Willow Goes to the Aquarium (picture heavy post!)

Last Friday, Angie and i took Willow to the city aquarium! We had a wonderful time. She and i both have a close relationship with him. He and his family live at Twin Oaks as well, but because his mother is Dutch, they come to Europe frequently, and they'd been staying with me for a couple of weeks in Barcelona, which i was thrilled about. Anyway, Angie and i are kind of like his crazy aunts. And we adore him.

The aquarium is near Port Vell. You walk into a atrium area where there are lots of plants growing, and walk down a ramp to get to the main aquarium.



Willow is an extremely smart child, and i say that without the bias of the "crazy aunt." He's engaged and he remembers and thinks quickly and critically.



Willow and i were both quite into the blue lobsters. I was particularly interested also in the fish in the Wrasse family, which were all very colorful.

I loved sharing this with Willow - he and i were equally excited about the animals! Okay, i might have been more excited.





The best part was the tank that was tube-like, with a moving sidewalk going through the tube. Sharks swam over your head!



It was SO COOL.



After the tanks, we came to a playground-like area.



There were tanks that you could get underneath, with manta rays in them!



There must be something very interesting up there...



Willow is an underwater explorer!



After the aquarium, we went to lunch with ice cream for dessert!



And then we headed home...





A VERY fun day!

Strange Paths

When i was three, we had an exchange student from Spain - from Sitges, to be precise, which is within Catalunya, and only about an hour's train ride from Barcelona. After thinking about it and being busy and not getting around to it and forgetting, i finally got in contact with her and we met for lunch last Wednesday!

It was a little strange, meetings like this have a high potential for awkwardness. The last time we saw each other i was maybe 7, when she surprised us with a visit at Christmas.

And twenty years later....



She took me out to a restaurant in Gracia, the artsy, high-end fashion area of Barcelona that is home to lots of Gaudi's work. The place we ate, Cerveseria Catalana, was very typically Catalan, as one might imagine from the name. We had tapas, and she introduced me to a Catalan onion dish that was delicious.

Roasted green onions, from which one peels the outer layer, then dips the soft white part into a sauce made of oil and vinegar, roasted red pepper, spices and some other ingredients. Yum!

We barely made it - she was leaving for Prague with her family the next day, and i would be gone by the time she got back, so it really was our last chance to meet, and i am really, really glad we did!

Dali is Not Overrated

On Thursday, Ethan and i went to Figueres, a town almost to the French border, to see the Dali Museum. We got on the train early in the morning, and an hour and a half later i was thrilled to see the Pyrenees mountains in the distance!





There are several, of course, but this is THE Dali Museum - the one he put together himself, which is what makes it so very amazing. It's supposedly the largest surrealist object in the world, and i believe it. It's so much more than a gallery where paintings hang; the whole thing is one big installation. It's like walking through one of his images. I LOVED it. We both did.

The building that houses the museum is a theater that was damaged during the war, and when it was rebuilt, it was rebuilt specifically for this purpose, but Dali apparently loved the idea that it was a theater and so it wasn't changed much, to my understanding. There's a courtyard that houses this sculpture:



Inside, there's a stage like setup where there's a massive, massive painting, and the tiers of the theater where the seats would be have been enclosed to make gallery hallways. The wings of the stage also have galleries, and everywhere there are alcoves housing curious installations, like this sculpture which included some kind of piano and the whole thing had music playing in the background.

One of my favorites was a piece where you walked up to a hole in the wall, looked in, and discovered a magical wonderland on the other side.



One whole room was taken up by "Portrait of Mae West," and you had to climb up this small staircase to get in the right place to view it. Coming in, it looks like this, and from the staircase, you see...



I was also excited to see a lot of prints and drawings, which aren't usually featured, seems like the curators pass over them in favor of melting clocks.



I also loved this drawing of his wife, Gala, who features prominently in his work. It looked also to me like some of the signatures on the pieces said both Gala and Salvador Dali. I wondered if she assisted in his pieces or if some of them were hers and she didn't get any credit.

After the museum, we went to this restaurant i had found online the night before, the only vegetarian restaurant in Figueres, El Cafe del Barri Vell. It was AMAZING. A tiny little restaurant with a funky exposed-beam ceiling and warm red walls with creative but simple food that was clearly prepared with a lot of care.



We had this sampler of guacamole, hummus, and baba ganoush, and all three were some of the best examples of each. I also had a salad with avocado, fresh soft cheese, peanuts, and a mint-orange vinaigrette. Here's the best part - it was cheap!

Then we walked around a little while longer, and came home on the train. DEFINITELY worth the travel time.

[ Fill This Space ]

The end of semester exhibition, [ Fill This Space ], was last Friday, the 12th, and it went well. I wore the fancy velvet dress i made, and i got lots of compliments on it! I was very happy that my framily was able to come - Ethan, Angie, Pax, Hawina, Sky, Kassia, and Willow were all there, as well as some friends of Pax's that happened to be in town that day. The school looked great and there seemed to be a healthy turn out, though i left after an hour and a half.

Some of my work i displayed in my studio, and my main piece was displayed as more of a "showcase" piece, with almost a whole room to itself. Those of you who have been reading know that i've been working with the theme of the body, and this was a continuation, or rather the first step in a project that is the culmination of all these thought processes. At the beginning of the year, i sent a ton of emails out to friends and acquaintances and posted on forums and facebook and myspace asking for people to send me their "body stories" - we all have them, and i'm fascinated by how they affect us and how we carry them within us. The response was completely overwhelming. I was humbled by how many people chose to share some very raw and hard things with me; as well i received poems and ecstatic tales of joy. So, naturally, i froze. I had no idea how to carry on, how to do this justice. It felt like i had been given a great responsibility.

Then we got to the "Minimalism" theme at school, and though i was quite skeptical at first, after hearing the arguments for minimalism, i decided that instead of trying to create some elaborate, showy, complicated work for the Body Stories, the best thing to do was just to let them speak for themselves. So what i decided to do was to make simple white plaster casts of bodies - no faces, just bodies, mostly torsos, in different positions. Then i put one line from each story, in black transfer letters, directly on the cast. I displayed them very simply, though i'd toyed with the idea of making like forty of them and filling the whole wall, but i wanted each individual to be able to speak for itself.



I will only post about half of the pieces as close ups, but i should let you know that most of the stories i got were about hard experiences (to put it mildly), and so it may be triggering for some folks to see this stuff.











I was very, very happy with the way this came out. Unfortunately due to cost constraints, i'm leaving these pieces behind. However, i'm proud enough of it and i think it's important enough that i intend on pitching it ruthlessly to galleries and remaking it when i get back to the states.

It's Been A While...

So! It's been a while since i've updated, and there's been a lot going on. The Expressa't exhibition opened with my installation in it, and an image of it was used on one of the promotional postcards, so that was really exciting. I presented my minimalism project, which went over very, very well - some people really loved it and some people were really offended. I don't have any images of it yet, but i am cleaning it up and adding to it to hang in the exhibition. I've been working on a bunch of sewing projects, i've finished a very fancy dress and a bag using materials i salvaged from a dumpster, finally got the hems done on the first pair of pants that i made, and am planning on working on a couple more things before i lose access to the sewing machine. My classes are over now, and i have my "exit interview" tomorrow, then we set up for the exhibition which opens on Friday.

Ethan got here about ten days ago, and i am so, so glad he is finally here! We have been hanging out at home a lot but also have been to two art exhibits and the beach, and have walked around the city a bunch. We have been through the Gracia neighborhood, where much of Gaudi's work is, and to Santa Maria del Mar, a gothic cathedral that is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. We also saw a great collective street art project. Pax and Hawina and their son Willow (who's almost 7) got to Barcelona last Tuesday, followed closely by Sky and Kassia, ex-members of Twin Oaks and good friends. So, this group that we are calling "Framily" (friend-family, as opposed to biological family) is almost complete - Angie gets here on Wednesday!! We are all orbiting around Willow to some extent, though i am pulled away by school. Last night we all piled into the big bed in the room that Pax and Hawina are staying in and watched "Stardust", this great kids' movie with Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer. Loved it, and loved the feeling of all being together, much better than being on my own all the time.

However, Pax, Willow, and i all have colds. Sick again! Hopefully it is something in the air in Barcelona and it will get better once i leave... one good thing to look forward to about leaving.

Ethan and i are hoping to go to the Dali museum in Figueres, but it is a good train ride away, almost to France, so maybe we will do that this coming weekend, or sometime in the week between the exhibition and when we leave for Amsterdam, on the 21st. My time in Barcelona is winding down quickly!

Mara, a classmate of mine, took this picture of the opening of Expressa't.



Here's Ethan looking at some boats. We thought they were - or at least one of them was - battleships.



When we went to the beach, we sat by the sea for quite some time, and Ethan made this nice sand sculpture:



This is my favorite painting from the street art thing we saw, though there was lots of really amazing work out there:



Sunday we all went to Can Mas Deu, the community nearby that i've been to many times. This is where Sky and Kassia are staying: