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.

All About Austin, Day 1

On Wednesday evening, Trevor and I got back from our six day trip to Austin, TX. The main purpose of our trip was so that I could attend the 35th annual NISOD International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence. My school is a NISOD member college, and every year leading up to the conference, member colleges nominate and select their own employees (faculty, staff, and administrators) for the NISOD Excellence Awards. I was one of two employees who won the award this year; my colleague and fellow winner, Julie, is another faculty member who teaches administrative office management. One perk of winning this award was that Julie and I both got free trips to the three-day conference--a pretty big perk, right? So, since Trevor and I rarely take "big" vacations (big = those that include packing multiple changes of clothes [dresses for me and at least one shirt & tie for Trevor], getting on an airplane, and landing in a city that's on a different time zone than the one we left from), we decided to make a real trip of it and get to Austin a few days ahead of the conference.

We'd never been to Austin and had heard only good things about it, so we had high expectations setting out on Friday morning. We'd landed late the night before (or the morning before, depending on how you view 2 a.m.), which wasn't intentional, but rather caused by the bad weather coming in from the East Coast and flight delays. We set out to wander the South Congress (SoCo) neighborhood, which is a hipster's paradise. Really. Trevor and I have never seen so many tattooed people. It makes the Chicago tattoo culture look like a bunch of Mary-smooth-skins.

After wandering the strip of upscale flea market shops, bars, taco joints, and boutiques, we were smacked upside the head with an uncharacteristic rainstorm. T. and I had just popped into Wahoo's, a restaurant boasting terrific fish tacos, so we ate our grub (the tacos really were delicious), ordered a second drink, and waited for the rain to slow down.

Wahoo's was a skater's haven

Once the rain had gone from torrential downpour to normal rain shower, we left Wahoo's to wander back up north, stopping in a few shops along the way. One of the stand-outs was Uncommon Objects, a shop set up with booths for two dozen different antique dealers. Each little nook had its own strange and wonderful goods. Trevor spotted these two guys hanging up and spent the next four days contemplating buying one of them.

Weird and wonderful lambs

We didn't end up making a lamb purchase, but we did come home with a pipe, which I anticipate will be a tremendous tool for my writing. It just looks like it will bring inspiration, doesn't it?

Now, one might ask, "Laura, do either you or Trevor actually smoke a pipe?" to which I might answer, "Well, no, not actually. But I just like the looks of it. So get off my back, jackson."

We had dinner that night at Koriente, and then hit Austin's famous 6th Street to wander past the dozens upon dozens of bars, the half dozen tattoo parlors, and the posses of UTA fraternity brothers who all seemed to be about seven feet tall. They grow them big in Texas.

And when we'd worn ourselves exhausted, we headed back to the Driskill Hotel, where we stayed the first three nights of our trip. It had gallons of personality: artwork on the hallway walls and in the rooms, books for borrowing on lovely curved shelves just outside of the elevators, live music each night in the bar, free coffee each morning in the lobby, and its own bank vault.

All of those safety deposit box doors were locked. We tried them.

Oh, hello.

AND, the Driskill Hotel has tiny furniture in the lobby! Why? I DON'T KNOW BUT I LOVE IT!

Trevor looks like a giant

And that was our first day in Austin.

We had a lot more adventures, and we took a lot more pictures. But I'm going to split them over a few posts, so look for more to come!

Welcome to Texas

Trevor and I are in Austin, TX for a vacation/teaching conference. I'll be writing longer posts with more information once we get back to Chicago on Wednesday night, but for now, I wanted to share with you all a little bit about our trip.