It’s time for the annual road trip photos of food and fun and and friends and art and kitties. Going back to familiar places has its place; it’s easy and welcoming.

Back to The Porches Inn at Mass MoCA, a hip, chic, funky-artsy, cool place to stay, with the prettiest calico kitty ever (next to mine). It is across the canal from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, (Mass MoCA) housed in the former Sprague Electric Company building. It is a great venue for installations and performances as it is huge.

First a bunch of photos of my dear little Sabine, the hotel kitty. I came with a bag of kitty treats and a desire to catnap her. Sweetest little thing.

Arrival at The Porches

 

 

A visit to Mass MoCA. This was a special day for me as a very dear childhood friend was at the museum at the same time and we were able to spend a few hours together.

 

A sampling of exhibits

Installations by Teresita Fernandez:

As Above So Below
Black Sun: “evokes an amplified glowing cloud cover. Thousands of translucent tubes suspended from the ceiling in graduating color from amber to black. Cloud cover, sky. Photos taken from above and below.

Sfumato is composed of more than 30,000 small rocks of mined graphite, each mounted and each with a hand drawn tail like mark trailing. It becomes a constellation, but each part has its own landscape.

 

 

 

The Wandering Veil, installations by Izhar Patkin, an Israeli-born artist, open with a rear view of Don Quixote, hinting at the components of the exhibition: it is a journey and a query.

Pleated canvas paintings fill a huge exhibition space. Many are ambiguous; they are diaphanous and ephemeral.

 

Darren Waterston: Uncertain Beauty: Filthy Lucre reflects creation and destruction, life and death. His piece is a rework of James McNeill Whistler’s Harmony in Blue and Gold. Whistler first major patron, Frederick Leyland commissioned him to paint and showcase his art. Whistler did as he pleased without consulting Leyland and subsequently was not paid the full amount agreed upon. Whistler painted battling peacocks for spite. This is Waterson’s take. He reconstructed the room and displayed it as warped and gaudy.

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