Memorial Day 2021 --- Days 10/30 & 31

Walk: 1. Presidio Pickleball  2. No

Distance: 1. 2.5 miles, 1 hr. pickle, yoga  2. Yoga

Often Ciwt goes to the moving Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony at the Presidio National Cemetery, but this year it was canceled.  So she joined others on line for the interfaith memorial service at the Presidio Chapel.  Always a special day of grateful remembrance.  

Back At The Flicks! --- Days 10/28 & 29

Walk: 1. Presidio Social Club, Crissy Field  2. AMC Kabuki (A Quiet Place II)

Distance: 1. 6 miles  2. 3.3 miles

So Ciwt went to the movies!  There may have been a couple of others there.  She can't be sure because she sits toward - sometimes at - the front.  The theater was spotless and very well organized with assigned seats and care taken to assure proper spacing (if there had been more in the audience).  And of course the screen was enormous, the sound surround and it didn't take a moment of Zoom-like concentration to sit back in her lounge chair and enjoy being immersed in another world.  It felt great and relieving to be at one of her favorite escapes after more than a year, and she says to movie buffs wherever you are,  "Try it, you'll like it!"  9You'll also be doing your part in keeping our big screens alive).

Also for a (dystopian) suspense/thriller getaway she can recommend the movie she saw:  A Quiet Place, Part II.

The "Perfect" Cure --- Days 10/26 & 27

Walk: 1. Presidio  2. Hood

Distance: 1. 4.4 miles, yoga  2. 4.2 miles, yoga

So, Ciwt was going to take a trip to the place where she grew up.  But today she canceled it.  Lots of real world reasons, mostly related to the fact that it really is too soon to travel for many of us unless it is a necessity. At least to take a longish plane trip.  For openers (and closers actually), the state she was going to has a no mask policy while Ciwt's state is still masking, social distancing etc., and Ciwt feels safest with that for now.  

Seems a rational, sensible decision, but, because it concerns the place of her childhood, not going is confusing.  By doing what feels safest and most comfortable (and sane) to her, is she being a good enough friend?, community member?, citizen of the world? human being?  It is fraught - home - and Ciwt struggles to finally, finally not get confused by it, nail it down, get over it. And she found a poem today that seems helpful.

THE CURE

Albert Huffstickler

We think we get over things.

We don’t get over things.

Or say, we get over the measles

but not a broken heart.

We need to make that distinction.

The things that become part of our experience

never become less a part of our experience.

How can I say it?

The way to “get over” a life is to die.

Short of that, you move with it,

let the pain be pain,

not in the hope that it will vanish

but in the faith that it will fit in,

find its place in the shape of things

and be then not any less pain but true to form.

Because anything natural has an inherent shape

and will flow towards it.

And a life is as natural as a leaf.

That’s what we’re looking for:

not the end of a thing but the shape of it.

Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life

without obliterating (getting over) a single

instant of it.

Something To Do - Intermittently --- Day 10/25

Walk: GG Park Pickleball

Distance: 1.5 miles, 90 minutes pickle. yoga

The day begins with vitamins and Water, really (desktop computer on right)

Ciwt is going to give an 'intermittent fast' diet a try. No eating until noon or after 8 pm.  Something to do. We'll see.

Pillow? Caper --- Day 10/24

Walk: Monday errands

Distance: 4 miles, yoga

Oh dear, just when Ciwt needs a couple of new ones, why do sleeping pillows have to look so different from when she was growing up.?

All Subverted --- Day 10/23

Walk: Presidio Pickleball Courts

Distance: 2.4 miles, Yoga, Just a few games of pickle 

Paulina Olowska (Polishm born 1976), Portrait of the Artist - indoors, 2012, oil, ink,transparency on linen 

So, Ciwt felt a bit subverted by the newly hung walls at SFMOMA the other day.  "Subvert," that's the recent art and other arenas buzz word intentionalty used wrong by subversive Ciwt.  It means undermine the power and authority of (an established system or institution), or topple, destabilize, unsettle, etc.  You get it, and, if you are like Ciwt, you've heard and seen quite enough of it these days.

There were several galleries at SFMOMA that felt to Ciwt like glorified street fairs, filled with artists she'd never heard of.  And there's part of the subversion.  It used to be that there was quite an exacting route to museum walls.  Artists had to have some combination of  talent, excellent training, patrons, approval by prestigious galleries and finally by the highly educated and powerful museum honchos.  In the 50's, when the art center moved to New York from Paris, that system began to crack in earnest.  There were the huge, macho, self-expressive canvases of the 'Ab Exs,' then Warhol opened the door to 'museum quality' art even farther showing that artists could make their own careers and command enormous prices through things like wild parties, equally wild movies, (women's) magazines.  They became such media stars museums looked out of it if they didn't put their work on the walls.  

Now it seems there are other - and international - routes to museums that Ciwt knows nothing about.  And many of them are "Subversive" according to the signage.  Some of this subversive art Ciwt has seen at other museums are simply gross, apparently meant to disgust and shock. But that wasn't the case at SFMOMA.  Many of their newly hung (or otherwise displayed) art works are beautifully executed, engaging and thought-provoking, even in their 'subversiveness.'  

For instance, the work at the top by Polish artist Paulina Olowska. It is finely crafted (with cats to please Ciwt), but, wow, the signage: Olowska embeds her compostions with forgotten figures from overlooked histories.  This work depicts the Mexican poet and painter Carmen Mondragon (1893-1978), also known as Nahui Olin, a fashion and cultural icon who posed for such artists as Diego Rivera, Tina Modotti, and Edward Weston.  Olowska complicates the depiction in several ways.  The central figure is based on a picture by the fashion photographer Norman Parkinson - not of Olin, but of another woman. The plates on the wall are decorated with images of the artist and her lovers, a nod to Olowska's own ceramic work, while the collaged cats evoke the artist's preoccupation with these animals  

Or this striking work by Guyanese artist, Frank Bowling: 

Frank Bowling (Guyanese, born 1934), Elder Sun Benjamin, 2018, Acrylic paint, synthetic resin, cut and pasted canvas, fabric, and photographs on canvas

Very affecting work, but, again, look at the extensive signage:  This work is named for the artist's oldest son, Benjamin, whose likeness emerges from the two photographs collaged onto the canvas, barely visible in the thick layers of yellow paint.  Also pasted onto the surface are strips of Asian textiles his grandson purchased in Zambia, weaving the artist's personal lineage and experience with broader histories of migration and cross-cultural exchange.  The ocular forms of the photographs recall the artists quote, "I don't think what you see or reel in the world when you open your eyes for first time ever lieaves you..Historical memory is hardly ever erased.

Can't Ciwt just enjoy or be intrigued by the work and research it (or take an art tour 😉) on her own if she wants to learn more about it or the artist?  Like just reading a poem?

Ciwt also wonders things like 1. Does this artist have a body of work similar to what Ciwt is looking at or is this just one good work? Ie, is there consistency and maturity here? 2. Is the museum showing this work primarily because the artist is local?  Or international?  Or an overlooked Sunday painter? 3. How much of a role do museums play in advancing local (or international) artists?  4. Similarly, is the art work displayed to advance or articulate a political statement or promote a cause?  5. Should museums be respites from politics or part of the political media? 6. Do viewers want to/benefit from seeing many of the same, 'accepted,' dazzlingly expensive 'in club' artists museum after museum?  

7.Does Ciwt want to walk into a green museum 

 

Olafur Eliasson, Danish-Icelandic, born 1967, One-way colour tunnel, 2007,stainless steel, acrylic color-effect filters, acrylic mirrors, paint, and wire

  

and out of a  blue/pink one - all or mildly  'subverted' - like she did in with Olafur Eliasson's glorious light tunnel?  

Questions without answers for now.  Probably for museums as well.  Everyone's a bit subverted she suspects.

Have Can, Will Travel --- Day 10/22

Walk: T. Joe's

Distance: 2.5 miles

Pretty amazing what taggers can do overnight.  This closed restaurant and parking lot is right next to 'Ciwt's' Trader Joe's, and those walls were blank just a few days ago.  

If the 'artist' got a legal permt from the property owner, it can stay.  But, if not, he/she is considered a vandal and subject to pretty severe consequences. Good, thinks Ciwt.  She enjoys our terrific, legal murals around San Francisco, but, otherwise prefers to see her art in museums, galleries, street fairs and homes.  

Form: Simple and Colorful --- Day 10/21

Walk: Presidio Pickleball

Distance: 2.5 miles, 90 minutes pickle, Yoga

Milton Avery (American, 1885-1965), White Rooster, 1947, o/c, 61 1/2 x 50 3/4" 

Ciwt just likes this painting and in general the intimately charming and colorful work of Milton Avery, a truly original, self-taught American painter.  

Marc Rothko, one of several artists who befriended Avery in New York City in the 30's and 40's liked him too and once said of his work: What was Avery's repertoire? His living room, Central Park, his wife Sally, his daughter March, the beaches and mountains where they summered; cows, fish heads, the flight of birds; his friends and whatever world strayed through his studio: a domestic, unheroic cast. But from these there have been fashioned great canvases, that far from the casual and transitory implications of the subjects, have always a gripping lyricism, and often achieve the permanence and monumentality of Egypt.