Kansas City, day 2- The Kemper art museum
The sculpture above was done by Tom Otterness and is called "crying Giant". When we visited Jane in Indy one time, the city had several of his works placed around so we were able to see several of his works, large and small. The figure reduced to simple shapes and has a element of playfulness that really attracts me. This one reminds me of the Timbertoes cartoons in the Highlight magazines I read at the doctor's office .

So, this is the view of the painting when you are standing about 2-3 ft from it...

And this is what it looks like across the room. By Ed Blackburn from Texas (of course) Imagine collecting enough plaid fabric to make this a quilt.


This is by Larry Rivers- It's canvas mounted on carved foam core board. You can see it has some dimensionality from the front...
But if you walk to the side, you can see it much more clearly. Even the foam boards are different levels, carved in places, stacked in others.
Stephen Scott Young did this painting in watercolor. It is exactly what I'm struggling with in my current quilt- so this piece resonated with me. I was most interested in the way he did the dark smudged background and how he had pencil marks here and there.
The Museum is rather small- actually, it has 3 different locations and I only went to this one. It's very close to the Art Institute and the Nelson-Atkins, so there's little space to expand this location, but it is the hot spot in art for Art. I can see their dilemma. I had just missed the exhibition in one of the galleries (makes sense since I was there to pick up my cup from the end of that exhibit) but it was fun to see them dismantling the rather large metal pieces in the parking lot behind the museum with a blow torch. I should have taken pictures.
Before I went to the Kemper, I spent some of the morning waiting for a ceramic shop to open. The website had them opening at 10, but, after I wasted time walking around the mall (those are so boring and predictable) I drove up to the door where it said 11:00.I couldn't see myself wasting a whole other hour in that area, so I gave up the idea.
On the way home I stopped in Osceola, mo where there's a cheese shop. You can sample any of the different varieties. My favorite is a smoked cheddar with basil and tomatoes. I picked up a Havarti with pesto and then a silly string cheese and sweet butter. All very yummy.