Brash and outspoken, traditional and gorgeous, if you love great art, North Carolina is happiness. This and this post introduced how much I love the North Carolina Museum of Art. That was in only one of their two buildings…
A second one houses a collection that dates as far back as Egyptian mummies…
… and as recent as works by the artists commissioned to paint official portraits of former U.S. President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama…
What’s your favorite art museum?…
What a great time my husband and I had visiting our dear friend David Hunt in North Carolina. He’s posted on Happiness Between Tails here and here. We hadn’t seen him in way too long — all the more reason that my recent discovery of the touching PBS series, “We’ll Meet Again,” gets me blubbering.
What did we expect of North Carolina? Who knows, but it wasn’t an abundance of terrific art museums!
Let’s start with the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. We loved it so much that we visited it three times! No, was it four? If it wasn’t, it should’ve been! ( ! ! These ! ! aren’t ! ! understatements ! ! )
Lucky for us (and how lovely it was to be among crowds of NC fine art lovers!) we caught a tribute to U.S. art goddess Georgia O’Keefe, a.k.a. Mother of American Modernism before it ended.
Alongside her art, there were O’Keeffe-inspired works by contemporary artists. Here’s a sampling.
And here’s another wing of the museum…
Where’s your favorite place to see great art?
Great art, impressive art, and terrific art! That — though foremost the wonderfulness of spending time with our dear friend in North Carolina — defines the marvelous visit that my husband and I had. In this post, I explained how we had the good fortune to catch an exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art that featured work by the enormously influential American artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. (And here I tell about another wing of the museum.) In addition to her art, the show featured works inspired by O’Keeffe…
Is there an artist who inspires you?
Truman Capote was a genius writer and spoken word performer. He’s best known for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Yes, the movie version that starred the lovely Audrey Hepburn but that horribly mangled Capote’s marvelous novella.
Here Capote reads aloud his heartbreakingly sweet and profound autobiographical “A Christmas Memory”…
Here, along with his “Among the Paths to Eden,” is him reading the real version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”…
Have you read any of Truman Capote’s stories?
“Flamenco & the Sitting Cat” is the title of the first of my soon-to-be self-published novels. The ‘Sitting Cat’ part of the title refers to the geographical shape of Iran…
I grew up with only classical music — and flamenco music and dance. My father, who left Barcelona in his mid-20s, wanted it that way. Since I left home at 18, it’s a gift to watch any type of dance I like and to listen to every kind of music that comes my way.
I still love classical — and flamenco! Especially fascinating to me is when flamenco is fused with the dance of Iran, where my husband was raised. Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam is an Iranian dancer now residing in France. Flamenco is as much about individuality as it is about technique — it accommodates all cultures, all forms of beauty.
If only politics were as intent on creating a climate of ‘we’ rather than an ‘us vs. them’!
The way Ghalam (click here for his Facebook page) fuses dance styles is respectful and hypnotic…
For more flamenco, check out Part 3: Marvelous Madrid — Flamenco
What fusion art do you enjoy?
Not feeling holiday cheerful? Don’t despair — holidays are merely dates on the calendar. Before you know it, they’ll be over and done with.
Here’s confirmation that Xmas isn’t always merry — but life can still be funny or at least interesting. The Davenport family holidays, as realized by John Waters, the king cult film-making, with the help of Devine who departed from us far too soon…
Are you feeling holiday-ish?
I love Spain! It’s no accident that one of my soon-to-be self-published novels is called, “Flamenco & the Sitting Cat.”
A dream to sightsee on foot, León, Spain, was the next to last stop of a fun-filled vacation that my husband and I began with a weekend in beautiful Barcelona and then a stop in wonderful Huesca. We crossed the French border into pretty saint-jean-pied-de-port, enchanting Espelette, and phenomenal French Basque Country cities Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Bayonne, and Biarritz. Upon our return to Spain, we enjoyed delicious food and seaside dogs in San Sebastián, and then the breathtaking city of Bilbao.
León, founded in 29 B.C., has so much fascinating architecture that the two days we visited weren’t enough to see everything. León’s gothic Santa María de León Cathedral was constructed mostly during 1205 to 1301, its north tower and cloister during the 14-century, and its south tower in 1472. Ever see Mother Mary pregnant? (Tap on photos to see them bigger and their captions.)
It’s an important cathedral on The Way of Saint James (El Camino de Santiago) religious pilgrimage route.
Architect Antoni Gaudí welcomes company. He’s best known for Barcelona’s Sagrada Família Cathedral. In León, he designed Casa Botines from 1891 to 1892. In 1929, it became a bank but has since reverted to its original appearance. Downstairs featured a display of Francisco Goya’s political cartoons.
Spain’s homestyle food (unlike typical restaurant fare most anywhere) is loaded with delicious veggies. I swooned when we happened into a tiny eatery that cooked like I was visiting someone’s gourmet granny — we ate there twice! Every single morning, ‘a comer’ take out restaurant owner Susana shops for the best of what’s in season, then cooks a new menu from scratch — thank you from the bottom of my stomach, querida Susana!
Our hosts, Marco and Mariu, made our stay at their home extra cozy and our visit to León extra memorable — many thanks to both of them!
It was time to hit the highway to Madrid!…
