OK,
so when this journal isn't about gulls and radios or
drinking coffee with Unitarian poets, it's about asking
the question "What is art?" over and over and over again.
Whatever art is, I can't seem to get enough of it.
Anyway, there was this Arts
Worcester event today
called the Patterns
of Worcester studio tour.
Since the Hermit Potter of Worcester's studio
was having a sale in conjunction with the tour, I planned
a day of art in the wild west (anything west of Rt. 128
is the wild west -- west of 495 might as well be west of
the Pecos).
It goes without saying that I like
the Hermit's pottery. It was also good to see the Hermit
Potter again, as we don't get together to drink coffee
and talk about what is art (see above) often enough any
more. I looked around at the other potters' work, some of
which I really liked also. I was especially intrigued
with one woman whose work was based on rocks and on
weapon heads from an archeological collection. I could
imagine carving wooden shafts for the heads and having
prehistoric hunters be wicked surprised when the weapons
shattered on impact and created instant potsherds instead
of turning animals into dinner or enemies into, uh,
defeated enemies. I was getting really into a shelf full
of the rock like objects when I picked up the one I liked
best and realized it was an actual rock. I guess that's
why it was marked "not for sale".
The
building the Hermit Potter's studio is in is a former
sprinkler factory. The hallway is lined with old photos
of people assembling sprinklers. It also house other art
studios and galleries. There was some pretty cool stuff
in the Worcester Arts Group's gallery on the second floor
and also some weird stuff. In one gallery a flock of
hollowed out crows hung from the ceiling with little
motors in them. You press a button and their wings flap.
Animatronic roadkill in flight. Creepy.
I went around taking pictures of
sprinkler pipes and fans and stuff in nooks and crannies
of the building. I had a great time poking around among
the art and the infrastructure. It is pretty funny that
the things I liked best were rocks, sprinkler pipes, and
fans.
Who's to say they're not art?
Those animatronic crows might haunt
my dreams. So I guess they must be art.
I've been wanting to see
the
Birds in Japanese Art and Poetry
exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum for a couple of
months now so that was the next stop. The woman at the
admission desk was insistent that I not miss the Paths to
Impressionism and the Joseph Greenwood exhibits too. She
didn't seem really enthusiastic about the Birds in
Japanese Art and Poetry.
Birds in Japanese Art and Poetry
had lots of northern goshawks in it. Does somebody at the
museum really like northern goshawks? They outnumbered
the red-crowned crane and the little cuckoo
(hototogisu), which are mentioned in far more
poems. I particularly liked the determined little cuckoo
in one of the prints. It just embodied everything that
hototogisu is supposed to represent in haiku. I'm
going to have to check my haiku collections for mentions
of northern goshawk. Astute readers of the bird list will
notice that the species listed are mostly not found in
Massachusetts.
The Joseph Greenwood exhibit was
good too: stone wa
lls
in all seasons and 36 views of Mt. Wachuset -- not
literally 36, it's that Japanese mind I've been in. My
only quarrel with the Greenwood exhibit was that the
captions attributed the open fields with small clumps of
trees to deforestation caused by 19th century industrial
development. Actually a lot of the greater Worcester area
had already been deforested by then to make room for
farming.
The Paths to Impressionism didn't
do anything for me but maybe I was tired or have seen too
many impressionist paintings. So after the museum visit I
was wicked hungry so I decided to do the full Worcester
experience and have supper at Da-Lat, the Vietnamese
restaurant with good food, cheap prices, and a huge
variety of weird fruit shakes. This is the first time I
have been in there when they weren't watching soccer on
TV. I used to think world cup matches were scheduled only
when I wanted to eat at Da-Lat. The whole family/staff
was playing cards instead. The bun noodles were good and
the sapota shake was good too -- I'm trying a different
weird fruit shake every time I go there. Leaving Da-Lat I
heard a pop coming from the passenger side of my car and
a group of boys playing ball in the alley pointed to my
right front tire. Uh oh. I drove over to the Mobil
station a half a bock away. I have no idea why I thought
the service part would be open on a Sunday evening.
Anyway, they weren't. I took a look. Flat. Very very very
flat. Called Triple A. They came in under 10 minutes and
changed the tire. I drove home on the spare. I don't know
what I ran over near Da-Lat but the hole in the tire is
amazing. I guess I'm gonna buy a tire
tomorrow.
Back home I decided to buy a few
groceries before curling up for the evening. Why I
decided to buy a jar of marinara sauce when what I went
there for was tomatoes and bread I don't know. I got a
notion to have pasta and sauce on hand in case I didn't
feel like cooking. The cashier took forever to ring up my
stuff then resentfully bagged it putting all the heavy
items in a single bag. As it turns out, a bag with a hole
in it. When I'm loading the car I carefully pick up the
heaviest bag by both handles so I don't drop anything.
Hah! The jar of marinara sauce slides out the hole in the
bag and breaks splattering marinara sauce all over my
shoes, my jeans, the car door, the windshield. I kicked
the glass into a pile out of the way of traffic with my
sauce-soaked shoe, and ran the windshield washer several
times to get the sauce off the windshield. There's still
some on the passenger side -- the side with the flat tire
-- so I'll have to wash it tomorrow after I get a new
tire. Something tells me I'm not doing the pasta and
sauce thing tomorrow after all.
My life seems to be turning into
performance art.
