San Jose Museum of Art
Tian Harter
other things, we went down to the San Jose Museum of Art,
a new place for me. It's a small museum, the kind of place
that you can take in completely in just a couple of hours
max. Being in the heart of Silicon Valley, the exhibits had
a veneer of computer terminology.
For example, the ground floor galleries had a collection of
landscape paintings and sculptures under the title "A Virtual
Tour of America." The works ranged from a blue and green
landscape of New Mexico by Georgia O'Keefe to an oil
painting of the Exxon Valdeze spewing oil behind a diorama
of a rock beach with dead, oil covered fish and a stuffed
weasel. There were several works that gave at least one
of us that "I don't get it" feeling.
We had just finished that floor and were looking for the
elevator when TheHippieLady appeared. A Santa Clara
County Green that hadn't been to a meeting for quite a
while, I was surprised to find out that her day job was
being part of the staff in the Museum. The first thing she
said to my mom after a round of greetings was "I thought
you were a computer." When this produced a puzzled look
she continued "this is Silicon Valley." "You're supposed to
bow before the great computer industry here." She
genuflected to illustrate the concept, and then ushered
us to the elevator.
One of the second floor one of the galleries was closed.
The other one had some really remarkable 3D claymation
sculptures. Things like a pair of life size green hands that
dipped into a book as if it was a lake, and scooped out a
salamander. The reptile then slithered back into the book,
at which point the cycle repeated in an Escheresque fashion.
The movie was created by arranging sculptures that worked
like frames in an animation sequence on a rotating carousel,
and then lighting them with a strobe that blinked at exactly
the right frame rate. The cumulative effect of the subject
matter, the strobe lights, the color scheme, the dark gallery,
and the completely new medium was quite spooky.
When we emerged from that gallery TheHippieLady talked a
bit about her future plans. "In the exhibit that won't be
opening until Mother's Day there are a few huge eggs. I can't
decide if they are elephant eggs or dinosaur eggs." She
pointed to some egg shaped rocks that were visible around
the barrier we couldn't cross. They were quite huge. "I've
been thinking about Easter eggs a lot lately. I even have
one here," she said. When my eyes got back from looking
at the ones she'd directed my gaze to before she had a yellow
plastic Easter egg in her hand. I got a "this is really
surreal" feeling.
Tian Harter
For Mother's Day I gave mom a porcelain praying mantis
I painted myself. MrFrizbee has a reefer magnet on his
fridge that looks like a videogame coin slot.