Happy 4th of July…

 

Guess who had fun watching some fireworks last night!  Hope everyone is enjoying their right to the pursuit of happiness today…

More NYC…

After going to bed early and getting up early we returned to the city via train…There were a few things I still wanted to see.   First we went to the Metropolitan Museum to see the summer roof installation The Big Bambu.

We even stood in line for awhile to sign up for the tour which takes you climbing up into it…

…but Mr O and I aren’t good at waiting in lines and you weren’t allowed to take a camera with you…

…so we just enjoyed the bamboo patterns above… .

and the shadow patterns below…

as well as the view…right from the rooftop.

We went directly from bamboo garden to a replica of a Chinese garden court…

..to an exhibit of Leon Levinstein photography.  Although I liked his quote, his photos were not my favorites…

…especially when compared to those of Henri Cartier Bresson which we later viewed at MOMA.

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson

This exhibit was exquisite, crowded, and HUGE…room after room after room…and was really more than should be seen in one day…but when you rarely get to NYC and it is the last few days of the exhibit…you carry on… We also took in the exhibit Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography which deserved an entire day to itself. Thankfully MOMA also has a wonderful cafe that serves wine…

Museum hopping is one of my favorite things to do and I am fortunate to have family and friends who are patient and kind enough to go with me.

A Whirlwind Trip to NYC…

Last weekend Mr O and I visited family in Westchester Co and took the train into NYC two days in a r0w.  We fit more into those two days than I would have thought possible…and everyone kindly let me see everything that I wanted to…

The Chelsea Market was our first stop.    Originally the National Biscuit Company complex it is now a foodie paradise just lined with shops and restaurants and lots and lots of people.  The photographer in me also enjoyed all the photos by Dave Mead of Magnificent Specimens of mustached men throughout the building.  Incredible…and fun. 

A walk on the High Line Park from end to end was next…

I had read a lot about this park that opened one year ago and I just love the idea of the community action which made this park possible. 

Originally an elevated train track it is now an elevated garden…

Views from the park include buildings by Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel …

…and balconies overlooking the walk.

It really was too hot to sit and relax for long.

CLAUDE MONET
Nymphéas, 1906
Oil on canvas

Next we went gallery hopping in Chelsea.   There was a Monet show at the Gagosian gallery which was free and fabulous…rooms full of variations of the lily pond and the bridge in his garden…

 

We bopped in and out of several galleries in the same area of Chelsea…I don’t remember all the gallery names but I do remember one photography exhibit at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery that I particularly loved.

“…to walk without destination and to see only to see” is the title of Uta Barth’s exhibit of diptychs and triptychs.

“My primary project has always been in finding ways to make the viewer aware of their own activity of looking at something (or in some instances, someone.) ...” Uta Barth

On the way to our last stop of the day my sister in law was sharp eyed enough to notice two of the statues included in Event Horizon.  Thirty one of these life size statues can be found around Madison Square Park but we only spotted these two.

By the time we finished a visit to the Morgan Library and Museum to see a show on the architect Palladio I was running out of steam and camera batteries….and slept most of the train ride back.

Playing with Water…

…remains one of the simple pleasures of life here on a summery day…

A wading pool…

or soap bubble blasters…

 

 

or watering cans…

all help to keep grandchildren cool and happy.

Looking at things from different points of view today…

Onions…

 

Ode To The Onion by Pablo Neruda

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.
You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

Oh my how I love this poem!  A poem of beauty in the mundane….

The word prompt for day three of CBC was multilayered.  Although I certainly wasn’t creative with my choice of onions, I wanted to try to photograph a still life in a more formal manner than I have before.  I had a lot of fun gathering as many types of onions as I could find in the market…I forgot the leeks…And I had fun trying to set up the black background I envisioned…  I used an old black velvet shirt…I then went all around the house looking for the right light…

 

I did take a lot of pictures…and it was fun…

 

Now I need to look up some onions dishes…maybe onion soup?

Watermelon Days…

We have been enjoying watermelon here in Arcadia….

I created this diptych  for CBC’s word prompt “Picnic”.  It was the first time I made one in Photoshop and I will not admit how long it took me to figure it out… That white cup under Mr J’s arm is annoying me but I find those watermelon juice lines and his little smile in the shadows precious. 

Am I the only one that misses the seeds and thinks that the old seedfull watermelons were sweeter even if slightly annoying?   How will children ever learn about seed spitting contests?   Also, I find it interesting that we are now notified that we may find an occasional seed even as we are learning that we may be reducing our risk of heart disease.  I admit that I investigated www. watermelon.org., and while I enjoyed reading the history of watermelon and learning that seedless watermelon does not involve genetic modification I was horrified at this recipe for watermelon jelly logs .  In all fairness I did find this recipe for a Watermelon Cosmopolitan that sounded like something I would try.

After an afternoon of grandchildren I was still left with plenty of watermelon for one of my favorite summer salads since 1995 when I first found it in the newspaper…so easy and so so yummy…

Ivory…

Maybe it is because the weather has been too nice to sit at the computer, or because I’ve been too busy with family obligations, or because I need the structure of a photography class but I have not been motivated to take many pictures lately….   Then this morning Beth at Be Yourself...Everyone Else is Taken mentioned Creativity Boot Camp and I decided to join in…in hopes of getting back to photographing and posting more.  What attracted me was in part that this course is only two weeks long and free…no pressure…just fun.  The first word prompt is “Ivory” and I don’t think I was very creative with my subject but when I heard the word all I could think of was creamy white Kousa dogwood blossoms…