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Saturday February 3, 2001
"Les paresseux ont toujours envie de faire quelque chose." Luc
de Clapiers
. 'art' in South Austin yard
Creating art at Shoal Creek Gallery, the first stroke
and still life takes shape...
and is on its way.
I'm proud of my children...
including these handsome dancers [I would have linked this to their WEB page, but I couldn't find it. So, if you are reading Andrew....send it to me.] |
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it really is Saturday At ten minutes until eight, SuRu's voice on the phone says, "It thirty degrees outside, wear layers." Chalow is glad it's really walk day, not the vague, mistaken idea of one floating in her mom's head. She's almost spent her energy being excited about it before SuRu pulls up in the drive with her CR/V. We can't decide where to go and finally end up parking by the car dealer on South Congress. We walk all the way down past the meat packer, hardware store, Fran's hamburgers and cut over into the neighborhood just shy of Oltorf. We did a few blocks we'd never touched on foot. We admired the aplomb of the yard artster on one. (We wouldn't necessarily want it in our yard, but we admire the unreserved attitude. And the pink paint on the rope.) I photographed it in my constant attempt to capture the neighborhoods and our moments in them. We veered over to S. 1st and speculated whether three Mexican restaurants in a row could thrive. They seemed to be doing OK, actually. Home again, I showered up and FFP returned from his errands. He, SuRu and I went on a art gallery crawl, catching three galleries near us plus an open house of an expensive home completely furnished and decorated including lots of art from one of the galleries. In the process, we thought about eating at Holiday House and even stood in line there for a few minutes. But we decided the wait and child-to-square-foot ratio were too much for us. This 'first Saturday in the galleries' art crawl was neat. (They may do it every first Saturday and are definitely doing it in March.) Gallery Shoal Creek had one of their artists, Lyuba Titovets, gearing up to paint in the gallery. She lives in El Paso but was born in St. Petersburg. We didn't stay past the early sketch stage. It would have been fun to see it as it progressed. We felt great being out on this beautiful day and taking part in a fun (and free if you can avoid buying a painting) event. I went on a computer rescue mission to Mom's house in the afternoon. She complained that she couldn't get the stuff up 'at the bottom.' She said she'd been using Paint. I assumed the computer was in a 'WIN lock' but, actually, she'd apparently resized the toolbar to a little few pixels of itself. I showed her a couple of times how this could happen and how to correct it. She showed me a print out of her painting which I'm going to put on my bulletin board at work like people do for the children. We reviewed Paint and some of her e-mail stuff and Microsoft WORD. She knocked out an e-mail pretty quickly. She's learning to type anyway. She really loves her computer and all the things it can do. Considering what she can do with a sewing machine or a loom, there's really no telling how far she'll go. Dad, however, won't touch it. Dad showed me his amarylis that is blooming and his tomato plants. We'd never been to the Art Ball. An Austin Museum of Art benefit, it seemed in past years closed to the lower reaches of wannabes even if they could pony up the price of admission. This year, though, someone invited us to go, gratis. Cool. Plus our buddies at American Airlines let us invite two of our favorite couples to go as well for their table. Son John and his wife. And Andrew Long and Darla Johnson of edge dance and performance art fame. I am briefly troubled that my sartorial attempts at ball dress and my hair and make-up (or lack there of) will get me ejected. Once you realize, though, that they probably will let you in even though you don't have a Susan Dell ball gown (can you imagine?), it starts to be fun to see the other people. Wear something black and blend in! No matter what one of these fund raisers thinks of itself, they end up being more or less the same. If you don't have a silent auction, people find some other reason to avoid sitting down like good children and being served by the patient Four Seasons professionals. The reasons this night were to look at the artworks to be auctioned (among which they had included designer dresses by Susan Dell) and, more importantly, to greet each other. This was less of the 'usual suspects' we see at other events we normally attend, although we knew plenty of people. We waited around first in the bar and then just inside the reception area to introduce our young friends to their hostess, Ann of American Airlines. We found our host and hostess right away so we first introduced our young friends to them. Good thing because they were hosting a couple of tables and we were not sitting with them so this gave us an opportunity to be suitably gracious about getting this freebie. People from the D company were everywhere; this is their event. Michael came over and said 'Hi' and we introduced him to the people he didn't know. He knows John and Susan well enough. And us. Finally the squirmy people in their black tie garb settled in. I'd decided to wear a top with curvy silver decoration and tuxedo pants. There weren't many pants on women, but there are always some examples of everything. FFP chose his most radical vest. It looked good although it puts me in mind of Oscar Wilde. I don't know what that means. I think there's a famous picture of Oscar in a similar one. He really looked great in his outfit and even squeezed into a lovely pair of Bally pumps, too. They are patent leather with a grossgrain penny loafer effect and are quite elegant. No ordinary shoes or upsetting 100% patent rentals under his cuffs! It was moderately boring waiting to eat. I downed a couple of whole wheat rolls and the chardonnay. We had an interesting conversation about growing up poor on farms and ranches, were quizzed about my company's prospects. The conversation strained, however, against the noise and our creativity. The man to my left commented, after a discussion of how long people had lived in Austin, that if he ever became unmarried again he would stay that way. This didn't seem to be a productive or exciting line of conversation. Also, he was one of those people who misconstrued things you said intentionally to be funny all the while deadpanning. I found this less and less funny by the second as the appetizer is a long time coming. Perhaps, of course, he was really hard-of-hearing. Finally some great crab cakes. I eat every bite and every bite of garnishing greens. And drink more wine. The entrée comes and its veal confit and lamb and carrots and I also eat every single bite. The dessert I can't finish. Several of my dinner companions are upset that it isn't ice cream. It does look like ice cream. Coffee. An auction that seems to have cool bidding from limited quarters but does raise $50,000 or maybe $75,000. I didn't add it up. No one around me bid. Most wouldn't even hold a bidding paddle when I offered one from the stack in front of me. I liked a couple of the works although not as much as the Christie's auctioneer did nor as much as a couple of works I saw during the day's art crawl. Plus we have no walls! Surely some of these D-naires do, though. Unless their expensive decorators have already covered their walls thoroughly. One conversation we had with our companions was about these houses that are huge and expensive and devoid of books. Books add warmth. Not ones selected by the foot and mixed with knickknacks that are also cold decorator-selected things. But ones read and cherished. It's pumpkin time. It's time to sleep. It's been a busy day, absorbing people and art and a bright wonderful sunny coolness. What more could you ask. |
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