Art Walk in DC

I just returned from a trip to Washington, DC - one of my favorite places to visit. The trip was work related, a semi annual meeting of consortium members from colleges that use the digital resources of the Library of Congress to enhance teaching and learning. The program, Teaching with Primary Sources, is a terrific resource to K12 schools and colleges. I'm happy to be the person on the ground here in Western North Carolina. I enjoy my colleagues very much and always return from those meetings energized.

I usually go up to DC a day in advance - It's hard to fly from Asheville to DC on Monday morning in time for a 10 am start. While in DC I always go to museums. This time it was raining, so I spent more time that usual in the museums, rather than strolling about. The highlight of the trip was the Louise Bourgoise show at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden. It was a huge show of large and small works, sculpture, paintings and drawing. One of her recurring themes is the spider. Bourgoise's mother was a tapestry weaver and both her earlier and later works use the spider and fibers in a number of different ways.

I have been visiting the Museum of the American Indian on nearly every trip. One of the current shows is Fritz Scholder's Indian/not Indian paintings (and more sculpture). Even with some disturbing images and his claim than 25% of something is nothing, he really changed Native American art.

The newest exhibit at the Library was the Lincoln Bicentennial exhibit 'With Malice Toward None.' This is an amazing collection of primary source documents - hand written notes, newspaper articles, drawings, photographs - even campaign buttons and banners. You can seee the online version here + the interactives will go up very soon, if not already. I saw anumber of other cool things, but these were the standouts of a fine trip.

Official fiber content: Nothing like time in airports, airplanes and hotel rooms to get serious knitting done. In this case, sleeve #1 of the Classic Lines Cardi in the rusty shades of Chipotle and Spice. Perhaps a bit too close in tone, I really like it.

Tonight is the monthly fiber group get together. I'll bring sleeve #2 and a tossed salad. We will be small. but mighty!