Greetings from Southern California. We will be here on and off throughout the winter so I hope not to confuse you with a game of "Where's Denise?" Today found us in beautiful Carlsbad. While Steve and his mom took care of some banking business, I found myself at the library's William D. Cannon Art Gallery for a very cool exhibit. Beloved Object featured treasured objects from each lender, celebrating favorite items from various Southern California collections and organizations. Each of the beautiful and engaging objects is a beloved possession. Some reveal the personal taste of the collector, others preserve a cherished memory or meaningful moment, and still others symbolize a relationship between the artist and the collector or museum. All have a special significance.

 Okay, so this flip phone wasn't on display but it is a very beloved object of mine (yes, no smart phone for me). Since I wasn't planning on attending this exhibit, I had to use it to photodocument my visit. Not too terrible for antiquated technology!
Okay, this little guy surprised me. Turns out that this beautifully carved early coconut was most likely made by an inmate of the notorious San Juan de Ulua prison in Veracruz, Mexico. Many of the cells in the 16th C. coastal fort-turned-prison flooded during high tide, so some prisoners were submerged to the neck for part of every day. Food was not free. Those inmates who did not have family members to bring or pay for food carved coconut shells into decorative banks to sell to visitors. Without tools, driven by hunger and desperation to survive, they used bits of rock, scraps of metal or broken glass to carve objects of astonishing artistry. Who knew?
People collect all manners of things. I was intrigued by this 1870 carved walking stick.
I love when I meet someone new. Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957) painted Shirley Temple Signs a New Contract in 1934. Being as I loved Shirley Temple, I thought it was an interesting look into what her life was probably like. As for the artist himself, José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud was born in Mexico City. After graduating from school at the age of 14, he started producing caricatures and illustrations for texts and training materials published by the Mexican Ministry of Public Education. At the age of 19, he moved to New York City armed with a grant from the Mexican government, tremendous talent, but very little English. He was then introduced to New York's literary/cultural elite (known as the Smart Set). Soon Covarrubias was drawing for several top magazines, eventually becoming one of Vanity Fair magazine's premier caricaturists. Cool stuff.
How cute is this typewriter- The Valentine. Designed by Italian Ettore Sottsass and Briton Perry King, and launched in 1969, this was probably the most famous of Olivetti's typewriters. Shown here in its signature bright red it, it was also produced in white, egg yellow, blue and pea green. It was billed as the anti-machine machine, made to make work fun. Oh man, works for me.
I wish I would have captured all the detail in the quilt Reflections (1999) by Linda Bennington Devereaux. Wow.
Jen Trute's Sunbathe Barbie at Bombay Beach was nostagic for me. I loved my Barbies growing up. According to her website, Jen's inspiration for this painting was very different than any memories I have with this doll. "We pulled into the village and drove around this godforsaken trailer-ville that looked like a modern day ghost town. The beach was lined with layers of orange and turquoise and chocolate colored foam. Where you could see into the water, pinky beige gunk waved back. There were lots of rotted out houses and trailers submerged out in the lake to about the 4-foot level. A rusted out delivery truck was sunk in sand up to the dashboard. Dead fish lay along the water's edge." Trute was a passionate environmentalist, with scenes of environmental degradation filling her paintings.
Thomas Merton said, “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” For a few precious moments, I lost myself in other's beloved objects. What fun.