Art Appreciation

Do you have an appreciation for art?  Can you spend an hour or longer in a museum admiring another person’s creative work?

Or do you look at pieces hanging on the wall and wonder…what the heck is that?  What in the world was the artist thinking? 

Depending on my mood, I might spend an hour in a museum or I may just stand there gaping with my mouth hanging open in disbelief or perhaps even disgust.

But even if I don’t like art, I can still find a way to appreciate it.  That’s a good thing too since I’ve already discussed what a crappy artist I am.  Remember my volunteer face painting failure story?

Anyway, after the past week of storm disaster and a stomach virus that floated around my household, I needed an escape.  So I skipped away to the closest art gallery I could find right there on the college campus where I work – TAG.  Fortunately, this one is no-cost.  It features contemporary works through a series of revolving exhibits that highlight various regional, national, and international artists.

One of the nice perks about being on a university is all the artistic talents surrounding us – beautiful landscaping, modern buildings and artwork like the one showcased in TAG through the UWF Center of Fine and Performing Arts Center.

This exhibit has a wide variety of art to view – some typical nude women, an odd naked girl holding a dog, old movie posters from the 1980’s that had paint and other images splattered across them to become new art, self-portraits by the artist and a worn-out chair.

My personal favorite was the worn-out looking chair.  It looked the most real and most believable over the other imagery.

Actually I take that back, my most favorite pieces were not even hanging in the gallery – they were the painted pianos down the hallway in the same building.

These pianos were donated by other people and they are open to the public.  Anyone can walk in to use them and play songs on the keys.  Now that’s living, breathing and beautiful art.

I can appreciate it all.  I’m glad I took a half-hour out of my day to enjoy the strange, unique images that some very talented people created.  After all, my writing is often strange and unique too.