Scatterings

I'm enjoying this lazy Sunday morning and am just going to leave you with some pictures and a few links.

Jody Williams with a swan outside the gallery.

I had a wonderful drive down to Maiden Rock yesterday with a friend to see John Pearson and Earl Gutnik's new show "Bark/Bark" (open through September 6 at Swan Song Gallery). Maiden Rock is on the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin...which is really just a very wide part of the Mississippi River. As we drove through the river valley, the cloud formations were fabulous and ever-changing and my friend and I both watched in delight as the light moved across the very green fields in unexpected ways. The new art by John and Earl was breath-taking and the works complemented each other in surprising ways. A few years ago, we talked about "nutritious" friends in my leadership program; I would say that yesterday afternoon was full of delicious ones.

Earl Gutnik's textile work "Coral Branches"

And in other news:

I have a major crush on Minneapolis author Kate DiCamillo. I actually have to fight feelings of terrible jealousy around friends who know her. Marianne Combs reports that she got to see a proof of her newest book due out in September. (Kate is technically a children's author, but I don't know any adult who doesn't love her work for themselves as well.)

Minnesota Public Radio has collected a number of tributes to Michael Steinberg. You can also listen to his warm and charming voice in the number of interviews he gave over the years to MPR. The link is here.

Sometimes art gets dirty. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has to clean the gorgeous glass work by Dale Chihuly once a year. This year they showed us how they do it.

Saturday was the two year anniversary of the 35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. I didn't drive over the bridge at all, if ever, but I drove under it at least once a week. For me, that collapse was the day that I discovered how much I loved my city and how proud I was of all the people that work for it...from the mayor to the citizens who stopped their cars and got out on the bridge to fish people literally out of the river. I can never drive under the new bridge without thinking of my city and all of the people that were changed by that one night.