Charlotte

Greensboro is a fine place to live. The locals like to say, "a great place to raise a family," which usually means, it has great parks and no nightlife or culture to speak of... Anyway, we are quite happy here, but occasionally get the urban jones, e.g. nice Italian restaurant, classy hotel, traffic, tall buildings, good brunch, a museum or two... So, this summer, on the spur of the moment, we took off for a weekend in Charlotte. Thankfully, our boys love hotels and all the accoutrements associated with them. So, we hung out in our room in the Omni, watched a movie or two, wandered around downtown, watched a bike race, ate at an Osteria, and went to the Discovery place. A good weekend.

Here are a few pictures.

Facebook ate my blog

So, looking back over my blog, I realize that I haven't posted anything for quite some time. The main culprit is facebook. Not sure why, but I really began to use facebook a lot more this summer — perhaps I hit the critical friend mass... Whatever the case, it ate up the limited amount of computer doodling time I had. But I have a series of posts which have been simmering and which I will get up soon enough.

Lego Platform

This is the platform H+I built for his Legos. It slides (thanks to H's clever design) right under the bed.

these aren't very good pictures...

but people have been asking me what we have been up to recently, and this tells part of the story. We moved — within the house that is. Our friends who were living with us temporarily moved out, and so R graduated to H's old room, H graduated to the larger bedroom, and I got a home office. We bought new furniture for all three rooms at IKEA — 16 boxes / 2 days worth of assembly. L repainted both rooms while I turned assembled. Everyone is pretty happy about the move, except now our bedroom looks pretty lame.

Other things about which I will post in the near future:
- a weekend getaway to Charlotte
- one year in Greensboro and a party to celebrate it
- a new semester, which begins at 8:30a tomorrow.

From Smythe's The Conquest of Arid America (1900)

The Conquest of Arid America By William Ellsworth Smythe: ""

a trip to the museum

LEFT: Barkley Hendricks, "Self-Portrait"



Took the boys to the Nasher Museum at Duke. The purpose was as much to make art as to look at it. I wanted to see the Barkley Hendricks exhibit before it closed. It was interesting, although the boys took some time to get used to his portrait style. At first it was a bit underwhelming.

But the real highlight was taking pictures. Everyone had at least one camera, and we took lots of shots. Both the boys were pretty diligent, but each pursued a different artistic methodology: R was unabashed, taking pictures of everything, pretty rapid-fire and switching between two cameras. H was much more focused, taking multiple shots of the same thing with a lot more attention to color (he has always favored the blurry, color field shots) and composition.

The pictures really should be viewed as a whole to get the effect. So, rather than post a couple of images here, just visit the flickr site for the full effect. And while you are there, also check out R's home series.

A fun Sunday.

well...

Sorry for the interruption in posting. I've been busy writing. I am now back down to a normal workload, and trying to get caught up with everything.

This is really just a message to let those few readers who remain know that I am still here and intend to become more regular in my postings in the future.

Took H the Weatherspoon Art Museum, where they had an exhibit on Latino / Latin American art, which was pretty interesting. One of my favorite pieces was "1492 Indians vs. Dukes," by Rubén Ortiz Torres. He is from Mexico City, but lives and works in Los Angeles. His work plays with a number of popular stereotypes, such as the low-rider lawn mower. [see below]




H did a little sketching, particularly of a tiny sculpture of a woman, sitting on the edge of a 2in square wooden block, staring at a gold earring stuck in the wall. I didn't get the artist's name, but he took a shine to it.

Next up, SECCA in Winston-Salem to see Maggie Orth's exhibit on electric textiles, capable of changing color and patterns.