Walking Squares: A Warmer-Than-Usual Dublin

It’s been a hectic two days of hard traveling, but now self is almost to her destination, and she only has to get on the bus to Monaghan tomorrow.

Here’s her latest installment for Life of B’s November Squares Challenge: Walking Squares.

Dublin is warm! And sunny! Perfect walking weather. From her Airbnb on Aungier Road, she walked to the Chester Beatty Museum (in Dublin Castle), which is a jewel of a museum, with the most amazing collection of ancient texts, all compiled by one man, Chester Beatty, who deserves to be a household name. She spent about three hours there (10 a.m. to 1 p.m.) today. The museum has a café/restaurant (called, appropriately, The Silk Road), where you can take a break and eat a wide variety of hot food and/or pastries/salads/cakes/coffee.

The Chester Beatty is a small museum (only 1 % of the permanent collection is on display at any one time) but this is the Holy Grail of book collectors. If you can, take a docent tour. They’re 5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and 11:30 a.m. on Saturdays. There are also excellent downloadable audio tours (free)

Mama Cormier’s Thursday Trios: The Empty Library, Berlin

It’s been a while since self joined this challenge, hosted by Mama Cormier.

Mama Cormier’s trios this week include a fun trio of scarecrows in front of an ice cream store. Self’s is a picture of three young people looking at Israeli artist Micha Ullman’s The Empty Library, an art installation on “one of the many sites of the Nazi book burnings in 1933.” Read more about the memorial in the caption below. The picture was part of an exhibit she saw at the San Francisco Public Library last month.

Water Water Everywhere # 148: Golden Gate Park, Last Summer

Whenever self feels in need of getting away, she goes to Golden Gate Park. It is 30 miles north, but being there always nourishes her spirit. She visits Stow Lake and sees whatever’s on at the de Young.

Last June, when she took these pictures, she dropped by to see the Alice Neel exhibit (fantastic!)

Posting for Jez Braithwaite’s Water Water Everywhere Challenge.

CFFC Texture: Carlos Villa

Last summer, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum featured the work of visionary Filipino-American artist Carlos Villa (born San Francisco, 1936 – died 2013). There is only one word to describe it: stunning.

His medium was paper and pulp, canvas and feathers.

His work is especially fitting for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week: TEXTURE.

Flower of the Day: A Walk in Golden Gate Park

Yesterday, Sunday, self left bright and early for Golden Gate Park. She’d made a reservation to see the Ramses the Great exhibit. While walking from her car to the museum, she passed a stand of gorgeous yellow abutilon and just had to stop and take a picture.

Self has two different kinds of abutilon in her garden: an anemone pink, and a variegated orange. This is the first yellow abutilon she’s ever seen. So pretty!

Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day.

Mid-Week Monochrome # 100: Candid at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square

When self travels, she loves taking candid pictures of complete strangers. She rarely takes pictures of monuments — not unless there are strangers walking in front of them. She is really interested in people-watching, most of all.

Last June, she was at the Raphael exhibit at London’s National Gallery (what a fantastic exhibit). Here are her candids (Thank you, Brashley Photography, for hosting the Mid-Week Monochrome Challenge):

Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC) # 56: CIRCLES

So happy whenever she can joing the PPAC Challenge.

This week, the theme is circles.

This is the display window of the London Review Bookshop in Bloomsbury:

And here’s a Raphael, from the blockbuster exhibit held at the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. Even though self went bright and early, half an hour before opening time, the line just to get in was already humongous.

‘Twas a great show. Self was so lucky to have caught it, her last week in England.

The Weekend Roundup Challenge, 3rd Weekend of July 2022

The Weekend Roundup Challenge is hosted by Tom, The Backroads Traveler.

There are three parts to this challenge:

• Something that starts with the letter B
• A favorite that starts with the letter B
• Tom’s choice: (B)erry

Without further ado:

• Something that starts with the letter B: BANKSY

• A favorite that starts with the letter B: Bookshop

Tom’s Choice: Berry

• Marianne’s Choice: Belfast, which she visited for the first time in April

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #207: SEEING DOUBLE

The host of this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is Jez Braithwaite:

• Seeing double is all about reflections—probably one of my biggest photographic obsessions. I tend to see them everywhere & actively seek them out when they’re not readily apparent. My reflection hunting started shortly after I got Snappy, my DSLR, 12 years ago with some poolside reflections.

This was such a fun challenge. Thank you for dreaming it up, Jez!

• Lily pond, Oxford University Botanical Garden:

• Ruth Asawa, permanent collection, De Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco:

• Alexander Calder mobile, from Calder/Picasso Exhibit, 2021, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park:

Six Word Saturday: Alice Neel at de Young Museum

This was the first exhibit self saw at the de Young Museum after getting back from the UK. It was a knockout. Alice Neel ROCKS!

Thanks to Debbie Smyth at Travel with Intent for hosting this fun challenge!

• Left Top: Robert Avedis Hagopian, graduate of Los Altos High, classical pianist, at age 26 (10 years later, he was dead of AIDS)
• Center Top: Thanksgiving (LOL LOL)
• Bottom Left: Fuller Brush Salesman (The story of this is pretty wild: Dewald Strauss came to Neel’s door to pitch his fuller brushes, and she persuaded him to sit for a portrait. He never told his family. After Strauss’s death, his son saw his dad’s portrait in an Alice Neel exhibit and said, That’s DAD! He got in touch with Neel and thanked her for preserving his dad’s memory for posterity)
• Bottom Right: Ginny, who was living with one of Neel’s sons in San Francisco and became Neel’s daughter-in-law
• Large picture: Hartley, Alice Neel’s younger son, who at that time was in medical school and thinking of dropping out because he couldn’t handle the anatomy classes. Hartley was 25 and depressed when he sat for his mother. You can see the disaffection so clearly on his face.