AL Day 3 - Folk Art, Fine China, and Fond Memories
Today started with a trip to Red Cat Coffee House for coffee and a muffin. It was very cold out, so I got a hot coffee instead of my usual. I got a latte. I thought it tasted pretty good for a hot coffee, but it as more objectively one of the prettiest coffees I've had so far. For my muffin I got a chocolate chip, but I ate it so fast i barely even registered what it tasted like. I assume that must be a good sign though.
After breakfast, I sat out to explore around Birmingham. My first stop was the African Village in America, a folk art creation by an artist named Joe Minter. Sprawling across just about every inch of his property, MInter has assembled various pieces of scrap metal and recycled materials to create his own African-American Village drawing traditional African art such as certain tribal headdresses as well as current events in America. There's also a lot of Biblical references because Minter says God gave him all the ideas for his work. He says he was told to "Pick up what's thrown away and put it together" which I think is a really lovely way of looking at it. Each individual sculpture isn't super pretty, but it all just gets more and more impressive when you take in the whole village.
I think my favorite piece in the whole village was this fishing net with a sign that says "Jesus Save Us". I like it because I'm pretty sure when Jesus said, "I will make you fishers of men" he wasn't picturing Big Mouth Billy Bass.
This was also the second folk art house I'd been too in three days with bowling ball art which was not something I was expecting to see at all let alone multiple times.
After the African Village, I went to the Museum of Fond Memories at Reed's Books. Jim Reed runs a book store collecting new, used, and rare books. He also has a "nostalgia museum" collecting various ornaments, stickers, photos, albums, and ephemera that he has fond memories associated with and decorating the entire shop with them. It gives the place a really whimsical, out of time feel that I really loved. I had to be careful or I could have lost hours in there.
My favorite thing there was this old sci-fi magazine with a big front page story about the movie Willow, George Lucas' big grand attempt at blatantly ripping off Lord of the Rings. It's not exactly a good movie, but is so weird in own its way that its sort of endearing. Plus while the idea of a race of little people in a fantasy world is sort of familiar, it does really give Warwick Davis quite an acting showcase as opposed to a lot of the crummier roles usually offered to Little People. I used to watch Willow a lot with my older brother and sister a lot so it was my own little nostalgia trip.
With warm feelings inside from all the fond memories, I then went to the Birmingham museum of art. Right when I walked in they had a big Chihuly installation spread across the center window in a way that caught the light beautifully. I felt like it was a good sign.
The special exhibition was called Afterlife and featured sculptures and ceramics from Ancient Japan, China, India, and Southeast Asia that were included in various burial traditions. It's amazing to see what ancient people were capable of making, and some of the burial vases from China were particularly intricate. My favorite part were the sculptures of little dancers, entertainers, and comedians that were buried with the dead in tombs so that they'd be able keep them amused in the afterlife. I like the idea of afterlife being just a big silly party.
After the special exhibit I started out on the permanent collection. The wings were all European art ranging from medieval stuff up through more modern works, with particular focus on the Renaissance. Styles ranged from paintings to sculptures to decorative works and even stained glass.
My favorite pieces were a big dreamy Monet seascape, a stunning painting called L'Aurore (Dawn) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (do you think that last name could be French?) that feels to me like it captures a lot of joy, a painting called the Last Judgement by Leandro Bassano that fits a seemingly impossibly huge cast of characters onto one canvas, and a sculpture by Salvador Dali of Perseus holding Medusa's head. Even after visiting a whole museum about him I had no idea that Dali made sculptures like that. He was just full of surprises I guess.
There was also a special smaller exhibit within the European galleries about the Dutch Masters. I'm so impressed by the draftsmanship in these early Dutch etchings that such textured almost photorealistic works were able to be created in such small spaces. I also really liked a piece called Gardens of the House Zijdebalen by Jan Alemis which used several little Delft squares to paint a large portrait of a garden.
Also in the European Wings, there was this plate labeled Adam and Eve, where I honestly have no idea who's supposed to be Adam and who's supposed to Eve because they both have the exact same breasts and long hair.
After the European wings came the American galleries. These ranged from colonial days to the turn of the 20th century, and included lots of landscapes, cowboy art, folk art, early abstractions, and even a Frank Lloyd Wright window.
My favorite pieces from these galleries included a painting called the Barricade by George Wesley Bellows which shows haunting imagery of soldiers using civilians as human shields during WWI; a surreal painting of a old man having a breakdown outside a church called The End of a Misspent Youth by Elihu Vedder (bad ass name); a very cute painting of a boy being taught how to read (i didn't remember to write down the title or the artist); two mored modernist works highlighting Black artists called Modernist Exhibition by Henry Wilmer Bannarn and Conversation Piece by Charles Edgar Shannon; and a gigantic beautiful painting of the Yosemite Valley by Alfred Bierstadt.
Oh and also there was also this shockingly unflattering portrait of the Honorable Dixon Hall Lewis. I get that he's a larger man, but I'm sure there's a way to make it look like he doesn't have a giant goiter.
On the second floor, there was the contemporary art exhibit called Third Space that sought to mix contemporary artists from the South with contmporary artists from around the world. It was really cool, with a big variety ranging from the very abstract to the very realistic across all kinds of mediums.
The highlights for me from this exhibit were a fiberglass sculpture of Pinocchio all tied up with his own nose entitled History Bites Its Own Tail by Esterio Segura (a bit on the nose for a metaphor); a piece called Presidents by Laylah Ali which included really realistic drawn portraits of the first 42 Presidents but with little cartoon black faces sticking their tongues out at Grant and Johnson (I'm guessing it's a statement about reconstruction, but there wasn't actually much information about the intentions behind the piece. I just like the mixing of the realistic and the cartoony); and a piece called Slow Clap for Satie by Dennis Oppenheim which featured two gigantic wooden hands attached to a motor so they'd open and shut over a long-ish interval to produce a slow clap. It's sarcastic and oddly beautiful.
Next up came the museums personal collection of art from ancient China, Japan, Korea, and India that wasn't specifically part of the Afterlife exhibit. For me the earthenware, especially the jade carvings, and some of the intricately inlaid furniture really stood out. The other thing that also stood out to me was some of the bold statements in the descriptions of each piece such as "The people of Korea love white more than any other color". I think they were going for it has symbolic and historic significance, but wow that's an insane sentence to make casually.
My favorites from this collection were ancient carved puzzle balls which are sort of like spherical precursors to Rubic's cubes where several different intricately carved ivory balls are layered inside each other. The puzzle is to to try to get all the holes in each layer to align. The attention to detail was absolutely amazing to see. My other favorite thing was this sculpture of a really fat samurai, because it shattered all my preconceived notions of ideal samurai bodies. You go girl!
The next exhibit I looked at was the museum's collection of Meso-American and Native American art. The main focus was on ancient art, but there were a few more modern pieces which I really liked. I particularly liked some pieces by an ethnologist named Maud Oakes, and a more recent work called Between Worlds by an artist named Teri Greeves (pictured center) which uses a mixture of paint, textiles, and beads to capture a really lovely and haunting image of a woman ascending to the afterlife.
The highlight of the second floor and perhaps the whole museum though was their massive collection of pieces from the Josiah Wedgwood and Sons company. Founded in 1759, Wedgwood became a go to name for fine decorative china and pottery In England and soon all over Europe, and it's clear why. They could work in a variety of styles and colors (which at the time they were working in is especially impressive), and they would seemingly make anything ranging from standards like vases and dishware to more elaborate works like fireplaces and swords. One of the coolest things the museum had was the collection of plates that the Wedgwood company was commissioned to make for a royal dinner with Catherine the Great.
The highlight for me though was this larger statue because it feels like they were just cutting loose and showing off what they were able to do, because it's not like it serves any practical purpose. It's just beautiful for the sake of being beautiful.
As I was leaving, I strolled through the sculpture garden which was small but fun, with a mixture of more modern sculptures and some classics. I particularly liked a cast of a Rodin nude that just looked a constipated naked man got lost in the garden.
After appreciating all that art, I had worked up quite the appetite so I went to a place called Saw's BBQ that had been highly recommended by multiple comedians and the internet. I got a BBQ pulled pork sandwich with a side of mac and cheese. It was super cheap, and honestly some of the best pork I have ever had. It was so juicy and flavorful, and just perfectly cooked. The mac and cheese was no slouch either, but I still think about that pork.
I washed down the sandwich with some coffee from Seeds Coffee Co. It was a really hip spot, but they looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for an extra shot of espresso in my iced coffee. I was gonna have a long drive to the open mic, and I thought that was a fairly standard coffee request but I must have been the first person who ever asked for it there. I guess Dunkin Donuts and their turbo shots have spoiled this New England boy. Given that they were shocked by the request, they did a good job of it and it was a pretty tasty beverage.
The reason I needed all that caffeine was that I was going back on the four hour drive to Mobile, because one of my favorite comedians from the Sunday mic, Ryan Adams, was hosting this one tonight. It was at a really cool bar called the Blind Mule, that had a big beer selection and a really cozy upstairs performance space. They also had this truly shocking painting of a naked Porky Pig that I will never be able to unsee every time I close my eyes.
I was also really pleasantly surprised to see a sticker from a local Boston punk/reggae band I really like called Destroy Babylon stuck above the bar. That was not something I was expecting to see at all, maybe even less so than Li'l Porky.
Because of the snow from the night before and the relatively cold (for Alabama) weather, the mic was not super well attended by comedians or audience members, which Ryan said was actually pretty uncommon. The positive side of this though was that all the people who were there were super supportive, and each comic got a little bit more time which was nice. It wasn't a big mic, but it sure was a fun one, with all the six or so comedians hanging out and joking around at the bar in between sets. It was a much warmer environment than the cold streets outside.
Highlights for me included:
Ryan Adams telling a story about his first protest in first grade when he asked if he could go to the bathroom and his teacher said "I don't know can you" so he peed himself. "Sure, I pissed myself, but I did it with purpose"
Ryan Pfeiffer- An extended Seinfeld-ian bit about how much he hates Low Talkers
Kendall Keaton- "Every time my roommate tells me I look bad in flared jeans, I masturbate on her couch"
My own set went pretty well, but it was a little rambly because I was a little tipsy and trying out some new stuff to fill out the extra time. I also accidentally started going into an older bit I haven't done in a while, but then had to commit to it once I started it which was interesting. I think because it was a smaller crowd, they liked the lighter material (for me and also everyone) and some of my darker material about death and stuff didn't go over as well as it sometimes does because it just wasn't the right mood for it.
Favorite Random Sightings: A Remodeling Company in a really run down building; Sticks and Stuff; Sharp Carpet (sounds dangerous); Beauty Master$; Burnt Corn Creek; A Bumper Sticker that said "We'll bring the ass-kicking, you bring the ass" (i get that it's supposed to sound tough, but try saying "You bring the ass" out loud)
Regional Observations: As far as I can tell there is no standardized spelling of BBQ, barbecue, bar-b-que, etc.
Albums Listened To: None Shall Pass by Aesop Rock; Northern Lights - Southern Cross by the Band; Notes from Elsewhere by Peter Mulvey (local guy my dad really likes); Nothing More to Say by the Frightnrs (a sadly prophetic album title because I believe this was their last album before their lead singer died from ALS)
People's Favorite Jokes:
A man walks into his psychiatrist's office and says, "Doc, I feel like nobody listens to me," and the psychiatrist says, "Next!"
Songs of the Day:
Spooky old time zombie movie music video. Also as far as I know one of the only rap songs to feature John Darnielle of the Mountain Goat. It's a weird cool mix
A classic. The Last Waltz is such a good concert
RIP Dan "Brukky" Klein
