Friday #6: Refuge, Sanctuary

{Jamie's note, I wrote this at 10:45 am, hours before I heard about the tragic shooting of children and teachers in CT. It's all the more apt, I think, to reflect on the need for refuge, sanctuary, and the lost innocence of girlhood. I've not gone back and edited all that in, but it's on my heart and mind as I publish this)

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Friday 6: 

Too haggard to give you an unedited photo...

Today what I need is quiet space. I need the sensory calm that lurks in the still upper rooms of the Bradley galleries. 

I need my favorite borrowed living room, a cavernous space that is hung with brightly colored abstract art and that overlooks the lake. 

I need a certain spot on a certain red, modernist couch that is surprisingly comfortable. 

I need refuge. From the projects of my life. From the demands of children, budget, driving, shopping, staying connected, and the pulls and deadlines from the 40+ classes I’ve taught this year. From the world at large. From other children who bully my own, from my past and future, from the terrible things that happen all the time. 

December is almost done, and I need sanctuary.

Today, I walked quickly through the museum. Knowing exactly what I needed from this visit. There are new square-shaped admission stickers all of a sudden, and I’m a bit paused by this.

“How are you today,” the ticket checker asks me.

“Tired,” I confess honestly.

He doesn’t know what to make of that frank answer, so we leave it at that. I’m grateful not to explain.

As I step past the counter, into the museum, I’m greeted enthusiastically by an old man in a blazer. He’d just been taking an elderly couple’s picture in front of the iconic Chihuly glass sculpture. They were both wearing Christmas sweaters.

“Welcome,” he exclaims. “Have you been to the Art Museum before?”

I give his nametag a quick read: Volunteer.

I want quiet, but I pause for a moment: “I come every Friday.”

“Excellent! Excellent!” he beams.  

For a moment, I’m tempted to tell him more, but the silent, empty upstairs places call to me.

I walk through the mostly empty galleries, keys stuffed into my back pants pocket, camera bouncing on my neck, laptop clutched in its black case in my arms, just like I used to carry notebooks in high school. (Before I ever, ever had a laptop). 

I don’t look at the other museum guards; I want to create the illusion that I’m just a girl, alone in the world, going somewhere. 

I like situations that I contrive that remind me of how it felt when I was a girl. I think about that as I look around my borrowed living room space and out at Lake Michigan.

I read an essay not long ago in The Atlantic, by critic Caitlin Flanagan, about writer Joan Didion. In essence, Flanagan argued that Didion’s writing-- and Didion herself-- is stuck in an eternal girlhood. Something that made Didion's reporting in Slouching Towards Bethlehem take our breath away. Something that Flanagan blasts her for now that Didion is old and her daughter and husband are dead. In the Atlantic piece, it seems that Flanagan's shouting at Didion: Wake up! Your bones are frail, and your spine starting to bend. Your precocious girlhood is long gone, and you have yourself destroyed it through your long years of living.

I think of this often when the demands of my life threaten to consume me. I miss my girlhood. I miss the eagerness with which I thought of my adult life. I miss the lack of responsibility that came before homes, children, and budgets. I miss being poor and it being only on me. I miss spending long days reading. I miss the quiet spaces that I seek now. I miss believing in my own beauty and youth. I miss the dreaminess that came before darkness took many of my ideals away.

I sit on this couch. In the stillness of the museum I love, and I close my eyes. Just for a moment. And I pretend that this is where I live. Art lives here, and for three minutes this Friday, so do I.

And then, my phone chirps. I get a text with a picture of my son making art at school. (He's covered top to toe in red paint). And then my husband texts me to tell me he's finally done with all the work of this semester. 

And then, a tall, skinny man with flyaway, chin-length grey hair drags a giant red metal, movable ladder into my living room, with it’s wheels clanging and creaking.  He clears his throat a few times, sneezes, and then starts changing the light bulbs.  They creak in protest, their whines punctuating my stillness, like the cries of my children.

It is time to go. Before I leave, I scope out this other living room space, in an adjacent gallery. 

Perfect for what it contains as well, "biomorphic works that inspire spiritual quietude"

Like these pieces of art, I am interested in how the "object interacts with the environment" (the object being my life); like these pieces of art are studied,  I'm here to study myself "in contrast to the lake...to the gallery's white walls..."

Here's where I'll be if you need me any time soon, in my new living room, considering how the(as the card above notes): "play of the 'inner' and the 'outer' further suggests a relationship between the physical and the spiritual."

See you next week. 

Friday #5: PJ Party After Dark, Reflections

On Friday #5, it was time for the nighttime museum again. MAM After Dark Pajama Jam.  Sticker proof of presence (bottle of wine optional): 

You can see from the festive Rosemary Tree in the background that the holidays are upon us. This meant the Pajama Jam was also a Holiday Party of sorts. 

As I said in an earlier post (Girls Night Out), I was really looking forward to seeing what people would wear as they interpreted PJ party through the complex social lens that is the Art Museum at night. I expected all sorts of non-G-rated happenings. I even bought a sassy little night dress, a short, black, silk robe, and some daring teal slipper boots for the occasion. I thought I'd be mild, but when I was getting my "lord-yes-she's-old-enough-to-drink" bracelet, the woman behind the counter hooted to her fellow bracelteer: "Wooo-eee! She's brought her lace!"

Indeed, I brought two lace cuffs to this PJ party, and that's the sort of party it was. Wild on the margins? Tame even by Victorian standards? There were lots of flannel pants, bathrobes, a few bold adults wearing footed PJs, and everywhere the ubiquitous co-ed PJ uniform of patterned pants and a tank top.

Adam wore the silk kimono his dad brought him back from China a few years ago. I don't think it's ever been seen in public, and he strolled like a lord through the art museum halls.  

We also brought David and Liana, our fav couple friends and fellow After Darkers.  This is totally a posed shot, but I like the bask-in-blue feel to it.

So, if the above is the posed, simulacrum of life (and boy is that a great word to throw around in relation to both Art and the holiday season as the appearances of holiday joy, cheer, and bliss, are staggering to keep up with), then this is what the night was really like:

Messier, darker, more real by half. I love this photo for the background screen shot that was projected above our heads (along with a lot of incongruous silent rap videos with the toned female rappers in silk PJs), and for the way Liana's laughing, and David is saying something funny.

And this is what Adam really looked like:

And as I looked at this and the other photos I took that night, I realized that this was a night all about reflections. I was captivated by the reflection of the tree, the screens, the bar, and the caterwauling karaoke stage in the concave windows-turned-mirrors of the art museum windows.

I was drawn to art like this: mirrored vessels in a  mirrored box:

And I snapped a quick picture as my friend looked at herself in a 500-year-old looking glass (gawd, I might be pretentious for typing that rather than mirror). I love this picture because it makes me think about all the other people who might have seen themselves in this mirror over the many, many ages of the world.

Even Adam and I have been spotted in it in an earlier life (1/20/12):

And all I've got at the end of it is this message: FOOL. Resonating in the silent halls of the art galleries (where I was talking too loud) as the PJ party went on far away. 

See you next week.

Friday #4: Monet-kind-of-day, Small Details

In sickness or in health, I go to the MAM. Today, both boys were barfing, and so I squeezed in a quick art museum visit later in the day. I had an hour to go the museum, take some pictures, find a story to tell you, and then get to Walgreens to buy diapers and Vitamin Water for sick children.

Walk with me...we have to be quick...

Look up as you go up the stairs...

Almost there...

Admission at last...sticker secured...

Another look up, the wings are open today...

Now, time for the Friday picture, I wanted something arty, perhaps a pic that shows my cute outfit. This reflective surface seemed ideal...but wait, who's that racing up towards me. Museum guard. She thought I was trying to take a picture of the verboten art on display on the other side of the glass (the featured "Treasures of Kenwood House."

Lamely, I explained, "No, sorry, I'm taking a picture of myself...for a project...." Trailed off, tried not to think of how I looked to the people on the other side of the glass...

I settled for a shot this way. Now, fully documented, I moved on to the art. Are you still with me?

Which way? Which way? Right or left after the mummy?

I saw a new AIDS Day exhibit in the East Gallery, but that's something that needs time, thought, an hour or more to consider. So, I turned left, sinister as usual.

The West galleries are full of old things. Paintings from the Renaissance, 17th century furniture, Triptychs, Icons, parts of wooden altar pieces, that sort of thing.  My eye was instantly drawn to a new piece on display: a huge, rather luridly painted nativity. (Indeed, sister, they have changed the art this week). Perhaps it's there now because of the approaching holidays.  I didn't take a picture of the whole thing, because it looks as you'd expect.  It was the absurdities of this nativity that caught my eye.

See the headless donkey, appearing from the rock to nibble on the Virgin with the Babe's blue cloak.
(At this point, David Bowie's song from Labyrinth, "The Babe with the Power...", is roling through my head...).

Disembodied head. Check.

I then hurried along, just a few feet away, to the blue gallery, a small rotunda of a room full of whimsical 18th century paintings. It is dominated by this mysterious headless philosopher, who has recently appeared at the MAM.

It stumps me. It needs a head. It is incongruous, and I would have investigated further, looking for a card of explanation, but another museum guard approached me at this point. 

He's a tall, black, middle-aged man in a navy blazer. I recognize him. He's the one that scolded me when my purse maybe-perhaps-almost bumped a painting during the MAM After Dark event. 

Shit. Have I broken another rule? Is this the day this girl gets thrown out of the MAM?

He's in good spirits though and asks me how it's going. 

"Good, good," I said, not wanting to be bothered. "Just looking at things that are absurd."

We agree that the headless philosopher is baffling.  

"Did you see the donkey from Shrek over there?"

Clearly he's referring to the disembodied beast of burden in the nativity.  

"Let me show you my favorite painting," he said, gesturing to this one a few feet away from the headless philosopher.

I'm not wowed. I just see a dude, with some commandments, simple stuff. (I don't have time to waste! Have to find today's art story!)

"Why do you like that?" I ask, remembering my manners. "Because of the subject?"

"No," he exclaims. "Look at the hands! The dirt under the fingernails! It's so real."

Indeed. Look closer:

He's right. That's a damn realistic hand. Time to slow down and look at small details (but I don't have the time today, hurry!). He ushers me out of that gallery, wanting to show me something else:  how much the "Last of the Spartans" looks like Conan O'Brian:

Fair enough. I remember when I worked at the Marquette Art Museum as a guard. When all I did for hours at a time was look at art and think about it, be reminded of things in the world by it, and want to tell someone about it.

And this reminds me of this blog's larger project: finding the intersections between life (namely my own) and art.

I say goodbye to the guard (see you next week, I'm sure), and hurry to another gallery where there's a Monet painting that reminds me of what I see every day as I drive along the Milwaukee Lakefront.

This is Monet's Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effects, ca. 1900 (dated 1903). This is one of his late-career serial paintings (remember the haystacks?).  His comment from the MAM display card:

"The motif is significant for me: what I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me" (1895).

I leave the MAM and jump in my car.  I only have 15 minutes to get to Walgreens and get home before Adam has to be somewhere, but I had to get out on the beach and show you some things: 

This is the Milwaukee Lakefront today. The smoke from that stack was blowing just so today. And see the colors? And the bridge's arch? 

A Monet-kind-of-day, don't you think?

The woman in the photo below is not me, but I love the way her hair's blowing in the wind.

Tanker on the lake, boards on the beach. Lines that remind me of the MAM's steel grids. 

Messy nature rounding out this near perfect color palate....

The bridge on the bluff above the lake, directly behind where I parked my car...

As it turns out, what lies between the motif and me is very little indeed...

After some time on the beach, and some time with some art, I felt ready to go home.

Back to the world of commercial drugstores, deadlines, and sick kids battling each other over juice. 

But I'll keep this close...

See you next Friday.