Lucia and I

It was time for a haircut today, so I called Lucia to see if she had a spot this afternoon, and fortunately she did.  Kathy and I have been coming to Lucia for haircuts I am thinking, for about 30 years plus. Kathy asked a friend who suggested Lucia and originally she had her salon in the basement of her house. I think neighbors complained about the cars parking there, so she rented a salon and we have been coming here ever since.  I love coming here for the life that goes on here. There are several hairdressers that have been with her for years, and Janet who does the shampooing,  who we have known for as as long as Lucia has been in this location.  She has a lot of Italian customers and the shop is usually full and there is so much conversation back and forth in Italian and Spanish and the shop always feels so alive with conversation.  There is always the offer of an espresso when I arrive.  So at the end of my haircut I asked if I could do a portrait of the both of us and she said "yes."  So here we are, friends after so many years.

 

Standing Woman 1, at the Getty Center

In my first post of the Giacometti sculptures at the Temple of Dendur, I mentioned how, every time  I entered this gallery at the Getty Center, I was stunned by the presence of one of his figures so striking, up against a white wall.  The other thing is, that this sculpture is nearly nine feet tall!  So you are actually looking up at it when you stand in front of it.  I thought I would take the time to show this "Standing Woman 1" in more detail so that you could appreciate how it is made.  Please click on each image to see it larger.

So this is a medium view and you can begin to see how little dabs of clay were put together to form the rough structure of this woman. When the clay figure was finished, a mold was put around it and then molten bronze was poured into the mold, to form this bronze figure.

And here is even more datail from a closer view.  So here is what is wonderful - I looked up this photo in my collection and then went to the Getty Center website to to look up the information.  Along with all that, there is a wonderful description by one of the Getty curators.  So I hope it will offer some insights if I reproduce just part of the description.

"Nearly nine feet tall, this larger-than-life, extremely slender figure towers over the viewer.  Despite her emaciated frame, she commands the surrounding space.  Her rail-thin arms appear almost fused to her torso, hightening a palpable sense of empty space around the figure.  The relatrively large base emphasizes her fragility.  The deeply kneaded, distressed bronze surface suggests a morbid, decomposing form."

OK but I find I have a problem with that.  I have never had a feeling when seeing these different Giacometti statues of woman that they were decomposing figures at all!  Never a hint of that so I disagree with the curator on this note.

 

Cloud Watching Again

We went to the beach again today, so Kathy could do some of the walking she needs to as part of her recovery.  The minute I got out of the car I saw this scene.  So many different kinds of clouds visible, both low level cumulus which you see closer to us and then higher clouds further away.  I was not sure, but at first right in the center of the photo, over the dark trees, I thought that might be a rain shower, but I don't think it is.  It was a showery day today.  After walking for a bit, I looked to the north across the sound and there was a similar rain shower as I photographed yesterday.  When we left the parking lot, there was another huge rain shower just across the harbor that obscured the whole horizon to the north.  Just beautiful gray clouds everywhere today.  And a single person down by the water, watching the clouds as we were.

 

Storm Clouds Over The Sound

We were on the way home after doing some errands and as we drove back along shore road I saw these brilliant white clouds, with the much darker gray clouds above them.  I have never seen anything like this in all the years I have lived here!  I quickly pulled over, grabbed my camera and took this photograph.  Notice the different reflections in the water, with the white clouds leaving a brighter reflection.  Notice that it is a bit more gray under the center area of the white clouds.  That gray color is either rain coming down from the clouds, or it could br "virga" which is when the rain falls from the cloud but evaporates before it hits the ground.  What a joy it was to see all these beautiful clouds!

 

Walking Woman

I was sort of familiar with the thin, rough surfaced Giacometti sculptures that were in yesterday's pictures.  What is really cool is they placed this bronze sculpture "Walking Woman" inside one of the structures of the Temple of Dendur.  In the wide angle photograph yesterday, this sculpture is inside the larger, far structure.  I would never have guessed that this sculpture was made by the same artist as all the other sculptures on display!  That shows you how little I know!  I was curious what people who know about art thought this sculpture was about.  So I looked it up!  "Alberto Giacometti's Walking Woman was created between 1932 and 1936.  It is an iconic slender sculpture that transitions from the surrealist experimentation to his signature elonged human style.  It reflects ancient Egyptian and Cycladic frontal proportions.  This figure captures the weightless balance of a living person in motion rather than a heavy physical body.  It also emphasizes rigid, timeless posture and profound psychological presence." What do you think?  I am not sure what I think.

 

Giacometti at the Temple of Dendur

                              

There is an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where 14 works in bronze and plaster by Alberto Giacometti are displayed in and around the Temple of Dendur.  It is explained that this "places the work of one of the great sculptors of the 20th century in dialogue with the ancient civilization that strongly influenced his art and his practice."  I love this shot because it shows the familiar unimaginable thin women statues against children and adults looking at the temple.

The Temple of Dendur was completed in 10 BCE as a commission by Caesar Augustus shortly after he became emperor of Rome. Gifted from Egypt to the United States in 1965, it has been one of the most beloved works of art at The Met since it opened to the public in 1978. 

It is further explained that "Throughout his career, Giacometti showed a particular fascination for the art of ancient Egypt. The Egyptian statues he saw in Italy as a young artist made a lasting impression on his visual repertoire, and after he moved to Paris, he regularly visited the Egyptian galleries of the Louvre." These statues are astounding to look at and to study.  There is a single bronze statue of a woman at the Getty on display up against a blank wall which you see when entering one of the galleries, and it always stops me in my tracks.

The Ghost Building

When I came up out of the subway I saw this building right away.  It looked like a ghost building instead of a real building.  So this building looks like this because they are doing some kind of construction on the outside.  They have set up scaffolding to work on the building, and then think they have regulations that some kind of fabric has to surround the scaffolding, I believe so that if anything was dropped, the fabric would keep it from falling out into the street.  So that's what makes it a ghost building.