Week two in Texas

It's hot. So very hot.

I went to the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth this afternoon. I love that place. I feel peaceful when I'm there. It sounds trite to say that it inspires me, but each visit I have these grand ideas of things I could do - write a book, take an amazing Art photograph, translate a lovely painting into a stunning work of embroidery. I never do any of these things, but the inspiration is enough. I feel like someone in love with being in love.

I know why I get along with kids. There's a 67-foot-tall large steel scuplture by Richard Serra on the grounds of the museum. The acoustics, the echo inside the sculpture is fun. I stood there clicking my tongue. Decorum, schmorum. As an 80 year old woman, I'd still be standing (hopefully) in the middle of the sculpture clicking my tongue because the echo was cool.

The primary exhibition now is of Ron Mueck. It makes me think of the question I had in college - where is the Art in this? Other than the artistic skill required - the sculpting, the painting, the casting. In college, I asked myself: is an exact reproduction of an actual thing (or general representation of that thing) art? Now, my answer is: if a piece gives me pause and reason to reapproach something familiar, it is Art.

With Mueck, the scale of his pieces take the subjects out of reality and it brings me to reconsidering how I view people in their physicality. What I find most fascinating about his sculpture are the hands of his old women. They seem so soft, so fragile. I want to touch them, to feel the skin. But it isn't. This fascinates me. And the fingernails. Amazing.