Stuff happening

Feeling more inspired, looking at classes for winter: an acting class working in verse (which I'll have to audition for), or a beginning play-writing class (which I'll have to apply for), or some other story-oriented courses.  Any of them would be useful.  I've been thinking a lot about story telling, what I like to see/hear, and I don't know if I can do it yet, but since that auditioning class year, it's been on my mind whenever I watch a show: what is the point-of-view?  What is the director/writer trying to get at?  And the projects that work best for me as an audience member, are the ones where I can engage in at that level, and I realize that's not important to everyone, but I want it.  I'd like to figure out how to do it.  (I can be all over the map, myself.)

Also, I skipped this art training (and was thankfully able to do a make-up session on Saturday) in order to attend this party at the Burke Museum on Thursday, where the drinks were strong and after having one I had conversations about poison frogs while I casually picked up mollusks and let them cruise along my hand (the snail was interested, the slug sorta' went to sleep.) Later I moved on to have a long discussion about spiders with a spider expert (those big, purplish spiders running across the floor and hanging out in the bathtub are probably male spiders looking for a mate.  The females are usually hiding somewhere.  They all spend their whole lives in your house, beneficial, as they eat other insects in the house.  Not likely to ever actually bother you.  European house spiders.)  I guess you could also have held a tarantula or a snake, but those lines were longer, so I didn't.  And opossums are remarkably soft, just as a reference, you probably don't want to be petting one in your yard.  (And whoever planned that event, that was a brilliant marketing move, both for fundraising, and for getting people into the museum; they had to turn people away.)

The art training was to be an "activator" for Franz Erhard Walther cloth sculptures.  A friend had printed out the volunteer opportunities at the Henry Art Gallery and left the paper on my desk, so I signed up, not really knowing what it meant; I thought it was helping the public directly interact with the material.  Instead, we unfold the clothes and then "put them on,"  and essentially become part of the sculpture itself.  These are all from the 1960's, I think.  The artist was there on Saturday to go over them and answer questions.  We will only be able to "activate" ones that we practiced with.  There is one where two people are essentially yoked by the material, about three feet apart and facing each other, and that one almost feels like performance art.  There is something that happens in the intimacy of the distance, much like the chair work in Meisner.  I didn't actually do it on Saturday, but I learned it, so I can do it in the future.  I want to do it, I'm curious how we will react.  All the other ones were held taut, but this one can't be because it's around your neck; someone commented that it felt like the material was alive, because it moved with the breathing.  Anyway, there's an open house on Thursday, and the show runs through March.  Not sure how often the sculptures will be activated.

That two-person one made me think about cultural differences with distance and contact.  The artist mentioned that once, when another piece where people step through, facing one another, was in a gallery in Europe, how a man from one culture just stood still the whole time, and the woman facing him, from another culture kept walking back and forth through it.  I find it all very interesting.  (Like in greeting and leave taking, do you bow, shake hands, kiss, hug?)  Anyway, I'm excited to be a part of this.

After the training there was an "art break" where a group of us experienced and discussed Pae White's "Command-Shift-4" which is downstairs.  Inspired by the supergraphics of Sea Ranch, California, it's made of yarn, paint, and numbers.  Someone commented that it was similar to the "half the air in a given space" exhibit in the filling up the space with very little, how all (except the bull head), the materials in this show could fit in a paper box, and yet they take up the entire ballroom.  I was wondering how different generations see it, for instance, spending my early childhood in the 70's, it made me think of funk, cartoons, album covers, and Detroit.  One of the curators, who must be around the same age, got the references, but didn't think of Detroit (as he is actually from there.)  But what does someone born in 2000 or 1990 think of?  I had a very strong, distinct reaction to it, I don't usually (though I cried when I stood in front of both El Greco's "The Holy Trinity" (something about the face of the angel in blue) and Picasso's "Guernika.")  Triggered memories.  (And I love the tours and the discussions that bring more depth to the experience of art.)

Also, found out about a show I was hoping to see, so will definitely try to go, and just got back into cold-reading practice again.

Been in a bit of a funk, but waking up again.