Showing posts with label Nashville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nashville. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Nashville rocks me baby, all night long ....

Before you go to Music City, better get some jean shorts and cowboy boots.  We didn't get the email in time to pack the right gear/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 9, 2022
Downtown Nashville was "a-go-go" last week, jammed all over (and jamming!) on four floors of this restaurant and everywhere else on Broadway with music lovers/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 9, 2022

Dancing flowed from one bar to the next with live music galore!  Talk about a mixed sound!/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 9, 2022
Dance with me, Henry!/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 9, 2022

Another multi-leveled bar where everybody can hang out on Broadway/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 9, 2022

In Nashville, you could even sit in a potato, like the woman here who's trying to climb out of one!  (Nashville has all kinds of new experiences.) The crew at the "Idahoan" promised free eatins', too, but, darlin', potatoes and margaritas do not a good mix make! It's drinkin' and carousin' I'm chasing right here on Broadway in Music City!/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 9, 2022

Forget your boots?  Come on in and try on a new pair! I think the task for the guy on the left was to make sure the shop didn't get too crowded/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 9, 2022
This was my favorite of the party trucks: bare-breasted men waving their shirts around in strip-tease fashion. Maybe it was a groomsmen party.  Whatever it was, it was a hearty party!/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 9, 2022

Nashville is a wild place, a mixture of Bourbon Street and Times Square on New Year’s Eve, with lots of country music thrown in, and bridesmaids galore!  We saw seven or eight (the number got so high, it was hard to keep up) bridesmaids' parties, identified by their matching outfits, some in purple and white jeans, the bride often wearing a long veil with the word "bride" stringing down her back in rhinestones or sequins.  She sparkled, that's for sure.
Another bar. Come on in and sit (drink) a spell on Broadway!/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 9, 2022
You've heard of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, surely!  It's only been around a zillion years and here 'tis!  There's one at Nashville's airport, too, but there's no beating Swett's, my all time-fav meat and two or three (also at the airport)./Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 9, 2022
He was singing the blues at the outdoor bar on Broadway/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 9, 2022

 In the center is a "pedal wagon" filled with party goers  pedaling the wagon to make it move, the riders not on the wagon themselves. It's a BYOB affair and Nashville's pedal wagon spaces were all sold out for the entire month of June except for Flag Day, June 14, but Claire says Clarendon has these party wagons.  I wish my birthday were this weekend so we could party up! Write if you want to join us!  We're trying to fill a wagon/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 11, 2022
Meanwhile, the place gets wilder with the night!  Here's the "Ultimate Party Bus" cruising on Broadway/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 11, 2022
Music City makes good use of its fire engines when they're not on duty.  Here's one decked out for a party on Broadway/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 11, 2022
 A fire engine party truck on Broadway in Nashville/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 11, 2022
Tattoos are abundant, too. (Surprise!)/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 11, 2022
See!  What did I tell you?  Bring on the boots and the cut-offs!/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 11, 2022

Nashville Party Wagon on Broadway.  Looks like another bridesmaids party on deck.  Nashville is the Bridesmaids Capital of the World, and we saw several of the parties, plus part of a real wedding, too!/Photo by Patricia Leslie,  June 11, 2022
Whatsis?  Three-wheelies with flashers on Broadway/Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 11, 2022
 And away they go on Broadway in Nashville/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 11, 2022
For the more sedate and/or those tourists looking beyond Broadway, look no further than the fabulous Victorian Belmont Mansion on the Belmont University campus ("Nashville's largest antebellum house museum!") or ... /Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 12, 2022

Centennial Park, the home of the Parthenon, modeled after the original in Athens/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 10, 2022

The Parthenon in Centennial Park in Nashville/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 10, 2022
Photo by Patricia Leslie, Nashville, June 10, 2022

Suffragettes protect the Parthenon at Centennial Park. This statue was dedicated August 21, 2020 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which gave women the right to vote.  A Tennessee legislator, Harry T. Burn, who listened to his mama, was the deciding vote in the Tennessee General Assembly whose action made the 19th a reality.  Thank you, Mr. Burn!

The statue honors these suffragettes who were instrumental in the fight for women's rights: Anne Dallas Dudley of Nashville, Frankie Pierce of Nashville, Carrie Chapman Catt (national suffrage leader who came to Tennessee for the final battle), Sue Shelton White of Jackson, and Abby Crawford Milton of Chattanooga.  Thank you, suffragettes!

And thanks, Nashville, for a great time in Music City!!


Patricialesli@gmail.com

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Picasso sells out at the Frist


The Frist Art Museum, Nashville/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Inside the galleries at the Frist/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The Barefoot Girl,  1895. La Coruna. Loaned by Musée national Picasso-Paris
Picasso was only 13 when he painted this amazing working-class girl which shows his empathy for the subject, according to the label.  It's among the first of many seated women he painted such as the one below he made 37 years later.  Someone said they were birds in a cage.  (Picasso's cage.) 
Reading Woman, 1932. Boisgeloup. Musée national Picasso-Paris. 
This is of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso's lover at the time and featured below in The Sculptor.  Marie was only 17 and almost 30 years younger than Picasso who was married when they met.  A standard line:  "You have an interesting face.  I would love to do a portrait of you," (according to Frist lecturers, Terri Cohen and Peg Werts, who gave one of many fine online sessions the Frist offered at no charge.  Dr. Werts paraphrased Picasso:  "I paint people as I think them, not as I see them.")

Picasso featured Marie-Thérèse Walter in many works, and in 1935, their daughter, Maya, was born.  Four years after Picasso died, Marie committed suicide.

Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937. Paris. 
Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Picasso took up with Dora Maar in 1936 at the time of the outbreak of Spanish Civil War when he was still involved with Marie-Thérèse Walter and married to Olga Khokhlova. Ms. Maar, a photographer, was instrumental in Picasso's development of Guernica.* She challenged him intellectuallyaccording to the Frist online talk given by Ms. Cohen and Ms. Werts.  

Picasso often pictured Ms. Maar crying, easy enough to understand after he shoved aside women when another, more desirable woman crossed his way, such as Francoise Gilot, a Picasso relationship which led to Ms. Maar's breakdown and reclusiveness.

She split with him in 1943, regained strength and began to paint. Right on, sister!

This work was featured on the cover of the booklet at the Frist show. 

At the exhibition, my son, William, asked me how Picasso was able to attract so many women:  "It was not looks!" I exclaimed. Women are attracted to fame, power, and money, all Picasso possessions, I told him, which explains why ugly men have beautiful wives. For a while, anyway.
Man with a Guitar, 1911-1913. Paris. 
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Can you find the man's moustache, the wall molding, and the rosette on the mandolin?  Good!  You may become an art historian!  The label said this "is characteristic of analytical cubism, which aimed to restore the three-dimensionality of a subject on a single surface by translating it into geometric facets." (?)  Translate that and you may become an author, too!

Both online sessions at the Frist which I attended featured this work.  Despite its connection to surrealism, the painter denied he was a surrealist.
Mother and Child, 1907, Paris. Musée national Picasso-Paris
The label said this rendering reflects the artist's fascination with Iberian, African, and Oceanian sculpture and was probably inspired by a Romanesque Virgin and Child Picasso would have seen in Gosol where he stayed in 1906.
Inside the galleries at the Frist, visitors watch a film of Picasso in motion/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Woman with a Ruffle, 1926. Juan-les-Pins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.
The Sculptor, 1931. Paris. 
Musée national Picasso-Paris.
The label noted the artist's early 1930s were marked by sculpture. Here a bearded man meditates at a statue of Picasso's lover at the time, Marie- Thérèse Walter. Mingling figures characterized much of  Picasso's 1920s output, which carried over into the next decade.
The Bathers, 1918. Biarritz. 
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Picasso painted this while honeymooning with the Russian ballerina, Olga Khokhlova, whom he had met the previous year and to whom he was married, despite many affairs, until she died in 1955, according to the online presentation at the Frist by Teri Cohen and Peg Werts.  (In an earlier online Frist talk, Amy Von Lintel and Leonard Folgarait also featured this work.)

The Bathers is modeled after Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres' Turkish Bath.  Dr. Folgarait noted that although the figures are touching themselves, they look away from the viewer.
Head of a Bearded Man, 1938. Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Man with a Straw Hat and Ice Cream Cone, 1938. Mougins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Child with Doves, 1943.  
Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Although labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis, Picasso remained in Paris during the war years of Nazi occupation, 1940 to 1944 when he painted this large, malformed child holding a rattle, with two doves nearby, all enclosed in a somber setting, perhaps underground, perhaps inside a tomb.

Picasso, his art and his public, 1968. Mougins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Woman Reading, 1935, Paris. 
Musée national Picasso-Paris.

The Kiss, 1931. Musee national Picasso-Paris. Made in Paris, loaned by Paris, It must be a French kiss...oooohhhhh. The better to bite you, Madam.  This man resembles a cow and the mark of Zorro connects the two in the sheets. Note how the man's eyes are open; the woman's, closed.  Remember what I said about ugly men?  Who would want to see this monstrosity anyway and she is kissing him! Yeech!
In the Picasso galleries at the Frist/
Photo by Patricia Leslie
Woman with a Baby Carriage, 1950, bronze. 
Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Picasso began recycling objects he found on the street long before collecting discarded objects for art became popular. 

Using abandoned objects he found in Vallauris, France where he was living, the sculptor combined them with a baby carriage, a frying pan, and plaster molds he made into the woman's arms and head/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Sunday, 1971. Mougins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Musician, 1972. Mougins. Musée national Picasso-Paris.
The Family, 1970, Mougins.  
Musée national Picasso-Paris.
The label copy noted this was characteristic of the artist's "final period" with its "deceptively naive handling of the figures," suggesting the influences of the 17th century (?).
At the back of the Frist Art Museum/
Photo by Patricia Leslie
 
If you missed Picasso Figures at the Frist Art Museum, here are many of the most intriguing works I found at the only venue for this exhibition in the U.S.

Several of these were featured by guest lecturers speaking at free online sessions hosted by the Frist whom I heard before I saw the show.

The 75 or so pieces on display included paintings, sculptures, works on paper, including a film of him at work, loaned to the Frist by the
 Musée national Picasso-Paris,  the beneficiary of donations by his family who battled each other for years over his estate.  He left no will but just about 45,000 works, not only his own, but paintings by other notable artists.

The Picasso-Paris claims to hold the largest collection of Picassos in the world.

The value of his estate today is estimated between $530 million and $1.3 billion.

Before Picasso Figures moved on to Quebec, the Frist extended it for a week, until Mother's Day. The timed-entry tickets quickly sold out.

It was a large presentation, spread over several galleries, almost encompassing the Frist's entire first floor of exhibition space. Although the number of viewers attending was enormous, there was plenty of elbow room in the large rooms, and overcrowding was never a problem.

(When I spy an empty space in front of any work at a popular show, I rush up to it, to have it all to myself, at least for a few seconds, until someone else joins me and enters my space. At least, I've "had it" all by myself for a few moments and eventually, I get to the most popular works where solitary looking is seldom experienced.)


I was lucky to be able to attend two of the museum's online sessions about the show, excellent in every respect. (Contract stipulations prohibited recordings of these events.) 

I wondered if Picasso's misogyny would be mentioned, and Terri Cohen and Peg Werts did not disappoint, especially in this time of "Me Too," Ms. Cohen said.  

"He was cruel and abusive to women throughout his life.  His behavior cannot be excused." She said some Frist members were unhappy the museum presented the show, and I wonder if his maltreatment of women played a role in other museums in the U.S. shunning the show, if they did. Was the fact that the show was only presented at one museum in the U.S. venue related to covid-19 or funding? 

What was the reason?

Can it be that after a while, the renderings became rather boring and repetitive? The crazy, disjointed, ugly figures? Maybe with the attention to women's rights and the increasing acceptance of us as equals, Picasso will fall from favor or perhaps the descent has already begun. One can hope!

When in Nashville, visit the Frist, housed on Broadway in the former home of Nashville's main U.S. Post Office building, an art deco gorgeous structure, with or without art on display.

*Guernica was not part of this show, Ms. Cohen and Ms. Werts said. B
eginning in 1937,  it was kept on and off at the Museum of Modern Art for safekeeping, to tour the world before MOMA returned it reluctantly to Spain in 1981. 
It is one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. 

patricialesli@gmail.com
















Roboto

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Wrong, WAPO: The Grand Ole Opry still plays at the Ryman


In an obituary today on country music singer-songwriter Jan Howard (may she rest in peace), the Washington Post's print version says in the credit line under Ms. Howard's picture that she performed "during the Grand Ole Opry's last show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on March 18, 1974."

Not only was March 18, 1974 not the last show for that time period at the Ryman (the last show was March 15, 1974), but the Grand Ole Opry still performs several times a year at the Ryman Auditorium.

Methinks the Washington Post needs a fact checker.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

A salute to Nashville's recycling star



The picture of Sherry Force on the plaque in her honor to hang at Granbery School


It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood at Granbery School in Nashville on Earth Day where the memory of environmental heroine Sherry Force was honored with an outstanding tribute.
"Happy Earth Day" proclaims the banner hanging at the entrance to Granbery School/Photo by Patricia Leslie


Hundreds of Granbery students, graduates, parents, and friends, many wearing green, turned out for a celebration of Sherry’s life.
,
The "Gecko Echoes," a Granbery teachers' chorus, sang We are the World and Sweet, Sweet Spirit in tribute to Sherry Force/Photo by Patricia Leslie 
Members of the "Gecko Echoes" who paid tribute to Sherry Force in song are Scott Adkins, Kate Affainie, Lana Bogie, Lanee Ferguson, Daniel Hayes, Theresa Hill, M.L. Morlock, Carol Scruggs, Angela Spiller, and Stacie Stark/Photo by Patricia Leslie


Chirping birds in the trees sang with the children's and teachers' choruses which made melody with the flutists and original poems students composed to commemorate the achievements of Ms. Force and the Granbery community over the more than 20 years she directed the school's recycling program. 
The Oliver Middle School Flute Choir, under the direction of Susan Waters, played at the memorial for Sherry Force at Granbery School/Photo by Patricia Leslie


In 1989 with a single newspaper bin, Sherry started up recycling at Granbery.

Her teachings over time about the values of protecting the Earth literally affected thousands of students who enlightened their families about new practices which soon became habits.

Long before anyone knew what "wet dry" was all about, Ms. Force implemented a food composting program at Granbery, a model copied by the Tennessee Department of Corrections which was able to reduce its solid waste budget by 75 percent.

Under her leadership, the school earned local, state, regional, and national awards for environmental awareness and action.  
Sherry Force/SEIU

Many recycle every Saturday at Granbery where Ms. Force never failed to show, come snow, ice, piercing sun, or holiday.  It didn't matter if Christmas Day fell on a Saturday:  She was there.

On cold winter days she served cups of hot chocolate to volunteers, and in the summer, popsicles.  Sherry's liberal leanings occasionally got her into trouble and almost cost her job, she said last June, but she grinned and bore it and proudly recycled on.

Last December she was felled by sudden illness, but her spirit and legacy did not die.  Her efforts will live for a long time as Granbery children educate their own children who will teach still more about the importance of preserving the environment and making it better.  Her spirit can always be found, floating around those bins.

Sherry Force died December 19, 2012 at Vanderbilt Hospice.
At the Granbery celebration these boys read poems they composed in tribute to Sherry Force/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Granbery students sang What a Wonderful World and This Land is Your Land/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Granbery kindergarten teacher M. L. Morlock sang In My Life/Photo by Patricia Leslie
These students read poems they had written to honor Ms. Force and said they learned "one person can make a difference," just like Ms. Force said/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Lori Donahue, Granbery principal, praised Sherry Force and announced the creation of a scholarship in Sherry's honor which will send a student to an environmental camp/Photo by Patricia Leslie

A representative from the mayor's office read a proclamation commending Sherry Force.
The students were perfectly poised and listened attentively throughout the 45-minute program/Photo by Patricia Leslie
A student held the plaque dedicated to the memory of Sherry Force/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Jessi Force, Sherry's daughter, greeted friends and families after the service/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Student ushers stand beside the dogwood tree planted at Granbery School in Sherry Force's honor/Photo by Patricia Leslie