NaBloPoMo Day 24: Bettye Saar at MoMA
Last Saturday, I decided to walk up to MoMA to renew my membership. Learned a valuable lesson. It's possible I've learned this same lesson before but now I'm going to document it for posterity and for my own future reference:
Do not walk up 6th Avenue into the 40s.
Seriously.
I had the misperception that 6th Avenue would be ok. Not 7th and therefore not Times Square. Not 5th and therefore no fancy shops. What the hell is on 6th Avenue above 34th Street I ask you?
Well now I know -- lots of tourists.
They come at you from all directions, it's like a video game. A very slow moving video game. Mostly the game involves not tripping over three ladies from Duluth, grabbing onto the strap of someone's cross body bag to avoid breaking an ankle and then getting arrested for pickpocketing or something. I think about these things after Matt's incident in Magnolia Bakery.
Anyway, finally, and in a hella bad mood, I made it up to MoMA. I was hopeful after the big MoMA remodel that those idiotic one-person-wide escalators would be gone, but no. They remain.
(As you can clearly tell, my day-to-day life requires immense resourcefulness and stamina. I overcome challenges such as these on practically a daily basis.)
While I was getting my credit card swiped at the member desk, Bruce sent me 9 texts delivering the down-low on these sculptures on the 5th floor by a possibly Korean sculptor featuring a soundtrack of birds.
The thing about the bird soundtrack however is that it wasn't supposed to be a soundtrack of birds. It was supposed to be an espionage recording of two Korean leaders having a secret meeting in a park. But there was a hitch in the espionage giddy-up. The microphones were too far away and only picked up birds.
Somehow the sculptor got ahold of this spy #fail and decided to use the recording for his/her exhibit. Sadly, the spies did not work for Cat TV. If they had, I'm sure they still would have jobs.
Anyway, the idea of taking one-person escalators all the way up to the 5th floor felt exhausting. And there were 95 strollers in line for the elevator. So I was just like fuck it all and darted into a gallery on the 2nd floor. Sometimes things work out for the best. I loved the Bettye Saar exhibit.
I wish I had run into Bettye before Petrina's party last Friday wherein I talked for a long time to her Dad's girlfriend who told me she's a patron of the arts and also herself an artist in the genre of Assemblage. She hasn't done much work recently though.
Anyway, Bettye Saar impressed me with her work in assemblage. But also etchings and ink. During our walk across the park on Saturday to check out this tree...
...Bruce mentioned that he did not fully appreciate Bettye Saar as much as he enjoyed those birds up on the 5th floor. He requested a rationale for my enchantment.
I launched into a three prong explanation, beginning with the etching "In the Dell."
Doesn't it make you feel like you're in the forest, in a bath of dim light and the smell of the undersides of leaves?
Do not walk up 6th Avenue into the 40s.
Seriously.
I had the misperception that 6th Avenue would be ok. Not 7th and therefore not Times Square. Not 5th and therefore no fancy shops. What the hell is on 6th Avenue above 34th Street I ask you?
Well now I know -- lots of tourists.
They come at you from all directions, it's like a video game. A very slow moving video game. Mostly the game involves not tripping over three ladies from Duluth, grabbing onto the strap of someone's cross body bag to avoid breaking an ankle and then getting arrested for pickpocketing or something. I think about these things after Matt's incident in Magnolia Bakery.
Anyway, finally, and in a hella bad mood, I made it up to MoMA. I was hopeful after the big MoMA remodel that those idiotic one-person-wide escalators would be gone, but no. They remain.
(As you can clearly tell, my day-to-day life requires immense resourcefulness and stamina. I overcome challenges such as these on practically a daily basis.)
While I was getting my credit card swiped at the member desk, Bruce sent me 9 texts delivering the down-low on these sculptures on the 5th floor by a possibly Korean sculptor featuring a soundtrack of birds.
The thing about the bird soundtrack however is that it wasn't supposed to be a soundtrack of birds. It was supposed to be an espionage recording of two Korean leaders having a secret meeting in a park. But there was a hitch in the espionage giddy-up. The microphones were too far away and only picked up birds.
Somehow the sculptor got ahold of this spy #fail and decided to use the recording for his/her exhibit. Sadly, the spies did not work for Cat TV. If they had, I'm sure they still would have jobs.
Anyway, the idea of taking one-person escalators all the way up to the 5th floor felt exhausting. And there were 95 strollers in line for the elevator. So I was just like fuck it all and darted into a gallery on the 2nd floor. Sometimes things work out for the best. I loved the Bettye Saar exhibit.
 |
| Bettye Saar -- Pretty cool with the metal and the ink drawings. |
I wish I had run into Bettye before Petrina's party last Friday wherein I talked for a long time to her Dad's girlfriend who told me she's a patron of the arts and also herself an artist in the genre of Assemblage. She hasn't done much work recently though.
Anyway, Bettye Saar impressed me with her work in assemblage. But also etchings and ink. During our walk across the park on Saturday to check out this tree...
 |
| A really spectacular tree in the park. |
...Bruce mentioned that he did not fully appreciate Bettye Saar as much as he enjoyed those birds up on the 5th floor. He requested a rationale for my enchantment.
 |
| In the Dell by Bettye Saar at MoMA |
I launched into a three prong explanation, beginning with the etching "In the Dell."
Doesn't it make you feel like you're in the forest, in a bath of dim light and the smell of the undersides of leaves?
Then I mentioned Bettye's mystical symbols and images of the sun and the moon. I love a good mystical symbol.
I never got to the 3rd prong in my three prong explanation, but I'm sure I had an excellent final point. Which I can no longer recall.
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