Here’s how Cee Neuner introduces the challenge:
Last June, self saw a fabulous exhibit at the Legion of Honor: Guo Pei, Coutoure Fantasy.
Gold was everywhere! Even on legs and feet! For example:
Self is in love with the gold booties.
Stay tuned.
Self was climbing up the walls after a whole year of pandemic lockdown. California Governor Gavin Newsom lifted the lockdown order in March 2021. The following month, self was taking road trips galore (so were her neighbors: 96-year-old Mrs. C went on a road trip to Seattle! Self remembers standing on the sidewalk and waving good-bye as Mrs. C and her sons and daughters drove off in a huge Cadillac!).
In April 2021, self signed up for a tour of the California Academy of Sciences. The tour was led by an in-house naturalist, everyone was still wearing masks, but oh, what joy to be out in the company of others!
It was self’s first time on the living roof. The naturalist explained that what held the roof together were coconut husks (like the ones we use to scrub our floor in the Philippines!). Six inches of soil were deposited on the roof, and then the naturalists left the roof alone to see what grew there.
The California Academy of Sciences runs entirely on solar energy. The round shapes on the roof are solar panels. It’s wild seeing the ferris wheel pop up across a meadow. Highly recommend this tour, if anyone is thinking of going.
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.
It’s been a while since self joined a Monday Windows Challenge. Don’t know why, she loves windows. Loves, loves, loves.
These windows are all from the Crocker Art Museum in Sacrameno. She went on a road trip last year, in March. The minute Gov. Newsom lifted the covid lockdown, she took off. What a joy to be someplace different! Crocker Art Museum is one of the coolest California museums.
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):
“I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with fog! ~ Om Malik.
For this challenge, self decided to focus on GRAYISH skies. These are from her most recent trip to the UK, in the spring:
One Oxford sky, and two rainy Trafalgar Squares (Self was exiting the National Gallery, after seeing a knock-your-socks-off exhibit of Raphael.
Luckily, she left England well before the first of the punishing heat waves that hit over the summer.
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 host of this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is Jez Braithwaite:
This was such a fun challenge. Thank you for dreaming it up, Jez!
Self’s favorite public square is the Great Courtyard of the British Museum. OK, technically it’s not a square (lol), It’s a CIRCLE.
The last time she was in London (May this year: She saw the Stonehenge exhibit and the one on feminine power), she took an architectural tour of the Museum (free). It was fascinating (though too short). The guide led us outside, told us about the architect, then led us to the great courtyard, and said it was the largest covered public square in the world. Self had no time to look up this one particular fact. But she loves the Great Courtyard, regardless.
She used to hang out here almost every day, when she stayed at The Penn Club on Bedford Place (The Club has since closed — WAAAH!). She’d pick a quiet corner and work — wi-fi was, and is, free. The food concession stands sold affordable soup, salad, and pastries. Right across the hall was the Rosetta Stone. What’s not to love?
Last spring it was packed like a market square. Self was a little thrown by the number of people, most of them unmasked. But she came home without catching covid, go figure.
Posting for Marsha Ingrao and Cee Neuner’s Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC).
Yesterday, self dropped by the Asian Art Museum on Larkin in downtown San Francisco. Traffic was surprisingly light. Good thing, because self was so distracted by listening to npr on her car radio that she might have gotten into an accident, the news was so bad.
It was her first visit to the Asian Art Museum since before the pandemic, well over two years ago.
The museum currently has not one, not two, but three blockbuster exhibits: Carlos Villa, Worlds in Collision; two experimental artists: one from Kolkata, the other from Hong Kong. And Marin artist Zheng Chongbin’s I Look for the Sky, a site-specific installation hanging from the lobby ceiling.
Hong Kong artist Lam Tung Pang’s piece, A day of two Suns (2019) was a video installation. The screen looked like a Chinese painting, but with witty modern objects decorating the edges. Amazing.
Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six Word Saturday.
Kanlaon 