More Art... and History

A lazy morning at our excellent B&B, La Reserve--heartily recommended to anyone contemplating a stay in Philadelphia. Up at 7AM to do a leisurely packing ready for this afternoon’s departure via Amtrak for Washington. Breakfast with the gang from yesterday. We were delighted to learn that Tim and Sierra, the young couple I mentioned in my previous entry, had become engaged overnight....

Congratulations all around, and great admiration for Sierra's new ring!

After another excellent breakfast, I had ample time for a change to return to our room and take care of the blog before heading out to meet our friend Leo at the art college where he teaches—and where he is included in their current faculty show. Here’s his contribution…

… a poor photo, I fear, but one of his best paintings ever. The monkey has been an omnipesent metaphor in his work for as long as I can remember, a trickster with a mischievous suggestion of racial insult and the echo of an old aristocratic tradition of the monkey as court jester and sexual provocateur. The swimmer is a portrait of Leo’s wife, Carol, floating in a kind of ecstatic contemplation of the spatial infinity suggested by the imponderable depth of water and the immeasurable distance of its horizonless surface. Leo has been teaching for many years and can’t wait for his imminent retirement, to spend more time in the studio. You can see why!

After bidding farewell to our friend and exchanging the best of intentions not to let another fifteen years drift by, we walked over to The Fabric Workshop and Museum, where I had imagined to find a display of textiles and a few local quilts. Not so. The museum’s current exhibit is called … and features five very impressive artists who work in a variety of media. (No pictures allowed, damn! Again, I hope you might find some at the website.) The artists included Tommy Joseph, from Alaska, who works in the ancient tribal tradition of totem poles and masks; his work includes a full suit of clothes (shades of Beuys!) designed with a Tlingit motif; Robert Chambers, with a huge, white, immaculate, elongated "Orbit Egg" and a miniature double Deere tractor, conjoined but facing in opposite direction; Bill Smith, with intricate structures made of wire, bones, beads, and odd-looking technological contraptions, some of them interactive at the touch of a finger or a breath, which challenge accepted ideas about the relationship between art, technology and the natural world; Marie Watt, who constructed a large cave out of felt, complete with stalactites and stalagmites, and the shifting video image of an actor narrating (superbly) the light-hearted fable involving the improbable couple of an octopus and a crow; and our own Southern Californian, Ruben Ortiz-Torres, with the video documentation of a large machine that combines the cumbersome, jazzy dance of the low-rider with the industrial heavy machinery of the cherry-picker and forklift. He involves us, clearly, in the meeting of Anglo and Hispanic cultures, in the mode of absurdist humor--at once hugely laughable and vaguely threatening. A great show. We loved it.

From there, we walked on, with a quick stopover at the bustling Central Market for a cup of coffee and a shared biscotto, and headed down to Philadelphia’s rich historical area. We had time only for a bow to the Liberty Bell…

… a nod to Constitution Hall…

and a perambulation of the lovely, tree-shaded gardens in the square behind...

... before heading back to our B&B to retrieve our bags for a taxi ride to the Amtrak station. These words are written on the train as we head down to Washington DC. More from there, on our arrival.

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We were delighted with the friendly greeting at Washington's Union Station. Noticing me struggle with heavy bags at the (non-functioning) escalator, a young black man offered to help; I pointed to Ellie, also struggling, and he grabbed her bags and carried them down for her. At the electronic ticket kiosk, another willing helper gladly showed us how to use our credit card to get the need tickets. (It turned out he was broke, and drink, and had no train fare home, so I helped him out! Not really a con--he was appropriately embarrassed!) And on the Metro ride to our friends' district, we had plenty of people eager to help us out with information about the stops.

Once at our destination, we were met by our friend Marjorie in the station and, outside, with the car, by her husband Damian. With kids and grandkids in Los Angeles, they invested in the house opposite to us in the Los Feliz area, and are therefore our neighbors for several weeks two or three times a year. They kindly offered to put us up for our stay in Washington--an offer we gladly accepted. We were greeted with an excellent steak dinner, and enjoyed a good evening of catch-up talk about families and travels...

Sitting here, this morning, with Ellie and Marjorie out for a morning walk and Damian just off for tennis, enjoying a quiet moment to write the blog...