NE Day 4- Quilts, Quality Gardens, and Quirky Landmarks
Today I bid a fond farewell to Omaha as I began to journey westward across Nebraska. I’m sure in part having no real preconceived notions helped, but between the sweet hosts, good comedy, great food, and cool museums Omaha was easily one of the most pleasant surprises of the whole road trip.
I started out by heading back to Lincoln, since one day earlier in the week wasn’t really enough to see all that I wanted to check out. My first course of action was to get some coffee at a place called Cultiva, which blended trendy craft coffee beverages with homey classic diner vibes to great effect.
Fueled up, I had a slightly non-traditional brunch at a fantastic Mediterranean grill called Sultan’s Kite, which blends traditional Middle Eastern street food and Greek staples for quick, flavorful treats. I got the Chicken Schwarma in a pita pocket with some taziki sauce, lettuce, and tomatoes. My picture doesn’t do it justice because I let it unwrap, but the chicken was tender and whatever they marinate it in is positively delicious. If you want a great local meal without breaking the bank, I don’t think you do much better.
My major stop for the day was The International Quilt Museum which is housed through the University of Nebraska Lincoln and contains the largest publicaly viewable quilt collection in the entire world! Their collection is well over 6000 quilts deep and features pieces from all over the world showcasing not only hundreds of hugely talented artists but also the variety of cultural traditions and practices associated with quilting. The Museum recently moved in to a new building to accommodate their expanded collection, and the new building does a really cool job blending more traditional brick architecture with more sleek modern glass structures. It seems fitting for the museum’s twin goals of honoring the rich history of quilting while also giving a platform to contemporary artists doing exciting new things with the medium. It also supposedly resembles the eye of a sewing needle when viewed from above, which is a really cool touch but I wasn’t quite tall enough to see for myself.
I really loved this museum, because it combined so much history and culture with really amazing art. It’s fascinating how quilting requires huge amounts of talent and creativity but was historically not treated like an art form due to it being considered women’s work and commercial. I think the museum does a fantastic job refuting the idea that things made by women for practical purposes can’t also be high art seamlessly (ha) blending form and function. Perhaps gender roles were extra on my mind because I did happen to be the only young man visiting the museum that day, and all the other visitors were older women. I was told multiple times how cute and sweet I was, so I do recommend that if you are looking to gain 4 or 5 new moms, this is the museum for you.
The first exhibit was all about Provençal quilt-making traditions from the south of France. These incredible pieces were largely solid colors of silk and cotton with intricate ornamental threadwork criss-cross throughout. Provence is known for its abundance of natural sunlight, and the patterns are meant to take advantage of this evoking the rolling, hilly landscapes whenever they catch the light. It was just incredible how they could look like just large single colored cloths from a distance until you got close enough to see just how involved and complex the patterns really were. Once you see them, they almost seem to swirl before your eyes and it’s quite dazzling. My favorite thing to learn was that all the recurring patterns had symbolic meanings, and sometimes the loops of the laurel laces would take the shape of local eligible bachelors’ initials.
To emphasize the quilts’ place within the region’s artistic lineage, there were also a number of painting and sculptures with my favorite being this sweet impressionistic scene of a sun-dappled fountain. When viewing the quilts in the context of the larger art world, it’s hard not to see how their repeated geometric patterns and optical illusions played a great influence on the Abstract Expressionist movement, but of course when men did it with paint it was great genius but when women did it with textiles it was a bed covering.
The next gallery was all luxurious quilts from Southeast Asia. My favorite thing I learned was that in ancient India quilts were considered big status symbols, and it was highly competitive to have your quilts made with the most expensive fabrics. Because blue dyes were also highly expensive, the amount of blue in a quilt was also a pretty good indicator that someone was a big spender. Naturally that meant there were some pretty impressively blue pieces on display:
Beyond the blue pieces, the other highlights for me were some fascinating more abstract modern pieces that seemed to operate much more on their own internal logic than on clearly defined patterns and one piece with lots of embroidered animals just because it was super cute.
The next gallery was a special exhibit called Eiko Okano’s Delectable World, showcasing the spectacular talents of contemporary Japanese quilter, Eiko Okano. The pieces here were connected by the unifying concept of “delectableness” which meant lots and lots of loving sewn recreations of various foods as well as anything else that just makes her happy. It was an immensely positive exhibit bursting with colors and drawing inspiration from Japanese textile traditions, culinary arts, pop-art, and pure imagination. It was remarkable how well she was able to really capture the essence of so many different foods with just fabrics, thread, and the occasionally well placed button.
The showstopping centerpiece of the exhibit was a full banquet table laid out for a veritable feast of gorgeously embroidered plate settings accompanied by sleek Japanese tableware. It was such a fun thesis statement for the exhibit highlighting both the artist's considerable skills as well as her playful blending of traditions and modernism.
The next exhibit was pun-derfully titled War and Pieced, and focused on quilts made by soldiers during wartime. It was a fascinating slice of history, showing what an unsung but ubiquitous trend soldiers quilting really is. Pieces ranged across multiple countries and multiple time periods and were often made from fragments of uniforms which to the curators offers a compelling reason for such a number of these quilts existing: attempts to make beauty and normalcy out of the tragedies that led to the uniforms being torn and fragmented in the first. Quilters ranged in ability and experience, with some soldiers having been tailors before the war while others operated almost purely on instinct, but even the untrained quilts have a raw emotionality to them that makes their idiosyncrasies shine rather than diminish. It’s also cool to see something so stereotypically portrayed as masculine as war produce something as traditionally feminine as beautiful quilting.
Some highlights for sheer size and scope included: a massive quilt with an insanely complex decorative border made by an unidentified British soldier stationed in India during the 19th century (both photos in the top row); a vivid blue quilt with a mosaic star pattern found in Pennsylvania most likely made by an American soldier from the Revolutionary War; and one quilt with the adorably shaky inscription “To my sister Mary from her brother John”.
While most of the soldiers stuck to more traditional patterns, some branched out to much more complex imagery inlaid into the quilts using a technique called intarsia. Inlaid images ranged from cure but more childish figures and animals to ridiculously detailed recreations of famous architecture.
The craziest intarsias were made by Hungarian-born soldier Michael Zumpf. Zumpf was a highly skilled tailor and he was able able to fully reproduce and etching of the House of Commons engraved by Thomas Oldham Barlow and an engraving of The Intellect and Valour of Great Britain, after a painting by the artist Thomas Jones Barker with stunning attention to detail in both the central images and the borders. It was hard to believe you were looking at fabric and not paintings.
Next up, I moved on to the museum’s permanent collection which opened up with a magnificent quilt called Big Blue sewn by Ardis James, whose donation of over 1000 quilts led to the foundation of the museum. The variety of patterns rippling through Big Blue really shows that Ardis was a masterful quilter in her own right not just an avid collector.
Because the museum’s permanent collection is so massive, they can’t possibly display everything at once so they arrange excerpts around a theme. While I was there, the theme was called Singular Fascination and featured all quilts that take a single shape or pattern and repeat it into dazzling compositions. It just blows my mind that some people can see a geometric shape and know how to take something so simple and turn it into something extravagant.
Some quilts used such teeny tiny repeated figures that they were downright dizzying to look at because your brain couldn’t quite a get a handle on any one color or recurring pattern which was deeply technically impressive but also sort of disorienting.
The most interesting discovery to me was a style of patterning called yo-yo quilts. Yo-yos feature small discs of fabric crimped and sewn along the edges to create a sort of flowery 3-D effect. I don’t think it’s a particularly uncommon pattern, but I’d never seen anything like it before and I thought each disc was super cool on its own let alone when they were arranged into full quilt-level patterns.
The next gallery was dedicated to highlighting a talented local contemporary artist. The featured artist was a quilter named Molly Anderson who was able to create insanely vivid natural scenes that looked unbelievably like paintings and not collections of threads and fabrics. Her techniques and imagination shone through so much, and each quilt really looked like a window into someone else’s dreams.
Next up was a collection of crazy quilts. Crazy here is not an epithet but refers to a style of quilting using irregular patches of fabric with no fixed order or pattern. On the one hand, it might seem easier to work without a “set of rules” but getting such irregular fabrics to actually fit within the boundaries of a usable quilt is actually more like a complicated game of Tetris. Some people event estimate that more intricate crazy quilts may take over 1000 hours to make. Each piece was so wild and bizarre, but there was a real beauty to all the chaos.
Last but not least was a cute display of quilts from different doll houses which was a real testament to how much love and care can sometimes go into getting the details right on something almost nobody will ever notice:
Outside the museum, there was was a really calming public art installation of swirling white steel called Reverie by an artist named Linda Fleming. I don’t know how related to quilting it is, but as far as public seating goes I don’t think it gets much cooler than that.
After all that quilting, my next stop was Lincoln’s Sunken Gardens, a spectacular public space created as part of Depression-era beautification efforts. The project employed dozens of men and turned a local dumpsite for garbage into one of the most celebrated public gardens in the plains. The garden is the alpine style popular during the era in which it was built featuring lots of terraces, hills, and rock features to create a uniquely varied landscape to accentuate the natural beauty all around. I don’t think I could have asked for a better day to visit either, as hundreds of different flowers of various colors were all bloom and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
To really get the full “sunken” effect though, you’ve got to stand on one of the hills and look down on all the rolling terraces. It’s quite a sight no matter who you are, but when you factor in just how flat Nebraska is, it really must have floored the first people to get to see it.
Accompanying all the natural beauty, the garden also had some man-made tricks up its sleeve. For example, during a 2003 renovation project, they added an amazing Rotary Pavilion by architect Jeffrey Chadwick which combines the classic and the modern with strong marble pillars supporting a dome of laser-cut steel panels depicting the four seasons (as in nature not Frankie Valli).
My favorite piece though was a sculpture by David Young Called Rebekah at the Well which doubles as a water feature as the small dribble from the Rebekah’s jar cascades down rocks into an incredible waterfall. Each element would be pretty on its own, but taken together it’s a really ingenious addition.
After all that exploring, I was due for some more coffee so i went through a classic local institution for good coffee quick: Lincoln Espresso. I went through the drive-in, briefly forgetting how weird the Frank Zappa album I was blasting was, and got a mighty fine iced coffee. As good as the coffee and the fast, friendly service was, my favorite part was their logo of Abe Lincoln’s trademark hat replaced with a cup of espresso. Just brilliant marketing right there.
I was going to have a long drive ahead of me for the rest of the day so to keep my spirits up, I indulged my sweet tooth at Le Quartier Bakery and Cafe. I didn’t have anything in particular in mind, but when I saw their decadent chocolate torte I knew my fate was sealed. It was impossibly rich and light at the same time, and the little milk chocolate disk on top added some great texture as well as a little stylistic flair. It was a real work of art, and if diabetes is the price it takes the support the arts then so be it.
Fueled by chocolate and coffee, I began my four hour drive across state to my night’s Air BnB. Roughly halfway there, I stopped at one of my favorite quirky roadside attractions in America: Harvard Jail of Harvard, NE. This tiny, two celled brick jail would be a fun bit of historical tourism just for its quaint size, but the story of jail gets much more gloriously wacky. In 1943, a 16 year old boy named Robert Pinckney was looking to lease a plot of land to plant a Victory Garden when he noticed that town accidentally listed the jailhouse on the list of properties for sale. He told the town council about their mistake and they laughed at him, so spitefully he bought it. For $1.50! The town leaders didn’t want to admit that they’d been outwitted by a child so they just pretended that nothing happened and continued to use the jail as normal. Robert not to be outdone sued the town for unpaid rent on the property he owned. And he won! To the town’s embarrassment, the whole saga became a national public interest piece getting written about in Time Magazine, but things only get stranger from there. Robert felt bad and wanted to sell the land back to the town, but legally he couldn’t do it because he was still only 16 and you can’t deed property to someone else until you’re 21 so he decided to auction off the property at a war bonds auction. To bring the absurdity of the whole situation to its logical conclusion, who should buy the little Nebraskan jail, but Charlie McCarthy, beloved comedian and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s most famous dummy. Yup, at one point a small mid-western jail was technically owned by a puppet which really couldn’t be a better satire of the foolishness of private prisons even if that probably wasn’t on anyone’s mind at the time. History is truly a terrible and wonderful thing sometimes.
After that, I drove remaining 3 hours to my Air BnB in the small town of Gothenburg. I had a weirdly spacious room with a full TV so I decided to take full advantage. I went to a charmingly named local liquor store called OK Bottle, picked up some dangerously strong but mighty tasty local Imperial Stouts, kicked back, and watched the at the time newest Pixar movie, Coco. You better believe I cried like a baby at the end. It was a great night.
Favorite Random Sightings: An advertisement for The “Elite” Fleet (the quotation marks make it seem a little sarcastic); a bar called The Spigot (appealing); Harry's Wonder Bar (i can’t not here it in a German accent); an outdoor clothing store called The Moose’s Tooth (kinda like the bee’s knees I guess)
Regional Observations: While Lincoln Espresso did it the best in my opinion, the sheer amount of logos using Honest Abe’s likeness across the city is truly impressive
Albums Listened To: We Want Miles by Miles Davis (probably my favorite late career Miles albums); We’re Not Happy Until You’re Not Happy by Reel Big Fish (just We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful); We’re Only In For the Money by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (Zappa’s answer to Sgt. Pepper’s, probably works better as a savage satire of both the conservative government and the counterculture of the 60s i equal measure more than as a piece of music); The Wedding Singer Soundtrack by Various Artists (just the Presidents of the United States’ fantastic cover of Video Killed the Radio Star); Weezer (Blue Album) by Weezer (just Say It Ain’t So and Undone); Weezer (Red Album) by Weezer (just Pork and Beans); Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne (just Stacy’s Mom); Welcome to Mali by Amadou and Mariam (a great album by this married couple of blind musical virtuosos from Mali); Well I Should Have* Learned to Play Piano by H. Jon Benjamin Jazz Daredevil (a hilarious album of jazz instrumentals played by a combo of fantastic jazz session players plus comedian H. Jon Benjamin playing piano despite having no clue what he’s doing)
Joke of the Day:
A magician was working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. The audience would be different each week, so the magician allowed himself to do the same tricks over and over again.
There was only one problem: The captain's parrot saw the shows every week and began to understand what the magician did in every trick. Once he understood that, he started shouting in the middle of the show.
"Look, it's not the same hat!" "Look, he's hiding the flowers under the table!" "Hey, why are all the cards the Ace of Spades?"
The magician was furious but couldn't do anything, it was the captain's parrot after all.
One day the ship had an accident and sank. The magician found himself on a piece of wood, in the middle of the ocean, and of course the parrot was by his side.
They stared at each other with hate, but did not utter a word. This went on for several days.
After a week the parrot finally said, "Okay, I give up. What'd you do with the boat?"
Songs of the Day:
What a wild live act
The Wedding Singer was always my favorite early Adam Sandler movie
they are just so perfectly in synch
the fact that the rest of the band is so good just makes it funnier
a cool bonus arrangement of one of my favorite Zappa songs on harp and bass