Vacation - Staycation

I've been on vacation since Christmas and it's been nice to stay home, visit local museums, and see old friends.  I've been sleeping and napping non-stop!  I must have been tired. 

Here's my list of what I wanted to do while on break (and I'm happy to say I've done most of them):
-Make oatcakes via the recipe from 3191 Quarterly and eat with apples and cheddar . . . also really good with blackberry jam.
-Buy ingredients at the Indian grocery store to make kitchari (bought the ingredients but haven't made the kitchari yet).
-Go on a long hike with Cody (this unfortunately was cut short due to spotting two coyotes).  Sigh, I don't think I can take him on hikes anymore due to the coyotes--they're everywhere in Southern California!  Cody and I did get to go on a nice long walk with my friend, Cynthia and her son Milo through their quiet neighborhood.  The last picture is from our walk.
-Visit the Autry Museum to see this exhibit.  So amazing!  I cried watching one of the artist videos . . . will have to write about that later.

Ah, I'm so grateful that I have a job that gives me this long of a break.

The art of tattoo

I went to the opening of L.A. Skin & Ink at the Craft and Folk Art Museum tonight.  I had wanted a tattoo in my '20s but I'm not sure it's really me now in my '30s . . . but I did like trying out a cool fake one from Tattly.  I also really enjoyed the show . . . some of my favorite pieces are shown above (apologies for the weird angles and bad lighting).

Also, some sights along Wilshire Blvd.  Yay, Artmageddon.  

California design

I paid a visit to the CA design exhibit going on at LACMA right now.  Love!

Floral Explosion

I took a mini-trip up to Santa Barbara this past weekend to visit my friend C.  I had never spent very much time up there so it was nice to see a new place.

C took me to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  They were having a cool Impressionism exhibit with paintings not commonly seen from the Impressionists.  I actually enjoyed looking at Henri Fantin-Latour's floral paintings the most.  He wasn't an Impressionist but was a friend of theirs I believe.  I want this floral arrangement in my house!

Henri Fantin-Latour, Roses in a Glass Vase, 1873
Oil on canvas
(Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, England)

The museum was also showing contemporary work from Ori Gersht:

Ori Gersht, Blow Up: Untitled 4, 2007. Light jet print mounted on aluminum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum

You gotta love a curator with a sense of humor.  This exhibit cracked me up seeing the juxtaposition of the Impressionists and Gersht's take on similar objects used by Latour such as flowers.  But seriously, it was cool to see Gersht's digital images, HD videos, and photography printed on aluminum.  The things you can do with technology.  Some of his other photographs have this dream-like quality about them that I love.  

And here is another Linda Kim floral that I finished last night.  I was looking through my box of art supplies and found an unfinished painting from a few years back.  I decided to use Prismacolors and watercolors to fill it in:

Linda Kim, Untitled, 2011.  Mixed media.

Virtual Museum

Have you heard of the Google Art Project http://www.googleartproject.com/?  You can view art work from galleries around the world.  Thank you, Google!