We Heart Art

LUMINOUS: I've been sitting on a Living Social voucher for the Seattle Art Museum for months. No way I wanted to let that expire without using it, so we met Christian there late this afternoon. (We rode the bus and he drove there from work.)

The first thing you see upon entering SAM is Ford Tauruses (Tauri?). Lots and lots of them, including many hanging from the ceiling and speared with light sticks that flash and change colors. It's a pretty stunning visual effect, and the coolest any Ford Taurus has ever looked. (Called Inopportune: Stage One, it's the work of Cai Guo-Qiang.)

We made our way through the museum's many exhibits. I think I spent more time watching the kids to make sure they didn't touch anything or cross any lines, etc. than I did looking at art, but oh well. It's part of taking 7- and 8-year olds to a fine art museum. I won't lie and tell you they loved it all. There were parts they really liked, including the ancient Egyptian stuff, African, Native American and Asian masks. They were impressed by how old some of the items they were viewing were.

There were things neither they, nor we, could appreciate. Like .... THIS

A white canvas + a painted on black frame = fine art? Um, OK, I guess someone says so. CeeJ begs to differ.

The museum's special exhibit right now is Luminous: The Art of Asia. As described by SAM's Web site, it's a showcase of "the jewels of Seattle Art Museum's Asian collections, featuring 160 of the museum's masterpieces." Without a doubt, the kids' favorite item in the show was a wood block print of "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" or "The Great Wave" by Katsushike Hokusai. They knew it from "Little Einsteins." :)

One of the most visually stunning works of art we encountered was "Some/One" - an enormous robe crafted out of dog tags by Korean artist Do Ho Suh.

It's gigantic and gorgeous.We all were enthralled by it.

We were all absolutely entranced by a art-in-motion installation called "The Gate" enchanted all of us. The installation, created by Do Ho Suh of the dog tag robe above especially for the Luminous exhibit, is a two-sided movie screen that looks like a wall and ornate archway or pass through. On both sides, a film (mostly black and white but with spots of color) with elements taken from nature (birds, butterflies, and such) was projected. I'm doing a miserable job of describing it. Sorry. The good news is, SAM has a video of it posted on YouTube. It still isn't as great as seeing it for yourself, but it's worth checking out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-JVU1DmO4Rc

I think we'd all agree that the painting we found most arresting was The Visitation, ca. 1643, by Philippe de Champaigne, a Flemish artist active in France, 1602-1674. The link I included above shows a small version of it. I wish you could see the older woman's eyes more clearly. They were AMAZING. We all stared at her and marveled for awhile.


On the south side of the museum, we found a spot where kids could craft some art of their own. CJ took a pass, but Annabelle dove right in.

The hallway on the south side of the building is gorgeous, with a series of larger than life statues.

LOCKSTEP: It's neither warm nor sunny, but we needed to get out and get some exercise. Even though I didn't think we'd see any fish in the fish ladder, I decided we'd head down to the Hiram Chittenden Locks.  I'm glad we went. It's always a special place, as it's at the confluence of fresh and salt water.

"This place is a ghost town" CJ said upon our arrival. And he was right. In the summer months, the place is so packed with sightseers from around the globe (I like trying to figure out all the different languages we hear there) and locals, sometimes you can hardly walk across the locks. Today, we had the run of the place. 

Upon our arrival, we got to see a tugboat helping push a large ship (Green Provider, from Miami, FLA) through the locks. That was cool.

Then, we went out and watched the water coursing through the fish ladder. We checked out the educational displays in the underground viewing area, and listened to a narration about the fish and the locks' history. The narrator suggested we check out the visitors center across the water. Funny, in all of the dozens of times we've been to the locks, we never even knew there WAS a visitors center! There were no fish running whatsoever, but it's still an interesting place to check out from an engineering standpoint. We crossed over the dam and across the locks.


We went into the first (lovely, century old) building we saw, but it ended up being the admin building.

The search continued. We walked another 100 feet or so and found the visitors center, which was mostly a gift shop (cute stuff, might I note), but there were some vintage photos there, as well as a nice little theater running a film about the history of the locks. CJ, Annabelle and I comprised the entire audience. The kids clapped when it was over. :)


On our way out of the park, we spied a semi truck hauling construction equipment across a railroad bridge. Now there's something you don't see every day!

FALL TO PIECES: Space.com had a nice (wrong word, I know) infographic today about the coming crashdown of Phobos-Grunt. Here it is for your viewing, er, pleasure.

Source:LiveScience

RETEST: "Guess what today is?" I said first thing this morning. I held a roundish plastic toy in my right hand and showed it swooshing down toward my left and made a splashing sound.

"Another Orion splashdown test!" Annabelle said, excitedly. (Yes, this is the type of thing that excites us.)

I said to the kids, "Geez. This will be like the fourth splashdown test we've watched. Why do you suppose they're doing so many tests?"

I was proud of CJ when he immediately answered, "Well sometimes things don't go as planned."

Exactly!

There's video of today's splash down test here: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/mpcv/orion-droptest-jan06.html


WEIGHTY MATTER: Thanks to a tweet from Neil deGrasse Tyson, we learned that every day the Earth weighs more than it did the day before. Why? "We plow thru several hundred tons of meteor dust per day," he explained.