A Wandering WeyrCat...

  May 5 Art Zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands In Amsterdam, there's a small taxidermy gallery with artfully preserved specimens meant to evoke a “Wunderkamer” (Room of Wonder, or cabinet of curiousities). This Art Zoo is created by a pair of artists called Darwin, Sinke & Van Tongeren (Yes, Two artists, that incorporate Darwin into their name to honor the role of a naturalist in preserving and sharing the wonders of nature). I went for the birds, and to show the boys the dinosaurs.  ‘Stan’ the replica t-rex was curled so he fit in one room, just barely. He shared it with blackened skeletons of birds, an anteater, an ape, and curiously, a purse made of lab-grown dinosaur leather.  The temporary exhibition ‘RELICS is a collection of gigantic fossils that was transformed into contemporary artworks’. A triceratops skull hung suspended over delicate coral. A mosasaurus skull stood like the globe in the middle of a giant's bone crown. There was also a seemingly un-altered Eleph...

Straat is the Amsterdam street art museum. It features everything from graffiti to amazing ethereal pieces two stories high. It's houses in an industrial building near the port, and share a large outdoor area that's covered in graffiti and street art too! I took the boys to kick off winter vacation.  The building is known for this huge and beautiful mural of Anne Frank, reading "Let me be myself". The 240 m² mural by Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra (1).  The inside is an open space lined with double rows of enormous canvases. The looped path is divided by standing exhibits and marked by painted animal foot prints.  We took the proffered children's scavenger hunt and let it guide us. Hobbit was really taken by the scale of some of the pieces.  Their favorite part might have been this upcycled (artcycled?) wooden shed done over with string and geometric wood panels. They spent nearly ten minutes pouring over every inch of the insid...

When growing up, I was obsessed with the movie Labyrinth. It probably is the root for a lot of things I love: owls, Escher, fantasy, and Goblin King's, of course. I searched and searched for a puzzle of the poster in Sarah's room. My Grandmother found one and brought it to her annual beach retreat, and invited me, my sister, and my mom. It would be the last time we would all be together. I have the puzzle hanging in my home, and now I've been able to see the real one.  As 2023 is the 125th anniversary of Escher’s birth and to celebrate, works from his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita were shown, too. I like his work too (I like woodcut style anything)!  But I was thrilled to be able to see the Metamorphoses , Ascending and Descending , and Waterfall . Some were new to me, like Paradise and 5th Day of Creation .  The insane detail on works like Scarabs and Inside St. Peters is amazing. The latter literally made me dizzy (it's a view from an ...

Exploring from Home: Art: Raku Inoue - Fauna Out of Flora at Atlas Obscura . Shelley Phillips - Virtual Art Gallery. NJ native and elementary art teacher for 35 years.  I have been READING: Dead Beat (Dresden Files #7)  by Jim Butcher.  The Turn: The Hollows Begins with Death (The Hollows #0.1) (Kim Harrison). I loved this book for the same reasons I love all the Hallows novels: the characters are believable, sarcastic, intelligent, and all have their own agency. Even female characters motivated solely by a desire to mate have deep personalities, believable backstories, and develop over time (seriously)! I loved seeing new characters interacting with old. I loved getting to learn about The Turn. I adore the new facet given to beloved characters. I do have one complaint: because Trent is a Jr (sharing his father's name), for the ENTIRE book I thought KAL was TRENT. That's really a Me problem, not a Kim Harrison problem. Reading throug...