On the second and third days at Lollapalooza I saw tons more great bands.  Mason Jennings, DeVotchKa, Explosions in the Sky, Rage Against the Machine, Wilco, G.Love, Flogging Molly, MGMT and Nine Inch Nails.  It was super great, I feel like my brain has been totally soaked in music - and it’s a pretty wonderful feeling.

Mason Jennings

DeVotchKa

Erin and Lisa

MGMT

Corey and Me

Explosions in the Sky

Getting ready for Rage

Rage Against the Machine. As expected, the crowd was pretty nuts and kids in the very front got pretty crushed. The band had to keep stopping, ask people to move back, again and again, I got bored with the whole lame bunch so went over and saw Wilco and noodle danced with the hippies. At least they were happy.

After Rage the kids took to the streets, flooding through downtown Chicago like a bunch of Night of the Living Dead zombies. In fact, I thought they looked so much like zombies that I decided to take some photos.

NIN, incredible

Oh yeah, and there was this guy too.

Check this out! and this!  I was at that game last night and it was one of the coolest, greatest displays of nature’s power I have ever seen.  It was insanely exhilarating, wicked lightning, ear piercing thunder, rain in sheets, so much that I was drenched standing under cover in the stands.  It was so gorgeous, so beautiful, the sky instantly turned deep purple grey - it was incredible.

Here are the pictures - the dark, stormy pictures were literally taken about 10 minutes after the daylight looking pictures.  It’s not night setting in, but a huge, insane thunderhead.

Here comes the storm…..

Kkkccrrrraaaaaaaaaaaacccckkkkkkkkkbbbbbbbrrrrrrrmmmmmm!!!!!!!!

And the crowd before the storm and during it…

That’s right, still trying to buy beer and cotton candy during a tornado - I knew I liked this town!

Somehow we don’t look very frightened

Chicago is by far the most “American” feeling city I’ve ever been in.  It seems when I’m on the east coast everything feels very European influenced, and on the west coast everything feels very Asian influenced, so maybe being smack in the middle of the country makes Chicago feel like the heart of America. 

I’ve really been enjoying my time here, soaking up American culture.  When I travel anywhere I like to immerse myself in the local culture and just because I’m an American in America, it makes no difference.  I’m still interested in discovering the true cultural identity of a place.  While at the Art Institute I sought out the American artists, I’m finding great American food, and listening to incredible bands, mostly from the States. 

Here are some photos from this week:

Kids discovering pointillism

Statues of lillies, made from car hoods and doors.

Raindrops on Lake Michigan

Fireworks on Navy Pier

An amazing dining experience at Avec. Bitter greens with peaches, manchego, and prosciutto. Dates stuff with spicy shredded pork, wrapped in brown sugar bacon and topped with a roasted pepper and smoked paprika sauce. Red pepper and tomato braised cod with caperberries and pancetta. White Valdeorras (Godello) wine, and a Cote du Rhone red (Cabernet, Grenache and Syrah) from a biodynamic winery.

The Field Museum

The view from the Sears Tower (having a Ferris Bueller moment)

For some reason this photo reminds me of my Grandma Jo

Here are some of my favorite shots from the first day of Lollapalooza.  I saw the bands Yeasayer, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Gogol Bordello, The Raconteurs, Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, and Radiohead.  Jeff Tweedy was adorable and played only Wilco songs that he thought would be suitable for kids.  Gogol Bordello puts on the best stage show I know of and there is so much energy bursting off of that stage that it is completely infectous.  Raconteurs reminded me of the Who (a good thing), and Stephan Malkmus and The Jicks were crossing genres like there was no tomorrow - from Hendrix-esque blues to poppy 60s style rock.  Radiohead were incredible, mind blowing awesome.  They sounded amazing, put on a 2 1/2 hour show where they played music from every one of their albums, it was amazing.

 I was so happy to see so many young people show an interest in the arts.  Yes it was a rock festival, but it still is art, and it warms my heart to see young people developing their creative juices in that way.

I think they called this “down-rocking” because it’s all on the ground.  Look at me learning about break-dancing.

Jeff Tweedy

West Coast represent!

Energy squared

Lisa and Corey

The stage and crowd for Radiohead

One of my favorite shots of the day

My other favorite shot of the day

A million faces, two million eyes
What do they think of, in their million lives
And where they’ve been and the reasons why
They’ve had to laugh or smile or cry

Normally, the art I’m drawn toward is not that which focuses on definible objects.  I generally prefer abstract art that leads my brain down a path but allows it to wander where it feels like, instead of being told what to believe.  Yesterday at the Art Institute though, the faces in the paintings and sculptures were pulling me in.  What I was thinking about was not what the people in these pieces were thinking or feeling, because those people are mostly fictitious - but what the artist was thinking and feeling while he created the piece.  What was the motivation? What was he trying to get the observer to think and feel, or did that even matter? 

Maybe because I’ve been taking so many photos lately, and because I love to paint, and because I surround myself with such creative, sensitive people - the actual artists have been more intriguing to me this trip than the work they produced.  I keep trying to get a feeling for what Max Weber, Diego Rivera, or Joel Sternfeld is/was truly like as a person based on what I can tell about them through their art.  I suppose I do that a lot anyway, I certainly do while tasting wine.  I love to try to assess the winemaker’s personality based on what flavors they try to accentuate and what they try to laud about their wine.  Do they use a lot of new oak?  Big tannins? Subtle nuances? Fine balance?  What does that say about them as a person?

I suppose I’m becoming a humanist in my old age, or maybe I’m just realizing that I’ve always been a humanist and it’s okay to allow other people to see it.

From The Art Institute of Chicago

From the Smith Stained Glass Museum

I saw a painting today that looked like the kaleidescope that is my head, or specifically the inside of my head when I’m daydreaming and night dreaming sometimes, and when I was a little girl and pressed the palms of my hands against my eyelids until I saw colors and shapes and stars, and when I was in Costa Rica taking yoga classes and focusing on my breath until all I saw were colors behind my eyelids.

The title also intrigued me because I’m always thinking and noticing and conscious of how everything is composed of the same materials; energy that is electrons, protons and neutrons, arranged in different ways, making a finite number of chemical compounds.  Everything from bananas to aluminum cans to carpet to laughing gas to my heart - they’re all basically the same thing, energy.  And so I was talking with a friend the other day about how if everything is energy, and the air is energy, and all mass and gases and everything is made up of the same substance, are we truly separate individuals or are we all and is everything both the animate and the inanimate, a part of one large organism?   

It felt really unusual to see something that I had only ever before seen inside my head, and I also loved the impression of both the organic pieces of a human combined with the organic pieces of the planet.  I loved it, and I’m going back to the Art Institute tomorrow to see it again. 

The Earth Is A Man
- Roberto Antonio Sebastian Matta Eschaurren, 1942

Detail Views

So I’m off to explore this week – another exploration of concrete and ideas, metal strings vibrating their excited energy into a melody, while chemicals and phenolics entertain my heart via my taste-buds. My rods and cones transmitting information that technically is light moving at differing frequencies which appear to a human eye like a thousand shades of blue and gold and red but somehow are interpreted as pure beauty and thereby pure white joy in the center of my brain. Pure joy that cuts like a knife through the daily bullshit and ennui and the grayscale moments which are inherent in life and unavoidable but which I try to limit as much as possible. A little cultural burst to fill my daydreams with new images of a different place, to fill them with ideas that once were solely contained in the gray matter of another humans head but explained through a medium, whether it be a ukulele, glass of wine or carven bit of compressed minerals will create new pathways and new synapses in my brain as it receives new information and new thoughts. I want nerves to fire in my brain that have never fired before, for the tickle spots between my ears to experience that lovely joy that they feel when something unknown stimulates my body in some way, and I want to hold onto that experience like nuggets of gold forgotten on the clean, sterile marble of a museum floor.

The IPNC (International Pinot Noir Celebration) was last weekend and I was a busy busy girl.  Between volunteering, working and tasting it was a wine filled weekend.  Unfortunately, being so busy meant that I didn’t have much opportunity for photography.  Here are a couple of my favorite shots from the weekend.

…it would look like this

I saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get you all
Its a pink moon
Its a pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon.

- Pink Moon, Nick Drake

I wanted a clear view of the sunset and the moonrise; so I headed to the Gothic, gorgeous, copper green, St. John’s Bridge.  I could see west into the sunset and east into the moonrise, all taking place over the swaying blue, orange tinged Columbia River.  The ancient feud between Portland’s guardians continued, as Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood persisted in their stand-off for the affections of Mt. St. Helens under a clear moon shining down pink moonbeams. 

Mt. Hood

A little bit of Mt. Adams visible

Mt. St. Helens, quiet once again