San Francisco- Day 4

I think we've zig-zagged across most of the city now.  We've been relying mostly on the public transportation and doing a whole lot of walking.  We rode the bus everywhere today.  On one bus there was a ninety-four year old woman who gave us a pretty great laugh.  She was hitting on the bus driver and telling all sorts of wild stories about her life.  Apparently she is like Alaska, everyone knows what it is but nobody wants to go there.  She definitely made our ride more interesting.


We went to Golden Gate park and The de Young museum.  They have a nice permanent collection.  There are a lot of American works including many colonial pieces and many from the Hudson River school.  There were a lot of landscapes, which aren't my favorite.  The hard thing about living so far away from great museums is that I have to visit them all in a few hours.  It's difficult to absorb that much work in a short amount of time.  I'd prefer to be able to see parts of the collections over extended periods of time so that I could digest them more easily.  S'est la vie.

The main reason for visiting the de Young was to see the Pablo Picasso exhibit they are currently hosting.  It contains just over 100 of the artist's personal collection, usually housed in the Musée National Picasso.  It was a great exhibit comprised of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints drawn from every phase of the artist’s career.  I enjoyed seeing the wide range of artistic movements and styles that Picasso went through during his prolific career.  There were pieces from his blue period, rose period, expressionist, cubist, proto-Surrealist, Surrealist,  and Neoclassical.  Seeing them all together gives you a real respect for Picasso's scorn of fixed ideologies.  Picasso's ability to assimilate new ideas, political influences

I wish the exhibit had been curated slightly differently.  It seemed to jump around too much. The works weren't really placed together thematically or chronologically.  I almost think placing them chronologically would have been the most interesting so it would show his progression through different styles and also demonstrate how he sometimes revisited previous periods and worked in multiple pictorial modes. 

The work in the exhibit is filled with paintings I have seen frequently.  I couldn't help but hear lines from my kid's Picasso book, Painting with Picasso (Mini Masters), in my head since many of the pictures were in the exhibit.


The exhibit is definitely worth seeing.  I always enjoy Picasso and seeing them in the flesh is always so much better.

San Francisco - Day 3

This morning we went out for crepes and then waited in line to ride the cable car.  We were the first ones on so I decided to hang off the side on the very front spot on the train.  It was fun.  I had a lot of tourists take pictures of me.  I'm totally famous now. (wink wink.)

I tried to take pictures while riding on the side.  Not such a great picture but a fun memory.

 We rode the cable car to China town and walked around for awhile.  Then we walked to Union Square and did some shopping.  All of our meals have been fabulous because we've been eating in all of these family owned restaurants and they are fabulous.  I love eating at places like that.  Today we had lunch at Sear's Fine Foods and dinner at Pompei's Grotto.

 

San Francisco - Day 2

This morning we got up early and went for a pancake breakfast.  We rode the ferry over to Alcatraz and took the audio tour.  It was pretty interesting to listen to the former guards and inmates talk about their years there.  I can't imagine being one of the guard's families who lived on the island.  What a crazy way to grow up.

 After lunch we rented some bicycles and rode from the pier around the coast and up over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County.  It was a great ride once I got my bike adjusted a bit.  It has been forever since I went on a real bike-ride.    It was a fun adventure.  The bridge is extremely crowded and I was almost mowed over by an enormous man in a fur coat but other than that it was great.

After dinner in a local Italian place we went for sundaes at Ghiardelli.  Fabulous day. 

San Francisco- Day 1

 For my 30th birthday (which isn't until November) my Mom took me to San Francisco, California.  It has been a long time since I have gotten to spend this much time with my Mom and this is a trip we have actually tried to take twice before so it was long overdue.  Two Fish is home with the girls.  My mom and I flew in late last night and we were off early this morning to see the sights.  We are staying right near Fisherman's wharf and we will be here until Monday.

The first thing we did this morning was go to Boudin's bakery for sour dough french toast.  Yum.

We went to pier 39 and did some shopping and saw the fabulous sea lions.  We ate lunch on the pier and watched the sea lions lounge about and try and push eachother off of the pier.

We went to Ghiardelli square and visited some of the art galleries.

The best part of the day was visiting the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  It seriously made my whole body buzz with excitement.  It has been so long since I have been in the presence of truly great artwork all in one place.  One thing home is missing is access to a great art museum.  The permanent collection is very nice.  I really wish I could visit them with my children and really let them experience the art the way it was meant to be experienced rather than showing them pictures in a book.  Sigh… Someday.

Anyway- we had tickets to the Stein exhibit and it was completely amazing.  It may be the best exhibit I have ever visited aside from when the Van Gogh museum exhibit came to the LACMA when I was in high school. 

Gertrude stein and her brothers Michael and Leo were extremely influential in the early 20^th century Bohemian Parisian art scene.  They befriended most of the most avant-garde artists of the time period and filled their homes literally floor to ceiling with paintings and sketches by these “wild beasts” and fauves’ artworks.  It was an astounding collection.  The exhibit features real photographs of the insides of the Stein homes that are literally mind blowing.  The collection was beyond amazing.  The pieces now reside all over the world and in dozens of museums and collections.  I can only imagine how much work went in to securing them for this exhibit. 

The exhibit is interesting not only because of it’s vast coverage of Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne (one Lautrec) and other 20^th century artists but the story of the Stein family’s connection with the artists.  I loved seeing a note from Picasso inviting them to lunch to “check out the latest Gaugains.” As if that is a normal everyday occurrence.  Some of the exhibit notes talk about Leo and Gertrude Stein having artistic differences and arguing over the importance of the cubist movement and practically dissolving their relationship.  I can only imagine the raging discussions that went on in that home.  The epiphanies that took place in those walls must have been incredible. 

The Steins had sketches and portraits of themselves by Matisse and Picasso.  They had Picasso’s early sketches preparing for Le Demoiselles d’Avignon.  They studied with these artists and have notebooks filled with notes. They introduced Henri Matisse to Pablo Picasso and inspired a bitter rivalry.  Sarah and Michael Stein were almost single handedly responsible for introducing Matisse’s work to the US.  I’m excited to read more about the Stein’s relationship with all of these people and about how the exhibit itself came together in the book I purchased of the exhibit. 

Completely inspiring and amazing.  A truly lovely day.  I’m such a lucky girl my mom brought me and lucky my wonderful husband is taking care of the girls.

Family Pictures From July

Just a few of the family pictures my cousin took last month during our family reunion.

Summer Is Starting To Fade A Bit

 Art time has been extremely relaxed lately.  We've been doing a lot of drawing at the kitchen table.  We've also been using a lot of sponge brushes for painting.  We have some with different textures and tips.  Mostly the girls are loving using roller brushes.  We have a dozen or so paintings made almost entirely with a roller brush.

Red Fish

New Fish

This little table has gotten a lot of use the past few years.  We use it for projects and lunch and everything in between.  It's a great stopping place between the swing set and the wading pool. Sitting outside with the girls is my favorite part of summer.  I may have to upgrade to a little bit larger table next year.  I probably should have just sprung for the larger one in the first place.

More Four Wheeling

We spent the weekend at the cabin with friends.  I should have been home cleaning my house and being responsible but escaping sounded so much better.  I love going to the cabin where there is no laundry and no internet connection so I can't feel the stress of all of the things I should be accomplishing.  Plus the girls get to run around and we all love it.  We can't keep Red Fish off the four wheelers.  She just loves riding around on them.  New Fish actually enjoyed riding this time but she will only go with Mommy.  (I guess she knows I am the best driver right?)

My favorite part of the weekend was laying on the back deck with Red Fish and watching for animal shapes in the clouds.  Summer is slipping away too fast.

Ballerinas At The Park

 Red Fish declared today "Ballerina Day" and New Fish happily agreed.  So they donned their tutus and we went to the park with Mimi for a picnic.  We've tried to go half a dozen times this summer but something has always ruined it.  I was really happy we finally made it!

Shaving Cream

We've tried shaving cream marbling twice before but this was New Fish's first time. This is a fabulous bathtub project (easy cleanup) but we did it outside and then used the hose.  We filled our trays with shaving cream and used an eye dropper to add liquid watercolors to them.

 Then the girls swirled the paint around with the tip of their eye dropper to create a marbling effect.  Then we pressed watercolor papers onto them.

The second their papers left the trays their hands went in.  I ended up with two naked children covered in shaving cream and dyed slightly blue.  They thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed the process though.  It's a great sensory activity.

These are their papers.  As soon as they've had a chance to dry more I will scrape the shaving cream off.

Dinosaurs

We made paperplate dinosaurs yesterday with friends.  The kids decorated their plates and cut out some dinosaur parts to staple onto the plate with pipe cleaner legs.  This was a good reminder of why I don't do many crafty projects where the product is important.  Red Fish cut out her dinosaur but I ended up cutting out tons of body parts and putting things together.  I like it so much better when they can do the projects entirely on their own.  We all enjoy it so much more and I feel like they get more out of it.

Explosions

 For cubscouts last week, we were working on our science belt loop.  I decided to focus on explosions. 
 To help the girls be included, I had them make a volcano out of clay earlier in the day.  We used air dry clay around a plastic cup.  Red Fish is fascinated by lava right now so she was really excited about the project.  They thoroughly enjoyed painting on the red lava.

 We had a scientist (one of the boy's dad is a doctor) come and take them through some explanations of the scientific method I posted on our back fence.  Then he drew some of my blood and showed the boys how blood clots.

 After we had talked through doing an experiment we errupted the girl's volcano.  We discussed what we thought would happen if we combined the vinegar and baking soda in an enclosed space instead of letting it fizz out of the volcano.

 We put baking soda in tissues and vinegar in ziploc bags and then dropped the tissue in an zipped it up. 

 The boys were very excited about their "bombs."

The highlight of the night was trying out the diet Coke and Mentos experiments.  The video is very short but if you pay attention you can catch me being shot in the face by our first attempt.

BFF

I got to see my BFF (Yes, I just seriously used that term) Lovely L for a little bit on Saturday.  We snapped a quick pic of us with our three girls.