My buddy Lisa left for New Mexico this morning, the hotel is very quiet with the departure of the team and it's the first time I've been on my own in 4 weeks, but I have another 3 weeks on the road and then I make the trek home. There are lots of little people that need a hug from Bamma.
I have some really exciting things to do in the coming weeks and I'll also have a couple of days of down time.
The Ricky Tims Super Seminar was the an energizing experience. Everyone was so enthusiastic and just plain 'nice' How lucky am I to be in that environment. We signed hundreds of autographs, had our photos taken with great people and I get to do it all again over the next few days. For the participants, suddenly a light goes on, and I had a lot of people eager to show me their new 'learned' ideas. Trust me, there is nothing sweeter.
I was able to catch up on domestic duties today and I'll be in bed early tonight, but I'm re-capping in my mind all that happened over the past few days. You may think I'm waxing lyrical, but I honestly had a ball with my 320 new best friends.
Today I also visited the Museum of Art here in Cedar Rapids.
Imagine my absolute delight when I found that there was a Grant Wood Exhibition on at present.
Grant Wood (February 13, 1891, – February 12, 1942,) was an American painter born four miles east of Anamosa Iowa. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest particularly the painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the 20th century.
His family moved to Cedar Rapids after his father died in 1901. Soon thereafter he began as an apprentice in a local metal shop. After graduating from Washington High School Wood enrolled in an art school in Minneapolis in 1910, and returned a year later to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. In 1913 he enrolled at the School of Art Institute of Chicago and performed some work as a silversmith From 1920 to 1928, he made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially Impressionism . But it was the work of the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan Van Eck that influenced him to take on the clarity of this new technique and to incorporate it in his new works. From 1924 to 1935, Wood lived in the loft of a carriage house that he turned into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley" (the studio had no address until Wood made one up himself). In 1932, Wood helped found the Stone City Art Gallery near his hometown to help artists get through the Great Dep
Wood's best known work is his 1930 painting American Gothic, which is also one of the most famous paintings in American art, and one of the few images to reach the status of universally recognized cultural icon, comparable to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream.
It was first exhibited in 1930 at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it is still located. It was given a $300 prize and made news stories country-wide, bringing Wood immediate recognition. Since then, it has been borrowed and satirized endlessly for advertisements and cartoons. And even quilts !!!!
I was just delighted to find these paintings in the gallery, I had studied them before, but to see them in reality was wonderful
I also found several Norman Rockwell Paintings and I fell in love with this artist at about the same time I found the image of the American Gothic.
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