The Art in Austin

Yesterday I recapped our first-day-in-Austin activities, but I have to do a couple of follow-up posts, since our adventures didn't stop on South Congress Avenue.

Our second day in Austin, Saturday, was our art day. We couldn't leave the city without exploring a bit of culture, so we visited a few museums and one tiny gallery.

The downtown Driskill Hotel where we stayed our first three nights was the perfect place for museum-ing; the museum furthest away from us was only a three block walk. We started, however, with the closest: the Austin Museum of Art "Arthouse" space at the Jones Center on Congress Avenue.

The AMOA had three exhibits up while we were there, and I was thrilled to see that all three artists were women (one artist--the Brazilian video artist Cinthia Marcelle--worked in collaboration with her countryman filmmaker Tiago Mata Machado). In addition to the video exhibit, which was thoughtful and serious in idea, though almost whimsical and balletic in execution [and mesmerizing in its entirety], the museum had an exhibit by Seher Shah, a Pakistani born artist now living in Brooklyn. Shah's exhibit was mixed media--some aerial photographs and drawings--and terrifically architectural in subject matter and design, which isn't surprising since Shah has a bachelor of architecture. Her side-by-side pieces Geometric Landscapes and the Spectacle of Force, and The Mirror Spectacle were works that I could have spent hours upon hours looking at, and, most likely, finding something new with each blink of my eyes.

The third of the three terrific exhibits was by Pinaree Sanpitak and entitled "Temporary Insanity." Sanpitak's was an installation of fruit-like silk poufs packed with small motors and noise devices. Each adorable pouf moved rhythmically and made quiet noises that were, at first glance, so subtle we didn't notice them. Then, after walking among the field of bulbous art, we realized that they were each doing a sort of dance. It was soothing and sinister all at once.

Trevor and some silky pods

The space itself was fantastic...

...but I had one minor complaint. And it was about grammar, because I simply cannot turn off that portion of my brain.

"disassembles it's regimented form..." isn't quite right. It's wrong, okay? It's just wrong.

I always feel a special kind of pain in my heart when I see grammatical errors in places that are meant to be cultural beacons. I know it's a minor mistake, but I just hated that it was the first thing I saw, even before looking at the art.

Otherwise, it was a perfect museum experience.

We walked a couple of blocks south to the Mexic-Arte Museum, which was showing the last weekend of its "masks" exhibits. The first exhibit, "Masked: Changing Identities," explored the tradition of masks in Mexican religious and cultural dance ceremonies. The masks on display were hand carved wood depicting specific mythical and historical characters, animals, and demons. They were all absolutely amazing.

They had some replicas on sale in the gift shop, and we were hoping to get one of the bearded gentlemen for the new house, but no dice. Only fish-faces and horned demons. No thank you, sir.

The second exhibit, "Unmasked: Lucha Libre," focused on the history and costumes of Mexican wrestling. In addition to dozens of wrestling masks and costumes on display, the gallery was also equipped with two films on loop: one of a lucha libre documentary and the other of the feature film Santo en El Museo de Cera starring the Mexican wrestling icon El Santo (obviously--his name is right there in the title...). The movie, made in 1963, starred a fully masked and costumed El Santo, and it was pretty amazing. Bizarre, yes. But amazing.

My favorite scenes depicted El Santo in regular clothes except for, of course, the mask. (Photo still courtesy of superradnow.wordpress.com)

We then made our way over to the Museum of the Weird on 6th Street, and weird it was. And fun. And shocking. Literally: Trevor volunteered during the freak show portion of our tour to get shocked by the self-described human freak acting as an electrical conduit. I was too nervous to get a picture of that in action, but we did take some pictures before that happened.

T. doesn't seem worried about that small wolfman who's about to attack.

Said wolfman

A mummy

Hey, komodo dragon. You're not so scary.

Now you're scary.

Finally, we made our way to East Austin, a quiet, artsy neighborhood we ended up spending a bit of time in over our trip. There were a few art galleries we'd have liked to visit, but we only had time for one, the Tiny Park Gallery. The show currently up, "Not How It Happened," was small but affecting. The artists used text and photography (the prints were really beautiful, but really [really] out of our price range) and reminded me a bit of a low-tech Jenny Holzer.

If we'd had more time in the day or more energy left in our museum-weary legs, we'd have visited the other gallery still open that night. But instead, we wandered into the Blue Dahlia Bistro for a delicious early dinner. "How delicious was it?" you may ask. Well, so delicious that by the end of our smoked trout (not as good as what we ate at La Trucha in Madrid [on our honeymoon], but still well above average. great, even), bouillabaisse, and ravioli dinners, we had room for salted caramel gelato that was good enough to swipe off the table with my finger (Trevor did not approve. I did not care. I was damn good gelato).

We left the Blue Dahlia in search of after-dinner cocktails, and came upon the East Side Show Room, a dark, speakeasy feeling lounge fitted with a very dapper waitstaff and mouth watering cocktails.

We eventually wandered back to the Driskill, our feet tired, but our bellies full of good food and drink, and our brains full of good ideas.

And that was our second day in Austin.