The Monterey Museum of Art

I had a free day before my evening lecture to the Monterey Peninsula Quilters Guild. I visited the iconic Back Porch Fabric first thing in the morning. Based on their recommendation, I drove to Monterey to visit the Monterey Museum of Art. What a treasure! It is a smaller museum but top-notch all the way. The front desk person greeted me with enthusiasm and was quite proud of the museum and its current exhibits. These were Big City Museum exhibits in a smaller space. Much of what I saw that day was ethereal-loved that!

I swooned over the Amanda Salm exhibit. Amanda’s statement spoke of how we are affected by our environment. Our physiology responds and neural pathways are activated. Her work explores the patterns, paths and rhythms created as our bodies react to our environment. These pieces were made of hand dyed horsehair. They were ethereal enough to sway from the slightest movement yet sturdy enough to hold their shape.

I loved the shadows of her work!

Again, that shadow. The lighting throughout the museum was superb.

It’s hard to see from the photo how beautiful these simple objects were. They were created with silk and ink, suspended by horsehair.

The room that held the cubes was small and it made it hard to photograph, but this was magical to me. They swayed ever so slightly and of course the shadows with them. It was transforming to see them. I loved this room!

Kathryn experienced a cerebral hemorrhage and taught herself to paint with her left hand. She takes classic vignettes and reimagines them using collaged images of her brain scans. You don’t notice at first, but then…

upon closer examination it becomes obvious.

There was a series of deconstructed kimonos by Judy Shintani. Each had a bowl beneath with the cut-out parts of the kimono. Judy appropriates kimonos and transforms them so they have new significance. The kimono appears to be flowing and simple, yet the layers bind and constrict. As she removed the flowers and leaves from the cloth, she pondered the life of the woman who wore it. She considers this process to loosen her connection with her ancestry and to be a dissection of stereotypes. The cut out pieces make room for a more simple, healthy and creative life.

The kimonos were both disturbing and beautiful.

Senninbari was composed 1,000 hand-dyed and hand-tyed cotton rope knots mounted to create an ombre effect. Senninbari is a 1000 French knot stitched belt that Japanese women made for their husbands and brothers going off to fight in World War II. Lisa Solomon works with mediums that are traditionally associated with domestic crafts. She is drawn to found objects and symbolic imagery, which she then alters to create new meaning.

Part of the The New Domestics: Finding Beauty in the Mundane exhibit, Susan Abbott Martin used mundane, domestic items to create whimsical sculpture.

Susan took the embroideries of the 50’s that might have been used on doilies and dish towels and elevated their status by mounting them on wood and presenting them as art.

I remember these!

This is composed entirely from resistors! Again, shadows were a major part of the beauty of this piece.

It was more dimensional than it might appear from the above photo.

There was also a wonderful exhibit of talented female photographers but I could not help but catch the glare of the lights in my photos. This took away from their beauty entirely so I will not post them.

This was such a delightful gem, a total surprise! I completely immersed myself in this all-woman exhibit. It was both beautiful and provocative. What caught my eye was the importance of the shadows in the art of most of the pieces hanging in this exhibit. I was taken away from reality for the moments I was in the museum. This was one of the most enjoyable museum experiences ever.

I’ll be linking up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday. I do hope you cruise the links for some of the best posts around.