Showing posts with label Chicago. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicago. Show all posts

Friday, March 15, 2024

Awakening Earth: Narratives of Spring - curated by Sergio Gomez



Art is meant to move you. To give you an emotion. To speak to you, at you, converse with you. As I calibrate my own desire for art I find that I now get excited about one or two pieces. Not an entire gallery. The gallery does move me. Just that I now recognize the difference to what I want vs. what I desire. What I want is to feel exuberated, alive, I want it to represent me and my morals, ethics, what I work for to make the world a better place.

Well, I found such a piece tonight at the Zhou B Art Center's 3rd Friday open exhibitions of the month, hosted by the resident artists and the gallery. This months exhibition titled "Awakening Earth: Narratives of Spring" was curated by Sergio Gomez. Sergio is a super nice guy. I met him through my friend Lou Shields. At one time I tried to attend a Lightroom (or maybe it was Photoshop) class from him, however had to cancel because of personnel reasons. Tonight Sergio was so welcoming, as I had remembered him to be some 12 years ago.

So, the piece I found is mentioned later in this blog. In the mean time, follow my journey as I arrived and started on the 4th floor, working myself down each floor.















Sergio's curated show, "Awakening Earth: Narratives of Spring" . . .













This next piece of art is the one I fell in love with. The piece of art that defines what I need (not desire) in this world. If I had the means, I would buy it.

This is the work of my wonderful and talented friend Diana Leviton Gondek. The story goes that her cat Bansky was very fond of flower, so Diana indulged him. However she noticed that he was not feeling well over time, to the point he was just laying around. Sort of a flopsy mopsy I am guessing. She took him to the vet and found out she was actually "killing him" with flowers. They were toxic for to Bansky. So now he does not get to enjoy flowers. Those thoughts, the feelings for Bansky, is why Diana created this piece. You really have to see it in person to understand the beauty of this. The added textures, though ever so slight, makes the painting pop.




Zhou B Art Center
1029 W. 35th Street
Chicago, IL 60609
(773) 523-0200



If you get a chance, check out my black and white blog post. This is my form of art that I like you to see and enjoy. (click here)

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You can see a categorized thumbnail of all Towle Theater related blogs by going to StreetPhoto.Me.

Further down this blog post are five buttons to click on: E-mail this, Blog this, Share to Twitter, Share to Facebook, and Share to Pinterest. Please take advantage of them and share this blog post with your friends.

The "219 Music" and "219 Artare owned trademarks of Wes Bushby.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Garfield Park Conservatory



The Garfield Park Conservatory located in Chicago is one of my favorite places to go. It can be a challenge at times because it is other people's favorite as well.

To paraphrase from their website (their information at the end of this blog), there are thousands of plant species from all over the world, located in 8 different gardens that are environmentally controlled and all are under glass (GPC website 2/28/2024). Each garden is humidity and temperature controlled to provide the seasonal changes that the plants would expect from their natural habitat. Going this time of year, what I would refer to as the "dessert" type plants, that habitat was cooler tempered than I would have anticipated, and I liked it!

I spent about 90 minutes there. To really appreciate, plan on spending 2 hours and possibly more. Currently there are a few blooms, and there will be many more as we enter more sunlit days.

It is free to get in. However please contribute some money. There is a drop box to the right of the check-in desk. Me, I give as much as I can because I want Garfield Park Conservatory to thrive.

The photograph above is one that everyone like to capture. It is a rectangular pond at the entrance to the gardens that captures some great reflections. The very bottom of the photography is "true view", along with the top right and left of the photograph. The remaining is an inverted image reflecting the above glass, overhanging plants, and people on the opposite side of the pond.

Enjoy the photographs. To have more enjoyment, and to fulfill some of your life dreams if you have not been there yet, please go check out Garfield Park Conservatory.

Note: They require reservations for day and time. This helps to control the number of people in the gardens at any given time. However, they do take walk ins. I went first thing on a Friday morning and was able to do just that, without a reservation.


















































This would be a first time photography capture for me. After I photographed the first picture at the top of this blog, the caregivers of this facility started to spray water on the plants in this area. Some of the water droplets found their way into the pond, which I thought gave it a cool effect.









Garfield Park Conservatory
300 North Central Park Ave.
Chicago, IL  60624
Phone: 773-638-1766

Wednesday 10am-8pm
Thursday – Sunday 10am-5pm
Closed Monday and Tuesday

_________________________________________________________________

You can see a categorized thumbnail of all Towle Theater related blogs by going to StreetPhoto.Me.

At the bottom of this blog post are five buttons to click on: E-mail this, Blog this, Share to Twitter, Share to Facebook, and Share to Pinterest. Please take advantage of them and share this blog post with your friends.

The "219 Music" and "219 Artare owned trademarks of Wes Bushby.