Guangqi Park
While Emma took an exam at Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, and before we begin our tea and sacred mountains explorations in Yunnan, I spent the morning in this delightful park of winding paths, koi ponds, ...orienting myself to this time zone. Such peaceful joy, birds singing, leaves fluttering in the slight breeze.. I strolled by individuals playing their flutes or violins softly, couples practicing what looked like a version of the swing “yi, er, san,si....yi, er, san, si...” and found a shaded bench in front of these five hills - a tomb for Xu Guangqi, a famous scientist from the Ming Dynasty, who died in 1633, yet this woman spent much time in standing meditation in front of it before sprinkling water along its length. A man came up and performed a quick series of energetic movements facing the hills and moved on and then... two women and a man, dressed alike in employee uniforms, (it was lunch time) placed a speaker by me and began moving in what I would describe as Asian forms of country line dances, soon joined by other women passers by. An elderly man sat down close to me, tapping his cane to the music and rolling carved wooden balls in his other hand, occasionally happily exclaiming to me in some non-Mandarin dialect. Preschool aged children raced their little scooters nearby, laughing in happiness.
Emma told me later that the aunties often use their breaks to dance in open spaces as exercise and that anyone could join in. I wish I had!

Texas Roadtrip 2019
Dallas
With Cory Cornett
The Kinsey Collection of art and historical documents deserved much more than a couple of hours and will, hopefully, travel to more museums.

Ragnar Kjartansson’s “The Visitors”
9 channel video projection
Dallas Museum of Art

Dirge-like, and eerily seductive... slow repetitions of lyrics such as “There are stars exploding around you, and there’s nothing, nothing you can do.” Each video a different, carefully staged room in a large home, each with a different musician/singer, rich color,each with it own full sound blended with the while as one moves through the space.

Texas Roadtrip 2019
Fort Worth
My five years living in Fort Worth in the late 80s were both financially and socially challenging (the very bright spot was getting pregnant with and delivering Collin, a 6th generation Texan). I discovered the Japanese Gardens on my first exploratory trip for housing, when I realized how different our lives would be here vs. our culturally diverse time in Houston. These gardens became one of my frequent getaways, transporting me to peaceful moods and reconnecting me to my true self.

In the 80s, I was drawn into photography in a new way when I saw Richard Avedon’s large scale photographs “In the American West” at the Amon Carter... as SFGate’s Kenneth Baker wrote, these photos: “consistently shows us people whose self-representations appear to override the camera's powers of affirmation and betrayal.”
During today’s visit, I saw works and artists that had influenced me and/or parallel my creative interests...
Dallas-area James Surls “Seven and Seven Flower” with his use of fence posts and materials gleaned from his land
Lewis Wickes Hine “Steamfitter” . He was originally a sociologist; I am a political scientist... and chose to use his camera as a tool for activism
Mexican-born Gabriel Dawe “Plexus no. 34” using sewing thread to push gender + material stereotypes and his use of web like connections (plexus - network of nerves) which, for me, symbolize, in my community memory project, our collective community memory
Camille Utterback “Untitled 5” using digital/tech art in an interactive, collaborative way, each interaction influenced by the previous one and influencing the next one
And then a surprising juxtaposition of Georgia o’Keefe and a male artist’s (Robert Laurent) similar “, but sculptural, use of plant forms which, when she painted them, pigeon holed her as a painter of erotic female form.

When I lived here, I was the public relations and marketing director for the YMCA. One of our members was friends with Ed Bass,who, at that time developed what was then called the , Caravan of Dreams (now Reata) on Houston street. On the roof of this performance/art center was a geodesic dome and bar to which we were able to have private access one night. The dome relates to another project Ed financed, Biosphere 2, in the Sonoran Desert, which was initially supposed to be a totally enclosed space, Including domes, for environmental experiments. I seem to recall that the systems of natural air purification failed, but that there was still decent scientific information that came out of that project. I enjoyed some Mezcal up there last night After drinks and light fare at Booger Reds in the stockyards and a quick tour around “the largest honkey tonk in the world”, Billy Bob’s :-)

Another place of respite for me when I lived here in the 80s were these water gardens by Phillip Johnson and John Burgee. Climbing down into them, below street level and with the falling water blocking out any city noise, was heaven. This morning I had the whole, glorious space to myself!

Texas Road Trip 2019
Cuero and Cheapside
In search of family homes
The families of both my maternal grandparents (Roesslers and Junkers) and my paternal grandmother (the Kruses) emigrated to Texas from northern Germany in the late 1880s. (My paternal grandfather’s family, the Cornetts, arrived in the US in the late 1700s and into Texas in the early 1900s from Louisiana). The German sides eventually had homesteads in south Texas around Cuero.
On this trip, I discovered that the Kruse homestead buildings in Cheapside had been torn down for fracking operations, but we found the Ruppert Cemetary, with the headstones of my great, great grandparents, who married shortly after arriving in Texas.
[Johanna Sophia Stoeffers (DOB 9/7/1848, DOD 7/19/1913) migrated from Schwye? Or Ellwarden?, German to Texas in 1871.
Johan Hinrick (John Henry) Kruse (DOB 3/3/1844, DOD 7/8/18895) migrated from Oldenburg, Reitland, Germany in 1871
Johanna and Johan married in December 1871. They settled in Brenham, Texas and worked as farm laborers until saving to purchase the homestead in Cheapside.]
The homes and some of the buildings of the dairy my great grandmother (Emma Kruse Gabler)created and ran in Cuero were still standing. And the home of my maternal grandparents (Ella Roessler Junker and Fred Junker) is there, though the garage where I played with parts from my grandfather’s automobile shop business and the bird houses where he raised parakeets, were crumbling, most likely from the floods from the Guadalupe River.
We had lunch at, what our family considers, the best smokehouse... Smolik’s, though I stopped eating their famous brisket decades ago.

Texas Road Trip 2019
Some of the many public art visits in San Antonio with artists Doerte Weber and her husband Ansen Seale.
Mel Chin’s “CoCobijos”

Houston-born artist Chin creates the word CoCobijos or “co-shelters” for this work that references resilience and community support. “Two-faceted cactus-like pads arc in a supporting embrace appearing to hold each other up.” The plasma cut lattice pattern resembles the xylem, interior capillary structure of prickly pear cacti.
This and other public art here were placed so as to be seen from highways, especially when leaves have fallen from trees in the winter.

Margarita Cabrera’s “Arbol de la Vida: Memorias y Voces de la Terra”
Margarita’s work filled my heart and touched my passion for community-engaged art. This 40x80 foot sculpture stopped me in awe as I rounded the bend in the path. She collaborated with 700 people, who created 700 ceramic representations of their 700 stories celebrating the city’s rich cultural history, diversity and community bonds.

Ansen Seale’s “Tricentennial Clock, 2018”
The Jewelbox Project
In historic Roatzsch-Griesenbeck-Arciniega House
​Doerte’s husband Ansen let us inside the building to see this normally “peep-in experience” installation more closely.

The public art program in San Antonio is vibrant and impressive!

Texas Road Trip 2019
Marfa - Big Bend Ranch State Park - Big Bend National Park
Each day, so far, in Texas I have driven through migras (border patrol) station, on different roads, miles from the border. Officers inspect the car visually, ask if we are US citizens and let us pass. As we drove 100+ miles along the Rio Grande, the concept of a border wall spanning the length of our contiguous countries seemed absurd, especially through the vast areas of mountains and Chihuahuan Desert. I There were numerous spots where I could have thrown a rock across the river. In Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend, one man walked across to sit in the verdant brush and view the beautiful canyon from the Mexican side.
On another topic, the herbal aroma of the desert is intoxicating and I have discovered a new liquor to, if not replace the mescal I came to enjoy in Oaxaca, at least add options to night time sipping ... Sotol, which is roasted similarly to the agave root for mescal, but had a grassier and refreshing taste. The plants themselves form forests with the similarly towering Spanish Bayonet yuccas and Ocotillos.

Texas Road Trip 2019
With Jo Hamilton
Chinati Foundation Highlights
Donald Judd...I had previously acknowledged Judd’s artistic contributions, but they had never moved me when seen in the comparatively sterile galleries in MOMA or even DIA Beacon, but I was stopped in my tracks by his “100 Untitled Mill Aluminum” with their infinite variation of shades of gray and tricks of the eye as openings become reflections and light and clouds move across polished surfaces as I slowly weaves through the cubes. I love it when my mind is opened to new ways of thinking and seeing.
Robert Irwin “untitled (dawn to dusk)” played with outside light shining on subtle gradations of scrim, the visitor wandering slowly into the brightness of white
I had never been attracted to Carl Andre’s work (partially influenced by his connection to Ana Mendieta’s death), but his word pieces reminded me of Jon Lodge’s way of thinking.
Prada Marfa
The public sculpture by Elmgreen and Dragset, as a criticism to consumerism and designed to slowly erode into the earth has become a selfie-stop, but its remoteness along a lonely highway and the train that was reflected in its window created and interesting roadside attraction and brief stop along our travels.
Giant Marfa
Erected by John Cerney, this was a surprise further down the road, especially when we go out of the car and heard the solar-powered c&w soundtrack.
Delightful visit with Kiley Dunlap and sweet Campbell Bo Warren.

What a full, educational, experiential, memory sharing #indigenouspeoplesday in El Paso and New Mexico with John Bretting, friend since my University of Houston political science days, and his wife Sylvia Roman. Beautiful soak in the hot springs along the Rio Grande in Truth or Consequences. Then, insightful new perspectives on borderland studies and the history of the Apache “peace camps” in the late 18th century in what is now the Duranguito area of El Paso, but was then part of New Spain, from Apache and Spanish viewpoints in an effort to decolonize methodology... presented in an intriguing mix of Apache, Spanish and English vocabulary
*New Mexico celebrated its first Indigenous People’s day
*The El Paso City Council declared yesterday Indigenous People’s Day
*how the Mescalero Apaches shared their ways of knowing, did not set up borders but this benevolence was systematically abused by leaders of New Spain and their artistic output exploited for colonial gain
* how the Apaches used the Spanish actions and policies for their own gain, to conduct their raids on Spanish horses, to gather intelligence about the Spaniards, to get food, to take advantage of the Spanish gifts, to heal the internal struggles between the various Apache bands. They viewed these early actions , not as capitulation, but as smart manipulation
*how the Apache “peace settlements” mirror in many ways our current border practices ... restriction of mobility , Apache women and children were captured and “deported” to Cuba as a bargaining tool for peace with the Apache leaders, exploitation of internal divisions, diminutive language for Apache people and leaders...
Continuando la luche

A 2 hour immersion into the astonishing story of the Barnes Collection. One man collecting more Renoirs (181) then any international museum, 69 Cezannes, and on and on and displaying them in ensembles with other objects to encourage his students to look for visual relationships. Of the 59 Mattises, many were of his Odalisques, and, since the collection was so massive (and I have named my teardrop trailer “Oda” - the Turkish word for room or chamber and the root word of Odalisque, which is often used for reclining nudes, or the relaxing posture required in my not-so-tall trailer)... I decided to focus on the many paintings referencing this posture. Many were from Mattise, but also Renoir, Modigliani, Picasso and Pascin.
I am grateful to Jo Hamilton for introducing me to this collection and do hope to return so I can focus on other aspects.