On The Road

The whole point of my having a souvenir of a journey or a trip or a travel is to jog my memory. A souvenir acts as a touchstone, so that when I see it, or touch it, the memory of the day or moment when I got it comes flooding back. I write about souvenirs a lot on this site - well - I ask people to leave their comments about their souvenirs. I always find what other people bring back with them to be interesting and there is always a story entwined with the object. Most people don’t realize that though, until they are asked about it.

The other day I was at my storage unit - I’m cleaning it out and giving a lot of useless stuff away. Painters and artists in general are such packrats. Keep everything for the sake of making art out of it - someday. But I came across a box that had been carefully packed before being placed in storage. It contained a number of things - mostly things that I had received as gifts.

Within that big box was another smaller box marked Art Postcards From Travels. I slowly opened it up. Inside were all of my favorite souvenirs.

Most people visit museums because they think they are supposed to. How could someone go to Paris and not see the Impressionist works at the Musee d’Orsay? As an art student, and then now as an artist, I visit museums frequently not to tick the museum or the art work off of a to-do list, but to study. I’ve always gone to museums to see and explore the masterworks of artists, to study the layers of Van Gogh’s paintings, or to study the physical dynamics of Michelangelo’s sculpture. And then, after visiting the works of art, I would go to the museum store to purchase postcards of the work I had seen.

I randomly pull a few out of the stack.

Five Turners from the first time I went to the Tate Gallery in 1986.

The Veiled Lady by Raphael, from a trip to Florence that same year, is one of my favorite portraits in The Uffizi, not because of the face, but because of the painterly way the fabric of her dress was recorded. I went there on a hot September day, no waiting in line in those days.

Le Lit (The Bed) by Toulouse-Lautrec is one of my favorite paintings in the Musee d’Orsay along with Les raboteurs de parquet (The Floor Planers) by Gustave Caillebotte. Although I have to admit that finding an absolute favorite in the Musee d’Orsay is really difficult as my stack of postcards from that museum is really large. I found those on my trip to Paris in 2000.

There are even a few from the old Dali museum in Cleveland, many from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh where I went to art school, some from a trip I took to Washington DC in 1976, and not as many as I thought from Rome.

I flip through the cards and remember the days, the travels, the weather, the experience and even what I ate for lunch - which is kind of funny because I couldn’t tell you what I had for lunch yesterday!

One other random thing I found in the box marked Art Postcards From Travels was my first passport. The only mark in the book is a Radiant Baby drawn and signed by my art school buddy K. Haring. I remember the night I asked him to draw in it - he was kind of taken aback, he didn’t want to deface a government document! But I assured him the passport was set to expire soon so it would be ok. There are two dates on it because he transposed the numbers and then corrected himself.

Tell me about your favorite souvenir and the memory it brings back to you. Or go look in the various regions on the site, like the Yucatan, Paris, San Francisco, or Prague for a With Eyes Open Survey Question about souvenirs!

What’s to do in Denver this week? Besides the Democratic National Convention?

Hey, even the most enthusiastic of Democrats need a break from politics on occasion. So why not check out some of The Mile High City’s cultural events?

The Denver Art Museum:

Clyfford Still Unveiled: Selections From The Estate features 13 paintings created by this leader among first-generation abstract expressionists. Clyfford Still is considered to be one of the most important painters of the twentieth century. This exhibition features a 1940 self-portrait, several never-before-seen works on paper, and five 1940s and 1950s masterworks that show the evolution of Still’s mature, purely abstract style.

The Age of Impressionism is running through September 7th. The exhibition features 40 works of art from 19th and 20th century European and American artists including Claude Monet, Eugene Boudin, Frederick Childe Hassam, and John Singer Sargent.

Varied Voices is a works on paper exhibition that includes works by 18 contemporary American artists and runs through December 31.

Vote is an exhibition in honor of the convention and is a collaborative project put on by the museum and the AIGA. Get Out the Vote, AIGA’s Design for Democracy initiative, invited designers from across the country to create posters to inspire Americans to participate in the political process. 50 of these digital posters will be displayed on the atrium’s screen through August 31.

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver:

THe MCA Denver has a number of exhibitions this week that look interesting. Artists included in individual shows include Jane Hammond, Adam Helms, Omar Fast, Suzanne Kuhn, Brad Kahlhamer, and Jack Balas.

Dialog:City:

What Dialog:City has to offer this week looks to be some really interesting work by some very contemporary artists. They have invited internationally renowned artists and designers to create participatory, interactive, and dialogical site-specific works in neighborhoods across the city of Denver. From Political Karaoke, digital projections of Veteran stories from a Humvee, and a technology hip-hop opera on the climate impact on Antarctica - this event will be a cutting-edge convergence of art and public life. Participating artists are Charlie Cannon, Minsuk Cho, Luke DuBois, Ann Hamilton, Sharon Hayes, Lyn Hershman, Daniel Peltz, DJ Spooky, spurse, and Krzysztof Wodiczko.

Unconventional Women:

An historic symposium uniting 3,000 women, advancing their political leadership and participation. This is happening on August 25th from 8am til 2pm at the Buell Theatre. Check web site for a list of speakers.

Cinemocracy Rocks

Democracy in film out at the Red Rocks amphitheatre.

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Extreme Ice is the work of award-winning photographer James Balog. This photographic exhibition features some of the most beautiful and remote environments on Earth.

Also on exhibit at the museum are the science of mummies, gems and minerals, an exhibit of Native American everyday objects, tracing evolution, discovering the universe, and wildlife exhibits. There is also a Discovery Zone for the kids.

It looks like it might be an interesting week in Denver even if you aren’t going to the convention. If you know of an event that I missed, please leave it in the comments area!

On one of the discussion boards that I participate on, there was a question as to how to make sure that a service will back up photos taken with a high resolution in high resolution. If you don’t want to lug a photo studio around with you but want photos from your trip that are worthy of printing here are a few tips:

Take several CF cards so that you don’t have to use non-professional services to transfer your photos. I take about 6 cards with me - but I usually create my backups each night before going to sleep so I can start with fresh cards in the morning. Having more than one card will buy you some time in finding a professional photo service.

Tell the photo person that you want full-res images on your CD, and to use as many CDs as needed to do so. The person at the desk probably assumed you wanted all the photos on one CD.

Take a wallet of blank CDs with you and backup the photos from a computer at an Internet Cafe.

If you decide to use a service for creating your CD, check the CD before reformatting your CF card.

How I do it, but it entails lugging crap around:

I travel with my cameras, CF cards, a large wallet of blank CDs, and my laptop.

Each night after shooting I download all of the photos onto my laptop (1st copy). Then, if there were a large number of photos from that day, or I wait a day until there are enough to fill a disc, I create a backup CD and store it in the wallet (copy 2).

When I travel I have one copy of the photographs on the laptop in my daypack, and the CD wallet goes in the suitcase (or duffel or whatever I’m using on that particular trip). This keeps the 2 copies of photos separate in case something happens to one of the bags.

Sometimes if the trip is short and I have a free internet connection, I’ll also load the most important photos into the home directory of my website. I rarely do this though because it’s time consuming and redundant. (backup 3)

I am currently researching the idea of using those little portable USB drives to backup photos rather than CDs. They make wallets for multiple USB drives that take up less space in the suitcase than a CD wallet.

I’m having writer’s block. There is one thing that is causing this and I know exactly what it is … time. I have none. I don’t have enough time to settle down and let the thoughts flow. I’m now on my third try of a blog post this morning. The first one was on art and ego and boxes. The second one was about my comment over on Everlast’s blog post about Paris and that he deleted it. And now, I’m just complaining that I don’t have cohesive enough thoughts about anything to write.

I need a vacation …