Friday we drove to Columbia to see the Turner to Cézanne exhibition at the Columbia Museum of Art. This show is on loan from the National Museum of Wales and contains highlights from the Davies Collection, including some masterpieces by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters. My favorite was van Gogh's Rain—Auvers, created during the last week of the artist's life. It shows a panoramic view of fields and sky, with a foreground of driving rain, and one black crow in flight in the center of the canvas.
No photos allowed at the Davies Collection, but downstairs at the CMA permanent collection, I made a quick sketch of this Chinese Storyteller earthenware sculpture (of course, now in retrospect, he appears to be saying, "No photography allowed!"):
Later in the afternoon we found ourselves at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art, where artist Ellen Kochansky's installation, Embedded Energy, was on view on the second floor. This group of ten transparent panels is a chronicle of Ellen's Artist in Residence experience at the Center, and speaks to the value of decay and transformation in our lives. The transparent silk panels with embedded found objects fairly glowed in the afternoon light coming in through the large windows of what was formerly the Olympia Community Center, now stunningly restored.
And a perfect conclusion to this very visually-oriented day came about when I checked my email after returning home, and found my friend Terry's announcement of her new website. Terry's textile constructions are gorgeous. Take a look.