So Larry & I had some fun these past two days – here’s how!
Last night, we went to a Hipcooks event that Larry had received from Nicki as a birthday gift. It’s one of those things where a group of people all cook a meal together and then feast upon the results! We chose “J’aime Paris”, which was all about cooking a Parisian meal with a modern/American twist. The main meal would be coque au vin, a fun salad, and finished off with some awesome chocolate custard (fancier word for it, for sure). We weren’t sure what to expect although Nicki had raved about it plenty as she’d volunteered there as an assistant and so had experienced this plenty. She hadn’t led us astray and it indeed was a blast. Everyone there was a lot of fun to be around and our instructor was great, and most importantly, the food turned out spectacularly. So good! Here are some pics – it was so colorful inside that the pics really are a lot of fun:
Oct 17, 2014 – Hipcooks Fun: “J’aime Paris”
Then today, we headed over to LACMA as we hadn’t been there for a few months. Quite a few new exhibitions to see, along with one or two repeats:
- Today was the last day of Member Previews for the Samurai Exhibit, meaning before the unwashed masses got their grubby hands on it. I kid, I kid! It was a very striking exhibit though, with dramatic red lighting and lots of neat sets of armor for both samurai and horse to be found.
- We then had the chance to revisit the “Breathing Light” exhibit from the Turrell exhibit which ended up sticking around at LACMA even though the other parts of that exhibition have moved on. It’s very easy to sign up for that and we didn’t have to wait more than 30 or so minutes to get in. It’s still just as mesmerizing as it was when we first went. Found out it’s now also called “Ganzfeld,” as it’s part of James Turrell’s pieces that completely eliminates the viewer’s depth perception. It certainly does that – the 10 minutes you get in there fly by.
- After that, we then went up to see another member preview exhibition, this time of an artist I hadn’t heard of before, Archibald Motley Jr. It was fantastic! He had such an amazing way to convey emotion and life in his paintings, plus a talent to have multiple distinct styles of painting.
There was the ultra-vivid and hyperreal paintings which are particularly exciting and compelling for me, especially those he painted of Paris and of Chicago. Then he could easily do extraordinarily lifelike portraits. It’s a wonderful showcase of talent. - Had to stop at Metropolis II again of course. It’s always fun to get lost in watching those damn little toy cars veer around all the byways.
- The exhibit we ostensibly came to see though was “Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s.” Larry comes from a film degree background and has an appreciation of many of the movies that came out from that period of German Expressionism (that period of film before the Nazis came in and said “no more of this freedom and creative shit”), including Fritz Lang’s many movies like Metropolis (no explicit relation to the exhibit above!), M, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It was a very interesting exhibit and also quite creative in the way the staging was done. There were large ripples of the floor that would come up that you would then walk under to be able to watch clips from the films in darkness. Then outside of those ripples, you’d be able to take in the artwork and stills in the light of the museum. Very cool.
We were done after that, but first grabbed some coffee at the Coffee & Milk coffee bar. Had a much necessary latte before heading home!
October 18, 2014 – LACMA in October
