The Train Museum

So it looks like Sacramento isn't exactly the cultural mecca of California. There was that one museum and beyond that there are a good two dozen attractions focused on the gold rush. It's all ye-olden days, gold rush, old California politics, Sutter's fort, California's birth... eh ok then. It's not quite as exciting as Albrecht Durer to me but it's what I've got. I went to the train museum...


... just to proove that I am a costumer I spent maybe three or four shots on the trains and most of the rest on costume research...



check out the prosthetic leg

Oh and of corse they had Dishes!  What the hell is up with the fascination with dishes! Now that I've noticed how many museums have rooms dedicated to dishes, it's really starting to get irritating...
There's a balcony full of toy trains... I liked the tiny one in the briefcase.

... yep that was it.  Well laid out, nice displays.  I guess I just wasn't that interested though.  I'd rather be at a science museum or an art museum.  

Happy Birthday to Alex

Today is my one of my oldest* and most dear friend's birthday (*that is oldest in the amount of time I've known him, not his time on the Earth). Unfortunately he lives in Hamburg and I can't get away to take him out on the town tonight. I can't even think of what to send him for the occasion. I know he has a thing for new office supplies... but really he lives in Germany. All of my favorite art supplies are from there, I imagine that their pens are equally superior to ours and they probably have some equivalent to post-its that make shipping them across the Atlantic a silly idea. I could send him a book... but which one? I went to the book store and nothing I saw was exotic or exciting enough for him in my opinion. I'll probably think of the perfect something in a month or two... in the mean time;

The top 10 things I love about Alex;
1. He's insightful
2. He keeps me smiling
3. He's a perfectionist
4. He has an amazing aesthetic sense
5. He always manages to keep me balanced
6. We still can write each other full letters after ten years!
7. He loves discussing art.
8. He doesn't balk to tell me when I'm being boring.
9. I can ask him about critical artistic choices and get a real answer.
10. He has an air of beauty about him.

...wow 10 was easy! I could go on, but I shant because he is also very modest and doesn't take praise very well...

Happy Birthday Alex!

Happy Birthday Mom!

I hope you have a great time today! Wish I were there.



I love you!

Cork Oak

I found a really Cool tree in the park. It's a Cork Oak. It is soft and pliant. It smells like oak that has been freshly sanded...



This is the bark...

... sorry I know I'm not being an interesting blogger right now... Work goes well but I can't take photos while I'm working... mostly I've been reading and drawing and that's about it right now. I need to find more exciting things to do...

a word to the robot

I like it.

The stupidest thing I overheard this week;

"...Well No, I havent Actually studied Japanese culture... but I read Manga so I know how it is."

art?

erm... thanks Andy Warhol.

Ha ha (slightly belated post)

The Crocker Art Museum

On Tuesday I also visited the Crocker Art Museum, which was small but surprisingly good for a modest museum. Most of the works were part of the Mrs. and Mr. Crocker's personal collection donated to the city. The building alone was worth the price of admission...
Here's the front of the mansion;

The foyer;

They had a display on nude figure drawing. I did a nerdy jump for joy when I spotted this original sketch by Albrecht Durer;
There was a room of dishes... I Really don't get why every museum seems to have a room or twelve dedicated to plates... so not interesting.

a sketch by Peter Paul Rubens (also really impressive to see in a small collection)
They had a modern art wing with pieces that weren't your standard MOMA fare... I liked this one, titled "Crowd Control"

... and this cool walk through sculpture mirror house

I also loved the salon style hanging of the genre paintings... although the lights weren't hung very well (there was a lot of glare and they weren't pointed in the proper directions for the paintings)

Mostly it's a neat little art museum that was worth the visit.

Dioramas

On the bottom level of the State Capitol building there are hallways filled with dioramas from every California district. This is actually something I remember from the last time I was there at age 4...
L.A's had a video screen... very representative of the place...
Marin Co's diorama looked like a 70's craft project...
San Bernadino's made me laugh because they made the airport and the mall look Really Exciting!
Riverside Co didn't mention Idyllwild (my hometown) but it was implied through the mountain and the itty bitty tram heading in that direction.

Governors on canvas

Today it was 110 degrees farighenheight (that's about 44C to the rest of the world)... now it is nearly 8pm and it is 103F (39C)... but it was my day off and one of the few that I didn't need to be tending to business in Berkeley or Carmel so I went out and saw the sights in Sacramento anyway. I went to see the state Capitol building, I went to the Crocker Art Museum and barely saw old Sacramento before fearing that I would burst into flames and made my way back to the hotel on a heated walk (or is that wok) that seamed to take three times longer than the way there. More Blogs of my walk today are forthcoming but I thought I would start with the Governor's portraits I saw today in the State Capitol.
It is the tradition for California governors to have their portrait painted as they leave office. For the most part this one of governor George Dukmejian is typical of them. They're realistic portraits of men in suits with conservative lawyer-esque backgrounds or sometimes a simple black scumble. Usually tasteful and very finely crafted, but not really interesting art. I couldn't find any info on the painters so I suppose that is the point.

I did like that Grey Davis had his portrait done with a background of California poppies and the coast line. For those who don't know; he was actually ousted from office because of the State's anger over California's budget woes... no matter what his record as a whole reflects, he was a good environmentalist and therefore not so bad in my book.

Now although I don't have a lot of knowledge about the gammut of California governors... I have a favorite based on his portrait. Governor Edmund "Jerry" Brown was the only governor of the state (that's out of 38 men) to have a non-realistic portrait done. with further research I learned that he also refused to live in the fancy governor's mansion or ride in the governor's limo because of his deep convictions for social equality... Yay Jerry Brown!

...turns out this is the same Jerry Brown who served as in the mayor of Oakland up to 2006 and is currently the Attorney General of California... oh! That Jerry Brown! Yea, he's cool.
Don't you have to like a man (a politician nonetheless) who would get a portrait like this?

Pity the poor business man. (in haiku)

relaxing is false
while longing by the water
work is all he sees

He sits by the pool
and cannot see his spread sheet
Put down the Lap Top!

Capitol building that...

The California State building as viewed from behind has this three part public art display(part 2 is shown,the other two may come later) This is called the "zone of Discovery"

all of the round drum-like sculptures have different murals representing the peoples of California (from all eras) and are supposedly arranged to represent the way the stars were alligned over Sacramento on September 9th 1850 (the day California became the 31st state)
Here is a cheery one of the Spaniards conquering the new world and getting the natives to bring them all their gold and harvest before killing or enslaving most of them.... yay.  They need to do a bit of a cleaning because this was one of the few not totally covered in bird crap.
I think this golden ball represents the sun... but I'm not sure.  The Skate-ramp area is painted with a portrait of Edwin Hubbel when you look at it from just the right place... still looking for that (maybe in the reflection of the golden ball... further investigation is required).


And here is the front of the Capitol building...

I plan on taking a tour on the inside later on.  Hopefully they'll let me take pictures.

why hotels have free Breakfast

Even hotels with "kitchens" have continental breakfasts. Today I wanted a hole-in-one egg (which is an egg cooked in a cut out piece of toast) and beans (something I've been fond of since leaving England). The free breakfast buffet does involve eggs but the eggs are those disgusting powdered variety you get from cafeterias. The eggs I eat, always have to be fancy expensive laid by cage-free vegetarian hens, because those are the only ones that taste good (plus the ethical concerns)... anyway I fired up the electric range included at my hotel and found that there is no way to determine how hot the stove is getting and there's no way to make anything cook evenly. I managed to fill the room with smoke but through some miracle I avoided setting off the smoke alarms. This is the tasty dish I managed to scorch half of and leave the other half just barely cooked...

Ugh!

Sitting on Thumbs...

The past two days we have been waiting for the Sweeney Todd costumes to be ready for us. Unfortunately the costumes arrived late and are still at the warehouse being checked in. The designer (Marcy), the cutter (Nancy) and I have done just about as much prep work as we can before laying hands on the actual clothes... We watched the movie, we toured the set, we did some pre-fitting alterations for the Joanna costumes (the virgin being played by a 5months pregnant actress) and then I volunteered on the remaining notes for Sound of Music... all of this waiting will most likely bite us all in the arse very soon so we're getting a bit jittery...
One cool thing is that we're getting the costumes from the iconic Angela Lansbury version of the show. So to do a plot we just watched the video (a clip is posted below)... I love the peasant rags and Sweeney, but the women all seem to be more "Olde Time" than 1856... eh oh well. Lets hope we see these costumes in person tomorrow...

Translations...

My friend Les just got back from China. One of my favorite pictures from her journey was this one;