraps up this episode of “Who Painted it Better?” Hit me with your votes!

    Twelve Art Goals for the New Year!

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    Happy New Year!!! 2022 is going to be a fantastic year!!! You can tell from all the exclamation points I’m using that I really mean it!

    Are you a goal setter? A podcaster I listen to asked his Twitter followers how many of them made New Year’s resolutions. Eighty percent did not. Eighty! They don’t know what they’re missing out on. Goals are so super fun if you do them right. (i.e. Don’t beat yourself up if you are less than perfect in achieving them.) A little known fact about goals is that you can change your mind about them any time you want. For instance, I used to have a goal to own a motorcycle. Now? No part of me wants a motorcycle- those things are death machines! So I took it off my list. Boom. The bucket list police didn’t arrest me and I get to live to see my children grow up. Win/win.

    All this to say: Art Goals. Are you setting any? For the first time ever, I am! Here they are:

    1. Get a stair mural. (This one is already in the works! Stay tuned!)
    2. Finally find a painting for a naked wall in my house that’s been driving me nuts.
    3. Make a piece of art. (I see it in my head and it looks awesome. It’s just that execution part that’s tripping me up….)

    If you want to make some art goals, but aren’t sure where to start, may I make some suggestions that might be fun? Take them or leave them- in any event, they’re safer than buying a motorcycle.

    • Start an Pinterest board of art you love.
    • Follow an art blogger. (Hi!)
    • Plan a tour d’art museum. (I smell a road trip!)
    • Find a local artist you love.
    • Create an art scavenger hunt to do at a museum or around town!
    • Follow your town’s art gallery on Instagram.
    • Go to some art shows. (May I recommend ArtPrize? Or Michigan State University’s Spring Arts Show?)
    • Get in touch with your artsy side and make something. Anything! (See the title picture for inspo. My daughter made me these toilet paper roll gnomes for Christmas and I love them!)
    • Throw an art-themed party! For inspiration, see this post.
    • Vow to see your favorite painting in person.
    • Be a groupie for a year- pick an artist you like and attend all their shows, exhibits, openings, etc.
    • Watch four different documentaries/movies on artists this year. See this post for one suggestion.

    These are just a few ideas to get your resolution juices flowing. The possibilities are endless! Either way, I am super excited to explore more art with you this year!