What I Did This Summer

One of the first school assignments this time of year is “What I Did This Summer.” As a mom and sub, I’ve seen many of these essays and always enjoy them. So, motivated by the touch of fall in the air, I’ll try it too.

A high point was Flower Piano held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I wrote about it in my last post and have been silent since. Having too much fun:-)

Every Tuesday this summer we volunteered at the Redwood Food Bank free lunch distribution held at our local library. We would have been happy with a bigger turnout, but it was the first year and still very gratifying.

We saw a few great museum exhibits, including a major collection of J.M.W. Turner’s light-filled paintings at the De Young. However he was a person (did you see the recent biopic?!), his work is groundbreaking, stirring, even spiritual. It’s hard to imagine the Impressionists weren’t greatly inspired by him. And there is a yearning and passion in him that, however different they are, we also feel in Van Gogh.

Snow Storm, 1842

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 1834

The Grand Canal “from the Steps of the Hotel Europa,” 1842

From the sublime to…well, we do love fashion, don’t we? So we couldn’t miss the Brooklyn Museum Costume exhibit at the Legion of Honor. I was smitten by a timeless bias-cut gown by Madeleine Vionnet (I *think,* but if you know better, I’d love to know!). 

There was a specially commissioned traveling box of “the most expensive shoes in the world.” Each pair required a deposit of $6000 in 1913 and I have to think that was the top of the market, as too soon thereafter came the start of WW1.

I visited my old town Half Moon Bay twice, for a yoga workshop at Enso Studio, and also a visit that included my favorite walk along the coastal bluffs. We took a lovely interlude at the Ritz-Carlton.

We saw Willie Nelson at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. That man is a powerhouse who never phones it in and has one of the best bands I’ve every seen. Little Sister plays a mean honky-tonk piano and the harmonica player gets you in the gut.

Alison Krause and Union Station opened for Willie on her birthday. The group has been together for twenty-four years and is very tight. We all had fun.

We put up a clothesline and are sleeping very well.

And watched our home-grown veggies turn red and so yummy!

Sometimes you really connect with someone. This is my Sicilian girlfriend 2C BC. We catch up every time I visit the Legion of Honor. 

Part 2 soon.

Artist Ai Weiwei: @Large in Alcatraz

Have you ever spent time in a prison cell narrower than the span of your arms? Yesterday we visited Alcatraz Island for the @Large exhibit of world-renowned artist and Beijing Olympics designer, Ai Weiwei, now detained at home, his passport confiscated. 

Imprisoned Tibetan musician Lolo represented here

A big man, not one to bow to authority, Ai Weiwei has created his latest installation from inside house arrest in Beijing. 

He's used his experience as a detainee to speak up for political prisoners around the world. With the assistance of curator Cheryl Haines, he created several site-specific installations at the prison, his theme freedom and confinement. 

In the former prison dining room, he designed Yours Truly, a display honoring 176 political prisoners around the world. We sit at the tables and write postcards to be collected and mailed. The artist's goal is to let these men and woman know they are not forgotten.

Upstairs in the former psychiatric wing, two tiny tiled cells resonate with music, one Tibetan and the other Hopi. In Illumination, we learn that 19C Hopi Indians were among the first prisoners of conscience here, detained for refusing to send their children to government boarding schools. (Photo from for-site.org).

Elsewhere in the hospital, Blossoms brings beauty to grim reality with masses of delicate porcelain flowers, recalling also the 100 Flowers Movement, a brief moment of freedom after China's Communist Revolution. 

Stay Tuned is located in a series of twelve cells in A Block, featuring sound, spoken word, and music relating to each confined dissident. Inside each cell is a single stool where we sit and try to experience their experience. Among the prisoners represented are Robben Island Singers imprisoned during South Africa's apartheid era, Tibetan musician Lolo, and Russian punk band Pussy Riot.

A great Chinese dragon greets us in the New Industries Building for With Wind.

The dragon is composed of dozens of individual kites, many quoting imprisoned or exiled activists, including Ai Weiwei.

These kites are confined here, never to soar in the blue sky.

Further on, millions of Legos are used in Trace, which gives faces to some of the imprisoned prisoners we've met in Yours Truly, whom Ai Weiwei calls "Heroes of our Time."

From above we peer down at Refraction where a vast bird's wing is assembled of metal solar panels locked in place, also unable to soar. (Photo from for-site.org).

It's a powerful experience, unforgettable and haunting. Especially as we exit into the blue-sky-blue-sea afternoon. Unlike these prisoners of conscience, we are able to breath free.

@LARGE: AI WEIWEI ON ALCATRAZ

Through April 26, 2015

About Ai Weiwei (Photo and bio from for-site.org)

Ai WeiweiChinese, born 1957

Ai Weiwei is a Beijing-based artist and activist whose work encompasses sculpture, installation, photography, film, architecture, curation, and social criticism. His art has been featured in major solo exhibitions including Ai Weiwei at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, UK, 2014; Evidence at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2014; and Ai Weiwei: According to What?, which was organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, in 2009, and traveled to North American venues in 2013–14. Ai collaborated with architects Herzog & de Meuron on the “bird’s nest” stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation in 2012. 

http://aiweiwei.com