Matisse and the Museum

     Well, the count down to school starting is dropping fast!  Monday the 23rd they all go back!  More next week on that one-and yes, with pics of all of them in their uniforms!!
     We've been enjoying the mild weather this last week.  Cooler temps (high 70's and low 80's) and some rain.  Ok, a lot more rain than we have ever seen!  On Thursday we got nearly 2 inches in 1 day.  Crazy for a desert girl like me.  If Idaho had gotten that much we'd have all flooded for sure!

This is a video clip of the rain.  Nothing exciting or anything, just amazing how loud it is as it hits all the greenery!  The birds are much quieter in the morning when it rains too.  Nice to get some solid sleep!

     The big even this week was going to the Matisse exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Brisbane.  We went with friends from the neighborhood just down the street.  Took the bus from the usual stop and hopped off at the Southbank Cultural Stop (theaters, state library, museums) and enjoyed the exhibit tremendously.  It was fun to see the growth from the early line drawings that convey so much with so little to the later works showing such depth, but still showing such life in each one.  I was fascinated with the line studies he did with the final product on display as well.  Did you know for one of his more famous works he did over 3000 drawings before the final painting?  WOW!  The kids loved that at the end of the exhibit there was an interactive opportunity to draw still life objects.  A large area with all sorts of things to look at and draw-with stools and benches everywhere to sit and work at!  The clipboards, lovely heavy drawing paper, and pencils were all provided.  Here are some pics of the kids drawing!  They were very intent.

     Once we were through this exhibit, we took a look at what the rest of the exhibits had to show.  The kids favorite was the Obliteration room-they give you a sheet of sticker dots and you get to put them on wherever you want!  They inspected you for dots when you left, but can't seem to get them all-we spotted dots clear down at the bus stop-nearly 300 m away!

     They also had a Fairy Magic sort of room the kids could look through-it was constructed entirely of colored sugar.  Think sand art kind of style in pinks, purples, greens-pastel overload.  Annika LOVED it-surprise?  Not at all!

There was a textile room with lots of quilts on display-Mom, you would have loved these!  The green one is in a pacific island motif using the methods taught by the missionaries when they arrived in the 1800's, similar to the Hawaiian quilts we saw a few years ago.  The bright colored one below is hundreds of squares, all about 1 inch each finished size.  The last picture is the pounded bark (tapa?) cloth done by the islanders.  This is a commissioned piece made just for the museum-it was overwhelming!  I just took a photo of the longest part-about 80-90 feet long, it also went up and draped another 12 feet on the other side of the wall!  Amazing!

     Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of my favorite part of the museum, the aboriginal art.  Many of the pieces were traditional, others were done using traditional methods, the rest were very modern interpretations.  I will go back when the kids are in school and take a longer look as the youngers were ready to go and I simply needed more time to absorb what I was seeing.  There was a piece that was about 18 inches off the floor done in herringbone lines to show the topography of a place-it was three dimensional when you looked at it from various angles!  Amazing stuff.  I really want to spend some more time looking at this form of art-so sophisticated, but simple in it's beauty.

     Have a great week everyone!  Sorry this is a bit late this week-back to Tuesday or Wednesday next week.