I am posting a little early this week.  My daughter is coming home from college tomorrow and I know I will be busy this weekend spending time with her and our family.  I have been cleaning most of the day, I have to confess I set my sewing machine up in her room while she was away and well, kind of made a mess. 😦  Her cat Button, who her dad and I have been spoiling, was “supervising” my efforts.

Button supervising my cleaning… and yes, that is dirt and lint on my black cat, kind of like keeping a black car clean.

I am looking forward to having her around this summer and we plan to visit some art galleries and museums together.  The Getty is definitely on our list. If anyone has a favorite art gallery in the greater Los Angeles area that we should visit, please leave me a comment.  I always get so inspired and motivated when I visit a gallery, I love to see different mediums and art up close and in person.

Button, Inspired by my art! 🙂

Speaking of the Getty, A few weeks ago I was invited to visit the Reading Room at the Getty Museum. It was an awesome visit!  An educator from the professional portrait photography industry and the curator lead a small group of artists in a discussion and up close study of about 18 photographs. The Getty has a wonderful on-line gallery of their art collection and I have linked to some of the photographs we studied.  We saw the gelatin silver print ‘Human Erosion in California (Migrant Mother) by Dorothea Lange, an original Polaroid of Jean-Michel Basquiat by Andy Warhol, and my favorite of the group, a platinum print “Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait”  by Alfred Stieglitz. This is a beautiful, expressive image of her hands.  I just love pictures of hands, they tell such a beautiful story… I guess they just speak to me. We also saw a framed hand-colored daguerreotype “Portrait of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre” by Charles Richard Meade. 

It was a wonderful and unique experience to see these beautiful photographs up close and have the time to study them.  A day I will always remember.

Now I better be off to the final touches of cleaning up my daughter’s room.  I got my fabric and sewing machine moved out to my studio.  You can see how helpful Button was…

Button, snoozing when he should be helping me!

Have a wonderful creative weekend, Janell