Art Adventure 2017 [Art, Books, Food, Good Company - What more could we ask?]

 Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

~ Pablo Picasso

Three travelers - letting the art wash us clean.

Every now and again DH and I have the chance to escape with our youngest nephew, JRF. It's becoming more difficult as he is involved in more and more activities (and so it should be), but we had four days between the end of school and start of summer commitments...and we headed to the big city to see a few of the sights.*

FRIDAY --

On our way we stopped at a family favorite - Prasek's in Hillje.

They have expanded this once old-time smokehouse and bakery. Now it is almost an event!

They had plenty of Chupecabra...

...as well as honey, jams, and sauces...

But they were out of kolaches. [We settled for a few cookies - sustenance for the hotel.]

We settled into our hotel - we had a pretty view (with the pool below). I work hard to plan easy navigation in trips like this. Most was...more later about that which wasn't.

SATURDAY --

Our first morning saw at breakfast with friends*** from a trip taken last summer. These sisters, EG and SW, share our love of music, art, and travel. We were delighted to visit them earlier this year for a house concert and so glad to be able to visit again on this trip. We talked a bit about our weekend plans and future travel plans - if the Lord is willing and the creek don't rise.

Then it was time for some art. 

The Houston Museum of Fine Arts is a remarkable place. The Ron Mueck exhibit** was almost indescribable. In fact Mueck doesn't say much about his art. He doesn't name it or explain it. The curator ends up doing that, according to the docent who gave us the tour.

Here are some of our favorite pieces (Mueck encourages photography! This is a far cry from our experiences in another museum - where we were almost thrown out for photography). I'm not going to explain much other than that all of these works are either smaller or much larger than life-size. One is a self-portrait. [If you have the chance to see the work of this artist, you must go.]

This seems very close to home.

The self-portrait

Detail of an enormous newborn.

Not the only homeless we saw on the trip. It has an echo later seen in the sculpture garden.

Detail of the first piece you see in the exhibit.

We wandered through a number of galleries  - mostly the Europeans.  The antiquities in the "spaces in-between" caught me as well. I do love the birds and am only going to include this one ancient work. We could have spent weeks in the museum. We will have to come back and spend more time here. [And we can because we are members - for a year anyway.]

Ibis (Wait - I know those guys on the left).

After the museum we thought we should follow the recommendation of the sisters to go to 1/4 Price Books. We had never been there before before, but we have never met a bookstore we didn't like.

1/4 Price Books is a fabulous place. We loved the proprietor, the store, and the eclectic selection. <SIGH>  It would be dangerous for us to live in the same town with this place. We each found book after book. We debated which ones we "needed." It was a bit easier to decide since the owner handed me a 20% off coupon as I began picking up volumes. [If you love books, you must visit this store. Just don't buy the ones I want.]

Our silver hybrid chariot parked by the sign for the strip center where the store is located.

A "Thinker" runs the place - he's quite the character and we had a fun conversation.

He said he doesn't usually let people take pictures, but gave me permission.

After a quick nap we headed off to a play (Natural Gardens) at the Main Street Theatre. It is a small place. We found our seats and opened our program to find one of the leads was from the town where we live (she attended school with our kids). The play was good and staging very clever.  We visited with the actors before a very late supper.

It is a tiny, but well designed place.

DH chose well.

I had never heard of meatball lasagna. JRF chose well.

SUNDAY -- 

What do you do on Sunday morning? Well, first we breakfasted and then we went to church - to the Rothko Chapel.

We succumbed to the hype and tried Torchy's Tacos. It was fine, but I'm not sure I will go back.

I have long wanted to see the Rothko Chapel. I am not sure how many times I have tried to add it to a visit to Houston, but it had never worked out. This trip had only 4 "must do" items on the list - Fine Arts Museum, play, Rothko Chapel, and Menil Museum. All are within a few miles (the Menil is just across a park from the chapel. It would be silly to visit one and not the other). And perhaps I save some of these experiences for a time when there are "young eyes" with us. I have always thought our travels enriched by the presence of young people whose experience helps broaden ours.

The Rothko Chapel just beyond Broken Obelisk (by Barnett Newman).****

Broken Obelisk and the reflecting pool.

I loved this view - point to point to point.

We spent a little time in the chapel, tried a few Tai Chi moves in front of the reflecting pool before we walked across the park to the Menil.

The park and surrounding properties were home to many squirrels. I counted 10 before I quit.

Two fig trees grace the edges of the park. I'd spend time here if I lived nearby.

Bygones by Mark Di Suvero

The Menil Collection is hard to describe. All I can say is I love it and I love the de Menils.***** What a gift! Some of the works stuck in my mind were by Rothko (in stark contrast to those in the chapel) and Magritte. There was also a room full of objects that "witnessed" the works of many great surrealists (I must say it made me feel much better about my collections).******

With a bit of time before supper with another friend, we headed back to the Museum of Fine Arts to tour the sculpture garden. While it was almost too hot to spend any time out of doors, we managed to make a quick round of the works:

Decanter by Frank Stella (1987)

This work was dwarfed by these construction cranes just beyond a barrier and the white mushrooms just below.

Mushrooms/toadstools beneath Stella's Decanter.

The Pilgrim by Marino Marini (1939) [I had to include this one because we were on an art pilgrimage of sorts.]

When I saw this sculpture I knew I loved it and so I was not surprised that it was by Louise Bourgeois. We have seen her "spiders" with our children in Rockefeller Center in 2001 and with JRF in the Smithsonian sculpture garden. This is Quarantania I (1947-53, cast 1981-84)

Four bronze panels by Henri Matisse. Back I (1909), Back II (1913), Back III (1916-17), Back IV (1930) Each work increasing in abstraction.

They missed out when they didn't call this "running man." It is Untitled by Joel Shapiro (1990)

Memory of Machu Picchu No. 3 (The Terraces) (1984) by Eduardo Ramirez Villamizar

Spatial Concept/Nature No. 1 (1965) by Lucio Fontana

Remember when I said there would be an echo of the homeless man of Ron Mueck? Here it is.

I would have gone over to look inside, but there was a guard nearby. They don't want you to touch the work. I wouldn't have touched it, but I just wanted to see if there was a face in that little opening.

I had no other place for this. St. Paul's is across the street from the museum. It is a beautiful church.

Our final adventure was a trip across town to dine at Ninfa's (original) and visit with our friend TDW.***  We have so missed him and his dogs and our wanderings in the wild. I don't know how we managed to eat as the conversation was so brisk. Then he showed us his neighborhood and the wonderful places to take the dogs - along Buffalo Bayou.

Our trips to the restaurant and back to the hotel were eye-opening. TDW had directed us on surface roads because he hates highways. We saw neighborhoods that probably aren't meant for casual visitors. We also found ourselves a bit confused by the changes wrought by the light rail that must be a convenience for riders, but is a menace for people who don't know the ins and outs of downtown Houston at night.

We hustled home between storms on Monday after our only "fast food" breakfast. JRF saw yet another side of the big city before we left it. We do hope he enjoyed the trip. We were unusually cranky in our sharing of directions and information. It could have been the efforts of the fates to derail the trip (driving in a city is hard - driving an unfamiliar car in a city is nuts), the wiggy-headed navigator, the heat, or all of the above. JRF is always an uncomplaining and easy companion. On this trip as our others he was game for anything.

We are looking forward to hearing about some of the other summer adventures he has planned.

A new kitten was more than ready to welcome JRF back home.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

~ Thomas Merton, in No Man Is an Island

NOTES:

* This was the trip that almost wasn't. We settled on the weekend and then there was vertigo followed by a wayward rock (that took out the condenser for the car air conditioner). But Houston was waiting. We just ignored the distractions, rented a car, and hoped for the best.

** https://www.mfah.org/exhibitions/ronmueck

***We are blessed with such wonderful friends. They were generous to share some of their holiday weekend to see us. How did we get so lucky?

**** You will want to read about how this sculpture came to be on the grounds of the chapel.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Experts-still-trying-to-fix-what-s-broken-with-6801865.php

*****https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_de_Menil

******https://www.menil.org/collection/5137-witnesses

Carve Their Names

Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.
~Shannon L. Alder


 Trench dirt didn't always wash out, I am sure.

~ Sebastian Barry, On Canaan's Side

Uncle Oscar, Grandpa Bob, Unknown

We visited my mother's home town recently. On our way to start a short adventure with our young nephew we stopped to visit family and friends and to witness the unveiling of a state historical marker at a home where we once visited family - Aunt Minnie and her daughters, Pat and Theo.  What a pleasure it was to be present for the unveiling.* What a treat for us to be invited back inside the home and see with the eyes of little girls again.**

Wilhelmina Dorbritz (Minnie) married Oscar S. McMullen on July 4, 1905. We never knew Uncle Oscar, but we certainly knew about him. Our grandfather's older brother, Uncle Oscar was a doctor. Our grandfather had wanted to be a doctor as well, but there was only money for one boy to go to medical school. Oscar was one in a long line of doctors in our family.

We also knew other things about Uncle Oscar. He delivered our mother.*** He served as a doctor  during WWI and, among other lives, saved our grandfather. He returned home and, as the county health officer, died in the service of his community after staying up for days battling an epidemic (I forget what it was and there's no one to ask).  According to Mom's story, Uncle Oscar returned home from treating patients and dropped dead of a heart attack - at 54 years of age.

As I spent time pouring over Internet search results for Uncle Oscar's information I discovered very little. I found the clerk's notation of his and Aunt Minnie's marriage. I found his death certificate. I found where he had spoken to the state medical association about smallpox.**** But little else was forthcoming.

I've been thinking a great deal about Uncle Oscar and Grandpa Bob during these holiday days and decided to share another story about brothers and war.  I sense I have written about this before, but the story bears retelling.

I know little about how Uncle Oscar entered military service, but I believe Grandpa Bob was drafted into the Army. Bob was in the trenches in France and (again according to family lore) went "over the top" four times. Most of his comrades in arms were killed around him and he was hospitalized for exposure to mustard gas. As he lay dying in a hospital in France a man (who knew him from working on the shrimp boats in earlier days) recognized him. This unnamed man was able to find and tell Uncle Oscar who then "nursed Bob back to health" as the story goes.*****

Before the front. Grandpa Bob in the Brody helmet and some of his brothers in arms.

[One wonders about such stories. All families have them, but are they true? Well, some years ago I found a small article in their local paper that confirmed the story of Oscar and Bob.]

Uncle Oscar came home to Aunt Minnie and they had 17 more years together. They raised five children - two boys and three girls.

Grandpa Bob returned to the states on the Leviathan according to the postcard he sent home to his girl, Grace.  He married Grace,  had two children, and four grandchildren. He was a salesman. He had a wonderful sense of humor and a way with animals.******

But the war never left him.  Trained as a mortician, Bob felt forced to leave his profession; he had seen enough death. And he never spoke of the war until a nephew returned from WWII.

So, while tomorrow is the day to commemorate our war dead, I will remember and celebrate brothers - brothers by blood and brothers in arms. Brothers who came home together and those who did not.

We may not know all their names, but they are carved in our hearts.

Grandpa (holding the dog) with fellow soldiers.

NOTES:

* Our mother's best friend's youngest son, P.J., still lives here and keeps us informed of events. I think our mothers would be pleased to know we are friends.

** At Christmas time we visited our grandmother and would often make calls on other members of the family. Aunt Minnie and Pat (and later Theo) had the most marvelous Christmas tree in the front room. Pat collected tiny pitchers when she traveled and a display cabinet stood just inside the front door. We could look, but not touch. We often played Mr. Potato Head with real potatoes. I suppose that is the way the game was originally designed.
 

This is the way I remember Aunt Minnie's.

The house today.

***It seems weird to me, but I have seen the birth certificate. And I would expect that Uncle Oscar delivered all his children, although I haven't checked - yet.

**** Google is an amazing tool.

*****Unlike my paternal grandfather and his brother, Oscar and Bob both came home. http://walkinthepark-padimus.blogspot.com/2015/05/two-boys-from-small-town.html

******Mom said he could turn a chicken over on its back and put it to sleep.

The Crossing - Tell Me the Secret

 I like geography best, he said, 

because your mountains & rivers know the secret. 

Pay no attention to boundaries. 

~ Brian Andreas, from Story People

The sky was gorgeous.

I overheard a friend talking about Mankins Crossing. "I go by there almost every day," she said.  

"I stop by whenever I can," said I. "And I'll be going there after the meeting."  She then offered to take me around the area to see some low water crossings along Mankins Branch that might be unfamiliar to me.

We stopped frequently to identify birds and photograph everything. Conversation flowed. Plans for a kayak trip were discussed.

Learning the secrets.

The old bridge at Mankins Crossing. One can see how this shallow spot provided a perfect place to ford the San Gabriel. It is no wonder Samuel Mankins chose this spot to homestead.

Great Blue Heron and Snowy Egret...only a couple of the birds we saw. [photo by MAMM. All rights reserved]

Mankins Branch is a small creek that flows into the San Gabriel just south of Mankins Crossing. [Looking east]

Looking west up Mankins Branch

This little creek has been carving its way through the limestone - slowly and steadily - for how long...

It would be a wonderful adventure - wading up and down this creek.

Old iron bridge over the San Gabriel.*

I am not the family "devil dare," but do want to return to investigate.

Stopping to photograph yet another Buffalo Gourd vine, I ended the day with plans for future adventures.*

*

NOTES:

*Google maps show the location of the iron bridge.

**And red harvest mites - from the family Trombiculidae. Keep your grass cut. Wear long pants (tuck them into your boots) and use insecticide. I've also heard that sulfur powder keeps them away.