Day 302/365 - Phillips After Five

Although I've been a member of the Phillips Collection for two years and can get into the museum for free, I'd never been to one of their "Phillips After Five" events until tonight. Turns out they are pretty damn cool.

My evening started off with the Mortified performance piece in the museum's auditorium. If you're unfamiliar with Mortified, it essentially involves people getting onstage in front of a room full of strangers and recounting some of the most embarrassing and angst-ridden moments of their adolescence. Tonight's participants read from their high school journals/diaries, recited old love letters, and in one case sang childhood songs they'd written about their neighbors and friends. It was a hilarious, empathetic, touching, and occasionally cringeworthy experience. Evidently they stage events in cities across the country, so if one pops up in your neck of the woods you should go.

After the show ended, I ventured up to the third floor to check out the "Paint Made Flesh" exhibit, which highlights the way that the development of oil paints lead to greater skill and interest in depicting the human form among painters. The exhibit features a wide range of works from a variety of artists, styles, places, and eras. When I'd finished perusing it, I wandered around the permanent collection to visit a few old friends amongst the artworks, although I was bummed to discover that one of my Phillips faves -- Matisse's "Studio, Quai Saint-Michel" -- had been taken down from display. Don't know whether it's being restored or loaned out, but it was MIA.

From there I ambled on down to the music room to catch the tail end of a jazz quartet's performance. There was a cash bar there, but I had no greenbacks on me so I had to make like a teetotaller. Boooo. I then wrapped up the evening with a late supper and a bit of bookbrowsing at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe. I guess I'd have to say it was a very yuppified night out. Fun, but definitely yuppified.

(Taken with my iPhone)

Day 248/365 - At Artomatic

Tonight was "Meet the Artists" night at the Artomatic exhibition in Washington, DC and since I hadn't been yet to check out the show, I figured I'd go. Several of my Flickr contacts had works on display and I wanted to see their walls. Going also gave me a chance to finally meet Stacey (who brought delish pasteles), Ramune (who brought yummy chocolate peanut butter crispy squares), Kerrin (who brought zesty tomato and mozzarella skewers), and Lindsay (who brought Kevin -- who, given that he's a Kevin, is naturally a treat in and of himself). It was great to meet all of them and to meet up again with some of the Flickr folks I hadn't seen in a while.

The show itself was quite enjoyable. It occupies eight floors of an unfinished office building and is essentially an artistic free-for-all. There's something of everything there, and something for everyone. Rather more nakedness than I was anticipating, though. Apparently it's fairly easy to get women to pose nude for you. Based on Artomatic, it seems that all you need do is buy a nice camera, tell a woman the photos are for artistic purposes, and then 'bang!' -- her clothes fall off. Too bad I shoot mostly buildings, places, and objects. Just my luck.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 228/365 - Art and War

I Amtrak'd it up to Philadelphia this morning for a day trip to tour the battleship USS New Jersey and check out the Cezanne exhibit going on at the Museum of Art. It was an interesting juxtaposition of the power of destruction and the power of creation, not to mention the machina and the deus.

When you think about it, creation and destruction aren't opposites as much as they are different points along the same continuum. They're both forms of affected change, ways of altering the world either through addition or subtraction. That being said, art generally doesn't kill or maim anyone -- so the world could do with much more of the former and considerably less of the latter.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 149/365 - Supporting My People

Local news and information website DCist.com has a 'Photo of the Day' feature wherein they highlight the work of a local photographer. In order to solicit photos for that feature, as well as to provide illustrations for the site's articles and other features, DCist has its own photo pool on Flickr. Additionally, they run an annual "DCist Exposed" photography exhibit.

This year's show is being held at Flashpoint, an arts incubator in the Gallery Place section of Washington, DC. It closes tomorrow, so tonight I made sure I swung by Flashpoint on the way home from work so I could finally check it out. Quite a few of my Flickr contacts have works on display in the exhibit: Erin, Brian, Marie, Pat, Phil, and Angela.

There were some really amazing photos in the exhibition. I put a few of my own entries in, but I didn't get selected for the show. Oh well, guess I'll just have to work at taking better pictures this year so I can make it into next year's exhibition.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 122/365 - Museum Peace

Late last year they finally finished up the renovations to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and I hadn't been by to check it out since the makeover, so today I decided to go and pay it a visit. It doesn't look much different than it did before. There's a new atrium entryway, but that's about it.

It's still a museum in search of a point. There are some interesting exhibits there, but it's a haphazard jumble of random items. Imagine a museum for cool and odd things you bought off eBay, and that would be the Museum of American History. It's the museum for 'stuff we didn't know what else to do with.'

My favorite part of the museum is still the transportation section with its old trains and cars. And the original star-spangled banner of national anthem fame is always neat to see, even if they won't let you take photos of it. After finishing with the Museum of American History, I ambled over to the National Gallery of Art to check out a couple photography exhibits and a cool lighting display in the tunnel connecting the two wings of the gallery that just about everyone on Flickr had been shooting.

It turned out to be a lot of fun to shoot and I went through the tunnel three times just so I could get the shots I wanted. It was a nice relaxing day for me and great way to finish up the first third of my 365 project.

(Taken with my Nikon D80)

Day 45/365 - Pictures at an Exhibition

This afternoon I went over to Georgetown to check out the exhibits at the main FotoWeek DC gallery. There were some really amazing photos there. I saw some stuff that gave me some ideas I wanted to try. They had one cool exhibit that featured massive enlargements of photographer's contact sheets. That exhibit mentioned how, with the advent of digital photography, contact sheets are a bit of an endangered species. I still have some of my old contact sheets from my high school and college photography classes. I had been thinking about pitching them, but now I think maybe I'll hang onto them.

I was walking around the gallery today taking loads of photos of people looking at photos. At one point I think I got 'mistooken' for a working photographer. I was leaning over a railing taking shots of the lower gallery area and some girls that were coming up the stairs heard my camera going 'tchkuh, tchkuh, tchkuh' and got all excited because they thought they were going to end up in some artsy photographer's photo. One of them told the others to play it cool and just keep walking so it wouldn't mess up the picture.

Little did they know they were just going to wind up on my Flickr page rather than in a gallery. It's a sort of sad substitute for fame, but it beats nothing I suppose.

(With apologies to Mussorgsky's ghost for the theft of the title.)

(Taken with my Nikon D80)