The Life in Colour Photo Challenge for this month is GOLD. Jude’s blog has so many striking photographs, wow.
A few days ago, the Anderson Collection on the Stanford Campus finally re-opened to the public (limited capacity: must register on-line first). I focused on pieces that had shades of GOLD:
“Approach” : Helen Frankenthaler, American (1928 – 2011)
“Burn and Glitter” : Jules Olitski, American, born Russia (1922-2007)
“Hostile Terrain 94” : a participatory art exhibition created by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP)
Self does not know whether she’s interpreting the challenge correctly: Find a picture that contains both GRAY and ORANGE.
She didn’t think she could find any pictures that fit, but — will wonders never cease? She found two pictures from a visit to the de Young Museum, a few weeks ago: Ruth Asawa art!
Without further ado:
Ruth Asawa: Permanent Installation, Education Tower, de Young Museum, San Francisco
Ruth Asawa: Permanent Installation, Education Tower, de Young Museum, San Francisco
Self is late again! It’s Monday and she’s posting for Travel with Intent’s One Word Sunday Challenge.
The word is OPPOSING.
Think this’ll suit: at the Judy Chicago Retrospective at the De Young, there’s a display of female figures (the show itself is amazing; if you’re anywhere within driving distance, do yourself a favor and see it). Self kept trying to take pictures, but the reflection on the glass was interfering. She finally decided to snap whatever, and after she came home and looked at what she’d taken, she discovered there was a woman on the other side of the glass from self, looking rather quizzically at her. So, here we are, on two opposing sides of the display.
Oh, self had fun this morning, searching through her garden for any red blooms. There were a few choices, but the ones that photographed best were geraniums. In her archives, there was this sweet little mini-Cooper parked in front of Horn Barbecue in Oakland.
Self is throwing in a Calder from last spring’s Calder/Picasso at the de Young Museum.
Thanks so much to Life in Colour for hosting this challenge.
Love this photo challenge from Nancy Merrill’s A Photo a Week.
tbh, ALL self’s shots are unedited. She takes all her pictures on the fly.
Here are a few shots she took last week at the Legion of Honor. She went to see the exhibit Last Supper at Pompeii. On the way in, her attention was captured by these Wangechi Mutu sculptures, and there was no way to take pictures of those without including the bystanders. Not the ideal, but here they are anyway. The man in the blue jacket has a starring role:
Really, WordPress? REALLY? Whole paragraphs of text disappeared just now!
Inferno, p. 78: The first plane to leave the ground, destination Hamburg, was “Sergeant P. Moseley’s Stirling of 74 (New Zealand) Squadron at 9:45 p.m.”
Lowe then goes on to describe each type of plane involved in the attack (Self absolutely loves these details):
The “Short Stirling” was a “gentleman’s aircraft” because “it was easy to handle, and capable of absorbing an enormous amount of punishment before it succumbed to flak or fighter fire . . . it was also relatively easy to escape from — which was fortunate, because its lamentable ceiling of only 16,000 feet made it the first target of all the German flak batteries.”
There was even a plane “made only of plywood”: the De Havilland Mosquito. It had “no defensive armament whatsoever but these . . . were so fast, and were capable of flying at such extreme altitudes, that they were in fact virtually untouchable.” There were eleven Mosquitos that took off with the main bombing force: “All of them would return to England the next morning, completely unscathed.”
The Rolls Royce of aerial bombers was the Avro Lancaster: “a huge, sleek machine capable of flying to Berlin and back laden with over six tons of bombs . . . Four Rolls Royce Merlin engines along its wings could carry it to a height of 22,000 feet and above, and at speeds of 226 mph.”
In fact, she has seen this engine. Four years ago, she went to London’s Imperial War Museum for the first time: Polished and gleaming, in its own display case on the ground floor, was a Merlin engine. At the time, she wondered why an airplane engine — even one made by Rolls Royce — deserved its own display case. Now she knows.
Chapter IV is about Ammonites, Discoscaphites jerseyensis
Kolbert meets a geologist from Brooklyn College in a parking lot next to a baseball field. They strike out through the underbrush to a shallow creek.
Its banks were covered in rust-colored slime. Brambles hung over the water. Fluttering from these were tattered banners of debris: lost plastic bags, scraps of newspaper, the rings from ancient six-packs.
In the “creek bed, a few inches above the water line,” was an exposed iridium layer, evidence of the six-mile wide asteroid that hit the earth in the late Cretaceous, wiping out the dinosaurs. A scientist digs out a piece of ammonite.
Kolbert goes on to describe the prevalence of ammonites: “Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption that buried Pompeii, was already familiar with them . . . “
That mention of Pliny the Elder dying at Pompeii . . . This Sunday, self is going to see the exhibit Last Supper at Pompeii at the Legion of Honor. The exhibit traveled from the Ashmolean, where self first saw it in November 2019. It was a fantastic exhibit, she wanted to see it again but ran out of time. She didn’t think she’d have another chance, but here it is, in her own backyard!
Self has many white flowers, so for this challenge, hosted by Jude on Travel World Blog, she will push herself to look for SILVER:
Silver is a precious metal, indicating wealth. “Born with a silver spoon in your mouth”. A cool colour. Sparkling silver water. The light of the moon. It represents feminine energy, pure, emotional and sensitive.
Her MacBook Air is silver. She’s had three MacBook Airs, but this one she’s had the longest (five years)
Here is Alexander Calder’s “Fish.” Self was lucky enough to attend the Picasso/Calder exhibit at the de Young Museum in March, almost as soon as it re-opened:
March was also when self took her first road trip post-pandemic. She went to Sacramento, to visit the Crocker. She stayed in an Airbnb in an old house that used to be a laundry. For reading material (and she ALWAYS) has reading material, she brought Douglas Stuart’s novel, Shuggie Bain. The room she stayed in was white, the bedspread was white, and the book had a black-and-white (well, more like silver) cover.
