End of the Road

Friday, December 11 2009

The 2009 biennial road trip adventure is officially over, clocked in at 4,932 miles.  Except for the blizzard near Buffalo, driving conditions were universally satisfactory.

Nothing exemplifies the passage of six weeks as much as before/after pictures of my greenhouse. 

This is "Row One" on October 25.  Here is it on December 11

The yellow thingie is a white fly trap, which Michael Johnson installed a week or so ago.  The other rows in the greenhouse exhibit the same amount of growth. And indicate that I'll be eating well in days to come. 

Bye.

The unofficial end to a splendid trip

Tuesday December 8 2009

My 2009 biennial road trip adventure is unofficially over, cancelled because of illness and nasty weather conditions.  I'm not home yet, but the fun-filled adventuresome activities are behind me.  Now it's just trying to feel better and making it home despite threatening weather.  I've enjoyed an amazing trip, collecting many vivid memories to see me through the brutish Berkshire winter.  TTFN 

And the winner is...City Museum in St. Louis

Saturday December 5 2009

I don't know how many museums I've visited in the last few weeks, but it's been a lot and most of them were wonderful in different ways.  Trying to list my favorite would be, I thought, like choosing which of my two children is "best." 

But St. Louis's City Museum stole my heart.  It's a kids museum, but "kids" ages are defined as roughly between 1 and 100 years.  It's the most hilarious, idiosyncratic, noisiest, funkiest museum I've ever seen, and I can't wait to return. 

I wonder if my immediate seduction by the museum is because it's completely recycled.  Nothing in, on, or around  it, including the building itself, is what it was meant to be.  Bob Cassilly, the genius sculptor who created the museum in downtown St. Louis 10 years ago, bought the old International Shoe Company building and with the help of 20 artisans who are still working on it, created the zaniest space one can imagine.  As you walk up to it, you see a school bus perched on the roof; despite it's positioning, kids play in it all the time (although I can't imagine how parents can watch).  Up on the roof there's also a ferris wheel.  Adorning the building are two Saber 40 aircraft fusselages, a fire engine, a castle turret, a 25' tall cupola, and various 4' wide wrought-iron "slinkies" with kids crawling around in them. 

After you pay $12 for admission (plus another $6 for the new aquairium and another $5 for entrance to the roof), your instincts take over.  And you just gape.  And laugh.  And if you're a kid sliding down one of the eight or so slides, you're screaming, too. 

The entire floor on the entry level is made of beautifully designed sea life with handmade tiles from California.

Note the clear glass eyes in the fish--through them you often see children's hands as they reach up from the "enchanted caves" that used to be International Shoe's special conveyor system for its products.  I didn't slide down the hole because I suffer from claustrophobia, but I could tell from the shrieks coming from down there that the kids thought it was pretty spiffy.

The marine life imagery of the first floor was desiged because the building was originally going to be the home of the city acquairium.  Life got in the way of that plan and the acquairium didn't get there until recently, but it must feel right at home with all of the sea life imagery everywhere.

There are thousands of decorated spindles that make up the stairway from first to second floor.  Intricately decorated architectural pillars are everywhere  The one above is made of old watch bands.  I don't think the watch bands are visible, but they're what make up the stripes.

The Skateless Park is where kids can swing from ropes, balance on a 76' long pencil, bounce off walls, do other child-like activities.  There's a Circus room where acrobats, gymnasts and jugglers perform every day, and where the museum holds its "circus classes" for kids.  On the same floor there are enormous rooms where kids can do their own art.  One of the rooms posted a sign “Japanese Doll Making at 2.”   Have I mentioned the treehouse, the belly of a whale for exploration, an old bank

vault, and a '60's memorabilia section.  Around the building one finds a Wurlitzer pipe organ, old chimneys, salvaged bridges, a room full of preserved insects, and so on and so forth.  There are many slides for either

sliding or climbing, like this one.

 For grown-ups, there are hundreds of architectural elements, many of them from Louis Sullivan buildings.  Not to mention walls made up of old printers' type. 

A St. Louisan who collects vintage opera posters donated some dozens of them that now hang in a hugely vaulted hall with opera recordings playing continuously.On the second floor there's a shoelace factory where you can buy not just shoelaces, but bracelets and keyrings and zipper attachments and other shoelace tchtchkes being made by four old shoelace machines from the old shoe factory.  It's worth noting for folks my age that this is the same International Shoe company building where Tom (later Tennessee) Williams worked while he wrote "The Glass Menagerie." 

We saw dozens of school groups walking around with lists.  I snuck a peak at one of the lists and discovered the kids were there on scavenger hunts.  Sample questions:  "How many blue minerals are on the stone pillar,? " What recycled material is used to fence off the puking pig?," "How many red spindles are on the right side of the staircase,?" "How many panels of butterflies are in the insect room?"  Cute.

I can't do City Museum justice, so if you want to "visit" it, go to citymuseum.org and look at their pictures.    Better yet, go to St. Louis and see for yourself.  It's quite the sight.

Random observations

Tuesday December 1 2009

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was one of this country's most prestigious newspapers for over a century.  Now it's worse than the BEagle.  I realize that Thanksgiving Day is not a big news day, but consider the headlines above the fold from the Post-Dispatch last Thursday.  "Sweet success after dog raid," "Holidays in flux for military families," and "Shopper planning to score big deals."  None of these stories is morally reprehensible or counterfactual, but are they news?  Nope.  Even the Kansas City Star is newsier and more dignified than the once mighty Post-Dispatch.

Two years ago a group of reporters and editors from the Post-Dispatch who were bought out by the paper formed an online daily, the St. Louis Beacon (stlbeacon.org).  It reads like the old paper did--newsy and thoughtful.  I wonder if theirs is the model for "newspapers" of the future.  Because surely the current Post-Dispatch isn't. 

"The best restaurants in the world are, of course, in Kansas City."  So began Bud Trillin's life-altering "American Fried," still a bible for those like me who crave authentic food.  And his favorite restaurant then was Arthur Bryant's, where the men behind the counter slap white bread on a plate and then load it up with bbq ribs or pulled pork or bbq chicken or rib tips.  They slather the sauce on from a battered old metal bowl, and then pass the plate down the line to receive french fries or potato salad or cole slaw or baked beans.  You order a beer or a Coke and sit down at one of the 20 or so tables to gobble up the best bbq in America.  At least that was my memory. 

And I'm delighted to report that Arthur Bryant's hasn't changed an iota.  Well, yes it has; now there are branches but if one goes to the original, which one must do, it's exactly as it was 30 years ago.  And just as delicious.  I didn't want to report this without visiting twice, just to make sure my memories were correct.  After ribs last night and pulled pork tonight, I can reassure Arthur Bryant fans that all is the same.  Phew!

I'm staying at an inn about 2 blocks from the famed Country Club Plaza, the first suburban shopping center built in America.  Erected in 1922, it's about 6 square blocks, built in Moorish style, and must be as lovely today as it was way back when.  What's particularly fun about being here now is that all the stores are lit with red, green or white lights outlining the building curvature.  It's like walkig through a fairyland.

It's still up-to-date in Kansas City

Tuesday, December 1 2009

On the left is Myra Siegel, my friend Penny's roommate in her freshman year at Newcomb.  They've remained friends lo these many years, and I visited her and her art collection this morning before going out for lunch.  Thomas Hart Benton was a friend of her father-in-law, and he painted a huge mural for the family department store, Harzfeld's.  That mural is now in the American wing of the Smithsonian, but Myra and her husband have a small oil of it hanging in their family room:

Imagine this scene 24' long.  I couldn't get the details clearly so you can't see the figures, but most of them were drawn from Myra's husband's family.  They have a goodly amount of Benton memorabilia, which is fun particularly if you're a longtime Benton fan like me. 

Touring her house today was the second time in just a few days that I've been blown away by fascinating collections people amass.  My friend Mary Sprague in St. Louis is a long-time collector of stuff.  I walked around her living and working quarters looking at collections of wooden feet, Indian dolls, Japanese dolls, contemporary ceramics, beaded necklaces, wooden horses, toy animals of all kinds, African masks, rubber band thingies, antique paintbrushes, trompe l'oeil furniture, clay figures...and so on and so forth until your eyes and your mind shut down from sensory overload.

Same with Myra's house, replete with folk art from all over the world  Fruit baskets from Spanish markets, Egyptian artifacts, folk art from all over Latin America, Native American goodies, Eastern European wood carvings, plastic beads from Mardi Gras, minerals, antique English game boards, Irish animals, Cambodian and Laotian crafts... and so on and so forth.  Not to mention all the serious art.  Makes one breathless.

Well, this was a first.  I've never been warned not to bring a gun into an art museum before, but there you see the evidence.  This was my introduction to the Nerman Museum at the Johnson County Junior College in Overland Park, KS.  It's a lovely building with good-size, well-lit galleries.  I couldn't take pictures of a temporary exhibition (too bad because the work by Agathe Snow is fabulous), but I did snap a sculpture created by a South Korean made of military dog tags.  Very striking.

Today I also visited the Kemper Contemporary Art Museum, opened here in KCMO in 1994.  I'm staying about two blocks away from the Nelson-Atkins Museum (their main art museum), which is about two blocks from the Kemper, and we're all just a few blocks from Country Club Plaza, built in 1922 as the first suburban shoppping center in America.  Quite the cultural nabe.

This spider graces a lot of the publicity for the Kemper, but I prefer the "Crying Giant" by Tom Otterness.

 

Art from a Siberian Prison Camp

I don't think I can give the experience the justice it deserves, but on the Saturday after Thanksgiving I had one of the most momentous artistic moments in my life.  My pals Penny and Mary and I paid a visit on Marian Steen, a St. Louis artist who's also a friend of my friends.  Here's a picture of the four of us when we had lunch at O'Connell's two years ago.*

Marian inherited two old battered suitcases packed full with 294 pictorial images created in a World War I Siberian prisoner-of-war camp. The prisoners were officers from central Europe (Austria, Hungary, etc) who were in the prison camp for four or five years. Because they were officers, they were able to buy their own food, furniture, and art supplies. Some of them even hired servants. But, still, they were prisoners. In Siberia.

During their years as captives, several of the artistic officers created watercolors, pencil sketches, silhouettes, and even two oils of their experiences. There are drawings of laundry hanging on clothes lines, interiors of the barracks, prisoners at meals, in bed, exercising, playing cards--that sort of thing.  There are also satirical drawings of the guards and their living conditions.  Food scarcity became a serious issue so there are drawings of prisoners fighting the cooks.  There is one excruciating drawing of a prisoner comforting a comrade who has just been sentenced to death.  In this one there are six corpses hanging from nooses in the background.

The drawings are mostly quite small, typically 6" x 6".  They are done almost entirely in the German Expressionism style of the period. 

One prisoner, an Austrian engineer, managed to take them with him upon his release. His daughter and son-in-law snuck them out of Austria when they escaped to America in the late 1930's and kept them under their bed until their death in the late 1990's. They were willed to Marian, a daughter of their lifelong friends, and she has taken on the huge responsibility of trying to insure that these unique pieces stay together in a location where they can be useful for artistic and historic education.

Several years ago, Marian and her husband Rick Knox mounted a show, "Drawings and Paintings of World War I Internees of the Krasnovarsk, Siberia Prison Camp" in St. Louis. At the same time they engaged an art historian to inventory the collection. As part of that process, there's now a book of all the art work, many of them reproduced in full because of their small size.

Once the collection was appraised (for a lot), Marian and Rick stored it in a fireproof safe while they figure out how to make sure that they end up in a suitable place.  I just reread this and realize I'm not able to convey the enormity of the experience of seeing this obscure record of life in a Siberian prison camp.  Looking through the drawings is both fascinating and horrifying.  The task of insuring that this body of 294 drawings remain together is enormous.  I'm rooting for Marian to find the right home for this work.

* In the photo from left to right, Marian, Mary, me, Pemy

Sleeping in Mary's Studio

Monday November 30 2009

St. Louis is perfectly splendid.  Visiting friends there was terrific, as were the many delicious meals I ate in favorite old haunts and new ones that dazzle.  Part of the time I stayed with dear friend Penny, who owns a comfortable condo in suburban St. Louis.  It's a "normal" place, one you can find your way around in because it's built like most other homes.  You know, the kitchen in the kitchen, next to the dining room.  Bedrooms upstairs. 

Then part of the time I stayed with another good friend, Mary Sprague, who lives and works in her multi-floor 4,000 sq ft loft in downtown St. Louis.  Living quarters on one floor, the studio above.  Guests sleep in a desk that folds out to a bed in the studio.

Although her building is only three stories, it's industrial enough to be a reasonable facsimile of SoHo.  I particularly liked riding on the industrial elevator.  Even though the building isn't tall, there's a lot of privacy because the neighborhood was once a manufacturing and display sort of place, and the surrounding buildings aren't very tall.  So unless you don't like light, it's fun to keep the shades up all the time.  I felt quite cosmopolitan changing clothes in full view of...the sky. 

Mary's studio is in a part of north St. Louis that is still recovering from the devastation wreaked upon the inner city since the end of World War II.  I wouldn't necessarily want to cruise the streets there at night, but in the last few years a number of restaurants and night clubs have opened near her building.  I wish I could describe how much fun it was to sleep in a working studio.  The images are wonderful.  And I have a real crush on turpentine's aroma.

Here are two views of the walls I studied before going to sleep:

I've enjoyed my time on the road by myself, but I must say that spending almost a week with good friends was quite a special treat.