Rainy day museum visit

"When you put a seed in the ground, it doesn't stop growing after eight hours. It keeps going every minute that it's in the earth. We, too, need to keep growing every moment of every day that we are on this earth." -- Ruth Asawa

I left the uber rainy SF Bay Area for equally wet LA this week to hang with my sweetie, work on some writing, and dig a little deeper in my yoga practice. I still found time for an afternoon at the Norton Simon Art Museum which was so, so pleasing. I was delighted both to see a special exhibit of Ruth Asawa drawings and prints as well as an extensive Asian collection.
Throughout I kept coming upon paintings of flowers, studies, drawings, etchings. I loved the fact of visual artists coming back to  simple, ordinary captures of floral beauty through the ages. These flower paintings, from Asawa, Latour and de Heem, span 350 years. 

Hawaii Postcard: Wherever you go...

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Wherever you go, there you are....it was fun to happen upon several paintings by Georgia O'Keefe at the Honolulu Art Museum this week. The Dole Company paid for O'Keefe to fly here in 1939 in exchange for two paintings (on any subject) they could use in their pineapple juice ads. She produced 20 paintings inspired by her time in the island landscape, and the three I saw were lovely and so immediately recognizable as her work. Even though Hawaii is 180 degrees different than New York, where she was living, and Santa Fe, where she settled. It reminded me what I've been feeling this latest bit of travel, and what I've learned in the past: wherever you go there you are
For a long time, my urge to travel was to get away. But my need to escape myself was cured  by my last trip to India. Both knees injured, yoga practice compromised (physically), far from my love, I felt finally a big 'uncle' in me. Realizing once and for all, I was not going to transmogrify into a fantasy of myself that had it all together and was pain (physical, emotional, you name it) free. No I was me, that wasn't going to change fundamentally, this lifetime. So when I came home, I really came home, and started to put down roots for the first time in years. I've travelled a little in the past three years, but it's been pretty west-coast centric, road-trippy and domestic.

So flying to Hawaii this week was the longest I've been on a plane in a bit. Still it felt pretty natural and familiar and I arrived curious for perspective rather than looking for escape.  Flying out over the Bay Area, getting a clear picture of my home territory: the small island of Alameda we call home, the vast, bridge- becrossed San Francisco Bay as well as Hawk Hill in the Marin Headlands, and Pt. Reyes jutting out furthest west fromthe mainland as if it wanted to go to Hawaii, too, was the literal broad overview. And being here has been a balm and extension of that. It's been great to mostly unplug and not do too much -- not try to see everything, everywhere, or play out or what have you, going to the yoga studio in the a.m., writing and strumming a little, albeit augmented by warm water, acai bowls and sand. Mm mm Mmmmm.

Yoga: Art of Transformation Exhibit @ The Asian Art Museum

“Vishnu Vishvarupa,” India, Rajasthan, Jaipur, circa 1800-1820

Saturday, we took the ferry to SF and spent half a day at the Asian Art Museum, catching the next-to-last-day of the Yoga: Art of Transformation exhibit. A much-buzzed-about-in-yoga-circles show (there were many accompanying events that drew on the vibrant and diverse Bay Area yoga community), the curators of the exhibit created a compelling narrative in 135 artworks that serves both as visual feast and food for thought, tracing the roots of yoga as a practice of renunciates in ancient India, to its overseas sensationalization in Europe and the US, and present-day popularity, and commercialization, worldwide. A winding narrative of paintings, sculpture, drawings, photos and video, including South Indian temple-derived sculptures of multi-armed yoginis, pages from a 16th century treatise“Ocean of Life" (some of the earliest examples of asana  illustrations),  large early-1800 paintings of the chakra system from the Jodhpur court that carry both religious and political associations, and footage of Krishnamacharya and Iyengar practicing asana, very clearly showed how captivating, and widely interpreted, yoga has been throughout the ages. Fittingly, the show culminates with a wall-size piece by Pardon My Hindi, #WhitePeopleDoingYoga in the Education Resource Center:

#WhitePeopleDoingYoga / *Pardon My Hindi from *Pardon My Hindi on Vimeo.

The Yoga: Art of Transformation exhibition next travels to the Cleveland Museum of Art (June 22, 2014–Sep. 7, 2014).

ancient yogini

Beyond such special exhibits, the Asian Art Museum, now housed in the former SF Publication Library that was built in 1917,  is truly a treasure trove of Asian art and culture.  Every time I've gone to a special event here, I take solace from the inevitable crowds in one of the upstairs galleries. This time, after viewing the yoga exhibit, we popped into a gallery filled with Japanese Buddha sculptures and then just stood a while in the beautiful interior court.