Going To MASS MoCA With Emily

I’d never been in the Kids Space Gallery at Mass MoCA before.   And I wouldn’t have been there today if I wasn’t with Emily.  She and her daughter go there when the visit the museum and Emily told me it’s not just for kids.

After seeing the exhibit of Anne Samat’s weavings, it made me wonder what else I had missed in all the years I’ve been going to the museum.

Emily and are often drawn to different kinds of art.  What speaks to one of us doesn’t always speak to the other.  And that’s a good thing, because  this way we get to see art through each’s others sensibility.  And we might look a little longer, or try a little more to understand a piece of art that otherwise we might just walk by.

But we both had the same reaction when we walked into the Kid’s Space Gallery and saw Samat’s work.

Traditionally woven tapestries, rakes, and brooms, beads and plastic swords, trinket and yarn, all strung and woven together  to create mystical beings and environments.

And at the same time we both questioned why this exhibit wasn’t in the main gallery where it could have the space and audience it deserved.

I can certainly see having some Samat’s art in the Kids gallery.  I think kids would love it.  But just looking at the larger installation I was imagining it or more like it filling up the main gallery on the first floor.

I could even picture larger versions of  Samat’s weavings  in that huge warehouse gallery space, embracing each of us as we walked in.   Maybe it’s because  Samat’s art are weaving, or that they are  about love, that they didn’t make it to one of the bigger more visible galleries.

Whatever the reason, I’m still so glad that I got to see them today.

There were also sculpture by Cate O’Connell Richards and Daniel Giordano that I was take with.  They are very different from each other, yet I liked them equally.

Emily and I were both intrigues by these sculptures by   Cate O’Connell-Richards which looked to us like  three dimensional free-standing symbols or letters from an alphabet we couldn’t’ read.

Daniel Giordano makes sculpture from all kinds of things.   There was even a candy bar in one of them. I loved the colorful curly locks on this piece.  I found “her” endearing.

Below is another of Giordano’s sculptures made from a wooden hat mold, copper screening and fiber.

I haven’t been to MASS MoCA in over a year.  And it’s the first time Emily and I have gotten together in a very long time.  It was definitely overdue.  We both agreed to get together more often even if just for tea.

I bought a membership to Mass MoCA today.  That means Jon and I can go for free for the year.  I’m already looking forward to going back again.