river view from a cliff
Snowy Minneapolis weekend
Well, this is clearly the best portrait I’ll ever take. The National Eagle Center is fantastic, and you should go. Solid exhibit design with clear messaging (because that is what I’m paying attention to these days), and rehabilitated eagles squawking at the wild ones diving on the Mississippi River. I watched Harriet the eagle eat a hunk of carp. It was disgusting. And apparently there was a historic hotel down the road where you could book famous cats to stay in your room overnight!?
The art lab and galleries at the Walker were free to the public last night, and the energy was so, so good. Artist Joe Smith planned a mixed-media abstraction activity with vacuum food sealers and a copying machine. All sorts of people of all sorts of ages and abilities dropped by the studio to paint. I kept overhearing, “I haven’t done this in such a long time.” This city keeps getting better.
Hello, new best buddy. (Spence Finch’s install at the @imamuseum) (at Indianapolis Museum Of Art (IMA))
Lovely.
From our Free First Saturday portrait studio. We love these.
I love being an intern here.
I think Minneapolis could be home. I haven’t felt like that about a place in awhile.
By the time I got to be old enough to know what was going on, my oldest brother moved out of the house. And then by the time we got to be interesting people, he was in Minnesota and I was in Indiana. He asked me to come here. “It’s been so long since I’ve had my family,” he told me over the phone.
Now we drink and eat too many Oreos and gush over stride piano, replaying those magic chords on Youtube over and over and over. Did you hear that?! Yeah. But did you hear it? We’re so similar.
Yesterday my nephew opened my bedroom door and said “Hey, Mimi.” It was so goddamn cheerful and matter-of-fact. Sometimes it’s Maymee, and sometimes it’s May-May. And sometimes that kid doesn’t even care I’m in the room, he’s got block towers to knock over and Mickey Mouse on the laptop. And every morning he’s up about 6:15 and crying like clockwork. But the night before, in flannel footie pajamas, he walks over and rests his head on my leg to say good night. That little routine matters. I’m in their lives now.
I watched the results come back for the 2008 elections with a bunch of good people in Iowa City. Remember how that felt? Let’s do it again.
