Detail Detective

Last week I helped with a program for kids at the Portland Art Museum. One of the activities was to play "Detail Detective," using 35mm slide frames to hone in on little corners of the artwork as a way to explore and share what you're noticing. We used the "Two Way Street" exhibition of street photography as the venue for this game.

 

These were my starter-sketches for the activity: pick a slip of paper, see if you can find it in the gallery. All were sketched in advance with the baby kiddo underfoot or in my arms. She loved sitting on the floor and patting the walls of the gallery (especially where the carpeted wall surface transitioned to smooth painted wood.) But she did eventually get impatient, which is only fair. My last little box was drawn while she was straddling one hip, grabbing my nose in her tiny hand, and shaking my head back and forth, back and forth!

Thank you for your patience, baby child. Once you are big enough to not just eat all the art supplies, I do hope that you love doodling as much as I do.

Brown Paper Thumbnails

I bought a new sketchbook, and I love the pale brown color of the paper. Tonight I went to the art museum with a friend. The paper was perfect for doing thumbnail sketches, little studies of the composition, the lights and shadows, while browsing through the paintings and sculptures. * He comprado un nuevo libro de dibujar y me encanta el papel de color café claro. Visité al museo de arte esta noche con una amiga. Este papel fue perfectito para hacer dibujos pequeños, estudios muy simples de composición, de luz y sombra, mirando las pinturas y esculturas. 

Wooden Sculptures

Visited the Portland Art Museum recently, and was impressed by the carved wooden figurines by John Frame. Originally designed as stop-motion figurines for a film, they are astoundingly intricate objects independently of the film project.

The magic, for me, is in the details. The figures are fairly small--maybe a foot high?--but they have astonishingly detailed joints carved in the wooden hands. The facial expressions carved into the wood are also astonishing in their subtlety and power. I gawked, I really did.

But these beautiful and distinctly surreal figures are even more amazing when you catch a glimpse of how they are animated for Frame's film. Tiny glass eyeballs, like you would see in dolls or taxidermy projects, are already pretty fascinating when they are sewed into this character's overcoat. (I was torn when I saw this--I simultaneously really want to make myself a coat covered with glass eyes, and really don't want to, because it's just too creepy!)

But, in the film, not only do the long thin wooden dowels sticking out of this character's head give its own eyeballs the power to move...but the eyes sewn into the cloth of its coat will nonchalantly blink throughout the scene. Yes. It is the most beautiful, and also the most deeply unnerving, thing I've seen in a long time.

There's a snippet of the blinking eyeball coat here. All I can say is, wow. (And, isn't it interesting that both of my recent visits to PAM have left me obsessed with the sewing technique wherein you slash open the outer layer of a jacket so the lining can show through?)

Old Masters, and fashion notes

A few weeks back I went to the Portland Art Museum to see the traveling masterpiece by Titian that is now on display. There are billboards of "La Bella" up all over town, and newspaper articles have claimed that she is the "elusive ideal of beauty." OK, that sounds worth checking out, no?

My impressions are as follows:

• The museum did an amazing job of setting the tone of "this is a very important painting" with the signage and other related pomp. It was really fun watching folks walk into the special alcove where La Bella is displayed--wide-eyed, unsure what to do with their hands, unsure how to react to what is clearly supposed to be a Big Deal Painting. 
• La Bella is a nice portrait. It doesn't strike me as especially superior to the other portraits in the European Art collection that are already on exhibit, though.   
• All of the promos you see of La Bella in the billboard promos and the newspaper articles zoom in on her face--the pale skin, delicate arch of eyebrows, youthful smoothness of the face. But what those photos don't reveal to you is her outfit. La Bella is a cute young woman who is entirely overshadowed by her enormous poofy sleeves. Oh my goodness. We're talking the height of Renaissance decadence here: blue and gold wagon-wheels at the shoulder, that transform into extraordinary oxblood arms that are slashed open at regular intervals with glorious meringue-like poofs of the white silk lining pulled through to the surface. The girl herself is like a pale, soft-focus afterthought tacked on to an extraordinary riot of gleaming gold embroidery on mediculously-rendered velvets and silks that catch the light in beautiful ways with every wrinkle and crease. 

See the full glorious outfit! Granted, this is after the painting has had a good cleaning; the dissonance between La Bella's face and dress seems less jarring when she had hundreds of years of soot to balance the composition out.

Today is the last day to see La Bella at the Portland Art Museum. I might have to go back and get a better look at those amazing sleeves today, just because.

Oregon Live has a good article where you can read more about the history and context of La Bella. (They're less snarky than I am, hee hee.)