the warhol

Dale Chihuly at Phipps Conservatory

First of all, I love the Phipps Conservatory. I have been going there ever since I can remember. My family would take us almost religiously to the different shows that showcased the seasons. We would go at Christmastime, and then in the Spring. I have always felt a fondness for Phipps in my heart. It makes me proud to live in Pittsburgh. When I lived in Chicago, I went searching for a place like this....a sanctuary of plant life, of majestic ceilings that feel like you are walking through a dream, a humble beauty that is welcoming and yet astonishing. I didn't find it.

When I first heard about the Chihuly exhibit, I was nervous. It made me anxious to imagine someone coming in and trampling my banana trees and vanilla orchids with their art. I was afraid he would "take over" a place that, in my mind, was so very perfect.

I was terribly wrong. What this artist accomplished is what we all ought to strive towards as artists, as human beings. Co-existing. Bringing out the beauty in the environment we are in. Celebrating it, giving it new life. It makes you think in new ways about the plants, about the relationships the glass forms have with the plant structures. I feel that Chihuly did an amazing job of making you really see.



So, the rooms. I will highlight some of my personal favorites. The room that the first photo is of is a stunning representation of the exhibit. The orange glass looks like tongues of fire, coming up from the ground. It looks as if it has dialogue with the plant life. The forms are similar, but not the same. It is poetic, and prepares you, I feel, for the blood red poetry of the room to follow.





My favorite room was this simple, yet phenomenal work of art. Vertical red glass seemed to come both down from the high cieling and up from the earth simultaneously. In the very green room of ferns you find its opposite. In a room that breathes life, you feel the poetry of the red, you feel the symbolism before you can think of it. He transformed this room.






Then there is the desert room. I have a photograph on my phone that I look at every day of this room. Sitting high like a chandelier is a yellow star-like form that looks amazing among the prickly cacti. The lavendar spears in this room were such a pleasant surprise. I would have never thought I could love lavendar so much. Apparently these "reeds" are made of Neodymium, a rare earth mineral. They look stunning with the Desert plants.





Lastly, the "East Room" I don't love blues and purples. I don't typically understand the sparkly princess feel of these colors. But the moment I walked into this room, I felt as if I were at peace with the world. That's all I can say.

For me, the work Chihuly has done here reminds me of Christo and Jeanne-Claude a little. Taking something beautiful, and making it new. Making the viewer see it differently. (Look up the wrapping of Point-Neuf in Paris.)

We went back for batteries, and I'm really glad we did. We met a cute Pittsburgh family, whose youngest member had the same boots as Laura. Only his were dinosaurs. It was wonderful. I haven't met anyone to date who has seen this that hasn't loved it. There is something universal about it, something that defies controversy.



There we are....

An excerpt by Davira S. Taragin, Director of Exhibitions and Programs at Racine Art Museum:
"Dale Chihuly is most frequently lauded for revolutionizing the Studio Glass movement, by expanding its original premise of the solitary artist working in a studio environment to encompass the notion of collaborative teams and a division of labor within the creative process. However, Chihuly's contribution extends well beyond the boundaries of both this movement and even the field of glass: his achievements have influenced contemporary art in general. Chihuly's practice of using teams has led to the development of complex, multipart sculptures of dramatic beauty that place him in the leadership role of moving blown glass out of the confines of the small, precious object and into the realm of large-scale contemporary sculpture. In face, Chihuly deserves credit for establishing the blown-glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art, beginning in the late twentieth century and continuing today."

mattress factory

james turrell is kind of the big hitter at the mattress factory. you should wikipedia him to learn more about him, because i'm not going to try to explain or act like i know more than i do. all i know is that he designs some quaker meeting rooms, he built this huge observatory type cool thing into a crater in arizona, and his main focus/medium is "light"... you have to see it in real life. pictures make no sense.

"pleiades" is a dark room that you sit in. i can't tell you more than that. because then it would be pointless. i've been really thinking about light and dark, the metaphors, the ways that light and dark are valuable parts of our spiritual lives, our growth, our development. sitting in this room made all of those things come together and make sense in a really whole way. as if everything i've been living, feeling, seeing over the past 5 months made sense in a piece of art. it's about light. and how it's constant. even in the darkness. the source is constant.

the thing i loved about this particular trip to the mattress factory is the way that people reacted. i can't explain it any more than pittsburghers, i mean, like, yinzers, in the mattress factory. nothing has made me so happy, so excited in a long time. especially when it comes to art and its role in a community, its role in the world. modern art (and a lot of "art") can sort of get this reputation for being confusing, full of itself, too good for the average person, sort of thing. watching this wonderfully awkward, happy, funny family walk through the museum was such a joy. i love when the two worlds collide and realize they are one. i think they were really brave to venturing to the mattress factory. sometimes i'm scared to go to things like that, fearing that i won't "fit in" - and they weren't. they were loud, maybe obnoxious, but laurie and i were just tasteless. pictures, posing, enjoying, laughing and running away when we realized people were watching.

"My works don't illustrate scientific principle, but I want them to express a certain consciousness, a certain knowing. My spaces must be sensitive to events outside themselves. They must bring external events into themselves. I think of my works as being important in terms of what they have to do with us and our relationship to the universe, but not necessarily in scientific terms. I'm concerned with what my spaces direct their seeing to, and hence what they direct our seeing to. At the same time, I'm interested in the expression of time. Because, eventhough you may have expressions of our particular historical moment in, say, the art of Andy Warhol, there are also expressions that go through time, beyond time, and have a sense of themselves that transcends anyspecific period. That's the part of art I'm interested in. This said, however, I do want to be involved with the here and now. I want my art to function in contemporary terms..."-james turrell

carnegie museum of art

this was our first trip. there's something really wonderful about pittsburgh's art museum. usually i tell people that i just feel really "healthy" when i'm at the carngie museum. i think it's because i feel independent there, i feel free, i think that i am doing something that is good for me. i think this museum has become a part of my identity in some ways, my mom used to take my brother and i there at least every month for most of our childhood. whether it was the dinosaurs, the art, or the hall of minatures, i feel like myself when i am there.

i know pittsburgh is sort of like your not-as-cool-friend who you don't always want to take out with you and show off, who you might be sort of embarassed by, but you love more than your shiny, pretty friends. but the carnegie museum of art in pittsburgh is wonderful. i'm pretty proud of it, really. something i love about this museum is that since it's not some big huge cool super popular museum, you get a lot of pretty well known arts, but with the not-as-well known paintings. most of the paintings that i wanted to chose for this post, were impossible to find on the internet. also, there are some not as well known artists, who are really wonderful. if you go, i would suggest bringing a lot a piece of paper and a pencil. keep notes of artists you like and might want to look into more!

this is a klimt painting. it's much better in real life. like most paintings. i like the texture. i like the colors. i like how everything is pretty green, but somehow you can distinguish between the different layers. i like the detail. i like how small the brush strokes are. kind of like pointalism, only not. i like the constrast of the grey, atmospheric sky and the kind of straight, rigid green trees/flowers.

laurie and i met a very nice security guard there. he went to central catholic. we bought him a cookie. and he was nice. and cute. and i love pittsburgh.