July Miscellany, with music by Jaeger, Mattingly & Trapani & performances by Dhegrae & Contemporaneous

That’s Robert Louis Stevenson contemplating the proceedings, courtesy John Singer Sargent. The proceedings include, among other things, El café by Joaquín Torres-García and the Cabinet of Geology and Mineralogy from the announcement of a project by Mark Dion at Vassar College.

Grant Wood at the Whitney

Young Corn (1931, detail)

Not something I’d ever though to see: an exhibit devoted to Grant Wood at the Whitney Museum in New York. Eons ago, I’d seen his work on his home turf. The impression it left was indelible. I’ve often wished I could see the works on display in Cedar Rapids once again.

At the Independent Art Fair

Charlie Billingham

With at least three art fairs on offer one March weekend in New York City, the question was how not to become overwhelmed. A review in the New York Times pointed us toward the Independent Art Fair:

If, like me, you find the full-tilt art fairs a little overwhelming, the formally ambitious but modestly scaled Independent is a godsend. With just 54 exhibits, many of them solo presentations, arranged over four spacious floors at Spring Studios in TriBeCa, it’s like a leisurely all-star game: It’s not exactly representative of the year in art, perhaps, but it feels as if it ought to be.

Color, Seeds, Thread, Buttons & Music by Debussy, Jalbert & Shaw

Postcards of Matisse’s Blue Window (1913) and Bonnard’s Table in Front of the Window (1934-35) called out for construction paper cut-outs. As if that weren’t enough, I scouted among our shelves, where I spotted an ancient packet of watermelon seeds and put them to use.

A Concatenation of Birds, with Music by Lembit Beecher

I’ve been sorting through stacks of postcards, looking for ones that might suggest a starting point for a collage. One I kept coming back to contained an image of an illustrated manuscript folio entitled “The Concourse of the Birds.”