Happy Valentine’s Day!  Here in the Northwest it’s chilly and overcast…just about the perfect day to run around doing a few errands and then COFFEE!  Archive Bar and Coffee was hopping today and Bigwig Donuts were down there, as well as Ponderosa and Thyme…

Coffee first and then a bouquet for a loved one to be delivered tomorrow…

and then we headed over to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.  The big show up at the moment is a 20 year retrospective of painter/print-maker James Thompson (on the faculty at Willamette)…which is nice…

but our particular quest on this day was the new Imogen Cunningham show.  The opening is this Friday at 6:00 at the museum, with remarks by curator/art historian  Abigail Susik and a dance presentation…Cunningham photographed dancer Martha Graham and a body of this work is in the show.  Cunningham was born in Portland and her first one person show in the northwest was at the Portland Art Museum in 1914.  This show at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, a little over 100 years later, is the second such show.  About time.  Susik has gathered photos and artifacts that make for an arresting and interesting exhibit and include one of Cunningham’s cameras…a Korona 4 x 5 view camera…

The photos are gorgeous…the study gallery filled with nudes…other photos including some family photos are in the Print Study room.  But for me today, and in this era of “selfies” (which I occasionally indulge in…) her self portraits are particularly wonderful.  She stares right at us…we can imagine her concentration and humor…we’d like to know her…they are interestingly composed.  Several of the self-portraits were only seen in a video loop playing…I loved them all…

Just outside the Print Study room are a few wonderful loans on view.  Collectors nationwide can reduce the taxes they pay on a purchase if the item they have purchased is put on view for 6 months or so in an Oregon public institution…The viewing public at both the Portland Art Museum (they had the Francis Bacon Triptrych) and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art has the chance to see things nobody every will see once they reach the purchaser.  Currently on view at the Hallie Ford are this beautiful Rudolf Bauer of 1916 “Sinfonie 23″…

This Jean Dubuffet of 1965….

and this Andre Masson of 1966 called “Les Trueurs des Lapins” (The Murderers of Rabbits)

On the way out I saw this Klamath Modoc “Basket Tray” of 1925 which seemed almost shocking…

after spending the morning working on the next quilt (which I will now call Basket Tray)…reminding me anew of the fun of how everything relates to everything else…even when you don’t know it does…

On the way out we stopped at the shop and I got an additional Valentine present…a tiny Elizabeth Bauman Painting “Bertrice”

and then home again, where pink things are blooming…

the house is full of tulips…

and the “Cowgirl Quilt” is all done…

Dinner with my Valentine ahead…