Light, Shadow And Space

Back home. Very late plane but home safe.

These are two more images from The Phoenix Museum of Art. I mentioned the openness yesterday. The B&W on top shows three levels, exhibits and people moving through them. The second photo was taken in a work placed inside a dark room. It is called You Who Are Getting Obliterates In The Dancing Swarm Of Fireflies by Yayoi Kusama. The title might be a bad translation from the Japanese but the space is disorienting. Dark but for this star field effect, glass walls and mirrors. You have no idea where to walk without bumping into something. There is a feeling of both spaciousness and confinement. Fortunately, a staff member was there to assist.  

Phoenix itself was disconcerting. It is just - so - bright. The intensity, the unrelieved searing sky, the endless high-volume tans and ochers, was really getting to me. It's cloudy today in St. Louis with a good chance of rain. What a relief. 

Phoenix Art Museum

We visited the Phoenix Art Museum yesterday. Although we have been to the area several times, we have never visited. We were impressed.

The building is spacious and the walls uncrowded. It has an open, airy feeling although it allows only secluded peaks at the desert sun. There was a show on about the work of celebrated fashion designer James Galanos (they had a copy of his famous portrait by Richard Avedon). The clothing was beautiful but, as I am not a big fashion fan, I found the mannequins almost as interesting.

Home tonight.

Paradise

Dinner last night with City Daily Photo friends at their beautiful home on the north side of Camelback Mountain in the town of Paradise Valley. They have a cactus gardener, a profession I never considered before. Good times, good wine and then had to speak at my conference at 8 AM this morning. It worked out.

So going to school today. May do some Phoenix area tourism tomorrow.  

Frank Lloyd Wright Slept (And Took A Shower) Here

The photo above is of the great room at Taliesin West, mentioned in yesterday's post. The chairs are based on origami. As Dave mentioned in a comment yesterday, when high power lines were built nearby to the west in the direction of Phoenix, Wright angrily revised the house to face east toward the McDowell Mountains. Note that the roof line to the right slopes so sharply that guests were forced to sit down, facing the host's preferred view.

Wright and his third and last wife, Olga, had separate bedrooms. Some think that's the only way someone could stay married to him. The bed in the foreground was only for lounging during the day. There's another one behind the divider for sleep. Who knows why. He also had his own tiny bathroom. Nothing like those in today's big American homes, so large you could play badminton. 

Olga Ivanovna Lazovich became a sculptor of some note. Some of her work is seen at the bottom.                        

 


Madeleine Monday

Gotta start 'em while they're young. (Bib found at the International Photography Hall of Fame in STL.)

Taliesin West

My favorite thing to do in Phoenix, a visit to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home. Wright, a cantankerous genius, was one of the greatest architects of the 20th Century. His most famous work is probably the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

The building sits on the eastern outskirts of the Phoenix area, with nothing beyond but desert and mountain. He and his wife entertained the greats of the artistic and political worlds, holding grand salons that make make you think of a dessicated version of Gertrude Stein's.

The house is full of rectangles but also triangles, some quite subtle. Look for them in today's and tomorrow's posts. And, yes, I gotta do one more, featuring interior space and artwork.

It's hard to give an impression of the place without being there. Someone once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. And I can't dance to save my life.                         

Scary Snake

We saw this just beside a trail at the Desert Botanical Garden. I don't run away screaming from snakes (with the possible exception of a deadly pit viper) but I keep my distance. Locals told me that this was a king snake and not poisonous. Not for me to do any tests.

Below, the raison d'être for all of this.                                     

Random Acts Of Cactus

I got bombed back at work yesterday so just time for a quick shot of the Arizona icon. We did not stay up to watch the red moon.                     

Butterflies Aren't Free. They Cost $3.50.

The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix is a special place.  I think of the lush Missouri Botanical Garden back home. This one shows you how beautiful plant life can be on a trickle of water. The big draw was the Chihuly glass exhibition. (Our garden had one two or three years ago. Everybody in the U.S. had had one, probably. Dale is making out like a bandit.) But there is something else worth going through on your way onto the grounds.

The DBG has a butterfly house. Not so unusual but always a pleasure. We got into the DBG gratis because most major American gardens have reciprocal admission privileges for members. But the butterflies aren’t free, if anyone is old enough to remember that movie. We had to pay $3.50 each extra, and no senior discount (harrump). It was worth it.

Blog-O-Rama

Bloggers in the desert: Sharon Anck of Phoenix Daily Photo, Julie Pace of Scottsdale Daily Photo, Dave Selden of Tamarindo Daily Photo and an interloper from Missouri on a beautiful spring night in Arizona. One of the reasons CDP is so very worth while.

Time to head back to reality today (hmm...is it worthy of being called real?) but lots more AZ pictures to come.                         

After Forty Years

Today is the fortieth anniversary of Carolyn and my marriage, the excuse for the trip out here. Dinner tonight with friends and colleagues Dave Selden and Julie Pace. The photo above is from the Dale Chihuly show at Phoenix's Desert Botanical Garden, much more about which later. I think of it as a candle for us.

Our two children have grown up to be good people. One of them has given us the most delightful granddaughter imaginable. We've seen lots of our own country and the wide world together, from our origins in Kansas and Queens to far, far beyond. We have supported one another through sickness and injury; times when the money was good and times when there wasn't much; long, long drives and instants of beauty. I wouldn't want to have done it with anyone else.

We're still friends after four decades. I really like living with her.

There's a full moon tonight.