20-Nov-99 Brickbottom Open Studios
The shells are from the beach yesterday, OK? I didn't scan them in until today. Yeah, yeah, if I really liked you I would have smoothed over the seam in the picture. Quit kvetching.
We were back to our urban (I never said urbane) side today. After raking up two big bags of leaves (and seeing a red-shouldered hawk overhead while doing that) and putting a pop rivet in the downspout in the hopes of keeping two sections together, we went over to the open studios at the Brickbottom complex in Somerville.
Not to break too far from yesterday, though, we walked around the Chestnut Hill reservoir with our binoculars. Though it's across one street from the Boston College campus, we didn't detect any euphoria wafting over from BC's football victory over Notre Dame yesterday. There were hooded mergansers and ruddy ducks on the reservoir, great black backed gulls, herring gulls, and something smaller so we'll say ring-billed, and two great blue herons, as well as Canada geese and a couple of dozen coots. The big event was in the land birds -- a golden-crowned kinglet. Also chickadees, juncos, titmice, bluejays, and crows.
The sad news in wildlife was that I had caught a mouse in the garage. There had been no sign of mouse activity for four days -- no sprung traps nor stolen bait, and no mice caught -- so I was hoping that we were done for the year. No such luck.
Well anyway, as I was saying when so rudely interrupted by my desire to keep in more or less chronological order, we went over to Brickbottom. It's three former factories, renovated into studio space ten or twelve years ago. They're well organized for open studios. The ones that are open had hung mylar streamers in front of the doors so you could see them from down the hall. Many of the ones that weren't open had signs, evidently xeroxed by the co-op organization, saying "Privacy Please" in cloudy airbrushed lettering with a picture of a skywriting plane alongside. Besides the art, it's always interesting to see what people have done with their space. Some studios have sleek modern furnishings; some are piled high with books; others have antiques on shelves along the top. Many have loft areas. The spaces are as different as the artwork.
Arlene was particularly interested in seeing her monoprint teacher's space and work. We went there first, talked with the artist for a while and looked carefully at her prints (and I can learn a lot for making backgrounds for stamped postcards from them) and were on the way out when we were greeted by one of my co-workers. In the studio after the next one we ran into two friends from Newton who live half a block from my bike route to work. We didn't meet any other people we knew until we got through that building and went into the gallery on the first floor, when someone said, “Arlene?” It was one of her former student teachers who's now living in Lowell, working with the city government on a similar conversion of an old factory into studio space.
There was a lot of interesting photography on display, some painting, a lot of printmaking, some jewelry, wood sculpture (shoes with skis and shoes with leaves growing out of them were among the more memorable), and even furniture. The single piece I liked best was in an industrial design studio; it was a high-intensity desk lamp with a saber saw body for its base. Not that I'd have any place to put it.
We left empty handed and went over to Anne's apartment, then got Charley and the four of us had dinner at Pho Pasteur, a Vietnamese restaurant in Allston. There were lots of tables when we got there, but the place filled up before we left. It makes sense, considering how good and how inexpensive the food is.
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