Seattle Day With Family and Friends, A little Wyeth Time, A Movie, and More Food

We took the 8:45 am ferry from Bainbridge Island into Seattle Wednesday.  The sun was sneaking past the clouds, it felt much warmer than it's been.  (A sign at one point said 66˚F.)

The day held promise.  My son and family were headed into Seattle to see an old friend and our other granddaughter was with us all too.  We were headed to see other friends.

The sky was mostly cloudy, but another ferry headed back to Bainbridge was sunlit.

We walked from the terminal.  Caught a bus.  Then took the monorail.  M is a big vehicle fan at 3 years old and hadn't been on a monorail.

Then another bus and a walk through the park to the Elliot Bay bookstore where we were meeting.  A lot of political stuff on the new books counter.

Our friends got us at the bookstore, the kids were at a story hour and we said good bye.

First to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit.

At first I was conflicted - I wanted to just talk to our friends, but I also wanted to absorb the Wyeth exhibit.  I must admit, I haven't been that big a fan of Wyeth.  The stuff was nice, but didn't really talk to me.  But I saw a lot of different styles and was much more impressed.  For instance, this early water color lobster is NOT something I would have identified as a Wyeth.

This picture of Siri is more familiar.  I couldn't help thinking about the current debates on sexual assault and also on child porn when I saw the nudes of Siri.  From a 1981 Time magazine article on Wyeth:

". . . teenage Siri Erickson, another Cushing resident, from 1967 to 1972. The paintings of her were also withheld, until she turned 21, and their release in 1975 caused a little of the same stir that the Helgas have. Siri, now 32 and the mother of two girls, recalls no embarrassment or awe about posing nude for Wyeth when she was 13. 'He would get totally involved in his work. It was as if you were a tree,' she says. 'He's a normal, everyday person. He does paint good, but he's just Andy.'"

By some standards, a picture of a nude 13 year old would be considered child porn.  By other standards it's great art.  I think we need to be much more discerning than we are at the moment about what we are seeing and how we classify it.  This CBC article talks about the fine line between sexting and child porn.  And this discussion of Wyeth's nudes is on the Catholic online forum Suscipe Domine.


Here are two folks regarding another Wyeth painting.

The exhibit was well laid out - with introductory posters discussing different groups of pictures.  My initial feelings of being overwhelmed lessened and I could wanter and view.  Sometimes looking at the descriptions of individual paintings, other times not.  While we ought to be able to appreciate a painting just by looking at, in theory, the background information helps me get a deeper sense of the each piece

But after two hours or so we were hungry.  And while I wished I could wonder around and look at other parts - like this modern section with this Andy Warhol "Double Elvis" . . . I too was interested in eating.






Someone wants to go to Boka to eat.  When we got there, we found out it is now All Water, in the lobby of Hotel 1000.  I was curious about the name All Water, when P pointed out this explanation on the menu.


Since the picture isn't that clear (but it is if you click on it), I'll help you out.

"In the 1880s the all water route would take prospectors from Seattle across the northern Pacific to the Alaskan coast.  In  the gold rush era this route created the trade in salmon and halibut industries. . . " 

It was a little after 2pm and we were told lunch was until 2pm and Happy Hour began at 3.  When I said, "So this is the unhappy hour?" we were told, "I'm sure we can get the kitchen to still do lunch."
It's only been open a few weeks.  We were all happy with our choices.





Then the group agreed to go see The Florida Project.  By this time, we'd had clouds, sunshine, drizzle, rain, more clouds, and more sunshine.  As we walked to the SIFF theater the sun was out and it was raining.  And a vibrant rainbow cleaned up the drab buildings.






 There was a lot I liked about The Florida Project, particularly the visual richness and the way the young kids had adventures.  I wandered my neighborhood like that with friends and wee also got into all sorts of mischief.  But the brashness of the mom, which got her out of some jams, made other ones worse, was painful to watch. Willem Dafoe's character Bobby was wonderful.  Justin Chang at the LA Times liked it a lot more than I did.

And finally we wandered down to "a Czech German beerhall."

Through these doors we walked into another world - a big warehouse like space with rows of communal wooden tables, a live band that was playing jazz (not polkas) when we walked in, and lots of beer.

Down the table from us the guys had 2 litre boots of beer.  (The two refers to the number of liters not the number of boots.)   Queen Ann Beer Hall is the official name, but doesn't really capture the mood for me.



Later J and I got in a good walk back to the ferry after rescuing our grandson's jacket from a restaurant where he'd left it.

A fun and busy day with family and good friends.