Finally Home

After a long and much needed break from school, I am finally back in the city that never sleeps - New York! I must say, this is quite some weather to be returning to. Right now there is about an inch of snow on the ground and it's FREEZING! 

I had such a good time in California. We did Christmas in Los Angeles and my brother-in-law took me around to all the Santa Monica galleries. They're all located in a place called Bergamot Station. It's an old warehouse-like place which used to be a train depot in the 19th century. There weren't too many people there on the day we went, I guess between the holidays the galleries all slow down a bit. My absolute favorite one was called the Frank Lloyd Gallery. They were showing an artist called Ralph Baccera. If you haven't heard of this man you HAVE to look him up. He's absolutely brilliant. He creates these wild and whimsical ceramics pieces. I found this quote by a NY Times Art Critic that describes my feelings perfectly, "To look at Ralph Bacerra's gorgeous ceramic vessels is to wallow in visual hedonism."

Then we went down to San Diego for a little fun in the sun. There is this great little art museum in Oceanside (which is in Northern San Diego) called the Oceanside Museum of Art. It's right in the middle of town and just a short walk from the beach (basically it was perfect for my purposes). There was this interesting show on while we were there called Quilt Visions. It was a juried show of fabric arts from around Southern California, mostly. I've never really seen textile arts displayed in this way, so that was quite interesting.

We also went downtown to Balboa Park to see this great Kimono exhibit. It was absolutely amazing. The man responsible for the work, Itchiku Kubota, is a Japanese master. He revived an ancient technique of Kimono dying/painting (which, to be perfectly honest I don't understand in the least) and made these intricate pictorial designs. The show we saw was called the Four Seasons and depicted a single continuous seasonal scene across maybe 40 separate Kimonos. The exhibit has since moved to Canton, Ohio so if you are in the area, I would highly suggest you scope it out. 

All in all, a great trip with some seriously great art. But I am glad to be back and excited to catch up on the NYC art scene.