Wow. I can’t believe it’s already this weekend (well, almost) and I haven’t even blogged about last weekend. Work, political activities and kids (well, kid – my daughter was away at Nature’s Classroom all week, the lucky thing) have really taken away from my blogging time.
So the kids were with their dad last weekend for the first time since the end of July, so I got to go up to Boston and visit the Webmeister.
What with it being a bank holiday weekend, a journey that normally takes me 3 hours max took me FIVE, which ended up being rather stressful since we had theater tickets for 8pm. I left CT at 3, thinking I’d have plenty of time to toodle up to Boston, change clothes, relax and drive to the theater together. As it turned out, I arrived drove straight to the theater and arrived with about five minutes to spare.
It was a rather fun Boston Center for the Arts production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”, which I haven’t seen in yonks, and thoroughly enjoyed.
Afterwards, we walked past the Mills Gallery on the way to dinner. It had an installation by British artist Martin Creed called “The Lights Going On and Off”, which is apparently one of Creed’s most well known works, for which he received the Turner Prize in 2001.
Basically the entire gallery was painted white, with a little white sofa and table in one of the windows. And…you guessed it – the lights kept turning on and off every few minutes. As we stood in front of the windows watching a man walked by and expressed my opinion perfectly – “What a load of cr*p!”
Ok, I’ll admit that I don’t “get” all modern art. But I was practically rolling on the pavement laughing when I read the explanation of the work on the gallery door:
The title is descriptive – in the work the lights go on and off, like someone flipping a switch, repeatedly and at set time intervals. Using the existing track lights in the Mills, it will fill the entire 2200 sq. foot space for an installation that is pointedly spare and quietly provocative, with a touch of humor and wonder at the role of inspiration in the creative process. Ultimately, The Lights Going On and Off is an experiential art viewing event, one that is both challenging and poetic.
”Quietly provocative”?! “Challenging and poetic”?! Give me a break! How about ANNOYING AS HELL? I was facing the gallery when while we ate dinner (al fresco, in the Northeast, in October…amazing!) and the only thing it inspired me to do was to blog about how ridiculous I found it.
On Saturday evening we had dessert at this amazing place called Finale. It specializes in my favorite food group, dessert. The Webmeister and I each had one of the Signature Molten Chocolate desserts.
To say it was awesome would be an understatement. I was glad that we weren’t sharing, otherwise I might have had to stab the Webmeister’s hand with my fork. I mean love might be love, but all’s fair when it comes to molten chocolate desserts.
Continuing our modern art theme, we went to the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park on Sunday. If you’re ever in the Boston area, I’d highly recommend a visit. This is modern art I “get” – or at least kind of get.
For example, there were many days during the Never Ending (but Finally Ended) Divorce that I felt like this:
The Webmeister and I had a fun time walking around and trying to guess the names of the sculptures. I nailed the “Trojan Chicken”
and with a guess of “Trojan Pig” came really close to this one:
(real name: “Trojan Piggy Bank” – not sure about the obsession with Trojans but maybe the artist had just drooled over the delectable Eric Bana
in Troy, or something)
But there were some that really had me flummoxed – and like “Lights Turning on and Off”, somewhat annoyed.
Like this one:
Ok, so what do YOU think this is called? No cheating now…but when you’ve made your guess,
Ok, so was called “Butterflies”. Go figure. My guess was “Cannonballs”. If I were getting really avant garde maybe I’d go with “Rabbit Turds”. But ”Butterflies”?. Go figure.
I can’t remember the exact name for this one, but I wasn’t far off with “Coneheads”.
And I was going to suggest The Webmeister and I take a romantic photo a deux next to this one:
till we got closer and realized that maybe it was quite so romantic after all:
There’s something about pickaxes and body parts that kinda takes the romance out of things, no?
It was a fun weekend – just the right amount of culture, activity, chocolate and napping. Add a Comment