Avery and Art

My trip to The Big Easy ended over a week ago, but processing what I learned will take me months. I think I will just take one step at a time and today I plan to reflect on my time with my dear friend - Avery.

Avery and I met in 1977 when we were both attending the University of Kansas. We were introduced through mutual friends and , as I remember the story, we made an instant connection. I was the maid-of-honor at her wedding and the rest is history.

Even though she lives in Mobile, Alabama we have reconnected over the years through Christmas cards and periodic visits. We picked up right where we left off even though it had been fifteen years since our last in-person visit.

Avery is a thinker and a doer; and, I immensely enjoy her company.

New Orleans Museum of Art

She built a successful small business over the past twenty years, Complete Safety Works, raised three boys into marvelous men and she is married to Geoff her wonderful husband of almost forty years.

I admire her southern charm, vast intellect, unwavering courage, and fervent work ethic.

Plus, she is a ton of fun!

Our thought-provoking conversations help me to see the world a little clearer. Ave and I do not always agree on politics, but we are able to discuss and debate issues in a civil manner.

I wish this was true for all Americans.

On Monday and Tuesday of my trip, Avery immersed me in the New Orleans art scene and my creative juices are still flowing. We spent time in the New Orleans Museum of Art and its fantastic sculpture garden that occupies eleven acres around the museum.

“The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden occupies approximately eleven acres in City Park adjacent to the museum. Atypical of most sculpture gardens, this garden is located within a mature existing landscape of pines, magnolias, and live oaks surrounding two lagoons. The garden design creates outdoor viewing spaces within this picturesque landscape.”

https://noma.org/background/

My pictures do not do it justice, but the museum and sculpture garden presented classic and modern art almost side-by-side. Juxtapositioning the old and new works was a mind trip and I am still trying to grasp all the takeaways Diana and Venus Victorious.

(Wait until you see the Golden Log Cabin in my next blog post.)

One of my absolute favorites was the sculpture called Karma by Korean artist Do Ho Suh.

“Karma is an intriguing sculptural installation by Korean artist Do Ho Suh that presents countless men sitting atop one another while shielding each other's eyes. Like his Cause & Effect piece, which features a spectacular tornado of figurines, Karma presents figurative sculptures ascending into the sky like a human ladder. However, in addition to being perched on each other's shoulders, they are successively blinding one another which leads one to wonder: Why? His work continually questions one's identity and individuality by using the human body. These stainless steel men, though recognizably different entities, appear to move as one. While the piece is open for interpretation, it makes one question whether the idea behind it is to present the figure of a man blindly following in the path of his ancestors before him, who have risen a step closer to the heavens with each new successor in the lineage.”

https://mymodernmet.com/do-ho-suh-karma/

Fun fact: This same artist Do Ho Suh has a sculpture in the Nerman Museum of Modern Art in Overland Park, Kansas. I am looking for my photo of this sculpture but for now, I will “borrow” from the JCCC collection.

So much more to process about the City Park of New Orleans, the art gallery, and the sculpture garden. I was so impressed with this area. The City Park is about the size of Swope Park, as they both were created for urban dwellers to give them a break from the city. The train and merry-go-round reminded me of the little Riverside Park and Zoo in Independence, KS, my hometown. Obviously, a much smaller scale, but giving people the break they need much the same.

We ventured inside the art gallery as well and on the way to the airport, Avery took me to the New Orleans School of Cooking and we enjoyed a fabulous lecture about the history of food in New Orleans learning the difference between cajun and creole food.

I will leave both of those subjects for my next blog posts.

Thanks for reading!