Seeking the Sublime in the Everyday

Last week I said I would try something in blue and here it is, as a work in progress. It's a blue house,  based on a picture of an antique doll house I've kept in my collage notebook for years. As I sit making all those little dots I think about what comes next. I have to put something in the windows.  One of my guilty pleasures is peeking into windows--Arthur thinks I'm going to get arrested but it's too tempting to see how strangers live. So I should offer something in these windows for my fellow peekers. What to put in the windows of this house?  Maybe some of my own work, like a tiny version of the Bear and the Bison. I thought about some of the gorgeous mosaics at the 81st street station of the C train, right by the Museum of Natural History. Sometimes I get out there even if it's not my destination, just to look. ere's another whale. The Hall of Ocean Life is one of the most amazing spaces in the city--a full sized blue whale hanging from the ceiling.  Tha...

 I hit a nerve last week when I spoke of my fallow period; many of you said you're feeling the same.  For my first Wordle guess yesterday I chose  allow   and then realized if I added an F I'd have fallow. Then I looked it up, just to be sure I knew what I was talking about.    Here's what the dictionary says;   "(of farmland) plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility as part of a crop rotation or to avoid surplus production." I don't have to worry about surplus production, but restoring fertility sounds like a good.  Also, "A fallow period of time is one in which very little happens."   Then I thought of a verse from People Look East, one of my favorite Christmas carols, actually an advent carol, because it's all about getting ready for the coming. "Furrows be glad when Earth is bare One more seed is planted there Give up your strength the seed to nourish that in time the flower may flourish, People ...

This morning I got my second vaccine shot and to celebrate I took myself on an Artist's Date.  Not to a museum, but to the Subway. You may remember that I've written about several of our loveliest subway stations and everyone has told me that I MUST see the Delancey Essex Station. So I made a pilgrimage. At first I saw nothing- you have to go two levels down, to the F and M Platform. There's a lot of stair climbing so I got a workout as well.  Here's the first thing I saw.                                                                                                                  ...

Here's another wonderful subway station installation with CROWS, The A,C, and E at Canal Street and Sixth Avenue.   Canal Street used to be a regular haunt for me and many other artists because of the late lamented Perl Paints; four or five floors of art supplies staffed by artists who really knew their stuff.   I once told a friend I was headed there and she said, "You're going to the candy store."   But, alas, Mr. Perl forgot to pay his taxes and that was that. Life will never be the same. I don't get there much anymore, and so it took me a while to discover these guys. This is one of the cooler among many cool art installations in our subway system. I was talking about it with a woman I met at Ellen Grossman's opening at  The Yard , a co-working space that's probably not open now.  and she told me that she once found a crow that had fallen off his perch.  She didn't know who to alert and admitted she was tempted to t...

Houston Street After my post about the Weimaraners my friend, Louanne, reminded me of these amazing mosaics at the Houston Street station on the number 1 line. Designed by Deborah Brown in 1995, they show marine creatures frolicking in our subway cars and stations.  In 1995 it was amusing, now in the age of climate change and rising sea levels it’s ominous. But at the moment we have other things to worry about.  let’s just enjoy that we have a subway system that believes art is important and if you're avoiding the subway right now, here they are. A manatee looking over a reader's shoulder.  This one may be my favorite. I'm sorry not to have the whole picture in some of these, but standing with my back to the subway tracks gave me flip flops in my stomach.  Let them inspire us to be active in saving our mother, the earth.

Last week after I posted pictures of Will Wegman's Weimaraners I made a tour of some of my favorite subway art.  Here's one that really tickles me.  In August 2018, this graffiti began to appear. Then someone put a homemade sign in the Franklin Street Station that said, RESPECT the MTA heard about it and said, "Hey, that's a great idea."  And they caused to be made an official MTA sign. Now both Franklin Street in Manhattan and Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn bear tribute to the Queen of Soul. Isn't that cool? A bureaucracy said Yes . It reminds me of Mayor Bloomberg's response to Christo and Jeanne-Claude when they came to him with the crazy idea of planting saffron-colored ceremonial gates all over Central Park.  He said, " Great, let's do it ." Christo and Jeanne-Claude said, "Huh?"  They were used to spending years struggling to get their projects moving.  they weren't ready for a yes. It also rem...

If you want to see William Wegman's wonderful Weimaraners in mosaic.  They adorn the 23rd Street station, at 23rd Street and 6th Ave. on both the uptown and downtown sides. Isn't this cool?  They're so beautiful and also funny and silly.  Bravo and thank you to the MTA. I know we all want a better chance at a seat at rush hour and shorter waits for a train, but you've got to admit, this provides a little lift.  There's a ton of wonderful art in our subways; you can check it out here; Art in the Subways