Art from the Mass. and various trips

Before school starts up again, I wanted to take this post to reflect on some of the art work I SAW this summer. One good thing about the lacrosse tournaments this summer was that we were able to go to quite a few nice little towns. True the gas stations were sometimes a little sketchy, but it just made it more of an adventure. One of the weekends, my mother and I were up in Groton and then Peabody Mass., and we stopped to see a little part of the bay. There was a cutesy sized drawbridge and as walked along the see splash I saw a little sign off to the side advertising for artwork. I didn't realize until we got up close, but the shop was run out of a guy's house, and he was selling some of his mothers artwork. It was more of a modern style painting and printmaking that she did, with a very grim tone. The colors were mostly dull with a splash of red that spiced things up a little bit. Ironically, the first thing I thought of when I saw the pieces was of Doctor Boerth, my AP Lang teacher. The way the lines and the faces were portrayed reminded me a lot of the queer, old black and white films that we watched full of strange happenings. I will post a picture later of the piece by Coco Berkman that caught my eye. Unfortunately we were not able to stop by an art museum throughout our trip, but in Gatlinburg I got my family to go somewhere a little unique. The Salt and Pepper Shaker museum. Believe it or not, it has been featured on food network, and it was queer in a way that I was really able to enjoy the museum. The owner of all the shakers had a saying posted somewhere in the little museum; that she collects salt and pepper shakers because it astounds her how creative people can be with a simple ordinary object. It was nice to be reminded that creativity can blossom just as well and spectacularly in the small objects as the big things.