"New to Me" Artist at Hess Collection

It's always great to discover a new artist you like, it happens all the time to me, I love it.  I do love going to art museums and galleries and usually that's where I'll find a painting that catches my eye or some sculpture that seems interesting but sometimes it just pops up when I'm doing something else.

When I was visiting my cousin and her family in San Francisco, we took an impromptu trip to Napa for lunch and a wine/chocolate tasting.  We arrived at the Hess Collection after a lovely lunch at Farmstead and found out that our tasting would be preceded by a tour of...their art collection!  It was a lovely surprise.  Although everyone kept joking that they were making me work on my day off, I was delighted.  I kept reassuring them that as long as I didn't have to arrange for it's transportation or give a talk on the work, I was happy.

They had an impressive collection of works including an abakan by Magdalena Abakanowicz, one of Anslem Kiefer's large-scale lead books, and a survey of works by Frank Stella.  Amid all of these well-known names and great pieces stood a few sculptures in pale white, silver, and blue.  Works resembling ladders and pilasters.  I had never heard of Bruce Robbins and when I got home, I looked him up.

I'm always excited to find a Philadelphia-born artist!  His ladders and pilasters date from the mid- to late-1970s and he has moved through a number of other veins: "windows," "doors," "built-outs," "monuments."  I discovered I liked his "Constructed Paintings" almost as much as the sculptures. I found this work too on eightiesart.tumblr.com.  

They wouldn't let us take pictures of the works there but the ladder works are included in the audio tour on the Hess Family site.  Wine...chocolate...art...I couldn't have asked for a better day!

Ghost Hunter

I read this article in the New York Times the other day about "ghost signs," those signs that advertise long gone businesses.  Since I was headed up to Nanticoke and Plymouth, Pennsylvania to visit family I thought this would be a great game to play.  The area around these cities are old coal mining towns.  When the mines were open, they were thriving small towns that had bakeries and restaurants and candy shops around their town squares and streets.

Like many of these small towns that have slowly declined there are vacant buildings in some places, others that have seen better days, and I thought I would be able to find a number of remnants of the trades and commercial districts that used to line their main streets. 

Well that was disappointing....not completely but I did think there would be more. 

Dom's dress - Jasper Johns inspired?

Did anyone else think the dress that Dom Streater's designed for Project Runway, Episode 4: "Tie the Knot" looked like a Jasper Johns?  Possibly like this one from the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis?

No?  Just me?

Gardner's pages 1092-3.

Look up! Seattle

Oh goodness gracious, it's been forever since I've blogged, wow.  Well we just got back from a week on the west coast for a family wedding and we had a great trip including an awesome day in Seattle!  I visited the city a while ago and somehow I forgot that it's as hilly as San Francisco.  We wandered around the downtown on Thursday, visited the Frye Art Museum, checked out Elliott Bay Books, and had a great dinner of clam chowder and fish and chips at Ivar's.

All through the day, we spent so much time going uphill though that I found myself staring at the tops of the buildings downtown.  I loved the architectural details my eyes kept landing on and thought about how these decorative pieces are probably in any city but rarely noticed with everyone rushing about.

I headed to the City of Seattle Landmarks List to see if I could figure anything about each of these places and came up with:

The Eitel Building at 1501 Second Avenue- this building with the easily recognizable corners was built in 1904/1906 and housed a number of offices with drug stores on the ground floor. The building has been largely vacant for years but just recently, in July 2013, plans were announced for a new developer to purchase the historic landmark building, renovate it, keeping the original facade, and find new retailers and place a restaurant in the top floor.  Info from Historic Seattle and The Seattle Times.

The Holyoke Building at 107 Spring Street - I thought those were waves up on the capitals, fitting since we were so close to the water, but I think they might just be leaves, now that I look at them again.  But this building was one of the first to be completed after the 1889 fire in Seattle.  Northwest Fixture Co. outfitted miners with electric motors and generators during the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s.  It also once housed Seattle's first Conservatory for the Arts.  Info from the National Park Service and the National Trust Guide for Seattle via Google books

I couldn't find these two in my quick search but I'd love to know more about them...anyone?