Thursday, 27 June 2002

Yesterday was Jackie's birthday. We spent the day together. We hadn't gotten to do that last year, because I was at Clarion and Jackie was in France.

To celebrate her birthday, I took Jackie to the Indianapolis Art Museum. We didn't know it, but there was an exhibit of Moroccan textiles, so it was a perfect day to go.

It's not a bad drive to Indianapolis from Champaign, and we had good weather. The museum building is being renovated and they're doing work on the grounds as well, but there was nothing that kept us from enjoying the whole thing.

For me the best thing was in the Asian art section. There were three paintings from a book of eleven ink & color paintings on silk. The artists was Zhou Tang and the book was called Album of Marvelous Rocks.

The pictures were not unlike what a good photographer with an eye for composition might bring home from a trip to southern Utah or anyplace with interesting rock formations. But they really just representational images of interesting rocks. But, to the artist, they weren't just interesting they were marvelous, and some of that quality came through in the painting.

It's a good example, too, of what a difference a title can make. The individual paintings were also well-titled.

Except for the Moroccan art and the Asian art we just zipped through the rest of it, more looking to see what was there than actually appreciating individual pieces. There was a scary amount of Christian iconography. (I can look at statues of Shiva and Parvati all day, but there's a point after which one more representation of the crucifixion or judgement day is daunting.)

The museum is on the grounds of the Eli Lilly estate and there is the old mansion, a greenhouse, fountains, several gardens, and a nice restaurant.

I get to travel on business again. In a month, I'll be going to Singapore for the next Bluetooth UnPlugFest. You'd think such a thing would be exciting, but basically I get to spend 20 some hours on airplanes, work from dawn till dusk for five days, and then fly home again.

I called called and requested the same arrangements as the other person who's going. The travel agent looked at the itinerary and said, "Flying coach to Asia? Who did you piss off?"

This evening we watched "Biloxi Blues," yet another movie about the writing life.