Mixed Taste

last Friday evening, I attended the Mixed Taste event at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. http://www.mcadenver.org/index.php/programs/Mixed_Taste_Summer_Series

The idea of this is to attempt to ferret out the strange and serendipitous connections between two disparate topics.  Two short talks are presented on two completely different topics.  Last Friday that was Chef Jorel Pierce discussing his passion for the making of blood sausage, and Geoff Manaugh, of BldgBlog fame, talking about urban spelunking.

And what comes of this?  After the two presentations, a number of audience members asked questions, some specific to each talk, others trying to form connections between the topics.  As each presenter tried to address the questions, they were often a bit stretched to make parallels between the talks, but they were game to give it a shot in front of the approximately 60 folks in the audience.

I quite like this kind of event - a kind of intellectual and funny exquisite corpse project.  I certainly will not make it to all of the summer's offerings, but you can bet "Suburbia and American Gin" will be on my list.

Oh, and they have cocktails available as well.

tractors - National Western Stock Show

Last weekend my family and I went to the Stock Show in Denver.  Amid all the cows and horses were an amazing collection of antique tractors.

Hard to get much more beautiful than these.

for Jim

Boulder's mystery artist

Many of you who live in Boulder may have read the Daily Camera stories about the mystery artist whose works have shown up at various places in the city.  It is an interesting, ongoing story that many would like to solve.  I think there have been two large works installed without the knowledge (or consent) of the property owners:  a tall columnar sculpture in the yard of Donna Coughlin and a even larger piece mysteriously installed in the front lawn of the Boulder History Museum:

The City of Boulder has removed the later piece while it decides what to do with it.  However, most other recipients seemed thrilled to have the works, many of which were directly mailed to them.

The Daily Camera and apparently a number of citizens are ardently on the trail of the artist and a prime suspect has been identified.  I don't have any illusions about the number of viewers of these blog posts or my ability to persuade, but I would like to send out an appeal to resist the urge to uncover the name and nature of the artist.  Clearly part of the work is in its delivery, mystery and surprise.  We should consider ourselves lucky to receive such gifts and we should take pleasure in display and appreciation of art in environments that are a far cry from stolid galleries and museums.  Please let this be - take it as a nice, soaking rain in Boulder - rare, beautiful and much-needed.

(all photos from the Daily Camera)