An invitation to join Nelly while she is visiting Getty Villa - Aug.14.2010

Visit the Getty Center and the Getty Villa—admission is free!
After being closed since 1997 The Getty Villa finally reopened to the public in January of 2006. The $ 275 million expansion has added a brand new entrance way, an outdoor amphitheater, a large café, an auditorium and new research facilities. The villa itself has undergone a number of changes: a new entrance and color scheme, new windows on the top floor and a new grand staircase. The Malibu Villa will now be dedicated exclusively to ancient Greek & Roman art treasures. The non-Greco-Roman part of the art collection has been moved to the new hilltop Getty Center in Brentwood.

Education:
Open studio, a collection of art-making ideas by artists and free family fun for the summer.

Exhibitions:
The spectacular art of Gérôme, documentary photography, new sculpture galleries, Old Testament images, and more.

For more information go to:http://www.cardifflimo.com/

July 28, 2010

An afternoon at Palm Springs Art museum

This past Sunday I spend quality time at Palm Springs Art museum. This was my first visit and quite impressive one. A fascinating place I must say!
The current exhibit: Modern Masters Celebrate Line and Form and runs to Oct.3, 2010.
Artists in the first decades of the twentieth century broke away from academic traditions and embraced a new approach to sculptural form and line drawing. Drawing and working spontaneously on paper and with print-making techniques took on a new urgency as artists worked out their methods freely. In sculpture, artists sought freedom from the constrictions of the past by employing non-traditional materials and exploring bold, abstract forms.
The artistic legacy of Modern art is represented by the drawings, prints, sculptures and paintings of renowned artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-August Renoir, August Rodin, and other modern masters.

Colors of The West: The paintings of Birger Sanzen were by far my favorite art encounter this afternoon.
Sven Birger Sandzen, a Swedish born artist, who trained in Paris and immigrated to United States in 1894 is considered a post-impressionist for his use of a color and expressionism in technique.
His contribution to the 20th century art gained him the title: “The American Van Gogh.”
The Palm Springs exhibit showcases more then 60 paintings, watercolors and prints from his Memorial Gallery in Kansas.

July 21,2010

A brief but very pleasant encounter with Debbie George.

I think Debbie is very beautiful and pleasant Lady. She seems so relaxed and collected, which is truly fantastic, given that she is an Educator. Quite frankly, I am fascinated to see how proud Debbie is with her children and how responsive she is to their academic achievements. Recently Debbie awarded her baby daughter with a graduation trip to Las Vegas in order to see Phantom in the Opera. Regrettably I met Debbie during the summer months, which are a vacation time for teachers therefore we could not coordinate any cultural visit together, never then less I was delighted to read about her San Diego’s area journey and Museum of Man visit.

Debra George debbieCMC@hotmail.com

debrageorge.wordpress.com

July 21,2010

Soaking up the Art vibe.

“Walking Tall” Exhibition Celebrates Shoes as Art
The Palm Desert Community Gallery welcomes works from eight Coachella Valley artists in its new exhibition “Walking Tall” Artists: Ryan Campbell, Michael Giddings, Gary Paterson, Karen Riley, William Schinsky, Patricia Seyfried, Lisa Soccio, and Clonard Thomas have re-imagined the shoe. These artists have taken a variety of flats, boots, loafers, heels and have transformed them using paint, collage, and other mixed media into artworks that celebrate some of history’s most famous figures. The footwear-focused exhibition includes both two- and three-dimensional artworks with references to the musings and imagery of Frieda Kahlo, Claude Monet, Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz, Marcel Duchamp, and Vincent Van Gogh.
Well, I must say that the current exhibit is different and engaging. Frankly I was not in WOW moment, never them less the Van Gogh’s shoe story is quite impressive and controversial.

Philosophers Rumble Over Van Gogh’s Shoes, Scott Horton

The Wallraf Richartz Museum in Cologne,Germany has launched an impressive new exhibition entitled “Vincent van Gogh: Shoes,” built around a celebrated painting by the Dutch master from 1886. Some might wonder how an exhibition can be framed around a single work with such a modest subject matter, but the curators provide us an impressive model. The exhibition focuses on the extraordinary role this painting has played in modern philosophy surrounding art, its reception, and its relationship to the history of ideas. A half dozen philosophers and art historians have written about van Gogh’s painting of shoes, including Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, and Jacques Derrida. The exhibition takes us on a trip through their writings—sometimes comic, occasionally downright rude, and often exhilarating. These thinkers certainly bar no holds in their clamber to be exceedingly profound.

Vincent Van Gogh, A Pair of Shoes (1886)
We should start with the facts now established as to the origins of this painting. In 1886, van Gogh visited a Paris flea market and came across a pair of worn-out shoes. He bought them and brought them back to his atelier in the city’s Montmartre district. It’s not clear why he bought them, but it could be simply that he needed a new pair of shoes. Apparently, he did try to wear them and found the fit impossible. Instead, he decided to use them as a prop for painting, and the shoes soon became the most celebrated footwear in the history of modern art. But that may be less the direct result of van Gogh’s painting than of its critical reception by eminent writers.
In The Still Life as a Personal Object (1968), Meyer Schapiro gives the painting his own best take: When van Gogh depicted the peasant’s wooden sabots, he gave them a clear, unworn shape and surface like the smooth still life objects he had set beside them on the same table: the bowl, the bottles, etc. In the later picture of a peasant’s leather slippers he has turned them with their backs to the viewer. His own shoes he has isolated on the floor and he has rendered them as if facing us, and so individual and wrinkled in appearance that we can speak of them as veridical portraits of aging shoes. And then we come to Jacques Derrida. There is another line, another system of detaching traits: this is the work qua picture in its frame. The frame makes a work of supplementary désœuvrement. It cuts out but also sews back together. By an invisible lace which pierces the canvas (as the pointure ‘pierces the paper’), passes into it then out of it in order to sew it back onto its milieu, onto its internal and external worlds. From then on, if these shoes are no longer useful, it is of course because they are detached from naked feet and from their subject of reattachment (their owner, usual holder, the one who wears them and whom they bear). It is also because they are painted: within the limits of a picture, but limits that have to be thought in laces. What, one wonders, would Vincent make of all of this? What did he really mean by those shoes? Sometimes shoes are just shoes, but the visitor coming away from this exhibition may realize that a pair of shoes can contain an entire universe.

July 14,2010

Nelly’s first intercultural experience

My very first non-European intercultural experience has to do with Dona Maria, which I met while visiting my good friends from Mexico City. I got acquainted with Jesus and Alia during my brief summer association to La Sorbonne in Paris where I was trying to improve my French skills. Exited by the idea of encountering a completely distinct culture and experiences I managed to get permission from the governing communist bureaucrats and left my home nest for good. And so, Mamasita or Dona Maria was the Granma that was chaperoning and cooking for my friends. At the very beginning I did not speak a word of Spanish but she was practical enough to take my hand and point to all of the kitchens appliances and utensils. Then she was so kind to offer me all sorts eatable delights with a “slide” problem of non-verbal communication. It turned out that the nodding for “yes” and “no” was opposite to the Mexican way, therefore she kept offering me different foods and I kept nodding hers ” no”, still eating everything I got in my plate. Afterwards, when Jesus came back from work, he came to me apologizing for having to eat things that I did not want or perhaps disliked. Of course we were having our tea or coffee ritual at four o’clock each afternoon and Dona Maria used to get so animated and exited while telling me her stories which obviously I did not understand. Then slowly I begun to recognize repeated words and maybe by association or perhaps telepathy we were able to enjoy our company. One day after approximately six month I opened my month and begun to speak Spanish. Naturally, Mamasita was stunned by that fact and her reaction was the shouting of: “Jesus Maria, Nelly abla Espaniol”!

July 7,2010

Meet Nelly perhaps a global citizen.

If one were to ask my friends to describe me they would describe me as a very pleasant, diverse, active and intelligent woman.

I think one of my most distinguishing characteristics is the diversity of experiences I possess. I am a graduated Business Science professional with a flair for the arts. I am also a woman with technical aptitude and an interest in business law. I have a passion for traveling and understanding different cultures of the world. All these elements have given me a very broad outlook with varying degrees of knowledge in a range of topics.

Even though I was born in Bulgaria I do consider myself as global citizen thanks to the extraordinary changes that took place in Europe, such as the collapse of the communist block behind the “Iron curtain”, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. My inspiration back then was to break free from the communist’s oppression and to have a chance of expressing my ideas freely as well as the chance to employ all of my talents far way of my native country. I consider myself very lucky of being able to emigrate to Central America and after words to United States, where I have lived for extended periods in Houston; Seattle, California’s central coast and presently in the Deserts.