Posts Tagged ‘Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’

Ed Ruscha at the DeYoung

Saturday, September 3rd, 2016


Today, Olivia and I saw the Ed Ruscha show at the DeYoung Museum. Olivia especially liked Ruscha’s later work, the paintings with words like “Rodeo” and “A Particular Kind of Heaven” and “The End,” and the silhouettes of howling wolves and buffaloes, with vertical lines painted through like old film. I liked the early work, the Standard Oil paintings and the photographs of gas stations, structures that seemed graphically distinctive then, and utterly generic today.

As we walked through the exhibition, I remembered working at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, when Ruscha’s great mural, “Brave Men Run in My Family,” was installed. I love how looking at art causes your mind to make associations to other things you’ve seen, other experiences you’ve had, the past. I looked up the mural and saw it was installed twenty years ago, in 1995-96. Before I met Tim, before we got married, before we adopted our children. Another lifetime.

Ed Ruscha and the American West runs at the DeYoung through October 9. See it if you can. ~

 

 

 

 

Images courtesy:

DeYoung Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

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Two readings, in Albuquerque and San Diego, thanks to “the girls”

Monday, October 4th, 2010

I met Bethany and Penny in San Diego, when I moved there from Los Angeles after a divorce, the Northridge earthquake, and, oh yes, the news from my doctor that I would never have children.  The three of us worked in the art world: Me as the P.R. officer at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bethany as the art school director at the La Jolla Athenaeum, and Penny as the grant-writer for the photography museum in Balboa Park. Our friendship was immediate and turned out to be lasting. We’ve referred to one another since the beginning as “the girls.” 

When my friends heard my book, MAMALITA: AN ADOPTION MEMOIR, was finally being published—believe me, they’ve endured every arduous phase—the girls came through. Penny, now a librarian in the San Diego County system, set up a reading for me at her branch library in Santee, in eastern San Diego. Bethany, now a designer living in New Mexico, arranged one at her favorite local indie bookstore, Bookworks, in Albuquerque.

Hope to see you at one of the readings! I can guarantee that when the girls are involved, it’s always a good time. 🙂

Friday, December 3, 2010 at 10 a.m.
Santee Branch Library
9225 Carlton Hills Boulevard
Santee, CA 92071
619-448-1863

Tuesday, January 11, 2011, at 7 p.m.
Bookworks
4022 Rio Grande Boulevard NW
Albuquerque, NM 87107
505-344-8139

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Zoo Again: The Same but Different

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

In the seven-plus years I lived in San Diego, I never went to the zoo. Single and childless, I considered the zoo a family place. I’ve since made up for lost time. This week alone, we’re on our third visit. Thursday morning, Tim gave a lecture at the Naval Hospital in Balboa Park. After dropping him off, the kids and I drove straight to the zoo. 

The zoo is one of many places I frequent now that I’m a parent. In the almost eight years since we adopted Olivia and Mateo, my stomping grounds are playgrounds, water parks, and bowling alleys. In the past six months alone, I’ve made more visits to zoos than in all the previous years of my life combined.  (more…)

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