Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall reports from the scene on books, writing . . . and life as she knows it.
A floral design by Monique Duncan of Plumweed Flowers Co., San Francisco, takes its inspiration from Robert Rauschenberg’s “Shadow (Tracks)” sculpture on the wall behind it. Photo by BF Newhall.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
At times during my visit to the Bouquets to Art exhibition at the de Young on Tuesday, I wondered whether my soul might be better off if I’d just stand there quietly looking at the floral [Read more...]
A sweeping red dogwood and pussy willow design with succulent paddle plant accents by Yoko Ishii Klingebiel and Naoko Suzuki repeats the rhythmic lines of Dorothy Napargardi’s Sandhills (not shown). Photo by BF Newhall
Patricia Gillespie of Sharpstick Studio created a tall floral arrangment to echo David Nash’s wood sculpture Rip and Cross Cut Block Column, 2002. Photo by BF Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall.
Nothing seems to be off limits to the 130-plus floral designers who’ve filled the courts and galleries of the de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco this week with arrangements of flowers, twigs, branches, seed pods, pussy willows and succulents for the museum’s annual exhibition Bouquets to Art.
To my mind, these arrangements — which range from simple and lovely to downright spectacular — qualify as art.
But are they bouquets? I’m going to say yes.
Bouquets to Art at the de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, March 19-23, 2013.
More flower stories and pictures at “Bouquets to Art at the de Young — Where Poppies Dance and Cactuses Are Petit Fours” and “In My Rain-Battered Garden — Nothing Is Forever, Not Even Those Poppies.”
Meanwhile, more bouquet pictures . . . [Read more...]
Kaori Imaizumi of Blooming Floral Design in San Francisco created a bouquet to bounce off Sam Francis‘s Helios for the Bouquets to Art show at the de Young museum this week. Photo by BF Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
It’s not too late to catch a bus – or a plane – and head out to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for the annual Bouquets to Art show at the de Young museum.* [Read more...]
A snowplow cleared snow — tried to — from the driveway of the Eden Prairie, MN, Community Center. Jon and I and the kids went there every day during our visit to Minnesota so we could work off the meals we sampled during auditions for our May rehearsal dinner. Photo by BF Newhall
My vintage, preindustrial Austrian Walkjanker finally got to strut its thermal stuff. Photo by Jon Newhall.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
My genuine Austrian Walkjanker had hung forlornly at the far end of a plastic garment bag for decades. It had no place to go.
Till my son got engaged to a Minnesota girl.
A classic Walkjanker, just so you know, is a traditional, no-nonsense Austrian winter jacket of real wool. It’s densely knit and, using an ancient, pre-industrial technology known as Walke in German and fulling in English, it is aggressively soaked, heated, beaten and shrunk until it’s two-thirds its original size and the scales on the wool fibers have loosened and hooked on to each other. The finished fabric is as thick and stiff and impenetrable as a slab of berber carpeting.
It’s a garment so old-timey and so Old World that even Google [Read more...]
Is the grapefruit-sized rock all that’s keeping the boulder from rolling down the hillside? Photos by BF Newhall.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
El Capitan, that massive cliff overlooking the Yosemite Valley, is the biggest single chunk of granite in Yosemite National Park — and in the world, for that matter. But to me, just as spectacular as all that bigness is the abundance of the smaller stuff at Yosemite — the boulders, the rocks, the stones and the pebbles that litter the park’s 12,000 square miles. [Read more...]
