Gabe and I had a good trip to Radford. The landscape was really very beautiful. It poured down rain all the way, the sun breaking through just as we arrived. We drove around town, went on the tour and talked to admissions. On our way home and stopped and took KT out to dinner, it was lovely to see her.

Mural Arts Project

Jane Golden was a keynote at our SAH conference. What an amazing program she has developed. Hired in 1984 as part of an anti-graffiti campaign she worked with known graffiti artists (knife, disco duck among others) to redirect their energies to mural-making. Helping them not only develop artistic skills, but also beautify their neighborhoods.

The Mural Arts Program has produced over 2,700 murals throughout Philadelphia. Even more importantly MAP's art education programs target under-served youth. Professional artists work as educators and role models. The program serves more than 3,000 youth and hire 300 artists each year. All that and she was a hilarious, dynamic and inspiring speaker. More about MAP here

Today we are off to change the exhibits @ NIH, yesterday Gretchen and I had a great meeting w/Sandy, between the two of them they are determined to keep me on track. Last week we also had a very interesting tour of the Wilson Building art collection from Sondra Arkin ( review in the post here)

Sondra will be showing with Willem DeLooper @ PASS Gallery
Opening Reception Friday, May 2nd 7-10pm

1617 S Street NW (rear)(enter alley off 17th Street between S and Swann Street NW)

May 2 - May 31, 2008 Gallery Open: Tuesdays & Saturdays 1-5 PM.

Rodin Museum

On Saturday afternoon I had a chance to go to the Rodin Museum, it was wonderful! They had several amazing marbles. Here is Andromeda, carved before 1917, looking at the subtlety of her backbone, it is hard to imagine it is carved out of stone.









Rodin fascinates me, he portrays the human form and the relationship between men and women with such passion but look at this mother & child. The mother's hand actually curves away from the child rather than embraces it.

There were students drawing all over the museum, it is a lovely old building, lots of natural light, the sculpture displayed in a straightforward manner.


The museum also did a great job showing Rodin's process. This amazing little sculpture of the Athlete was exhibited side by side with an earlier version (I wish I'd photographed both). You could see how in the first pose the athlete is sitting at rest, in the second - very similar - but there is so much more tension. The left leg is sprawled to one side while the head is turned opposite direction (rather than looking down as in the first). Also you can see how he exaggerated the size of the hand in the foreground which seemed to give the figure greater strength. It was insightful to see them in the same scale right next to each other.

A great feature, which you can access on line is Rodin's sketchbook see it here

Well I am home safe and sound after a wonderful trip. Lots to blog about, some wonderful keynote speakers, our own successful SAH film festival, and great museum visits. Most importantly Gabe's birthday! out to dinner tonight with the fam.

There are the most amazing murals everywhere you turn! this I discovered just blocks from the hotel on the way to dinner the other night. Too much to do last night, I didnt get back until 11 and have 9:30 this morning - so will blog later.

It was beautiful out so after the board meeting we took a walk to Rittenhouse Square which is just three blocks from the hotel, it was lovely lovely. I think everyone in Philadelphia was out having lunch in the park. Our opening ceremony is today.

This was from my walk around town yesterday, blissful nights sleep, board meeting in 1/2 hr.

I knew I'd be to Philly before, I just couldn't remember the last time. It was twenty years ago and I was with Helen. We were interviewing for a big Bell Atlantic job at their headquarters. Literally the minute I walked into the train station I remembered. I was pregnant with Raph.

Trip was delightful, gazed out the window, napped was here before I knew it. Unpacked and walked the neighborhood, beautiful day!

boy if anything has made my life easier its Gretchen organizing all our changing exhibits into a spreadsheet. A work of art in my eyes. Today I am off to Philadelphia for the Society for Arts in Healthcare conference.

today I'm having lunch with Deborah from the Women's Museum, Anita from SAH and pc. Other than that just working from home. This weekend we will be hammering out the contract for Lawrence Hospital.

tonight I'll be the guest lecturer for Cheryl Anne Colton's Arts Management class at Marymount University. I've made up a powerpoint of my 4 largest projects over the last 8 years. NIH, USBG, MJH and Smith Farm Center. Should be fun!

more noteworthy news

"Young@Heart" features a chorus of singers whose average age is 80, led by Bob Climan, center.
April 9, 2008
Retired, Yes, but Never Too Old to Rock
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: April 9, 2008
Time revises every taste and closes every gap. To observe the Young@Heart Chorus, a fluctuating group of about two dozen singers whose average age is 80, perform “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees in Stephen Walker’s documentary “Young@Heart” is to be uplifted, if slightly unsettled.
Sung by people approaching the end of their lives, the song is no longer about strutting through the urban jungle with your elbows out; it is a blunt survival anthem. These singers, most of them well-rehearsed amateurs, refuse to go gently into that good night. For them music is oxygen.
When they perform punk classics like “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash or “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones, the notion of a generation gap begins to crumble. Apart from the rebellious attitude behind the songs’ creation, these are elementary meat-and-potatoes tunes: “Sing Along With Mitch” material but with a hip credential.
The Clash song is a lusty group cheer, which, interpreted by people of advanced age, could be taken as a stubborn assertion of choosing life over death. “I Wanna Be Sedated,” an extremely catchy song any way you look at it, comes across as an ironic refusal to follow a doctor’s orders and lie back in a medicated haze. Members who suffer from chronic multiple ailments are shown struggling out of sickbeds to attend rehearsals.
At moments the movie, made for British television, risks being a cloying, rose-colored study of happy old folks at play, and the cheer sounds forced. But the lives of the several members it examines at some depth are too real and complicated to resemble a commercial starring Wilford Brimley as a Norman Rockwell grandpa. The movie offers an encouraging vision of old age in which the depression commonly associated with decrepitude is held at bay by music making, camaraderie and a sense of humor.
Since its beginnings as a collective arts project in 1982 at a center for the elderly in Northampton, Mass., the chorus has developed into a popular local ensemble with an international reputation. It has made 12 tours of Australia, Europe and Canada and serenaded Norwegian royalty. Accompanying the singers is a solid core of professional rock musicians who help ground their sometimes wavering voices.
Sandwiched into the movie are several surreal music videos made by the film’s producer, Sally George. The wittiest, created around “Road to Nowhere” by Talking Heads, depicts singers happily stranded on the side of an American highway.
The movie concentrates on the rigorous two-month preparations for a 2006 concert at the Academy Theater in Northampton. Guided by the chorus’s demanding longtime director, Bob Cilman, the members are learning new material, including “Yes We Can Can,” the Allen Toussaint hit for the Pointer Sisters, whose lyrics repeat “can” 71 times in intricate, staccato patterns; Sonic Youth’s enigmatic, equally demanding “Schizophrenia”; and the Coldplay ballad “Fix You.”
The fact that the chorus’s members are willing to tackle such daunting material attests to the spirit of adventure that is a crucial spur to their shared bonhomie. More than one member admits that his or her favorite music is classical, opera or show tunes. These rock songs are unfamiliar. Instead of comfortable walks around the block, rehearsals (there are three a week) are demanding hikes over hilly terrain. The challenge only makes it more exciting.
Late during the making of “Young@Heart” two members of the chorus, Bob Salvini and Joe Benoit, died within a week. Although neither death was a complete surprise, occurring so close together, they come as shock to a group dedicated to living in the present as fully and exuberantly as possible. The upbeat realism of everyone connected with “Young@Heart” might be summarized in six words: Life goes on until it doesn’t.
“Young@Heart” is rated PG (Parental Guidance suggested). It includes some strong language.
YOUNG@HEART
Opens on Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles.
Directed by Stephen Walker; director of photography, Eddie Marritz; edited by Chris King; produced by Sally George; released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.

great article in today's post

"Fabien Navidi-Kasmai, 15, diagnosed with a form of Hodgkin's lymphoma when he was 11, illustrated his five-day course of chemotherapy at Georgetown: "I drew a picture of me getting hit by a truck," he said in a phone interview, "then I'd get up and get hit by a train. I'd get up again and be hit by a plane. It really helps to get those feelings out on paper." The lure of the art studio made him drag himself out of bed. "Unless you've been through it," he said, "it's difficult to grasp the concept that art has the power to make having cancer a good experience."

Read it here

ah me, had a great visit w/pc on saturday. We went to the Women's museum to see the Paula Rego show that kt told me about. It was amazing amazing work. Then we went to the talk at Randall Scott, it was all over the blogs but sadly not well attended. then I broke my camera I swear something happens every time pc and I go out, if she doesn't misplace her credit card I lose my cell phone.

Had a good visit with Elizabeth, I really like her new work. Finally the exhibit is taking shape in my mind. Its been difficult to visualize the work in the space without the space actually existing! but here it is ....

very nice drive today out to Elizabeth Burger's studio. I know part of it is just being someplace you've never been before but I swear I've never seen so many beautiful barns. this doesn't do them justice. If it had been a prettier day I would have stopped and spent more time trying to capture them.

watched the movie sylvia over the weekend. I found it really touching - perhaps because I didn't know anything about her. But any movie that makes you want to read some one's poetry is a good thing.

Randall Scott Gallery Invites you to a special Saturday afternoon discussion featuring...

Kriston Capps, Brandon Fortune and Cara Ober

discussing Cara Ober's new work,
and whatever else pops into their heads.

This will prove to be quite an interesting free form discussion.

We hope you can stop by.Saturday, April 5th 5pm to 6:30PM

Space is limited, so please come early.

The gallery will remain open till 8pm.

Gray S. Dodson

web site here

Novie Trump

Until May 4 that lucky Novie is in Cardiff Wales, at an artist residency at Fireworks Studio.

read her blog http://www.novietrump.blogspot.com/