Happy Weekend: Work Week One Done.

My first week at my new job was exciting, a little overwhelming and totally engaging. I know I will accumulate a lot of papers, books, and reports over the coming months, but for now my office is nice and tidy. Bare, even. Here are some prints I would love to hang on my walls.

But enough about work...it's the weekend!

Weekend Recap: Hot. Humid. Art.

A filling, fun, sticky, exhausting weekend. A few friends were in town this weekend, which made for some exploration of local restaurants and watering holes and great conversation. It also got us out of the house on a couple wildly hot, humid days.

On Saturday we explored the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. To be completely honest, I never knew the American Art Museum existed. And it is wonderful! We went there specifically to see a photography exhibit that closed this weekend titled Close to Home: Photographers and Their Families. It showcased nine photographers' shots of their family. I particularly loved the two crisp, saturated photographs by Larry Sultan.

Mom In The Garage

Dad On Bed

Virginia Beahan's series of photographs taken after her aging mother came to live with her are beautiful and haunting.

Christina and Gram on Thanksgiving

First Day of Spring

All images via La Lettre de la Photographie.com.

I also enjoyed the museum's modern and contemporary wing, especially Nam June Paik's enormous multimedia installation Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii.

We later saw Abe Frajndlich's photograph of Paik in the Portrait Gallery along with paintings, photographs, drawings and sculptures of other famous artists, politicians, athletes and performers.

Making it Home: Hanging Art.

I will admit that I have not felt the urgency to settle in to this apartment. It may be that I am road-weary from having lived in three apartments in one year. I feel that the next move is always right around the corner - why get comfortable? But chances are we will be in this apartment for a year or two, so it was time to make the place feel more like home.

The easiest way to warm up our cookie-cutter, beige walls-on-beige carpet apartment was to hang the artwork and photographs we have collected over the years. How to fit it all in? Our walls were large, but our art was plentiful. Luckily, I'm a sucker for a good gallery wall.

Source: baltares.blogspot.com via Lauren on Pinterest

Source: youaremyfave.com via Lauren on Pinterest

Source: madebygirl.blogspot.com via Lauren on Pinterest

My friend recently put together a gallery wall in her new Denver apartment. On her blog, she wisely calls it the family memory wall. It includes photographs, meaningful song lyrics, a letter her husband wrote to her when they were 14 years old (oh my gosh, awwww, right?), her Chicago Marathon finisher medal and other items that hold personal value to them as a family.

In our Chicago apartment we had a wall of black and white photographs, mostly from our then-recent wedding. Because we are now living in a very blank space, I thought black and white photos would be too stark. Besides, we have so many great pieces that we have collected, been gifted, made, or inherited. Each of these pieces hold such meaning to us for different reasons. So this is our memory wall:

1. This photograph was given to me by my aunt and is of my grandfather's family. He is just a little boy, and you can barely see him sitting at the far end of the table.
2. A reproduction of a painting hubs fell in love with when we lived in Chicago. The artist, Bruce Holwerda, frequently showed his work at a gallery up the street from our apartment, and we would see this painting as we'd walk home from dinner or the grocery store. My sister and her boyfriend gave us a reproduction for Christmas the year before we moved out of Chicago.
3. Two paintings by Chicago artist Nancy Rosen. Nancy is a good friend of a good friend. She is a great artist and fabulous person.
4. One of my most beloved items - the thing that I would grab if my house were on fire - a painting by my grandmother. This painting sat on the top of a bookcase in my parents' room for my entire childhood. I would look at it when my mom would brush and blowdry my hair at night, when we'd open stockings in their room on Christmas morning, or after borrowing a necklace off of my mom's jewelry stand. Three years ago, my mom had the painting framed and gave it to me for Christmas. I forget if I got anything else that morning. It doesn't matter.
5. A painting I did in high school. I love it and it picks up the color of the quilt we have on our bed.
6. I made this painting/collage for hubs just a couple weeks after we started dating. It incorporates pictures of items that were already meaningful to us in that short time: a coffee advertisement, a science textbook, a picture of an airplane. It also includes part of Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII ("I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where..."), which three years later would be read at our wedding.
7. I gave this print to hubs on our first anniversary. It is by artist Brian Andreas and is titled One of Us.

In Memory of Cy Twombly.

Artist Cy Twombly died at the age of 83 on Monday in Rome. I had the good fortune of seeing the exhibit The Natural World: Selected Works, 2000-2007 at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. I especially loved the rich tones in his Untitled, 2001 series, and was stunned by the scale and beauty of a series of untitled paintings he completed in 2004, my favorite being Untitled n°5, 2004. But I don't think I can understand the true color and magnitude of his Bacchus or Lepanto paintings until I experience them in person. Here's hoping for a trip to Munich to see them at the Brandhorst Collection.

Untitled, 2001
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Hero and Leandro, 1985
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Bay of Naples, 1961
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Miramare by the Sea, 2005
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The Rose (II), 2008
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The Rose, Gagosian Gallery
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Bacchus Psilax Mainomenos, Gagosian Gallery
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Brandhorst Collection, Munich
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