The Art is, Well, Hung

pr

It's good to finally have everything properly framed and hung.  Today, you'll get a tour of our apartment as well as a peek at our art.

Today, I'll start in the living room and kitchen, and then meander down the hallway.

This Naxi calligraphy deserved a better frame and so I reframed it. I also found a frame for the little note written by the artist, Mr. Lu.

This hangs between the door and the window, in proximity to the work calligraphy explains. Thanks for the suggestion, Patty. Apparently I did have time to frame it, after all.

And here is our living room and kitchen. Those are skylights in the kitchen and they make the place quite bright.

I must say, this is my favorite piece of art we have. Like much of our art, it's from Yunnan Province. It's a representation of a Naxi (Nakhi) fertility rite. The artist, Yang Guangming (杨光敏), has developed a fair bit of renown, winning some sort of gold medal in Paris, as well as a few other accolades. The last time I visited her, she was no longer selling her art, content to simply let it increase in value. She and her husband Neeman, who owns a gallery and resort in Dali, flew to Detroit a few years back to give birth to their first son so he could be a U.S. citizen. Anchors away.

This piece was bought at Neeman's gallery in Dali. I can't recall the artist and his signature is so spare and abstract as to be unreadable. He was a friend of Neeman's, though, so I should probably send him an email and find out. We have three other pieces by him which you'll discover tomorrow.

These are Chinese stone rubbings and they were given to us by Jim Majure. Thanks, Jim. Maybe you can tell us more about them, eh?

My sister Trish drew this picture of our house in Des Moines. Thanks, sis. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a reflection-free shot of it to give it justice. 

This spoon is also the work of Yang Guangmin. She gave it to me as a gift when I visited her in 1994 on my first China trek with students.

This is actually a trivet but we keep it on the wall because it's more of an art piece to us. Om sweet om...

Here's the orange chair, Judy,  underneath the Chris Vance.

We bought this Chris Vance from Chris Vance, at the Des Moines Art Fest, in 2008.  It's entitled, One More Saturday Night, and is one of two paintings we have that Patty considers portraits of moi.

Our capacious hallway was quickly covered in art and such.

Patty was aghast when she discovered I'd packed these thrift store pieces, but I think they work rather nicely with the god-awful paint.

The hallway from the other direction (with just a glimpse of dysfunctional family Damon on the right.

We bought these Manuel Salas prints from the Santisima Art Gallery in Albuquerque in 2006. I would have loved to have had the originals, which were done in colored pencil.

Paintings by my sister Marty. The one on top is clearly identified as a Tai Ji (太极) symbol; the one below, uh, not sure, but I call them cheek prints. Danke, sister.

A pencil drawing of Johnny, and a mirror, both by Trisha.

Photos I took in Monument Valley in 1995, when a trailer was a remarkable sight. It's sad to pass by these days as the housing bubble wasn't kind to John Ford's beautiful backdrop.

A poem given me by Marty from a show in Las Vegas.

This is a San Francisco de Asis shadow box by Johnny Salas (no relation to Manuel), also from the Santisima Gallery in Albuquerque.

Tomorrow, the office and the bedroom.