Still August. Still humid.
Nomar still a Cubbie and not a Red Sock. And it's Friday
the 13th.
With that said: Attend the tale of
"lucky tires".
Having discovered the hitherto
unknown, at least to me, connection between art and tires
once
already back in May, I
might have been prepared for further lessons in art and
tires. But who thinks about these things? Might as well
contemplate the connection between art and bait fish or
gulls and radios, oh wait, we already know the gulls and
radios connection. Art and radios? Art and gulls? No,
just art and tires. Well, maybe coffee too. And cannoli.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
A couple of
weeks ago while in Lowell
for the Lowell Folk Festival, I discovered that
Caffe
Paradiso has set up shop on
Palmer Street practically right across the street from
the Coffee
Mill. There's an insurance
company or accounting office or some such next to the
Coffee Mill on the corner between Coffee Mill and
Paradiso but when the outdoor tables are set up you could
easily banter back and forth between the two cafes. Since
I am duty bound to inform the Hermit Potter of Worcester
of any important art or coffee news, I duly informed him
(by the way, a Hermit Potter is nothing like either Harry
Potter or a hermit crab :-) just thought you might
wonder) and we scheduled a meeting of the highly
caffeinated what-is-art
-what's-wrong-with-the-Red-Sox-and-are-the-Red-Sox-art
society at the Lowell incarnation of Caffe Paradiso for
this past Saturday. Fortified with omelets from the Deli
King in nearby Tewksbury we braved the crowds pouring
into Lowell for the quilt
festival. OK, so the
quilters didn't take over the city the way the folk
festival did and we even found a convenient parking
space... I was just trying to make it sound
dramatic.
Since I've been thinking about
cannoli a lot lately (yes, I think about things besides
gulls and radios and whether the Red Sox are art), I knew
what I was going to order -- besides an espresso-based
beverage -- before we got there. And when Nancy heard me
talking obsessively about cannoli she requested that I
bring her one. So I ordered: One cannoli for me to eat
here and one to take out for Nancy. They put the take out
one in a little white cardboard box. Meanwhile, the
Hermit Potter was still looking at the desserts and the
crusty woman behind the counter got a little impatient.
She must drink a lot of espresso-based beverages. Over
coffee and our respective desserts, we watched quilters
from all over the known universe stream in. Some of them
were clearly labeled as quilters, with polo shirts
emblazoned with the names of their quilting clubs. Others
just had that "quilter from out of town " look about
them. I wish we had t-shirts identifying the" highly
caffeinated what is art " club or something. Or just the
"we really like coffee" club. Or something cryptic that
nobody but us would understand... Do quilters have a
secret handshake?
Nowadays Lowell is full of art
galleries, artists' lofts, museums, and, apparently ,
banners, at least on Middle, Shattuck, and Palmer
Streets. Last weekend, and most of the rest of this month
for that matter, the galleries and museums, and probably
the artists' lofts too, were/are full of quilt-related or
textile-related art. It's a veritable textile theme park.
Oh wait, it's supposed to be a textile theme park.
Now that the red brick mills don't actually make
textiles, the city is saved from oblivion by the history,
art, music, and trolleys of textiles. And the Lowell
Spinners too. They have their own detour on Market
Street. The sign says "Spinners Detour". We tried to
figure out if that meant the players had to take the
detour to get to the ballpark, whether only actual
spinners (of textiles as opposed to of baseball) had to
take the detour, where exactly the detour goes... and I
never did manage to score tickets for Peter Gammons
bobblehead night or any other game in August. I don't
know if the Spinners had anything special going for the
quilt festival.
In the immediate neighborhood of
our coffee-drinking, you would have to make considerable
effort to avoid art. And who are we to avoid art? My
favorite exhibition was Small
Works for Small Spaces at
the Ayer
Lofts Gallery. There was
one watercolor transfer onto fiber depicting a pear in a
doorway that just blew me away. I wanted to just keep
looking at it. There was another work that was a soft
sculpture of a fragment of a statue from Angkor Wat.
Nothing like a quilt. Kind of like a stuffie but much
more moving. Hard to describe. Nobody noticed I was
carrying a cannoli.
We checked out the Boundaries
to Bridges exhibition at
the Revolving
Museum. I especially liked
the large color photographs of a family in front of
elaborate painted backdrops used by an immigrant
photographer whose studio is in his home. A photographer
photographing a photographer and his backdrops. How to
tell the backdrop from the real rooms? The informal
household shrine on the mantel could be a painted
backdrop but it's not. What's real and what's not? Where
are the boundaries? There was an installation that
juxtaposed tradition and basketball to make a point about
immigrant communities assimilating and hanging onto
tradition. It had basketball hoops at each end: one
backboard with traditional Cambodian images and the other
backboard with images of sneakers and basketball stuff.
The artists even provided Nerf basketballs. I can't do a
layup like I used to. Nobody noticed I was carrying a
cannoli.
A guy with a megaphone came into
the museum and announced that the Stay
in School Spool 500 was
about to start. We'd noticed the race track -- a steep
one like in a pinewood derby -- earlier so had to check
out the race. Auto-race themed banners hung along both
sides of the street : cars, race tracks, tires ... the
megaphone guy announced the banners are for sale. Anyway,
the cars are all made of recycled materials and must use
official old Lowell textile mill spools as wheels.
Apparently the objective was to make cool-looking art
cars as opposed to aerodynamic, well-engineered, vehicles
that stay on the track. An amazing number of cars left
the track or flipped over and slid down the track upside
down and sideways. Some of them became airborne and I
feared for the safety of the spectators. Winners just had
to get to the finish line first -- even if they just sort
of fell there instead of rolling on their spools.
Megaphone guy made up names for the cars and I got way
way too into cheering out loud for the ones I liked. I
did keep trying to debug the ones that couldn't stay on
the track though. I suggested they should have
engineering students from the university formerly known
as Lowell Tech advise the artists. The Hermit Potter
pointed out that that would take the fun and the
art out of it. It was a blast to watch. One of the
banners read "Lucky Tires". Nobody noticed I was carrying
a cannoli.
Apparently watching art cars fly
off the track makes me thirsty. A good old-fashioned
raspberry lime rickey at Gary's
Ice Cream (the hermit got
ice cream or sorbet or something) fixed that right up. We
sat outside near the brick archway depicting where the
train station use to be (this is Lowell, a New England
city, we know where things used to be and still navigate
by where they used to be) looking out over B&M steam
locomotive #410 , part of a special Boston & Maine
Railroad Exhibit (June 28 through Sept. 1 -- still time
to catch it) all about the history of the B&M
Railroad, successor of the Boston and Lowell, which was
New England's first steam railroad. This brought back a
memory of going to Boston on a steam train with La Madre
and the Ex-Pat (who at age 2 was not yet the Ex-Pat
obviously) in 1955. I remember the steam engine vividly.
It's possible that this is an accurate memory, as the
B&M ran steam engines until 1956. Weird thoughts
while carrying a cannoli.
The art quilt exhibit at
Brush
Art Gallery was much more
quilt-like than the Small Works for Small Spaces. Some of
them were really wonderful. My favorite, and the "poster
quilt" for the exhibit was called Mill and looked like a
red brick mill building. The artist's statement declared
that it was inspired by a view of mill buildings ... gee,
I thought it was inspired by steam engines... The gallery
was serving food for the opening so even if I had
revealed the cannoli it probably wouldn't have gotten us
thrown out.
After our day of art, I zipped
home, stashed the cannoli in the fridge, and went to pick
up Nancy at South Station. I told her the cannoli was
waiting for her at home. Over dinner at Mary Chung in
Central Square I regaled her with tales of all the places
the cannoli had been and the art we had seen, especially
the mill inspired by mills. Oh, and there was a staircase
inspired by a staircase too. Maybe the gallery should
give lessons in how to write artists'
statements.
On the way to I-93 through
Sommerville where the road is all dug up for resurfacing
and manhole covers are sticking up all over the place, I
was dodging pedestrians crossing not in crosswalks,
wearing black clothing at night, quite a challenge.
Unfortunately dodging pedestrians makes it hard to weave
in and out among the huge obstacle course of manhole
covers. I hit one hard. Blam. Blown tire. Grrr. I pulled
off the road at a well lighted gas station somewhere over
the Medford line and called AAA on my cellphone. We
listened to the Red Sox on the radio. Fortunately Pedro
was having a good night. An hour or so later, just as the
game was ending, the AAA guy showed up. He was wearing
his #5 Garciaparra Red Sox jersey. He verified that the
tiny donut spare was OK even though I had driven on it
from Worcester after my last
day of art.
I gave Nancy the cannoli for
breakfast the next morning. It survived the day of art
with remarkably little loss of ricotta. Almost no tire
vendor is open on Sunday on this edge of the universe, so
I drove to Andover for Julie's book launch, which was
great fun, on the spare. My duty had been to remind Ned
that he was supposed to be there. He made it. The band
was good but Tom was the only one dancing. There was a
cake decorated to look like the book cover. I won 2 of
the raffle items and I only bought 6 tickets! The
donut-sized spare notwithstanding, Nancy and I decided we
had not yet had enough official fun so we went to the
Southeast Asia Restaurant in Lowell for dinner and then
to Caffe Paradiso for dessert. They were out of ricotta
cheese!!!!!! So we had chocolate mousse cake, which was
delicious. I parked near the Revolving Museum , and
immediately noticed the "Lucky Tires" banner, which I'd
forgotten about! We had a good laugh over it. I may have
to go back and buy the banner, though I have no idea
where I would put it!
The local tire dealer had a buy one
get one for half price sale going on the same model of
Pirelli tires that I have so I bought 2 for the front and
had the old ones put on the back. We watched some weird
makeover show on TV while we waited. Just as the formerly
dorky looking boy was about to go back to the girl who
had rejected him to ask why, my car was ready. Nancy
exclaimed "But now we won't know why she rejected him!"
So, like, is that art?
So now with the new lucky tires we
had to take a road trip. Nancy suggested
Manchester-by-the-Sea because she likes the views of the
water down the alleys between houses. We gazed at the
water plenty and watched a dinghy get towed by a larger
boat. We have no clue why but we could hear people
talking about a cranberry bog. A cranberry bog in
Manchester-by-the-Sea? Somehow, though our stated aim was
to enjoy the nice day outdoors by the water, we ended up
in Manchester by the Book. I found one of the two William
Brewster books I've been looking for, Concord
River, and one of the volumes of the Old Stone
Bank History of Rhode Island. Nancy wouldn't let us
leave without Whistler's Mother's Cookbook. Quite
a haul. Maybe the new tires are the lucky tires after
all.
