National Portrait Gallery

I headed into Galleryplace/Chinatown this afternoon. First stop: food. There's this place that I've been eyeing everytime I've been in Chinatown, so I decided to try it today. It's called "Chop't" a creative salad company. So you pick your ingredients and they toss it on the counter and chop it all up with a giant blade and toss it back into a bowl. So here is my salad. It was so delicious. 3 kinds of lettuce, onions, peppers, chicken, feta, pita crisps, and a lemon-lime vinegrette. Best salad. Way too big though.

Then I was off to the National Portrait Gallery / American Art Museum. They were installing a new exhibition called Recognize to open in a week. It's a portrait of Hip Hop. The pieces that were hung already were all graffiti art. I'm not a fan. Taken off the street and out of context, I think it really loses something.

However, there were plenty of other great things. Some of my favorites:
Fermented Soil by Hans Hofmann - with thick and chunky oil in shades of terracotta
Untitled 1999 by Jorge pardo - 70 blown-glass lamps in cerulean blue hung at different heights in the space
Electric Superhighway by Nam June Paik - the 50 States outlined in neon lights with televisions filling in the state playing different videos. For examples - Alabama had a MLK speech, Georgia the Olympics, Kansas the Wizard of Oz, Florida palm trees, Kentucky the derby, etc. The screens were all different sizes and directions (upside down, tilted, etc). Some of the smaller states had tiny personal tvs.
Sky Cathedral by Louise Nevelson - a plank of wooden objects all painted matte black
Three Discs by Adolph Gottlieb
Phil III by Chuck Close - a pixelized portrait in cast paper pulp

The gallery has an interesting set-up. It is a rectangle around a center atrium area. The atrium is so beautiful! It is enclosed so that it is nice and warm, but the ceiling is glass so that you get the feeling of being outside.








After gallery adventures, I sat on the front steps for a while knitting. The weather suddenly warmed up while I was inside so I hung out in the sun watching people and working on Greg's scarf.

Tomorrow is a craft fair in NW that looks really awesome. http://craftsandkisses.wordpress.com/

Also: I've started reading Friday Night Knitting Club and it's really good so far. Emily tells me it's being made into a movie and Julia Roberts is going to play Georgia - exciting!