Birmingham Museum of Art

I wasn't really planning to blog until at least after tonight's concert, but I am just so completely blown away by the museum that I went to today that I have to get this down while it is still fresh in my mind.

I decided to come in to Birmingham early today and do something other than just "see the show."  There were a couple of reasons for that.  Birmingham has only ever been a city I dreaded driving through, a fast blur I cursed my own personal blue streak at as I tried to hit the junction for I-65 N as I headed up to Bloomington or as my parents drove on vacation.  I felt like it deserved to have a little bit more than that or a civic center to define it in my mind.

Then there is the fact that I inevitably get lost at least once every trip.  Since a concert is one of those things they sort of like you to show up on time for, I didn't want to have to fool with getting lost trying to find the auditorium and be stressed out about it.  (For those of you keeping score, I have already taken care of the lost bit and gotten it out of the way as I tried to find my hotel.  Hopefully, I'm done with that.)

Therefore, I came to the museum.  When I entered, I asked the docent at the desk what their entry fee was.  She just smiled and handed me some brochures.  There isn't one.  For a collection that size and that quality, I almost fell over.

The first gallery I toured was their education section, all of which had been done by local students. Two thoughts crossed my mind:  What must it be like to teach at those schools? and Oh, how I wish my darling babies could see this....  We have a strong art program at our school, but some of that work was just incredible.  There was even sumi-e.

Every kind of thing you can think of from Wedgwood to African Art to traditional American pottery to Japanese antiquities to pre-Columbian artifacts is in that one building.  I didn't see it all.  I couldn't.  I spent a considerable amount of time with the Asian collection (surprise, surprise), and stumbled across a small but lovely gallery of 14th - 18th century Italian  pieces in a variety of media, including some of the prizes of the museum, some terracotta studies of saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that were really amazing.

Three pieces from the whole have sort of stuck with me, though, haunting me long after I left the parking lot and got shoved by traffic onto the onramp for the interstate.  (yeah.  this was the beginning of "lost.")  The first was a painting by a French artist.  It was called "The Sorceress."  Something about it just grabbed me and pulled me in.  I've never seen anything like it. The painting was almost life-size.  I am almost certain that woman is going to start showing up in my dreams now.  This is not a good thing since she had a little voodoo doll and was stabbing it through the heart with a giant knife.  The painting was that...I hesitate to use the word captivating, but that's the only one I can come up with now.  It was really strange.  Everybody who saw it was pulled to it that way.  I can't explain.

The second piece was free-standing ceramic sculpture perhaps seven feet tall by a Bay Area potter whose stuff I saw before at SFMOMA and loved, Robert Arneson.  The piece I saw by him in San Francisco was tremendous, but the one I saw today made him one of my favorite artists ever.  I have to find out all about him now.  It was this fantastic clay self-portrait head which he deliberately disfigured and made a top of a perfectly-formed funerary urn.  Carved into it, both the head and the urn, were all types of phrases and reminders that we should not judge because "we are all just dust," and other things.  He had adapted a classical form and turned it personal as he was struggling with cancer.  It was just knock-you-down amazing, especially when you take the time to consider the skill involved in what he did to create it all.

The third piece was also pottery.  I suppose it is inevitable that I am carrying more of it than anything else.  I saw another Jomon vase today.  I have only ever seen one at the Aichi Prefectural pottery museum, I think it was, when I made my very first ever piece of pottery.  Jomon is literally thousands of years old.  When I look at Jomon, I feel amazed that we still do that same thing, we still shape mud and try to make it lovely, fire it so it becomes something else, use it in our daily lives.  Jomon is beautiful, too.  The shapes of the early pieces are lovely and very modern-looking.  I guess the cliche about everything old becoming new again is true, after all.  I stood and peered into that case surrounded by a whole gallery full of Japan for a long time.  It lifted something in my heart, and when I turned away, I felt better than I had in a long, long time.

I'll sit here a while longer, and then I'll go down and find something that will pass for food.  I'm not worried about a meal, really.  Just as long as it will keep body and soul together, that's fine.  I didn't come to eat.  I came to be fed with other things, things I can't really get at home. Part one of the "refueling" is more or less complete.  I guess you can say I've downloaded it and it has to finish the install (ha).  This isn't an easy day trip, but to know there is this much beauty this close might make me come this way again even if it is a heckuva drive home when I'm done.  I think it would be worth it.