Summertime--and the livin's easy!

(Check out my Inside NAU TV Show story above about Sherrie Wolf's amazing artwork.)

  Hey, just cuz' it's summertime doesn't mean there isn't stuff to see.  The exhibit at the NAU Art Museum, "Sherrie Wolf: Historyonics" is up until June 2.

  I took advantage of the opportunity to visit the museum today when no one was there.  I love the colors in Sherrie Wolf's art.  A friend told me she just wanted to lie down and soak it all up.  I'm not recommending you try this (people might look at you strange) but this is DEFINITELY the feeling you get when you enter this exhibit.

  I love looking at art with people who have experience and knowledge of it, and I also like introducing people to art.  When I was in Colorado last summer, I took my mom and dad to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, and told my dad "Before we go in, I just want you to know there's nothing to "get" with this art.  It's just an experience."  Turns out that was just the advice dear old dad needed, and he enjoyed himself better than any other art museum trip before.

  It seems like the most memorable art experiences for me are the ones in which there is an "experience," rather than a lesson.  When I went today to Sherrie Wolf's show, I had a spacey head (I've been sick with a head-cold for a week now.)  And although her still-lifes are based on famous painters, and art history students will see reproductions of paintings they've only seen on slides and in textbooks, I wasn't worried about those details today.  I felt almost drugged out with my cold symptoms, which may explain why I focused on the clouds in her landscapes.  Man, I felt like flying in those soft fluffy clouds!  I could almost smell the summer breeze!

  It was surreal.  I was just soaking in the cloudscape.  There was nothing to "get" and it seemed like a pretty good idea to have a cloudful, and calm, still-life experience. 

  I think this must be my official start of the easy-breezy summer type living.