(no subject)
I finally got to go to a Mixed Taste talk at Belmar. The topics were Outsider Art and the Large Hadron Collider.
The art historian talked about how to define Outsider Art and whether it even exists. I liked her first example the best. She began my talking about Lee Steen who lived in Montana and was a complete recluse. He lived with his brother and started making people out of cottonwood branches and set them out on his fence all around his house. I found a quote about him from the man who invented skiing - weird.
"I befriended a man in Roundup, Montana named Lee Steen. He made human and animal figures out of tree limbs and stumps. He gave them what they were lacking: eyes, ears, an arm, a head, hats, noses, and lips, then he painted them up and gave them a story. He had thousands of these creatures. He insisted it wasn’t art. He called them his guys. He had over a hundred thousand dollars in fifty dollar bills stashed in a dresser drawer, and a desiccated monkey in a mason jar. His skin was dark and shiny with black pores. The last time I saw him he had boards on the bed to keep the dogs off and he slept in an overstuffed chair in front of a potbellied coal stove. He was burning his guys for fire wood. Lee was one of the kindest, sweetest men I ever met. And if you believe in art--he was probably Montana's greatest artist."
The next speaker was a prof. from CU. He was wonderful because in half an hour he went from telling us how a particle is made to explaining how the LHC will detect a Higgs boson so that somebody who didn't know anything about physics could follow it all. It got me all pumped about physics again. I think I'm going to re-read my modern physics textbook just a little bit because I got the same feeling of excitement learning about relativity for the first time.
Coming up is the best weekend of the summer. I turn 21 at the Denver Post Music Showcase. And next Tuesday I go to New York. Hooray!
The art historian talked about how to define Outsider Art and whether it even exists. I liked her first example the best. She began my talking about Lee Steen who lived in Montana and was a complete recluse. He lived with his brother and started making people out of cottonwood branches and set them out on his fence all around his house. I found a quote about him from the man who invented skiing - weird.
"I befriended a man in Roundup, Montana named Lee Steen. He made human and animal figures out of tree limbs and stumps. He gave them what they were lacking: eyes, ears, an arm, a head, hats, noses, and lips, then he painted them up and gave them a story. He had thousands of these creatures. He insisted it wasn’t art. He called them his guys. He had over a hundred thousand dollars in fifty dollar bills stashed in a dresser drawer, and a desiccated monkey in a mason jar. His skin was dark and shiny with black pores. The last time I saw him he had boards on the bed to keep the dogs off and he slept in an overstuffed chair in front of a potbellied coal stove. He was burning his guys for fire wood. Lee was one of the kindest, sweetest men I ever met. And if you believe in art--he was probably Montana's greatest artist."
The next speaker was a prof. from CU. He was wonderful because in half an hour he went from telling us how a particle is made to explaining how the LHC will detect a Higgs boson so that somebody who didn't know anything about physics could follow it all. It got me all pumped about physics again. I think I'm going to re-read my modern physics textbook just a little bit because I got the same feeling of excitement learning about relativity for the first time.
Coming up is the best weekend of the summer. I turn 21 at the Denver Post Music Showcase. And next Tuesday I go to New York. Hooray!