Tut Tut

We took a Friday daytrip up to San Francisco yesterday to take in the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibit at the DeYoung Museum.

The exhibit was given mostly ho-hum reviews by friends who had seen it, mostly because it had been over-hyped by the museum and was much smaller and less impressive than the massive display that toured the US in the 1970's. With our expectations thus lowered, we liked the exhibit very much: the layout of the rooms, the lighting and other aspects of presentation, and especially the explanatory material were excellent, and many of the small objects were exquisite.

The biggest disappointment for me was that I couldn't take photographs. The only room in which photography is allowed is the last one...

... the souvenir store (or "King Tut's Kitch-en," as Mrs. Fort dubbed it.)

You can buy magnetuts in the store...

... and it has a habertuttery (I'm kicking myself for not getting one of those headdresses to wear for Monday's lectures.)

It has tete-a-Tuts (don't you wish you had a box for all your Tutheads?), and you can even...

... generate a sheet of "papyrus" with your name in a weird phonetic-hierogylphic jam-up for only a buck! Lessee, S-H-E-R-T-U-T comes out "bolt-house-double reed-mouth..."

You know, our kitchen straight-back chairs are getting a little decrepit -- maybe we should replace them with six of these!

... or maybe not.

We bought a refrigerator magnet instead and then went to look at the ocean.

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New Blogroll Link: Margaret Ryall

Margaret Ryall

Margaret Ryall is an artist and educator in Newfoundland. I found her by Googling around for Birr Castle and the Bothy, as I do frequently, since that place is so dear to Diane's and my hearts. Ms. Ryall stayed in the Bothy for a fortnight in July of 2008, researching a body of work that will ultimately comprise 16 images that, together, "read" the garden of the Demesne.

That alone would have earned her a place in our appreciation. But her insight, expertise, and ability to express the technical aspects of fine art composition and production earn her a place of significant admiration. A seminar conducted by Ms. Ryall and Brian Fies would and should command an impressive tuition, since their talents and teaching abilities are unquestionably above merely top-tier.

As an introduction to Margaret Ryall's abilities, both in creation and instruction, please visit:

Her detailed recipe for critique, and
Her keen advice concerning enriching a center of interest in a visual composition.

While couched in terms of painting, this latter piece is equally applicable to photography. (And while not so directly applicable to cartooning, there is much that she says that could inform line-art structures. I think.)

As I often say, I'm hard-pressed to draw anything beyond a breath, but Ms. Ryall and Mr. Fies's presence in my daily reading allows me to better enjoy the works of those who can express themselves with facility and skill in visual media. They boost me along, sort of, to at least ride along on their wings and help me to enjoy the view.

And their expertise in wielding words is pretty cool, too.

It's Global [Updated February 3, 2009]

Update, February 3, 2009: The wrangling continues, the sit-in continues, and the plant is still closed -- except, tellingly, the furnace, which is being kept stoked by a skeleton crew. Two US investment groups, Clarion Capital and KPS, are evidently interested in acquiring at least the Waterford name; the former apparently would keep at least something going in Co. Waterford, while the latter is probably more interested in the brand rather than the actual product. Click here for the Irish Times' February 4th story on developments. I'll update here occasionally, but those with keen interest should establish a bookmark for the Times and check it frequently, searching on "Waterford" in its search box.

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I know many people in my town, and many people in my circle of friends, and many of my students who are either in fear of losing their jobs in this deep recession or who have already lost their jobs. I'm sure that the same can be said by just about everyone who reads this blog.

The immediacy of our friends' and our fears, and the U.S. news's concentration on the situation in our nation and continent, can tend to obscure this fact: the phenomenon is global, not just the problem of one nation.

If I needed a smack upside the head on that, it was provided by this story in the Irish Times today: the venerable glass factory in Kilbarry, Co. Waterford, has been shut down and its employees laid off.

Stunned: Waterford employees take over the cafeteria in the Visitors' Centre, an action that continues now (Saturday, January 31, 2009). Photo by P. Browne, copied from the Irish Times website.

Waterford crystal glass pieces have been among the highest-quality in the world for more than 200 years. In addition to magnificent goblets, pitchers, vases, and the like, their one-of-a-kind pieces (such as the crystal carriage at the top of this blog post) are legendary. They manufactured trophies for the world's great sporting events, for example, and the ball that drops over Times Square in New York at the stroke of midnight on every New Year was skillfully crafted in County Waterford.

But all of that stopped yesterday, when the place was shut down by its bankruptcy receiver.

Diane and I made a point to visit Waterford Glass during our trip to Ireland in 2006. We were fascinated by the processes we saw, astounded by the artistry unfolding in front of us, and charmed in a way that touched our hearts by every worker we spoke to, from the artisans to the tourguides to the clerks in the gift shop. Every one of them clearly took great pride in their employer's reputation and in their own jobs.

We don't know their names, but this fact saddens us dearly: none of the people in the pictures below will be able to report to work next Monday. (All photos taken on August 7, 2006.)

Good luck, my friends.

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Glass Friday

Chihuly at the deYoung, July 18, 2008
(update, July 24: more photos are available by
clicking here.)

As an astronomer, I suppose that I am predisposed to be fascinated by unusual things that glow in the dark. As a former telescope-maker, I am certainly predisposed to appreciate masterful glasswork. As a human being, I am predisposed to appreciate beauty.

No wonder, then, that I was absolutely blown completely away (at least until lunch) by the display of Dale Chihuly's work at San Francisco's deYoung Museum last Friday.

(NOTE: I have uploaded larger than usual original images to Blogger for this post; my standard is 800 pixels on the larger side, but these are 1,000 pixels on the larger side, and they are very well worth viewing at that resolution. You can do so by clicking on any image in this post.)

An early display in the exhibit: autumn comes in large glass leaves.

Chihuly's work is deliciously slathered in controversy in artsy circles. He doesn't actually fabricate the pieces himself, he self-promotes agressively, he has legions of hired minions, he uses light (and marketing) in ways reminiscent of Kinkade... to all of which I say, "so what?" Diane's and my hour in the darkened tunnel of the deYoung's Chihuly exhibit was a jubilant one, a time of slack-jawed grinning that was every bit as energizing as a trip down Disneyland's Splash Mountain waterfall. If that ain't cerebral enough for true art appreciation, then so be it.

The exhibit is popular enough that even museum members need to call ahead for timed tickets, so the darkened trail that winds through the Chihuly exhibit is always pretty well crowded. That prohibited bringing my tripod, so I had to resort to various less-than-optimum hardware and software compromises in order to capture these images. I think they came out pretty well -- for what they are -- but, keep in mind, that they are very, very poor representations of how breathtaking the display really is.

Glass Baskets

Macchia Forest #1

Macchia Forest #2

The "candles" in this work are approximately five feet tall.

Boatloads of Fantasy

Chandelier Room

A Grand Chandelier (about ten feet tall).

Chandelier Detail

A Good Glass Ceiling

Glass Ceiling Detail

Climactic Display: Starting End

Climactic Display: Finishing End

Climactic Display: Detail

A photographer's adjustment I learned to make during the trip through the exhibit was to use my camera's polarizing filter to enhance, rather than minimize, reflections. (The polarizer is almost always used to supress glare and reflections.) It became clear as we went along that there were two major actors in the Chihuly exhibit: the glassworks and the lighting, and that the latter -- including reflections, highlights, etc. -- was absolutely the equal of the former in the overall performance and impact of the work.

At the end of the exhibit is, of course, a gift shop, which includes the opportunity to buy some original products from the Chihuly enterprise. Like this little blue basket. Its size is calibrated by the credit-card-sized price tag at left... for more than $6,000. Mrs. Fort and I opted for a book, instead.

The Chihuly exhibit at the deYoung runs through late September. I strongly urge any of my California readers who haven't been to it yet to hie themselves thereto. It is, to paraphrase Michael Jagger, a glass, glass, glass.

Another Excursion to Oakland's Disneyland

In his most recent blog entry, Brian Fies says, "Honestly, I think I divide other people's work into three categories: 1.) I could do that. 2.) I wish I could do that. 3.) Wow, I have no idea how they did that." Diane and I categorize all glass art as a 3+, and are fascinated by it. (We also have a lot of it around the house, which is probably not the smartest thing in the world for people who have six cats and three dogs.) Above, Diane visits our favorite glass-art shop in Sausalito, Petri's, in 2002. Photo used with her permission. At least I think "I don't care" constitutes permission.

I wish I could remember where I first heard San Francisco referred to as "Oakland's Disneyland," but it's an apt tag in a sardonic sort of way. "The City" (as its citizens often call it*) is a little square of treasures and surprises, abutted on three sides by water and graveyards on the fourth, isolated, suave, kinky, cosmopolitan, goofy, and always charming. It is a great place for a getaway, as it was a great place to work for 17 years.

This week was spring break for me, and Diane and I motored off to Oakland's Disneyland twice. The first time was Wednesday, to visit our old friend, Lucile, and another of my co-workers from those 17 years whom I hadn't seen in more than a decade. On part of that visit, Lucile showed us a little treasure that I hadn't seen before: the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden at the foot of the Dutch Windmill at the far western edge of Golden Gate Park. After I'd muttered at myself for a while about not having brought my camera, Diane and I decided that we'd just drive back up the next day and do some more of the tourist thing. It's an easy drive, and even with gas prices the way they are now, the round trip from Ft. Harrington only costs about 30 bucks.

So we did.

Here are some snapshots from yesterday's outing:

Our first stop was a place that has been a topic here before: the Legion of Honor Art Museum near the Golden Gate. Our main aim there was to visit the Annie Liebovitz exhibit ("A Photographer's Life, 1990 - 2005"), which was well worth the drive all by itself. No pictures here from that exhibit, though: photographing the photographer's photographs was strictly forbidden, possibly because the Museum was concerned about potential effects on the spacetime continuum of inadvertent infinite recursions. But a couple of things that I could take pictures of were just remarkable.

Dale Chihuly's Sun in the Legion courtyard.

Chihuly's Sea Blue and Green Tower in an interior exhibit room.

The Legion of Honor's sister museum, the de Young in Golden Gate Park, will have an exhibit of Dale Chihuly's remarkable sculptures later this year. As part of the lead-up to that event, four of his large glass works have been installed, two in each of the Museums. In the Legion, they were Sun and Sea Blue and Green Tower, both above. They are massive works of blown glass, and Sun is also a neon light! You can see it illuminated by clicking here to go directly to a well-hidden (it seems) page in Chihuly's massive website (but please come back.)



Details in Sun. Click on any image to see a larger version.










As we were leaving the Legion of Honor to go on to our next destination, we were treated to an accidental piece of performance art.

Oakland's finest at a Frisco museum.

A group of seven Oakland motorcycle police officers pulled into the parking area and carefully backed their bikes into position for a photo to be taken of them with the stately pillars and arches of the Legion in the background. As I was taking the photo above, Diane (standing closer to them than I was) heard one of them say, "Somebody should write down all the gay stuff they make us do."

I'm pretty sure he thought that Diane was laughing with him. Silly boy. I was tempted -- but only for a split-split second -- to tell him that if he actually went into the museum, he could see lots of pichers of nekkid wimmin! Of course, he probably knows how to use the internet, so it wouldn't have been worth the effort to him, anyway.

The next destination. Somebody should write down all the gay stuff Diane makes me do.

The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park actually has an astronomical tie-in. Its constituent parts were purchased by James Lick, who endowed Lick Observatory. Those parts were still in crates when he died in 1876, so the Conservatory (like the Observatory) wasn't constructed until after it would do him any good personally.

The attraction on this day at the Conservatory was the butterfly exhibit -- not insects mounted on pins in cases, but freely flapping around in the entire western end of the Conservatory. We had a great time there for an hour, giggling like little kids (of whom there were may real ones scooting around) as the colorful littler guys flitted around.

On to the final stop:

The Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden, Golden Gate Park

Our final destination was the tulip garden we had seen, briefly, the previous day. The little patch was named after Queen Wilhelmina (1880 - 1962) of the Netherlands -- and so was my paternal grandmother. The tulips are at the height of their display right now, as you can see above.

The Dutch Windmill.

The tulip garden is at the foot of the "Dutch Windmill," one of two large pump drivers that were erected in the early 1900's to supply fresh water for the huge expanse of greenery atop sand dunes that is Golden Gate Park. The windmills are at the far western edge of the Park, facing the beach, and the nearly constant strong wind off the Pacific allowed, through them, the park to become what it is today: one of the greatest urban parks in the world.

Meanwhile, back at the Fort...

... it's time for the first rosebuds ...

... and for apple blossoms ...

... and for the bees to get to work. Clicking on this picture to see the little guy hard at work upside-down will be worth your trouble.

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* "The City" is so ingrained a nickname for San Francisco that the Warriors NBA team had that as its only locale designation on their jerseys for many years. Now, of course, they use the milquetoast "Golden State" abomination, which makes them sound like a college team from Colorado. (Photo copied from an ad on eBay; I have no idea whom to credit.)

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