Steel and Art

I love everything about New Orleans: the oysters, the po' boys, the architecture, the music; the walking tours, so I'm glad they won the Super Bowl whee! But I feel sorry that Pittsburgh lost, so I thought I would lead us on a tour of the losing city just for "equal time."

The "Bridge of Sorrows" goes between the courthouse and the jailhouse.

Frederick Osterling's Union Arcade originally had four levels of shopping. Love the dormers. He built it for Henry Clay Frick one of the most horrible human beings of all time and an art collector. Frick purchased Ingres' Comtesse d'Haussonville that might just be the inspiration of the portrait of Carlotta and subsequently Midge's self-portrait in Vertigo. There's a Frick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh. The Frick Collection in New York City where the Ingres is housed is not-to-be-missed. It's Frick's formerNew York mansion and takes up an entire city block. Other works include Vermeers.

My Favorite Sculptor

Richard Deacon is my favorite sculptor. His early works were riveted sheet metal doodles that twist and turn like mystical air conditioning ducts. Form is what is amazing and surprising. His wooden works speak the quiet language of driftwood and the withered forest, but do not look like coffee tables. This sculpture is not based on abstract predecessors of the 50's, yet not realistic. His rivets of his works in metal are elegant, reminding one of a Victorian Martian spacecraft, though his pieces are probably most related to music. Many works combine man-made with natural materials as musical instruments do. The work shown here is from "Art for Other People" a very different series for Deacon. Looking at a Deacon work is like sipping a very good French onion soup (in France they call it onion soup - soup a l'onion). He lives in London, but teaches at the Beaux-Arts where Julia Morgan was the first woman to graduate in architecture. There is something very English about his pieces.

The Roar of the Grapefruit

A rival revival of one of my favorite musicals The Roar of the Grapefruit - the Smell of the Crowd is coming to the Orange County Performing Arts Center (across from Southcoast Plaza). A mother and her teen fraternal twins, travel west from Minneapolis finding themselves, somehow, in Orange County where the no-count father promised he had a new house waiting for them. It's full of tragedy, courage, humor, and vitamin C.