Georgia O' Keeffe and Ansel Adams: natursal affinities

    An exhibition of two best known American artists presented at the Georgia O' Keeffe Museum in Santa

Fe from May 23 until September 7, 2008 and at the SEMOMA Museum in San Francisco from May 30
until September 7, 2009.   

   Modernist painter Georgia O' Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin in 1887.
   In 1920 she began visiting North New Mexico where she finally located permanently in 1949 at Ghost
Ranch (north of Abiquiu). It is a mountainous area (known now as Georgia O' Keeffe County) that have
many Indian Pueblos which charmed her and marked her way of painting, and mostly her themes
(landscapes, rocks, animal skeletons).
   In 1984 she moved in Santa Fe where died two years later.
   It was her wish to incinerate, and disperse her ashes from the top of Pedernal Mountain over the land she
loved.

   Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco, California in 1902.
   He was Photographer and Environmentalist well known for his enchanting black and white photography.
His influence and his inspiration was the nature. He preferred the big format cameras for their high quality
result. His photography is unique and recognizable, however those photographs taken in American West and
mostly in the Yosemity National Park are the most famous.
   Ansel Adams died in Monterey, California in 1984.

   Georgia O' Keeffe and Ansel Adams first time met in Taos Pueblo, New Mexico in 1929, and their
friendship was lifelong.
   There were sometimes that they "worked" together painting, and taking pictures of the nature which
inspired both of them and which defined their lives.
   The exhibition's visitors had the opportunity to ascertain exactly this artistic affinity. Something that perhaps
happens often in the world of the art, but rarely somebody has the opportunity to see it that way.

Chicago Botanic Garden: Japanese Garden "Senso - En"

   The Chicago Botanic Garden in the northern suburbs of Chicago is an oasis of senses.
   Βy the end of May and throughout  the summer the garden offers a delightful dew shelter.
   There are plenty of thematic gardens, but the garden that travels you in another place, is the Japanese
Garden: Sansho-en, garden of three islands. You are no longer in the Botanic Garden. You are in a Japanese
country in another time.
   There is a small lodge, a reproduction of those that the nobble Japanese were accustom to use for
concentration, reading, writing or painting, and it makes you feel envy of the era and the place.
   The little house is located literally on the water and in the green. Wooden and metallic wind chimes hanging
from apertures and trees, produce dream sounds, as they swinging with the slightest breeze. Can't avoid the
thought (or the wish) you could live in a such a little home like that...
   The other fascinating point of this garden is the Zig Zag bridge that connects two of the three islands.It is
built in a way to block the passing of the bad spirits that according the Japanese lore can walk only straight...

The Zig-Zag bridge

NYC - Battery Park City. Nelson A. Rockefeller Park: " The Real World"

    Continuing optimistically let's talk about a park.

    The thematic small park "The Real World" is α NFT (Not For Tourists) point of the city. It is a pleasant
and amusing surprise as you walk for the first time around the area musing the river and its opposite bank.
    "The Real World" is a tiny world which has installed there since 1992. Is a joyful crowd of miniature
cartoonish sculptures. Anthropomorphic, imaginary, unrealistic figures, little animals and objects outspreaded
all around. They look like being in a consecutive motion rambling and murmuring their stories.
     Suddenly you feel like losing the burden of your age.
     You keep walking relieved, and lighter.

     The installation is Tom Otterness's artwork in bronze.

let's start optimistically...

 New Orleans, Biennial 2008