new, weird, old art

I know I should be packing or organizing some element of this crazy, cross-country move, but I need a break. A sit down in front of my laptop for a good while kinda break. I spent the better part of Elias's morning nap yesterday struggling with my printer, so it's nice to spend a little time catching up on things that involve little to no hardware.

During my last weeks in Boston, I'm trying to check a few things off my sightseeing to do list, and yesterday re-visited the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln. The three miles from the freeway to the museum seem long but the drive is just lovely, especially this time of year, when you can really appreciate the foliage New England has to offer. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit gray and misty but we still managed to take a nice stroll through the sculpture park.


We followed that with a quick tour of their new exhibit inside, The Old, Weird America, which includes work by a couple of contemporary artists I quite like, including Kara Walker, Allison Smith and Sam Durant. Although I have to admit that I think I missed Walker's work completely (that's what happens when your companion is not even a year old). I believe I blogged briefly about Durant's work after our first summer in Boston, when his solo show in one of MassArt's galleries followed shortly after a visit to Plymoth and Plimoth Plantation. The thing I enjoy most about his work, strangely, is the way the diorama rotates, ever so slowly, almost imperceptibly so as to surprise you and maybe even reward you a little for hanging out long enough to notice. Allison Smith's work I first saw after a fellow Bellwether Gallery artist, Amy Wilson, visited the Museum School and mentioned her work during a critique. Smith's contribution to the DeCordova show is interesting but doesn't quite match up to the project I'm most familiar with, The Muster. Anyway, the show and artists are all worth checking out if you're into folk themes, American history, and historical reenactment. Amy Wilson's website is definitely worth a visit as well, so long as we're talking about art and stuff. She's an example of one of those rare instances when actually meeting an artist and listening to her talk about her work adds to your appreciation of her practice instead of taking away from it.