Southern Detour

Ursula Von Rydingsvard, top; Anthony Caro, bottom

For the last few days, we have been traveling south from Maine. Our first stop was Storm King in upstate New York. Outside of Beacon to be exact. Storm King is a 500 acre outdoor sculpture park. It is breathtaking in it's beauty and vastness. The giant sculptures really have room to breathe, hopefully fulfilling the artists vision. It was pretty incredible to see these same sculptures that I had studied in school and had only seen on slide film. My favorite piece was by Menashe Kadishman, called "Suspended". Huge pieces of weathering steel made poetic by its graceful balance. We saw several pieces by Sol Lewitt, David Smith and Mark Di Suvero. I can't get Isamu Noguchi's piece, "Momo Taro" out of my head. Large pieces of stone cut and polished smooth on some faces, left raw but shaped in other places. Large hollowed spaces reminiscent of the place the pit of an avocado left when removed from the flesh. Everything was in beautiful condition and Storm King employed some interesting ways of mounting the outdoor sculptures to the bases that both reflected the piece but were clearly seperate from the piece.

Menashe Kadishman

From Storm King, we were on our way to Washington D.c. and then to Virginia. But first we decided to stop to spend the night at a campsite that was not a KOA. I'm not one for brand loyalty, but the KOA's are always clean and dependable with working wifi. They usually even have dog parks. So we found this little non-KOA in the south east tip of Pennsylvania. Turns out we were 10 miles from our friend Claire's mom's house on a christmas tree farm. In retrospect we should have just gone there. We descended deep down a very windy road, past old skinny cows and old wooden bridges until it finally emptied out into a little valley. The valley was so buried that it felt like you were in the bottom of a bowl. As we pull into this small, literally backwoods camp ground, that catchy banjo tune from Deliverence wafted into my head. All the people on the cabin porches stopped to stare and the little kids on bikes paid no heed to our truck. They just zoomed by as close as they could, completely ambivilant to the danger. We found a space next to a very shallow, clear as tap water creek in soft, barely tread upon grass. The space was private by way of being one of many empty lots in a row. We built a quick fire and drank some vodka and juice. One of the hillbillies came up, and in a thick drawl, asked Gabe if this was a custom made camper. Then they talked about the Redskins. There was a dog that, though friendly, wandered around the park, visiting all the campers. Some campers across the park had brought along a karaoke machine and were brazenly singing to entertain the rest of us. We locked up tight that night.

The next day, we were supposed to get up early and make the 3 hour trip to D.c. so that we could walk around the Mall and give old Bushie the bird. But we got up late and were way off schedule. We had a date at Brian's house that evening at 6pm. We got into D.C., looked for parking for about 20 minutes and then walked the dogs to the Hershorn Museum outdoor sculpture park for about 20 minutes. Gabe took some pictures and we ate at a sidewalk vender and then rushed back to the truck so that we could get on the road. We had to be in Blacksburg Virginia at 6:00.

Yoko Ono's piece about Wishes at the Hirschorn.

Brian is Gabes oldest and dearest friend. He and his wife Amy are corporate lawyers and they are raising two little girls Audrey and Sidney, Sidney being just 3 weeks old! It's funny to watch Brian and Gabe. They laugh at exactly the same things. A joke that will be chuckle worthy to the rest of us is sidesplitting to the both of them. One definitely gets a sense of they long long friendship. Brian and his older daughter Audrey have a great report. They seem to relate and communicate together on a level all their own with a high degree of mutual respect. Gabe is also great with kids. Gabe and Audrey immediately became friends, comrades, pals, chums and partners in crime. Audrey is a cute girl with huge blue eyes that turn down slightly at the outside, giving her a specific look that says, "It's ok that you love me, its not your fault. You can't help it." At two, she repeats everything. But she's smart. She pointed out a back hoe to me with the words, "Look, orange back hoe". Her hair looks to be in permanent pigtails, with a little fuzzy matting at the rubber bands. Her little pantaloons are always falling off her diaper. At the time of writing this rough draft, she was finger painting, thoroughly impressing her observers. Comments like, "That looks like a Cy Twombly" or "I'm pretty sure Marc Chagall sold something like that for millions" were heard often. We stayed in the guest room at Brian and Amy's. They were very gracious hosts and cooked us dinner and breakfast. I couldn't sleep so before dawn, I walked the dogs in the sub-development neighborhood, chaperoned by a neighbors very large, very friendly, very slobbery black lab.

Gabe holding Sydney and chatting with Audrey and laughing with Brian.

The last two nights we stayed in Louisville Kentucky. Louisville is a very cool city. It is now on our list of possible cities to move to. We lunched with Brandon Jones, one of my good friends from college. Blissfully we ate a mediterranean place with lots of great vegetarian options. (I'm so sick of gas station food that I may actually starve to death on this trip...) Brandon was great. He was funny as usual and he looked good. He took us to a huge beautiful park and then directed us to a hip local brewery and then departed our company for work. We had a beer and walked around the neighborhood looking at houses and discussing what we want in a house until Ted called. We GPS'ed it over to Ted and Sara's house. They have a cute little bungalo in Germantown with a huge beautiful back yard. The house was very cute with a loft ceiling in the back. Sara made up a big fire in the firepit outside in the backyard and we ladies drank wine and the gents drank Kentucky respectable bourbon and gingers. The dogs raced and barked at the cats in the windows. It was nice day. Louisville is a pretty cool place and extremely cheap to live in. Right now, we're in a small boring RV park outside of Memphis. We got in late and we don't have any wood or real food so we're relaxing in the camper with Regina Spektor on the stereo, reading and typing, respectively. We are tired from driving and from laughing at the Savage Love podcast by Dan Savage. Tomorrow we'll visit the metal museum and then head out on the road to eventually end up in Austin. Until then, au revoir.

Brandon telling me something about Louisville.

It is now Wednesday afternoon. I've had some internet hiccups so hopefully this will be posted once and for all. We went to the National Ornamental Metal Museum here in Memphis. It was awesome. It is staffed, founded and run by artists so it has a bit of a loosey-goosey feel but very heartfelt and passionate. Everyone we talked to from the catalogist Leila, the apprentice Jake, metalsmither Kevin and founder Jim "Wally" Wallace were incredibly knowledgeable, nice and fully willing to show us the ins and outs of the museum. It was a very homey place with a couple of interesting Artist-in-Residencies coming up that seem really inviting. Please check them out online at http://www.metalmuseum.org/. There is some interesting things going on with their permanent works and they have the most extensive library on metal literature in the country. It is definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far. This all just happened this afternoon so no pictures yet but I'll add them later.

Gabe driving and Conrad chewing on the baseball he found, no doubt hit at one point by a Louisville Slugger.