I had to call in sick to work today for the first time since I don’t know when. Other than Covid, which was something on another level, I’ve had to do that less than a handful of times in almost 21 years. And I haven’t slept so much in a day since Covid, either.
Not happy.
I saw this on my United widget this morning, though, and started to feel a little better. haha.
Seriously, I am much better and will be back to work tomorrow.
Our tree has been up for a couple of weeks now, brightening our lives with only the lights.
It has finally been decorated! I bought this ornament in Amsterdam when Annie & I took the Heineken tour in July. I forgot that I brought it out when actually decorating the tree was still being considered. Ali found it the other night & voila! Decorated!
Cheers!!
I had the kids for a little while last night.
We took a detour on the way home to visit a yard with a great light display — and candy canes for visitors!
The exhibit prompting the visit to Kansas City’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is called Infinite Regress: Mystical Abstraction from the Permanent Collection and Beyond. It is on view through February 23, 2025.
infinite regress : an endless chain of reasoning leading backward by interpolating a third entity between any two entities
Here are a few works that caught my eye.
Scale is so hard to convey, but these are all fairly large pieces. Some of them — Dzubas’ 17 canvases — are VERY large. I kept trying to imagine the dimensions of the room in a house (rather than a museum) where that would work.
AND, did you catch that Dzubas was 70 +/- years old when he did that? I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, given that my own artist husband did a 25′ long canvas when he was 75 +/-.
Age is an issue of mind over matter.
–Mark Twain
Stezaker (above) and Thiebaud & Katz (below) were also doing amazing work in later years.
It takes a very long time to become young.
–Pablo Picasso
Here are a few other pieces, not part of the main exhibition, that also caught my eye.
I love a Thiebaud dessert painting! They’re so colorful & fun.
This painting is also quite large — I kept the electrical receptacle in the frame for a bit of scale. It’s so big & the blacks are SO black… it took a minute to get pulled in.
Oh, I do love a long, horizontal painting. This piece is about a foot high & almost five feet long. It’s very detailed and appears to have been altered (something added or deleted) at some point, given the seam about a foot in from the right.
It was a fun & very fast trip — a Kansas City primer, if you will — and we will definitely go back! There are a lot more museums to visit… and barbecue to eat!
For the first time this year, I chose to listen to Christmas music this morning. As I have for the past seven years (since its release), I turned to Leslie Odom Jr’s Simply Christmas album. And, as happens every year, I want to shout from the rooftops so everyone knows how great it is!!
(Picture that!)
I don’t have a picture of that, but I do have this one. I’m gonna say it’s Christmas 1968; I’m the one holding the guinea pig. Our tree was most often in the family room (where we spent more time), but this year it was in the living room (very formal & always ready should Good Housekeeping drop by). Behind us is the Christmas tree — loaded with TINSEL! I was reminded of Carole’s Holiday This or That post yesterday. My mother was adamant about each piece being hung individually… very tedious, but the effect was oh, so shimmery! I loved watching it move softly when a door opened or the furnace came on or someone breezed by.
Back to the music… I started the morning listening to The Christmas Album, a more recent release. My favorite track is Winter Song, which is on both albums, but this one is a duet with Cynthia Erivo. Fabulous.
Both albums are streaming on Spotify, and likely on whatever service you prefer. So good.
