A Fun Trip

The outside is covered in a mirror mosaic.

This weekend is a weekend at home. Yea! It seems since August, I have been gone at least every other weekend. Too much for me. It's hard to get traction on the things that need to get done at home when we're gone.

With that being said, here's one of the places we went recently with my father-in-law and his girlfriend, The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. We have visited here before, but I never get tired of going. It is a totally fascinating (some would say quirky) place. All of the works are by untrained artists who are doing the work more for the process than the product. We particularly wanted my FIL to go because he has made several things very similar to works we saw there. The dream would be to get some of his things exhibited. But that's a big project for another time.

To make things simpler, we did all the driving. A lot driving, but some of the best conversations happen in the car. :) As hoped everyone enjoyed the museum, especially my FIL, who by the end, was relating to some of the artists because he could tell they probably enjoyed making their creations as much as he does making his.

Here are a few pictures from the day. No flash allowed, so some of the pictures are kind of dark.

This is Fifi, the mascot of the museum. She goes to a lot of parades.

This entire wall was filled with quilt "squares" made from neckties.

This was in the OCD room where everything had a lot of detail. 
This room was my favorite.

If you look closely, you can see that this mosaic was done with Maxwell House coffee cans. Also notice the cafe coffee station in the background.

This is in the main lobby.

Don't remember the details of this one, but it was interesting to me.

They had a display of mostly wooden mechanical toys. Ward and his father were especially happy that the insides were exposed so they could study how they worked.

There was everything in this dino sculpture except the kitchen sink.
 It reminded me of an eye spy book.

A closer look at the above picture.

This sculpture outside the museum was moving all of the time.

You can walk through this creation.

So many more things to show, but I think this was enough to give you an idea of the fun we had at that day.

Note: If you go to the link above to a previous post about this museum, you'll get a little better idea of the philosophy of it.

Visionary Arts

Do you ever have one of those times when you just want to get out of the house and do something different? Ward and I had one of those days this weekend. We needed a change of scenery, so on a whim, we visited the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore, MD. We had visited this museum a couple of times before and it is a favorite of ours.

Before my first visit, I didn't really understand what visionary art was. At first glance, it looked a little like folk art. But on second glance, was it something far different. Folk art is passed down from person to person, but visionary art comes totally from within the artist. It is more about the process of making the piece than about the finished product, and it comes from an emotional level. The artist usually has no formal training and often comes to creating their art later in life. At this point they have lived enough that they are less concerned about what people think and more concerned about their creation.

Whatever it is, I like it. The artists ranged from people who spent their life in mental institutions to a plantation child. There were paintings, sculptures, and mechanical pieces. Much of it was whimsical and some of it was disturbing.  As you can tell, it is really hard to categorize.

 The interesting thing for me on this trip was how I came alive in the OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) room. The artists in this room worked with very small detailed pieces (large match stick sculptures or lots of tiny dots). There was also a lot of symmetry in their pieces. I knew that I liked detail and symmetry, but I didn't realize how much. Ward's favorite part were the wooden moving toys. And much as we don't want to admit it, we both enjoy the section on flatulence.

A visit to the Visionary Arts Museum always gives me a new outlook on life. I look at things with a new found appreciation for their creation. And I always think that I want to create a visionary art room in my house. Everything has a story, I want to tell some of mine. Who knows? Maybe someday I will do just that.

Unfortunately, as with most museums, we couldn't take any pictures inside. I did snap a few on the outside while bracing against the cold wind. You can see a few of them below.