The U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree, Washington, D.C.

The Capitol Christmas Tree from the White River National Forest in Colorado. The "People's Tree," an Engelmann spruce, was 74 years old and 73 feet high. If you look closely, you may be able to see what I think is Jupiter, about equidistant between the Capitol and the tree/patricia leslie

 

 

 

Colorado school children made more than 5,000 ornaments for the Capitol Christmas Tree and other Washington, D.C. sites. The tree's lights come on every day at dusk and are turned off at 11 p.m./patricia leslie

 

With backs to the Capitol and looking down the National Mall towards the Washington Monument or what looks like an upside down golf tee/patricia leslie

 

Hanging on the Capitol Christmas Tree is one of the ornaments made by Colorado school children/patricia leslie

 

The Washington Monument framed by the Capitol Christmas Tree.  The tree stands on the Capitol's West Lawn, below construction of the 2013 inaugural viewing stands at the Capitol. The U.S. Forest Service chooses a tree every year from one of our 155 national forests.

 

This year's tree traveled 5,000 miles from Colorado to Washington, stopping in 30 cities and towns for more people to enjoy. A song by Lindsay Lawler of Nashville, Standing Tall, was chosen from 300 entries as the Capitol Christmas Tree song, and the first Capitol tree art competition was won by Cheryl St. John of Colorado, for Awaiting Spring, which will be used on the cover of the CD featuring music for the trees. If no one is there, will they hear what we hear?/patricia leslie

 

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Torpedo Factory artists have lots for the hard-to-please

On a bumpy sidewalk along Alexandria's King Street on the way to the Torpedo Factory Art Center/patricia leslie

For samples of local original art, jewelry, vases, mugs, glass bears, cashmere and hand-painted silk scarves, books, paintings (all sizes), cards, sculpture, calendars, tapestries, or pottery about cats (really, it's there), what better place than the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria where reasonable prices abound, and artists are ready to talk, Merry Christmas! 

It's a winter wonderland of art. So much to see! So much to choose! And so much fun.

 

 

At the Torpedo Factory Art Center's open house in Alexandria/patricia leslie

What a totally delightful experience to visit galleries and discuss the creations while strolling from piece to piece and sipping champagne. What? You missed this year's open house? There is next year, dearie, and besides, the art remains. 

(Breaking news from a Torpedo Factory tweet: Decadent December Art Night 12/13 6-9pm w/ chocolate, shopping, exhibit receptions + @WAACBand!  Let's go!)

Some of the treats at the Torpedo Factory Art Center's open house/patricia leslie

Have you ever been? It's the home of 160 artists, 82 studios, 2,000 students, six galleries, Bread and Chocolate (!), and a museum, all which occupy three floors in a facility built after the end of World War I for torpedo construction. (Only in D.C.) 

Snowflakes dance in the windows of this Torpedo Factory gallery where Gloria Barbre, Candace Edgerley, AnneMarie Feld, Virginia Irby-Maxwell, Tamara Embrey, Kathy Udell, and Saaraliisa Ylitalo have art they want to show you/patricia leslie

Still on display in the main hall is a (dormant) green torpedo constructed on-site in 1945. Yes, the building definitively suggests the military, if you've ever been inside a submarine or on an aircraft carrier: The environment is similar which is part of the charm.

Music by Wytold, stationed on a second floor walk-through, added merriment to the Torpedo Factory Art Center's open house/patricia leslie

 

After World War II, everybody used the building for storage: the military, the Smithsonian (dinosaur bones), Congress, the federal government, until Alexandria bought it, and its development as an arts center began in earnest in 1974.

The Torpedo Factory's third floor is also the home of the Alexandria Archaeology Museum where the main exhibit, the Lee Street Site, features one city block and what's been found there. The museum is an excellent introduction to archaeology for children of all ages.  Hands-on demonstrations are part of the learning experience at the museum.

Tory Cowles, Sheep Jones, and Jeanne Garant are the artists at this studio at the Torpedo Factory Art Center/patricia leslie

 

Alison Sigethy makes and sells environmental art at the Torpedo Factory Art Center/patricia leslie

 

Is that sculptor Carol G. Levin on the left?  In her studio at the Torpedo Factory Art Center/patricia leslie

 

A view from above at the Torpedo Factory Art Center/patricia leslie

 

This handsome fellow greeted guests at the gallery of Lisa Schumaier at the Torpedo Factory Art Center/patricia leslie

 

What: Torpedo Factory Art Center

When: Open daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. (until 9 p.m. on Thursdays)

Where: On the waterfront at 105 N. Union Street, Alexandria, VA 22314

For more information: 703-838-4565

Metro station: King Street. From the Metro you have two choices (excluding a taxi):  Walk a pleasant (flat) 30 minutes down King Street, past beautifully decorated shops on your way, or hop on the free trolley, coming and going, which also takes you past beautifully decorated shops.

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Filmmaker James Benning at the National Gallery of Art this weekend

                                                James Benning/jb

The celebrated experimental filmmaker, James Benning, will be on hand Saturday and Sunday for screenings at the National Gallery of Art of three of his most recent, notable films: Twenty Cigarettes, small roads, and Two Cabins.

Twenty Cigarettes is based on 20 of Benning's friends he filmed while they each smoked a cigarette. Small roads is 47 shots of roads crisscrossing the U.S. from the Pacific coast to the Midwest which the movie maker says is "a list of the roads in question and the cars that drive on them."

Film still from small roads (James Benning, 2011, HDCAM, 103 minutes) to be shown at the National Gallery of Art on Saturday, December 8, 4:30 p.m. as part of the film series, American Originals Now: James Benning. Image courtesy of James Benning

Two Cabins concerns "utopian and dystopian versions of social isolation” and shows Benning's construction of Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond and the cabin built by Ted Kaczynski (AKA the Unabomber) outside Lincoln, Montana.

Benning’s presentation is part of the exhibit now on display in the National Gallery's West Building, "The Serial Portrait:  Photography and identity in the Last One Hundred Years."

Benning has been making films for more than 40 years and says they are not aimed at commercial audiences but are made for an audience of one, himself. They “help me understand the world better.” (IMDB says he's directed 47.)

One of his recent films is about Pussy Riot which organizers have asked him to withhold from public screenings until management details can be worked out.

In a telephone interview, he said he doesn’t work against convention but tries to present an “elegant solution” by “using materials to solve problems” which he observes in everyday life.

Twenty Cigarettes is not actually about smoking but “looking at people, their faces as landscapes.” Benning was “much more interested in their gestures and how they reveal themselves.” Initially, some of his friends appear self-conscious which “disappears over time.”

Film still from Twenty Cigarettes (James Benning, 2011, HD, 99 minutes) to be shown at the National Gallery of Art on Saturday, December 8, 2:30 p.m. as part of the film series American Originals Now: James Benning. Image courtesy of James Benning

Backgrounds are “somewhat minimal” but they provide a clue about the person’s environment. Is she rich? Poor? An animal lover? Does he have children? After consulting with the subjects, Benning chose backdrops.

He edited some of the sounds, removing distractions and sometimes making additions, which provide more clues about the subject’s identity. When it comes to sound, Benning said, “I am not a purist."

He is “very proud” of the film and the “diverse friendships” he has. It’s a “complex reading.”

Two Cabins didn’t start as it became. The film is more about obsession, Benning said, and an outsider's perspective. “I am too old [70] to build a real house” so he built one with the same dimensions as Thoreau’s, but it's not an “exact replica.” Half the books in Benning’s Kaczynski cabin are Benning’s and half, Kaczynski’s. Benning has not see Kaczynski's actual cabin (still on display at the Newseum, across the street from the National Gallery). Kaczynski’s desk has “exactly the same dimensions" as Thoreau’s, Benning said.

He used actual sounds from Walden Pond and Lincoln, Montana for Two Cabins which has no narration. Benning said Kaczynski’s writings mention the sounds of annoying planes overhead.

A book about Two Cabins was published last year which Amazon describes this way: “Benning's engagement makes discernable a multitude of contacts between their motivations, beliefs, and experiences of seclusion. Benning's armature artfully unfolds a complex articulation of practices of dissent, nonprescriptive ways of living, and the politics of solitude.”

Benning is a mathematician whose conversation is sprinkled with references to math.

In an interview with Mark Peranson for Cinema Scope Online, Benning supplied two mathematical equations for Twenty Cigarettes, one made by him, the other, by the cast. The film premiered last year in Berlin at the International Forum of New Cinema.

He came to filmmaking "quite late” after he thought about it off and on for almost a decade, stimulated by Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren (1917-1961), "one of the most important American experimental filmmakers" of the 1940s and 1950s (Wikipedia).

Benning was born in Milwaukee and spent part of his teens, twenties and thirties protesting the Vietnam War, earning a math degree, a master of fine arts, and teaching at Paul Smith’s Junior College in New York. The Paul Smith administrator was also the head of the local John Birch Society who didn’t take too well to those whose politics didn’t match his, and he kicked out Benning and several other faculty members because of their anti-Vietnam postures.

The ouster opened up a door for Benning, much like what happened to Milton Rogovin, a photographer in the serials show, whose optometry business disappeared after he refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1957, paving the way for Rogovin to pursue his passion, photography.

Benning’s path took him to the University of Wisconsin and a course in filmmaking. He bought a camera but sat on the career possibility for three years before taking the plunge and making his first film, Did You Ever Hear That Cricket Sound, in 1971.

Financing for movie making comes from teaching, his reputation, and from German television which encourages "uncommon cinema.” The Web indicates, and he confirmed, that his following outside the U.S. is bigger than here. Venues for his films are art houses, museums, and festivals. He’s had screens at the Sundance Film Festival, in Vienna, London, Kenya, Asia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Austria, to name a few sites. Two Cabins was re-constructed and installed in Berlin as part of 2012 International Forum of New Cinema.

Sometimes a friend helps him, but Benning's work is his own. He’s the editor, cinematographer, sound man, producer, and director. Technology permits him to be totally independent and "has freed me," but “I am in a turmoil" because with the freedom comes loss of time, and he asks himself: “Did I gain or did I lose?”

Benning teaches at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.  Ask him about prime numbers. Visualizing that film is an easy thing.

Who: James Benning

What: Three films

When: Twenty Cigarettes (2011, 99 minutes), 2:30 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012

  small roads (2011, 103 minutes), 4:30 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012

 Two Cabins (2011, 60 minutes),  4:30 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 9, 2012

Where: East Building Concourse Auditorium, The National Gallery of Art and Sculpture Garden is located at the National Mall along Constitution Avenue and between Third and Ninth Streets. The East Building is at the corner of Constitution and 4^th Street NW.

How much: No charge. “Admission to the National Gallery of Art is always free.”

For more information: (202) 737-4215
Metro stations: Judiciary Square, Navy Memorial-Archives, or the Smithsonian


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Inside the Christmas White House 2012

The hallway on the ground floor of the White House looking towards the East Garden Room, home of faux Bo/Patricia Leslie

The East Wing Visitor Entrance/Patricia Leslie

At the Visitor Entrance (outdoors)/Patricia Leslie

In the lobby upon entering. About 100 volunteers from 50 states spent a week decorating the White House which exudes an immediate and magnificent Fraser Fir fragrance to greet visitors and infuse magic, like when you get off the plane in Hawai'i/Patricia Leslie

The Armed Forces Tree where visitors are invited to sign postcards to troops and indicate the number of hours the signer is willing to commit to community service in honor of the servicemen's and women's commitment to the U.S. The White House holiday theme this year is Joy to All/Patricia Leslie

Looking out the large hallway windows on the ground floor towards "backyard decorations" and the Washington Monument in the distance, with a reflection of greenery lining above framed Christmas photos of the first families/Patricia Leslie

A life-size faux "Bo" with hanging lights and Santa hat guards the portraits of President Calvin Coolidge on the left, and President Grover Cleveland, in the East Garden Room/Patricia Leslie

After the East Garden Room, one comes to a hall on the ground floor with the Vermeil and China rooms on the left, the library on the right, and a cabinet with .../Patricia Leslie

"Part of a State Service first ordered by President John F. Kennedy" and made by Morgantown Glassware Guild, Morgantown, West Virginia in 1961/Patricia Leslie

 And another part of a State Service first ordered by President Andrew Jackson and made by Bakewell, Page & Bakewell, Pittsburgh in 1829/Patricia Leslie

First ladies Patricia Nixon, on the left, and Jacqueline Kennedy preside over the Vermeil Room  Are the gifts under the trees real?/Patricia Leslie

 The book collection in the library across the hall numbers about 2,700 volumes.  Until 1935 when it was renovated, the library was a laundry room and a gentlemen's waiting room, according to a booklet given to Christmas White House visitors/Patricia Leslie

The White House Library/Patricia Leslie

The China Room.  The White House has 54 Christmas trees. President Theodore Roosevelt, an "ardent conservationist," prohibited the cutting of trees for White House Christmases, but his cunning children sneaked one in past their papa, and decorated it with twinkling white lights (and an electrician's help), according to the booklet.  Students from Washington's Duke Ellington School for the Arts created the art for the booklet/Patricia Leslie

After leaving the ground floor and ascending the stairs, a visitor finds herself in the East Room peeking out windows onto Pennsylvania Avenue/Patricia Leslie

The East Room is the location of after-dinner entertainment, and was the scene of the soiree for guests and honorees attending Sunday night's Kennedy Center Honors/Patricia Leslie

From the East Room one glances down the hallway to Cross Hall and the North Entrance (Pennsylvania Avenue) on the right.  The entrance on the left is to the Blue Room and at the end of the hallway is the State Dining Room. More than 90,000 are expected to tour the White House during the holiday season/Patricia Leslie

But back to the East Room.  Whose portrait is behind the tree?/Patricia Leslie

A lighting fixture in the East Room/Patricia Leslie

Part of a tree in the Green Room, the next room on the tour/Patricia Leslie

The Green Room and above the mantle, the oldest publicly displayed portrait in the White House, according to a friendly, erudite White House veteran. ("We don't know what's upstairs, so it may not be the oldest one here.")  David Martin painted Benjamin Franklin in 1767, and 200 years later, Walter Annenberg gave it to the White House in memory of President Kennedy. The silhouette of a man barely visible on the left in the painting is Sir Isaac Newton/Patricia Leslie

"Bed head," a Christmas bird cage, or ? in the Green Room/Patricia Leslie

In the Blue Room, the next one on the tour, is found THE official White House Christmas tree filled with ornaments made by military children stationed with their parents around the world. The Fraser Fir is 18.5 feet tall and came from Jefferson, N.C./Patricia Leslie

 The Red Room (photos below) follows the Blue Room on the tour and next is the State Dining Room, above, anchored by George F. P. Healy's portrait of President Abraham Lincoln.  About 120 persons can be seated here comfortably for dinner, a guide said, and the president and first lady do not sit together/Patricia Leslie

The 300-pound gingerbread house at the north end of the State Dining Room.  Note the table legs.  Behind these doors is the Family Dining Room, closed to visitors/Patricia Leslie

From the State Dining Room is the Red Room with the Blue Room on the other side/Patricia Leslie

In Cross Hall at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance /Patricia Leslie

The Red Room from the Entrance Hall.  Normally, Dolley Madison reigns over the Red Room, however, her portrait is on loan to the National Portrait Gallery until late winter, a guide said/Patricia Leslie

One of many first lady ornaments which decorate the four first ladies trees at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance. More than 60 percent of the White House ornaments have been "re-purposed" or recycled/Patricia Leslie

One of the state ornaments hanging at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance/Patricia Leslie

In the Entrance Hall with a tree reflected in the mirror/Patricia Leslie

The reflected tree and out the window is Pennsylvania Avenue/Patricia Leslie

It was World AIDS Day (and Night)/Patricia Leslie

Not to be overlooked next door is the gracious and imposing David Eisenhower Executive Office Building/Patricia Leslie

For a look at last year's White House decorations, click here.

Feliz Navidad!

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