Wedding rings in Boston

All work and no play makes for a boring day, Marcel told me, so I took the day off and we went for a walk through Boston, buying stuff here and there. So many interesting books on modern culture one can collect. After a coffee here and a sandwich there we arrived at the Institute for Contemporary Art, a new building along the waterfront. All cities are developing that side of the city, I notice. Amsterdam is working hard on it too. A few interesting works and a design exhibition (best of America 2003-2007) which was nice, but not as good as the annual show of the Design Academy in Eindhoven, I must say, with my normal Dutch arrogance. I was impressed with work by Cornelia Parker, the artist perhaps most famous for letting English actress Tllda Swinton (the one with the very pale face) lie down in a glass coffin for a week during opening hours.

The image I was impressed with most was "Wedding Ring Drawing": "made from two wedding rings that have been literally drawn into new forms. The gold rings were melted and stretched into a single 40-foot-long thread. The thread was then trapped between two sheets of glass, creating a "drawing" that winds around in delicate loops and turns. The work simultaneously evokes the fragile and beautiful history of these two abandoned rings and the possibility of renewed connection." Says (part of) the byscript.

Most of her work seems to deal with destruction and the new forms that derive from that. Very much an autumn artist, my theory would say. A lot of her work is from around the millennium, so that would fit reasonably well. But it is also just good work.

Enough on art for this week. Tonight we'll do a movie, I guess and tomorrow the 'get all of it in your bags' game will be our main issue for the day. And Marcel already bought a bigger bag. Ah well.

Boston and Cambridge are great. Could stay longer here, I had a choice.