encounters with ...

Elizabeth Lilker had highly recommended seeing Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, for the images. And it is a beautiful film. As I was watching it at the Quad (I'm now eligible for senior rate; yea!), the scenes of McMurdo air base on Antarctica looked familiar, like the photos of An-My Lê. Indeed, her photos are also of McMurdo, a bleak but serene landscape. And then on Friday, I'd been to Murray Guy and the wonderful Flemish frieze of saints masquerading as soldiers had been on the office wall. It's such an incredible photo: a frieze of soldiers in various stances looking like a scene of standing saints.

After Murray Guy, I went up to P.P.O.W. to see the Wojnarowicz show. The image just inside the door really confronts you aesthetically and thematically. The rest of the show was pretty interesting too. A lovely photo by Wolfgang Tillmans of feet and lower legs: "in the night."

On to Long Island City. I got there early enough to visit P.S. 1 before the ARLIS/NY tour of the Richard Meier Model Museum. The P.S. 1 courtyard show this summer is Public Farm One, part of the Young Architects Program. Lots of interesting info and fun to look at too, particularly so soon after standing in my brother's garden as he thinned the beets. I wasn't doing any gardening myself but I did take the weeds as Doug pulled them and tossed them on the mulch pile.

The Richard Meier models are great. There are several whole-site ones of the Getty as the design evolved as well as the huge final model. There are also some wonderful detail models such as staircases and light wells. After we visited the museum, about a dozen of us went on to Lounge 47 for a snack, drink and chat. A lovely afternoon. If you do get over to Long Island City, don't miss the show of women earth artists at the Sculpture Center. There's a great staircase/amphitheater by Alice Aycock, a great Jackie Ferrara in the courtyard, and a number of other really interesting works. Oops, just checked: the show closed in late July.

everything is also possible

On the last day that I was in southern California for ALA, John Maier and I walked over to the Crystal Cathedral. I'd seen pictures of Philip Johnson's glass church for Robert Schuller in a Global architecture decades ago. I'm not sure I knew that Richard Meier had designed the Welcoming Center and I am absolutely sure that I didn't know that the first church was designed by Richard Neutra. Quite a nice complex of modernist architecture. Schuller's message is very positive and American dream -- the engraved slogan was along the lines of everything being possible.

The sculpture on the grounds is mostly pretty kitschy with several works by John Seward Johnson. The "Prodigal Son" is quite amazing. As we passed the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt," a fellow was praying and crossing himself. Seemed kind of Catholic for such a Protestant place.

The Welcoming Center is a museum of Schulleriana with some speakers from the drive-in church era and a tar patch. You probably have to see it to believe it. From the third floor, you can see the hills of La Habra Heights from which Sharon Chickanzeff hails. The store is quite full of wonderful tchotchkes.

We were a bit hungry as we left and stopped at Winchell's Donuts for a snack. The slogan on the bag was "with a donut in each hand, anything is possible." They had to know they are just a block or two from the possibilities church!