The Light Show

Besides the Monet exhibit at the Denver Art Museum (DAM), there was also a large collection of British portraits and an entire exhibit dedicated to light and how light plays out in certain genres. Several of the pieces caught my attention, including this sculpture using a series of monitors and an old pay phone. On the wall behind this piece was a set of sentences that read, "You watch to much TV. You read too much TV. You are too much TV."

I'm not sure if that's totally correct. While I fully admit that I used to watch a lot of TV when I was younger, I don't as much now. However, while I'm not watching as much TV, there's a certain amount of screen time with other technologies that aren't TV that have taken up the slack and I'm sure if everyone really looked at their own life, they'd probably see similar things going one with themselves as well. Most of us use a screen in our work and in our leisure, be it a smart phone, or a computer, or a tablet. Video games, YouTube videos and the like are constantly screaming for our attention, so this particular piece did hit a note.

While wandering around this floor of the museum, I actually walked right past an Ansel Adams print they had on the wall. How I missed it the first time around is beyond me since I'm a big fan of Adams and have admired his work from an early age. I even have a poster of this exact print that my wife gave to me for Christmas one year before we were even married. Suffice to say, she knew my tastes pretty well, even back then.

The funny thing about artists is we tend to revere what we like and usually, not always, but usually assume that because they are good in one field of art, they should be good in all fields. That's not the case and it's true with Adams. At one point in my life, there was an Ansel Adams show at one of the Claremont Colleges of his portraitures, which I attended because, as I said before, I was a fan of his. This exhibit was 100 portraits by Ansel Adams.

I'm sure others went away satisfied with this particular exhibit. I did not. I have come to the conclusion that Adams was not a good portrait person. I felt that most of the portraits lacked any kind of depth and they were sorely lacking when compared with his landscapes. But, as I've said in the past, art is subjective and others, I'm sure came away with a new found respect for him.

This particular print of Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico is one of his most famous images. He encountered the scene while driving down a highway from another photo shoot and had only minutes to set up his equipment and take an exposure. In fact, he only took this one exposure. Later, when asked, he couldn't remember the date the photo was taken, but an astronomer in Boulder, Colorado was able to use basic knowledge of when Adams was in the area, surveying tools, astronomical information, and moon cycles to later determine that the photo was taken on October 31, 1941 at 4:03 PM. This time has since been correct to November 1, 1941 at 4:49 PM. Apparently, the error was due to a number of things, including incorrect geographic coordinates and the curvature of a computer monitor. You can read the account here in a 1991 Los Angeles Times article. 

Perhaps why I didn't see this particular Adams print on my first go around was I was distracted by the hall of mirrors. Or at least that's what it looked like at first when I approached it. What looked like a fun house type of mirror exhibit turned out to be very interesting once I entered it.

First, I had to don booties to keep smudges off the mirrors. Yep, not only did this hallway have mirrors on the walls, but it also had them on the floors and ceilings, making for a very surrealistic tunnel that seemingly stretched forever in all directions. Because of the vantage point of all of the mirrors, you can actually see the booties I'm wearing in the third photo. Later in the morning, I had to walk through this again, even though it was only a 20 foot hallway. I really liked the illusion of floating on air.

I think I noted in my last blog entry that the DAM is undergoing some major renovation, so there's not as many pieces on exhibit at this time. Couple that with the two floors that were solely dedicated to the Monet paintings and there wasn't a lot to see there. However, what was available, was fascinating, in my opinion and it made me want to come back in a couple of years to take in the full museum once the renovations are totally complete.

My next blog entry will be devoted to the Monet exhibit.

Whimsical Art

The next day was devoted to driving to Denver, Colorado. The plan was to visit the Denver Art Museum (DAM) the following day because there was a large retrospective exhibit of Claude Monet paintings that had just opened up the third Monday of October. I had heard about this exhibit months before I retired and had decided that I wanted to see it and this was the perfect time to go. Other works of art that are temporary exhibits I hadn't been able to attend because of time restrictions mainly because of work. Now, with the time off and this exhibit only going to be at the DAM until February, I made it a priority to attend. I'll be writing about the Monet exhibit in a future blog post.

Those of you who know me well, know I like a variety of art, with photography up near the top of the list. I also enjoy whimsical pieces and temporary pieces of art. Usually, temporary pieces of art tend to be environmental pieces and so they blend in with the landscape. The Field of Lights that I wrote about here or much of what Christo and Jeanne-Claude have created, fall into that category. Because environmental art is usually outside, you get to watch the play of light or weather on the pieces, which creates different moods to the piece.

There were several pieces of art outside the DAM that fit this description. The first one that caught my eye was the Giant Broom and Dustpan outside the entrance of the museum annex. As you can see by the photo, it's a giant broom and dustpan with a couple of pieces of rubble caught up in the bristles of the broom.

The beauty of art is that it's open to interpretation. What some people find fascinating, others will look at it and go "Huh?"  Art is subjective. I like art like this. I also enjoy a good sense of humor, which the museum definitely has, based upon the sign at the base of the Giant Broom and Dustpan.

I get that the museum doesn't want people climbing all over the sculpture and they could have just posted a sign stating quite clearly, "KEEP OFF THE SCULPTURE." But where the fun in that? And so we're left with this sign posted at the base of the Giant Broom and Dustpan, giving appropriate behavior when around such a thing. Clearly, a lot of thought went into this, because it's appropriate to verbally abuse the broom, but it's not OK to skate on the broom. Looking at it, I could see where skaters might be able to grind on some of the bristles, which could damage the sculpture and probably put the museum in a liability bind. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose. And what's the difference between touching, fondling and caressing? Yeah, we could get into a lengthy discussion on that, but I don't think I really want to go there, do you?

I have a couple of regrets regarding this piece of work. First, I should have gotten a photo of the piece with a person near it so you could see the scale. This is actually a pretty large piece of art. Second, I should have gone back to see it after the snow fell that night. I was back in the same general area the next day and could have easily walked over and seen what it looked like with snow covering it, but I got involved in a couple of other things and it completely slipped my mind. And so it goes. 

My next couple of posts will be dedicated to art on the inside of the museum.

Change of plans

The day following my exploration of Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks, I headed towards Albuquerque, New Mexico. Originally, I was going to head west toward White Sands National Monument. But when I checked the White Sands website, I saw this alert; occasionally the road into the monument can close due to missile testing. Look here for the latest information. So I checked and sure enough, the day I'm supposed to be heading to White Sands, there's going to be missile testing. The website when further to say they could give a range as to when the road would be closed, but there was no guarantee that it wouldn't last longer. 

So I now have a slight dilemma on my hands. Do I risk it and take a three hour drive on a mountainous road only to be told that the road into the park is closed? I decided that I really didn't want to rush the extra driving, so I took a different route heading northwest directly to Albuquerque. Because I got to Albuquerque earlier than anticipated, I decided to visit Petroglyph National Monument which was just a couple of miles north of my motel. I'd never heard of this particular monument before, but as long as I was there, I decided I was going to explore parts of it.

My first stop was the visitors center off of Unser Boulevard just north of Interstate 40. As a teenager, I spent many springs and summers in Albuquerque visiting my cousins who lived there, but I wasn't aware of this park at that time. This was mainly because it was established as a state park in the 70s and was authorized as a national monument by an act of Congress in 1990. I got a map and decided that I was going to explore the Boca Negra Canyon area, mainly because it looked like that was a place where the petroglyphs were easily accessible and plentiful.

I got there at a perfect time, since most people who had been there were departing, so I had the area pretty much to myself and was able to enjoy looking at the different petroglyphs as I climbed up on the trail through the volcanic boulders that were piled up on this hillside/escarpment. After exploring that first trail, I then wandered over to the Macaw Trail, so named because of the prominent bird petroglyph right at the start of that trail. I walked that trail and figured I spent about two hours in the park before deciding to head back to my motel room for the night.

As I walked along the trails, I couldn't help but think about what might have been going through the Native American's minds as he or she scraped off the desert varnish on the rocks to create this piece of artwork. Were they trying to convey how beautiful that particular bird was, or were they merely creating an image of their food, much like what many people do today with their Instagram accounts? Also, what was going through the minds of some of the people from the present day who felt it necessary to scrape and scratch out things on the rock? As you can clearly see in the second photo, there are extra scratches that were mostly likely done by a present day visitor. Since Christianity wasn't in the area 700 to 2000 years ago when these petroglyphs were created, I know that the modern day cross I observed on one of the rocks was definitely not supposed to be there. This graffiti is pure and simple, vandalism.

And because the National Park Service is underfunded, it's not surprising that these national treasures get defaced and sometimes even stolen away. When I visited Craters of the Moon National Monument in August, there was clear evidence in several areas where lava flows had been broken off and taken home with people. It's almost like we have to lock up everything behind bullet proof cases in order to protect the treasures out there from idiots who feel that it's for them and who cares about anyone else. I was taught to look, don't touch unless it's OK to touch. I respected that rule growing up and I respect it today. Sometimes I don't get the attitude of some people. And yes, I can hear the grumpy old man in me right now yelling, "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

So I'll get off of my soapbox right now and tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed this extra highlight to my trip, one that I wouldn't have had time to see if my plans hadn't been altered in the first place. Life gave me a different thing to enjoy that day.

Above ground next

After touring Carlsbad Caverns, I had some extra time and I really didn't want to just hole up in my motel room, so I headed south out of New Mexico into Texas towards Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Guadalupe Mountains is an extension of Carlsbad Caverns, except, this is above ground. In other words, the limestone marine fossil reef that's below ground in New Mexico, is above ground in Texas, forming the tallest mountains in the entire state of Texas.

The park is primarily a wilderness area, so there are very few roads in the park, either paved or dirt roads. Consequently, you really need to be prepared when you visit this park. The original plan was to camp here, then head up to Carlsbad Caverns and explore what I could here. As luck would have it, this would have been the only place where I would have camped on this road trip, so I opted to leave the camping gear at home and just motel it on this trip. Although the campsites are first come first served, this park has a lot of visitors in the off season because the climate is fairly mild and it would have been problematic to even find a good campsite. So it ended up being a day trip.

I explored the visitors center, took in the National Park movie they offer, then decided to explore what I could in the time I had left in the day. I actually drove out of the park further south and to the west to get some great views of El Capitan, which is the main piece of rock at the end of the exposed mountain range. I'm not sure if you can actually see Guadalupe Peak, which is the highest point in Texas, from the road. I believe the tall peak to the right of El Capitan in the sign photo is obscuring Guadalupe Peak. There is a trail leading to the top of the peak, but that's a good 8 hour round trip, so I opted for a hike in McKittrick Canyon, which is very near the northern border of Texas and southern border of New Mexico.

I ended up hiking the nature trail at McKittrick Canyon, which was a short loop trail, which was very enjoyable and allowed me to get a feel for the entire park, but if I'd had more time, I would have worked my way back up into the canyon as there was a lot to explore there. As noted above, had I camped there for a couple of extra days, I think I would have also hiked to the top of Guadalupe Peak. Eventually, I can see myself coming back here, possibly in the next five years. I'll be in somewhere in Texas in 2024 for the next solar eclipse of the sun and this might be a good starting point. Hike a day or two, then work my way down to Big Bend National Park, then further east to view the eclipse. More road trips down the road.

Going underground again

Last month, I went on an epic 10 day road trip through four states. The second day was devoted to driving from Tucson, Arizona to Carlsbad, New Mexico where I would spend the next couple of days exploring both Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park to the south in Texas. I'll write about Guadalupe Mountains in another post later on.

The drive over to Carlsbad was rather uneventful, outside of getting into town after dark and having the Jeep basically sucking on fumes. No services on the road and I'm already 100 miles in with 130 to go and the sign says, next services, 100 miles. Ok, I can make that. Yeah, well the distance approximater in the Jeep doesn't take into account hilly terrain where the gas mileage and thus the mileage range of the vehicle will go down. Going up and over the Guadalupe Mountains tested my nerve, but the Jeep made it down the north side of the Mountains and into town where I was able to fill up the tank with about a gallon of gas to spare. I could just see my wife, had she been there, but I'm glad she wasn't.

The next morning, I got to the park fairly early, as I wanted to have a lot of time to explore the cave. I'd been there one other time in, I believe, 1983, but I don't remember much of it as my friend and I went through quickly since we had other things on our mind and places to go. I had no place to go that day since this was one of my destination stops. Still, I arrived and the cave wasn't open yet, but I got in line and got my ticket (which was free because of the National Park annual pass my daughter and son-in-law bought for me as a Christmas/retirement gift). 

I got my phone disinfected to prevent the possibility of carrying in white nose syndrome to the bats and began my journey into the darkness. I chose to use the natural entrance as opposed to the elevator mainly because I wanted to have a more natural experience. Taking the natural entrance also allowed me to see the swallows that nest at the entrance take off in the morning. Here's a video of them I took that day. 

Coming into the caves is like descending an 80 story building, but mostly on a paved pathway. Many of you know that I hurt my knee back in August, so this would be a serious test of my knee, but it passed with almost flying colors. Going down is always more difficult than going up on knees and this was no exception. By the time I was down at the bottom, my knee was barking at me, but it stopped once the path leveled out.

Perhaps it was the time of year, but I remember that there didn't seem to be as much reverence of the majesty of the place the last time I was there. I'll blame that on summer tourists. I remember it being so much more crowded back then and there wasn't as much time to just look around at the immensity of the cave formations. Coming in the off season was definitely the way to go. I was able to wander the trail in a logical fashion so I could see all the main formations as well as take my time in reading the various information kiosks set up along the trail. I'm not sure I can adequately describe the enormity of the place. It's huge. To give you an idea, if you look at the second photo, the drapery seen there is probably 50 feet tall. It's very hard to see the scale of this place, but I do know that once you're down in the Big Room, it's basic layout is much like a giant cross that's larger than the Capital building in Washington, D.C.

Once I had walked the entire trail, I ended up down near the elevators and decided at that time to take advantage of them going to the surface. I think many of the cave explorers that day, did the very same thing - walk down via the natural entrance and then come back to the surface via the elevator. 80 stories in just about 2 minutes. The last photo was taken along the Big Room trail and it's called the Chinese Theater. I really like the way this photo turned out, especially with the darkness of the non-lit areas around the edges of the photo.

Once up at the surface again, I chose to wander around the visitors center for a little bit, before I headed back to the Jeep. From there, I went out to find some lunch. I'd spent the better part of three hours underground and it's really amazing how you lose your sense of time, when you don't have any reference like the sun to tell you the passage of time. After lunch, I drove south into Texas to explore the same general area, but the above ground part in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

A new voting experience

This morning, I wandered over to my polling place to vote.  The city where I live had one thing on the ballot, whether to raise the sales tax within the city boundaries. Lots of signs all over the city expressed the two side adequately and I choose (as is my prerogative) to not tell you how I voted.

First, I don't like to vote absentee ballot. I like to go to the polling place and "ink" my ballot. From the looks of things, it looks like I won't be inking my ballot in the near future. They had two electronic voting booths and a woman was trying to find people who wanted to try it out. Apparently, the county of Los Angeles is moving toward this for the next election, meaning the primary in the springtime, and they were testing it out. By the looks of it, they need to work out more kinks in the system. Either that, or the voting machine just didn't like me.

I had my sample ballot's barcode scanned which brought up the pertinent information about me and then the precinct worker put a sheet of paper through a printer which printed my electronic ballot and told me to go over to the voting booth and follow the instructions. So I did. I got one step in and there was an internal code 103 error. Neither worker knew what that meant and they couldn't clear the machine without rebooting it. They also had to open up the machine in order to get my ballot.

Once someone had voted at the other machine, I asked if I could vote on that machine with my ballot. Sure.  So I went through the procedures again and the machine gave me the same error. Until I retired this past spring, I used to teach computers at the middle school. Thinking to myself and troubleshooting, my ballot caused two different machines to error, indicating that it's not the machine, but the ballot that's the problem, especially since it was taking other people's ballots and allowing them to vote.

So now, the precinct workers voided my ballot and we decided to go through the process again with a new printed ballot.  I figured I'd be their Guinea Pig this morning to help them out, although I heard both of them vent their frustrations that they'd not gotten any kind of training on these machines. That, in itself, is a very bad thing if they're planning on rolling these things out en masse next spring.

So a new ballot was printed, I went over to the machine, started the process and got the same error message - Error 103.  Troubleshooting again, now it appears as if perhaps it's not the ballot, but the machine at the source doesn't like me for some reason. Needless to say, we didn't go through the process on another machine after that, my ballot was again voided and I went over and voted the "old fashioned" way, by inking my ballot. 45 minute after I'd walked into the building, I was walking out with my "I Voted" sticker. At the moment, I'm not impressed, nor am I satisfied that this could stop willful hacking of the system. I may end up going to absentee balloting in the future.

Liquid

Once again, it's the end of the month, which means it's time, once again for P.J.'s monthly blogging challenge. The theme for this month was liquid. I have to be honest with this one. When I first saw the theme at the beginning of the month, I figured there would be no way that I would be able to come up with anything for the theme, let alone five shots. But, once the month got underway, I saw ways that this would work, so bear with me as I think I'm stretching the boundaries a little bit with this theme, but at least I didn't have to resort to any photos of snow. Snow? Yeah, I actually saw it snow in a city for only the second time in my entire life, but that's another story that I'll tell at another time.

I'm actually doing these in chronological order, which means this first shot was taken on October 20th. Yes, I did the entire theme in less than 10 days. At first, I thought that I might get by with 5 different cave photos, because after all, what creates a cave but water? And so I figured I was done, but I'll not post a bunch of photos of the caverns, because after all was said and done, I was able to come up with 5 different liquid shots. And to also be honest here, this blog entry is sort of a teaser for other entries I'll be writing about next month.

1. Phoenix, Arizona
In my last post, I mentioned that I would be on an extended road trip and I just came back from that one Sunday. The main purpose of the trip was a visit to the Denver Art Museum to see a very large collection of Claude Monet paintings. The collection was only going to be there from October to February, so I figured this would be the best time to go to avoid really bad weather. Anyway, the first day of the trip took me through Phoenix. And, as usual, I spent some of the time on the drive geocaching. I ended up in downtown Phoenix, where there is a large war memorial to all of the different wars our country has been involved in. Part of this park is where I discovered the USS Arizona's anchor. Pulled from the liquid depths of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, this anchor is on permanent display at this park in Phoenix. Around the base of the anchor are all of the names of the brave men who perished on that fateful day in 1941.

2.  Guadalupe Mountains National Park

This was a new place I'd never visited before and originally, I had planned on camping here, but things fell through on the opposite end of the trip, so I ended up staying at motels along the way. This was actually a good thing because camping was very limited in this park. The Guadalupes are the extension of Carlsbad Caverns, only above ground. I spent most of the morning exploring the Caverns, and after having thoroughly explored them, I ventured south to this national park, just across the border in Texas. This park is mostly wilderness, which means little to no roads and mostly backcountry camping and hiking, something I wasn't equipped for on this trip, but I was able to get a feel for this area nonetheless. 

West Texas is pretty much desert and the Guadalupe Mountains rise like an island out of this desert, providing refuge for an abundance of wildlife and plant life. I took this photo of this prickly pear cactus mainly because I liked the contrast of the brown and greens with the light violet of the flowers on the left. And if you're ever stuck out in the desert without water, you can, in a pinch, open up the cactus and get some liquid refreshment which will sustain you for a little bit.

3. Monet

The reason this trip happened in the first place was because of this collection of paintings. I can't remember where I first heard about this exhibition, but as soon as I knew about it, I started making plans to see it. The exhibition was falling at a perfect time: the fall and winter following my retirement. Since this exhibition was only happening during this time period, I probably wouldn't have been able to see it since I was working during most of that time. That's one of the benefits of retirement. I highly recommend it.

The main building of the Denver Art Museum is undergoing extensive renovation and the museum is in the annex building across the street. This means the collection of artwork on display is small at this time, but they had some interesting works dealing with the study of light. 

The bottom two floors of the annex were dedicated to Claude Monet and his life. Each of the patrons were given audio guides to learn more about the paintings and about different periods of his life. The galleries were arranged in approximately a chronological order. Since he created most of his lily pad and pond paintings near the end of his life, this was the last room of the gallery that I walked through. The way the liquid paint created the illusion of the liquid water in the lily pond is just amazing, in my opinion.

4. Chocolate Porter

Coming home later in the week, I ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of the nice things about traveling is checking out the local cuisine. There were times on this trip where I'd eat at a place that I was familiar with because I just wanted a quick meal and there were times when I wanted something a little bit more tasty and different. That night in Albuquerque was one such nice, so I decided to try a local barbecue place. It was recommended to me by the waitress that I try the burnt ends sandwich, a decision which I will not regret. I also have an affinity for dark, very dark beers, the kind you can almost chew. This chocolate porter certainly filled that bill and went quite well with the barbecue sandwich I had. The Nexus Silver Taproom will be someplace I will probably visit again should my travels take me through northern New Mexico.

5. Continental Divide
Finally, on my next to last day of my trip, I traveled from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Arizona where I would spend my last night. Heading toward Denver, I missed when I exactly crossed over the continental divide, but this spot along Interstate 40 is very hard to miss. With signs on either side of the freeway, it's pretty much a spot where travelers stop and get their photos taken.

It's also the spot, where liquid falling to earth gets separated. Rain and snow falling on the eastern side of the continental divide will eventually make it to the Gulf of Mexico. In this case, the water would flow into the Rio Grande, which forms the southern border of Texas with Mexico. Rain falling on the western side would eventually flow into the Gulf of California and into the Pacific Ocean. Most of the rain that fell here would flow eventually into the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon.

It's always intrigued me how cartographers were able to graphically map this out and figure out where each little stream would eventually drain. If you've ever looked at a map of the continental divide, you'll see some very interesting details. In southern Wyoming, it actually splits in two, creating a basin where the water doesn't flow to either, but either evaporates or flows downhill to the lowest point in that basin where it percolates back down into the groundwater. Further north, in Yellowstone National Park, there's a lake that literally sits right on top of the continental divide. The lake has two outlets, one flowing to the Atlantic Ocean and the other flowing to the Pacific Ocean.

For hiking enthusiasts, there's also the Continental Divide Trail, a national trail which loosely follows the Continental Divide from the southern border of New Mexico all the way to the northern border of Montana. Somewhere in this area, I also crossed over that trail.

And there's my interpretation of the theme liquid. Some might call this a stretch, but it worked for me. Please check out P.J.'s blog and scroll down to the bottom. You'll see other blogs and their interpretations of the same theme. And as always, feel free to comment. I won't bite.