Of Pi and Portraits

Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States. Cornelius Tiebout and
Rembrandt Peale, 1801 - Library of Congress digital ID: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.15715

STRIKE A POSE:  Saturday we were fortunate to get to see "A New Republic," an exhibition of artist Kehinde Wiley's works at the Seattle Art Museum.

Wiley is renowned for bold, regal paintings of people of color - something that has been missing from fine art of the Western World seemingly forever.

A happy coincidence, today I received an email from the Library of Congress titled "Reading Portraits: Analyzing Art as a Primary Source."

The article, written by Tom Bober, the Library of Congress 2015-16 Audio-Visual Teacher in Residence, and Briana Zavadil White, Student and Teacher Programs Manager at the National Portrait Gallery, states, in part, "The strategy of reading portraiture encourages the visual analysis of a piece of art, similar to closely reading a document. The visual clues found in portraiture may be decoded to learn about the individual featured in the artwork. To get started, select visually complex images that include objects and a compelling setting."

That's exactly what we were thinking about this weekend when looking at Wiley's work, all of which featured people of color. Conversely, the portrait subject in the Library of Congress article was Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, pointing at a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Something to think about.
IRRATIONAL: Yesterday was a geeky 'holiday' we always look forward to: Pi Day.

As you no doubt know, Pi is an irrational number which can't be expressed exactly as a fraction and its decimal representation never ends, nor does it ever settle into a permanently repeating patter. But it always starts off with 3.14, which makes March 14th Pi Day! 

We celebrated the occasion with food. Pizza "pi" from Pagliacci for just $3.14 for two slices for lunch!

For dinner, we had a delicious, home-made curried chicken and vegetable pot pi(e), a savory delight!