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January 28, 2016 by Kat

A View of Dublin

  
Last week was a whirlwind trip to Dublin, Ireland for my corporate job. The week was busy with meetings and dinners and travel, but I did manage to squeeze in a day and a half of exploring the city over the weekend before heading home. Here are a few images of this great city. I hope to get back very soon!

I started out wandering the streets… Yes, Starbucks is everywhere.

  
My favorite thing is finding interesting scenes on streets and back alleys. Oh, and bicycles. Mission accomplished in the Temple Bar area!
  
  
Wandering into Trinity College is like pausing for a deep breath in the middle of the busy city.

  
I saw the Book of Kells (no pictures allowed) and the amazing old library. A true book lover’s dream, that library. I stayed in there for a while, just soaking up the feel and the smell of the place.

  
  
Midday I met up with my friend Tom who recently moved from Corvallis to Ireland. Together we wandered some more, me always looking for interesting scenes, sometimes dragging Tom across streets and down alleys. 

   
   
Eventually we found our way to the National Gallery to take in a Turner exhibition, and then met up with some other new friends from work. We went to this amazing Italian restaurant, where I had the best gnocchi since living in Italy. Mmmmm.

Meeting and connecting with people through work is one of the more wonderful parts of business travel. While I often don’t have much time for outside exploring and socialization, the connections with the people I work with, sometimes extending to their families and friends, makes the experience of the place so much richer than when you visit solely as a tourist. I’ve learned to always take up offers to meet for a meal, or a walk, or to see a sight that is important to the culture or a shared interest. My experience of a place is so, so much richer. 

Before heading out to the airport, I managed to squeeze in a visit to Kilmainham Gaol, learning more about the history of Ireland in the process.

  
And a quick visit to the Irish Museum of Modern Art as well. This 1937 Salvador Dali painting, Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, was part of a temporary exhibition on love. Not a big fan of surrealism, this is one of the few Dali paintings I have ever liked.

  

My favorite exhibition was Nick Miller and the studio of Edward McGuire. In 2009, Irish painter Edward McGuire’s widow donated 130 items from his studio to the museum. To “avoid a detached, museological approach” of displaying and explained the studio contents, artist Nick Miller researched and reinterpreted the items through his own work. It was exceptionally interesting and well done. I don’t have any good pictures of this exhibition unfortunately, but there is some additional information you can explore online.

Then it was off to the airport to discover one of my flights had been cancelled due to the weather on the east coast, and to be rerouted I would have to leave the following day. A small glitch in plans, an extra night in an airport hotel, and I made it home safe and sound.

  
And speaking of safe and sound… Patrick and Brandon were in a car accident while I was gone. It was a hit and run, the other drivers fault. They walked away without a scratch, but my car is likely totaled. 

  
Scary all around, but makes you realize what is truly important in life: It’s people, always people. Everything else is secondary.

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: art museum, city, dublin, exhibition, ireland, travel

November 17, 2015 by Kat

A Human Snow Globe

Every now and then it’s good to step out of the routine. Whether it’s through a vacation or a class or a retreat, it gives you a chance to look at things from a different perspective. Things get swirled up internally, giving you the chance to review and reconsider your direction. Giving you new tools to use moving forward.

Last week was a jam-packed week for me. It started with a relaxing, but rainy, yoga retreat at the Oregon coast. Good food, good company, good times. After two years of attending right after my open studio, I consider this retreat a little reward after my art fair season. 

   
Normally I would come back from the retreat to my everyday world, rested and recharged. Instead, I went straight from the retreat to the airport, and heading to California for a week-long business and leadership course taught by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 
It was a crazy week, “on” from 6am for a bit of exercise to 9 or 10pm with studying or socializing with colleagues from around the world. Intense classes and discussions, full of new ideas. Whew. 

While the content and the tenor of the course was quite different from the retreat, I realized they had something in common: Good food, good company, good times. A great group of people, brought together by a common goal and interest, is always an invigorating space.

  
And the two events had one other important thing in common, too. They both provided the opportunity to step outside of my normal life. They both swirled up thoughts and ideas that may land in a different place. I’m like a human snow globe right now, a blizzard of sparkly thoughts flying around. Things will be different as they land.

Life is change. If you don’t seek opportunities to learn and grow, they will find you. Sometimes it’s good to get out of your routine and stir things up, whether it’s through a quiet yoga retreat or an intense business course. 

It may be a while, but I’ll let you know when and where all these sparkly new ideas land. 


Busy weeks mean simple edits! Info on the photos:

Top
: Oregon Coast, edited using the Formulas app.

Middle
: Hoover Tower on the Stanford Campus, edited using the Stackables app, my Heceta formula

Bottom
: Rodin sculpture garden on the Stanford campus, edited in Snapseed. I was able to get an art fix during my morning walks at Stanford. An unexpected bonus!

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: art museum, California, Oregon Coast, travel

June 21, 2015 by Kat

Days in Del Mar

Another week come and gone, five days in Del Mar went by in the blink of an eye. You think when you plan a business trip that you will have more time than you really do. But between early meetings and late dinners, there was very little free time. So much for taking advantage of staying near the beach! That’s why it’s called a “business trip” and not a vacation, I suppose.

I did get a couple of morning walks in on the foggy beach…

I had one beautiful evening…

And managed to get a quick stop in at the San Diego Museum of Art. A wonderful find there is the work of photographer Lalla Essaydi. These incredibly detailed, large format color prints were exquisite and intriguing in their subject matter. I encourage you to look her up and learn more.

Now I’m back home and getting back into the routine. Until Thursday, that is, when I’m off again. Stay tuned to find out where!

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: art museum, beach, California, palm tree, photographer, San Diego

July 19, 2013 by Kat

Seeking Artistic Inspiration

One of the best things we can do for our own artistic development is to view the work of other artists. Viewing the art in books or online is ok, but seeing a body of work in person, life-size, as intended to be viewed is a much stronger experience. It’s immersive. You don’t just “see” the art intellectually. You feel it, you become part of it. And you discover new things about yourself as an artist.

So I was excited to be in Chicago for a few days, a big city with lots of art opportunities. I didn’t see as much art as I might have liked to… It’s always a balance when traveling with the family. I don’t want to go off by myself too much, but I want to have a little time for this experience I love so much. I managed to sneak in a few different visits, and made a couple of discoveries I’ll share with you today.

Abelardo Morell

I had a couple of hours to spend at the Art Institute of Chicago, and was lucky enough to see the special photography exhibition, Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door.

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I’ve seen Morell’s camera obscura work in a couple of magazines and have looked at his website before. I love the juxtaposition of the outside world onto the inside. It was very cool to see the progression of this work from the early black and white with the upside down projections, through his transition to color, and more recently the tent work, where he projects images on to the ground. The combination of landscape image and ground texture is fascinating to me.

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But what was even more interesting was the depth and breadth of his other bodies of work included in the exhibition, and how they all captivated and delighted me. He has a wonderful way of seeing interesting things in the every day. His ability to see and present the most mundane things in a surprising way is an example of what photography can be, at its best. Sometimes I feel a little jaded with photography, as if everything has already been photographed a thousand times over. Morell’s work reminded me that there is always a fresh way to look at things, and we can cultivate and develop our own unique perspective, even in the deluge of photographs shared every day. It is something I strive for.

I was so inspired by his work, I bought the exhibition catalog and I will be poring over it now that I’m home. You can visit Morell’s website here and the exhibition website here.

Louis Comfort Tiffany

Navy Pier, as one of the main tourist spots in Chicago, was disappointing. My impressions were nothing but heat, tourists, and an exorbitant $18 price tag for our family to have ice cream. I had read about the free Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows, and we found this fantastic display inside as we searched for relief from the heat. It completely redeemed our visit to Navy Pier.

Most of the stained glass I’ve seen is in churches and cathedrals, and with the exception of a couple of places with more abstract designs, it’s been less than interesting to me as an art form. This museum transformed my thinking on stained glass, with the discovery of the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Of course I’ve heard of Tiffany lamps before, but they’ve never really caught my eye. But did you know that he did incredible landscape windows?

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They were amazing. The colors, the depth, the feelings he could evoke, all surprised me. I fell in love with his work.

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This man was a genius with glass. He developed an amazing array of techniques to create different effects with the glass.

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We think of photography as the art of capturing light, but stained glass is an art of capturing light in a completely different way. (Kim, these poppies made me think of you!)

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I was inspired by Tiffany’s use of color and simple shapes to convey a complex scene. I’d love to develop a way to create images that evoke a similar look and feel.

Who knew that a cruise through this little museum to beat the tourists and the heat would yield so much creative inspiration? You can find more on the museum here and on Tiffany’s work here.

Frank Lloyd Wright

I fell in love with Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture when I first visited the Gordon House here in Oregon a number of years ago. Architecture, even more than 2D art, is something you need to physically see and experience to understand. I wasn’t impressed with anything when looking at the outside of Wright’s Gordon House, but the inside! Wow! I finally understood what all of the fuss was about.

So having the opportunity to see another of Wright’s houses while in Chicago was something I couldn’t pass up. I visited and toured the Robie House, in Hyde Park.

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It was great to learn more about Wright’s history, and to see another of his styles of architecture. Robie House is considered one of the ultimate examples of his Prairie House style, intended to give a feeling of the spaciousness of the prairie in the urban environment.

I love Wright’s use of space and attention to detail, everything down to the fixtures and furniture. The patterns and designs he created for each building appeal to my sense of order. There is always a wonderful repetition of motif in his work, like this leaded window pattern.

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We couldn’t take photographs inside the house, but it was great to be inside, to see and feel the spaces. It was also great to compare the Prairie House style of Robie House with the Usonian House style of the Gordon House, and to discover I liked the Gordon House better. In thinking through why, I learn more about myself and my preferences. It’s all good artistic inspiration.

You can learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright here, the Robie House here and the Gordon House here.

While I didn’t get to explore art in Chicago as much as I would have liked to, I think I brought home some fantastic inspiration and discoveries that will stay with me. It doesn’t take a lot of time to be inspired by other artists, but the benefits are long-lasting.

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: Abelardo Morell, art museum, Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright, Illinois, inspiration, Louis Comfort Tiffany

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