Enchanted Jellyfish

I haven't blogged since early December and I feel like I've been through a wall of fire and transformed by it (and still actually in that process but through it enough to come up for air). My life is different, I am different, who I know and who I no longer know is different, what I do and what I no longer do is different. All is washed new. At times may have felt like an acid wash, but such is the way with deep changes. One consistent thing in all my recent life changes has been art and I follow that life line and listen to its vibration inside me.

Back to blogging.

I took a field trip/mini-vacation to Carmel-by-the-Sea, to have a dinner date with Lauryn Taylor of Lauryn Taylor Gallery and my friend Daniella Woolf. Turns out Lauryn never made it back to town on time, but I had a nice trip anyway. Spent over 3 hours one day walking around visiting almost every single gallery in the main downtown area there. What a concentration of galleries! All the owners were so nice and welcoming, very friendly, and to see that much art on one walk was inspiring.

After that long gallery walk marathon, my friend Lisa and I went back to the hotel and I did laps in the pool and we both hung out in the hot tub. Then we raced to catch the sunset at the beach, which was picture-perfect, like a postcard (photo below). Just beautiful. There was fog the rest of the time, so we were really fortunate to catch that.

The next day, we did the Monterey Bay Aquarium to see the jellyfish. Dale Chihuly had a jellyfish exhibit in glass (see the photo below) and I spent a lot of time looking at all the kinds of jellyfish. We had a drink and oysters on the water and saw a sea otter playing in the wild.

We walked around Cannery Row and could not believe that even though one of buildings was called the John Steinbeck Shopping Center, we in fact could not find a single thing on John Steinbeck. We went into one souvenir shop and asked where we could find things about John Steinbeck and she said, "John who??". Lisa could not believe it. We finally found a high end store selling kind of fashion wear for sailing people and it had two books on John Steinbeck. Sad.

We drove the 17 mile drive and took pictures of the cool surf and waves against the rocks at the first outlook, but the fog rolled in for the rest of it. Back for another hot tub and then dinner, then a 6-pack of beer and a movie.

The final morning we drove up to Santa Cruz and had lunch with Daniella Woolf (who I had missed having dinner with the other night) and had a lovely thai lunch and chatted about art. Daniella particularly got me thinking about the challenges of a true art collaboration project, which is something she is exploring now with two other artists.

We drove home via Route 1 and here are a couple of photos:





Technorati tags: art , Carmel , Dale Chihuly , jellyfish, Monterey Bay Aquarium