Visiting the University of Texas / Visita al museo Blanton de la Universidad de Tejas

Charles W. White, Awaken from the Unknowing, 1961

Elizabeth Catlett, Homage to My Young Black Sisters, 1968

Coincidentally, my two favorite works in this show at UT were both by artists who worked with the People's Printshop (Taller de Gráfica Popular). 

One of the reasons I love Robert Rauschenberg's work is because he frequently blurs the line between painting and printmaking. Next to the Rauschenberg in the exhibit was this quote--I include it here because it fits with the TGP's goals if not its methodology, which was more propagandistic. 

"I've never thought that problems were so simple politically that they could, by me anyway, be tackled directly. But every day by consistently doing what you do with the attitude that you do it ... if you feel strongly, it's going to show there." 

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Ambos artistas de estas dos obras (vistas en esta exposición) trabajaron en el Taller de Gráfica Popular. 

También en la misma exposición se expuso una obra de Robert Rauschenberg, con esta cita al lado. Parece que Rauschenberg compartía algunas de las metas del TGP, aunque no seguía una metodología tan activista. 

"Nunca había creído que los problemas políticas eran tan sencillos que yo las podía tratar. Pero en hacer lo que haces, de tu manera, todos los días ... lo que opinas va a mostrarse." 

Diagonal storage

When I was at Portugal's national printing museum, I saw lead type stored like this:

Bent to a Straight and Narrow at a Point of Passage

Lawrence Weiner piece at the UMFA

Cuts for printing Spanish playing cards / Planchas de imprenta (naipes)

These snapshots are from the Museu Frederic Marès in Barcelona. Marès was a Catalan sculptor. His statues speckle Barcelona. You've probably seen them at Montjuic and Pl. Catalunya. His home became a museum. The first floor houses his collection of Spanish figurative sculpture. The rest of it is one big cabinet of curiosities--comprised of anything and everything he could hoard.  

Marès graduated from the school I attended last year, and later in his life, ended up directing it. The story I heard was that his hoarding actually gave birth to the book arts program. He needed somebody to bind all of his paper ephemera and photographs into albums. 

Marès was, apparently, deeply quirky. He'd shuffle around his house/studio/museum, checking on his collections in his nightgown, well into his old age. 

Anyway, I loved seeing these cuts for printing Spanish playing cards there. 

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Hice estas dos fotos en el Museo Marès de Barcelona. La casa de Marès, escultor catalán, se convirtió en museo mientras él vivía, y sigue siéndolo. En la primera planta se expone su colección de escultura hispánica. Las demás plantas son un gran gabinete de curiosidades que contiene todo lo que coleccionaba. 

Marès estudió en La Llotja y llegó a dirigirla. Me contaron que, de la necesidad de encuadernar todos los recuerdos y fotos que guardaba, nació el Conservatorio de las Artes del Libro. 

Marès era no solo excéntrico, sino muy así, andando por la casa-museo en zapatillas de casa para vigilar las colecciones.  

Entre ellas hay unas pocas planchas de imprenta, incluso estas. Son para imprimir los naipes. 

SOCIAL/BRIEF: Blank Slate

I went to this event in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center while I was home recently. 

I thought it was a cool collaboration because letterpress printing usually does not happen in a modern art museum. Craft and contemporary art may attract different audiences. Because most of the magic of letterpress printing happens behind the scenes, it can be a fairly opaque process. 

Here, printer Jenni Undis of Lunalux is setting some of the poems that were read at the event in type, and printing small editions of them on a tiny press. Lunalux prepared for the evening by printing the name of the event on the back of each card and numbering them before printing. They also have "live" printing events at their own shop sometimes. 

Here photo corners are being used instead of gauge pins. 

A handful of the editioned prints:

PORTO

In Porto ...

I saw the sun!

I remembered that the small city is a beautiful thing ... goodbye, endless hours on the metro.

Students dressed up (finals week tradition):

I ate a giant meat-stuffed sandwich (chorizo, ham, a fried egg, tomato sauce, roast beef, and fries). Yup.

I climbed to the top:

I swam in this!!

There were a lot of things about Portugal that were charming but slow.

I got my fill of printing museums:

The colors were all so intense ... such orange rooftops in the rain. Porto in the rain made me thing of what Margarit said about another place: "una ciutat grisa amb un gran port."

The city isn't all clean and shiny, but does it sound terrible to say that it's pretty clean for the Iberian Peninsula?

I went to an antique book dealer

And they let me go look at their basement stash. People there were friendly, patient. A little old man forced a pastel de nata on me while I waited for the bus to the airport home. 

All the shops had old fashioned facades and antique furniture (counters, cabinets). It was like stepping back in time.

The market was full of olives, seafood, sausage, fruit, and homemade jam.

There were traditional bookbinding, leatherworking, and woodworking shops. (I dig this).

They apparently don't have rules like in Barcelona about where you can hang your laundry. (In the part of the city where I live we can't hang it outside). I guess sometimes I feel like rules in BCN are made more for tourists than locals, but Porto felt pretty lived in.

I really liked seeing some baroque churches; Portuguese baroque is over the top (I mean that in the best of ways). The guide I had referred to this one as "Golden Cave #2."

 I saw a fellow Minnesotan (how was it that we didn't take any photos together???). But it was SO GREAT. MINNESOOOOOTA. So soon! 

More than anything I loved how being there felt like being in another time, not just another place. I seriously googled "expat in Portugal" when I got home. But you know what? MINNESOTA. That is all. 

Parallel Lives

I hung out at the Picasso Museum today. Guess what? Picasso and I have parallel lives.

The museum, whose collection is mostly Picasso's early drawings and works on paper, arranges all the pieces chronologically.

So you can see Picasso coming to Barcelona, studying at my school, carrying around a sketchbook, making little paintings of the sea and the city ... discovering Madrid and Paris ...

What does this all boil down to? I'm probably about to make it big as a Cubist painter. Basically I'm waiting for that to happen any minute now.

Here were some of my favorites:

Sant Pau del Camp, with its distinctive mozarab cloister.

The Liceu

La Barceloneta

     
 Near the Prado in Madrid

A café in Barcelona

Barcelona cityscape

The beach at Barceloneta

Images pulled from the Museum's online catalog.

Read what they have to say about Picasso's relationship with Barcelona ... the modernization of the city and the construction of the Eixample began while he lived here.

Although Picasso spent far more time in Paris, Barcelona is "where it all began ... where I understood how far I could go."

10 photos of Paris

Holy week in Spain is wonderful and not to be missed. But this year I spent the week of vacation with my MOM in PARIS. 

Yep, doesn't get better than that. Besides seeing her, here were some of my favorite things from our trip:

The river. 

The Rodin museum. 

Free admission to it. (!!!) Not paying for museums as a student is wonderful, I recommend never getting older than 26.

I think the Louvre is maybe my idea of paradise. I knew it was an art capital, but after visiting I'm blown away by the amount of art making, patronage and appreciation that goes on in Paris. It's so great to see museums packed full of people looking at art.

Paris is also full of architecture from the middle ages. 

Like the conciergerie. 

And in case you're wondering where all the old printing/flying equipment is, check out the museum of Arts et Metiers.

I didn't expect to be blown away by the Eiffel Tower. I was blown away. I also really loved the architecture at the train stations, which reminded me of it.

So many public gardens. All this beauty is good for the soul, don't you think?

Casa de la Moneda

There are two Casa de la Moneda [mint] museums in Spain and I have been to both of them. They are about Spanish currency through the ages--sounds kind of boring, but if you factor in all the printing of lottery tickets, bills, etc. things get more interesting. 

One of the museums is in Madrid, and it's full of antique printing machinery. I am a sucker for outdated printing technology so I was basically in heaven when I visited. I learned what a pantograph was. And saw old industrial litho presses. 

The other one is in Segovia, where I took these photos. The permanent exhibit was not as print-focused. But unlike in Madrid, the water wheels are still running. Of course, there is a bar there, too. ('What museum doesn't need a bar?' would be the Spanish response to your raised eyebrows). 

hello raval

Spent last Saturday getting to know the Raval a bit. I visited a lot of neighborhoods in Barcelona when I was looking for an apartment (and finally settled here), but I didn't look in the Raval. It has a ... reputation. 

But then I discovered that the only bank in the city that would cash my paychecks was in the heart of the Raval. "Great," I thought, "exactly where I want to be with a wad of cash."  

But guess what? It wasn't sketchy. I found skateboarders, street art, a naan bakery, open air markets, and modern art museums. This is actually the part of Barcelona that feels the most like an American downtown to me. It's not charming, but it has soul.

Plus I ran into linotype machine hanging out in the courtyard of a former monastery here ... the dusty printing equipment follows me, I can't help it.

Also I saw Flo at a market. We go to bookbinding school together. She is also the owner of a business that sells rad handmade notebooks, covered with vintage cloth. Each book has an inscription inside that tells where the cloth came from.

Last weekend she was at the CCCB. Right now they have an exhibit about the Paral•lel. The avenue was Barcelona's entertainment and red light district before the Spanish Civil War, from about 1900-1930. For the exhibit, the galleries were dotted with theater posters that were full of really sweet wood type. Look at this 'A,' pulled from one of the posters:

And 'Marina,' IS THAT TWO COLOR WOOD TYPE??? It was hard to tell how the original was printed because they used an enlarged reproduction for the exhibit.