Or: too many ideas, a creative explosion, stunning color palettes, African strip quilts, and me Sometimes, work and play intersect, overlap, combine. For this week’s material culture class, we read four selections, chapters and articles, on design and aesthetic. One of the pieces was a chapter from John M. Vlach’s book The Afro-American Tradition in [...]
We’ll call this the requisite commentary-on-the-anniversary blog. Probably every American is reflecting on that Tuesday, September 11 ten years ago, in their own way, to many different degrees of emotion and disconnection, both and neither at once. It has been a decade, and what made it perhaps most poignant was a story posted on Public [...]
I spent over two hours of pure joy and pleasure this weekend drinking in an exhibit that told its story with folk art: hand crafted chairs, cotton-picking plows and tools, buttons made of sea mussels, the most enormous mortar and pestle I’ve ever seen, Victorian- and African-inspired quilt motifs. I can’t remember the last time [...]
Books I read this summer (and recommend) For the preservationist you: The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a CIty Transformed by Michael Meyer For the adventurous youthful side: Undress Me In the Temple Of Heaven: A Memoir by Susan Jane Gilman For an all-out laugh (and very breezy, quick [...]