Spooner Has Landed

My pal Spooner has been stateside for a week now, mostly in VT taking a course, and has dropped in a couple of times. Tonight I'm to drive to Ashburnham and fetch him and then we will have four days of adventures. We're thinking of going to the Berkshires one day to look at sculpture at Chesterwood and to shop for bargains at the factory outlets in Lee. I'm sure that we'll have to go to several of his storage spots so that he can visit his things and see what crap he needs to take back to England with him. He still hasn't located his prized Madonna and Barbara Streisand CDs anywhere, and I know that this is cause for high anxiety on his part. We'll also be doing some photo shoots, so watch for new things on my Flickr page. So far, Spooner hasn't broken anything and the cats don't seem too traumatized. Whew! Stay tuned for further updates.

The (Quarter-Baked) London Plan

...no matter how long you stay in London, London will wear you down and wear you out. London is intractable, insuperable, inexhaustible; the tourist is hapless, cowed, puny, and ultimately penniless. -- Joe Queenan, Queenan Country


I'm starting to plan my fall trip to London. It will be the third time I've been there. The first was a one-day lightning-round on a double-decker tour bus. I got off a couple of times to see a few sights and some less-popular (i.e. no queues) museums -- The Museum of London and the Design Museum. I discovered Postman's Park all on my own, WAY before anyone had seen Closer or heard of Alice Ayres. On my second trip, I was there for a week and saw a combination of tourist traps (Windsor Castle, the Cabinet War Rooms, the National Portrait Gallery) and low-cost, no-cost oddities like the Museum of Tea and Coffee, John Soanes Museum, the Geffrye Museum (housed in an old alms house), and took a trip to the end of the Victoria Line to see the William Morris Gallery and an old workhouse museum in Walthamstow.

The Queenan book is the first thing I'm reading as I begin my research for the upcoming trip. It's rather funny, but the thick overlay of crankiness that he's trowelled over everything is a bit much. He recounts his day trip to Liverpool, where a cabbie drives him around to see various houses and clubs associated with the Beatles, while avoiding anything to do with Sir Paul who both Queenan and the cabbie agree is overrated, treacly and full of himself. The cabbie tells Queenan of his friendship with John Lennon who was his best man at his wedding. Queenan has a fabulous time, but his bubble is burst when he returns to London and learns from a friend that the cabbie's stories couldn't possibly hold water. Quickly recovering from the disappointment, Queenan realizes that, truth or no, it was still a great day with marvelous company. The lesson here is this: England is a land of a thousand tales, many of them contradictory, apocryphal, or downright lies. This doesn't matter, however. Tourists need only find the stories they love, then immerse themselves and savor the experience. Who cares if it's shite!

Here's what I'm thinking of including in my itinerary:

• Pearlies' Harvest Festival
• Some markets I missed last time (Borough, Portobello)
• Camden Town
• Docklands (East London)
  
• Return to the Tate Modern
• Possibly a day trip to Brighton, Greenwich or some other destination if Spooner is amenable.

For further research, I'm planning to order a couple of books of walking tours, and I've joined the London-alt Flickr group (lots of interesting pix there). I'm open to all suggestions, tips, advice, etc. Leave them in the comments, okay?

Mass MoCA

ST was visiting from Philly this past weekend, and we drove to Mass MoCA in North Adams. (Sorry, Spooner. I went without you this time. But we can go again when you are stateside in a few weeks.)

Any trip to Mass MoCA must include a stop in the basement bathroom, a spiffed-up version of the Sprague Electric Company (Mass MoCA's previous incarnation) employee's washroom.

The main exhibit right now is Ahistoric, in which artists take historic material and refashion it or create anachronistic juxtapositions that have new meaning. More info on Mass MoCA's website.

In the gigantic space in Building 5 is Carsten Hoeller's Amusement Park, an eerie recreation of a broken-down amusement park. The space is dark and quiet, and the five rides periodically light up and begin to come to life with slow, jerky movements. The exhibit description says that the speed changes daily, and I think we must have been there on a very slow day. It's supposed to give you an altered sense of time and space. I've put pix of the Twister and the Gravitron Thriller on my Flickr page.

Another installation is a whole bunch of mirrored doors, at different angles and assembled in a circle so you can walk completely around it. It reminded me of the fitting rooms in old-fashioned department stores. There's a photo of that on the Flickr page as well.

Before we left the complex, we wandered around in back of one of the buildings and found lots of rusty relics of Mass MoCA's industrial past.

MOBA on boston.com

Here's a great little article, complete with audio slideshow (a must-see, but alas, Gina isn't featured), about the Hackneyed Portraits exhibit at MOBA: So bad, it's good

Gina Unveiled (Part 3 of the Saga)

Erin did a fine job of representing us at the gala opening of “Hackneyed Portraits” at MOBA. She also provided the pix below. I interviewed her about the experience.

M. J.: Set the scene for me. What was the event like? Who was there? What was happening?

Erin: Curator Mike Frank, wearing a tux, Louise Sacco, the Permanent Acting Interim Executive Director, and Garen Daly, Director of Special Events, were there and all were very welcoming. I think there were maybe about 20 other patrons of the bad arts milling about the gallery and looking at the works. Mike had chosen some great background music for the event – instrumental jazz accompanied by loons, and yodeling of the classics. As I made my way around the room, I definitely caught wind of the buzz in the air, “We have a donor here!” Tee hee!

M. J.: What’s this I read about “traditional MOBA snacks”? What did they serve?



Erin: Louise supplied the purple and green Kool-Aid and cheese curls as well as other chips and fruits. It was all very colorful and festive, in a garishly neon way. I stayed away from the cheese curls – I assumed that they weren’t vegan, but come to think about it, they may have been made with a chemical cheese food substance that wasn’t a dairy product at all.

M. J.: What about our painting? How were people reacting to it?

Erin: Well, when I got there, I immediately began searching for Gina, but I didn’t see her hanging among the 20-some other portraits. Turns out she was covered with a burgundy cloth. When the official part of the ceremonies started, Mike called me up and asked me to read the description as he unveiled the painting: "Frightening non-kosher demons haunt this blonde, blue-eyed beauty in a see-through blouse." Some people gasped, others laughed, all applauded. I felt so proud and honored. A woman came up to me later and asked if I’d be putting on my resume that I’m a patron of MOBA. I think I will! Woo hoo! (Blogger’s note: Erin was raised among mild-mannered Midwestern Episcopalians, and she never uses salty language or is the least bit sarcastic. “Tee hee” and “Woo hoo” are genuine indicators of great glee and enthusiasm.)



M. J.: What have you learned about the bad arts as a result of this experience? Do you have any advice to pass along to other would-be patrons?

Erin: This whole saga, from the acquisition to the unveiling, has taught me to trust my taste in bad art. I was telling Curator Mike that, when we first saw the painting at the flea market, we recognized its elements of badness but didn’t know if it was MOBA-worthy. “How could you not know?” he asked me repeatedly. I can now say with confidence that I will truly know bad art when I see it. As Mike says, “I don’t let good technique stand in the way of bad art.”