Picasso

This sunny little alley might not look like much, but one afternoon we discovered that it is in fact a portal to a magical world of wonderful art!

The alley led us to an art gallery where a Picasso exhibit was going on. You probably think Picasso's work looks something like this:

However, this was the only "traditionally Picasso" piece in the collection. It was a private collection on display, and it mostly consisted of sketches and smaller Picasso works. They looked more like this:

  This piece (L) was my favorite..............This one (R) was very creative.

It was really cool that we were allowed to take photos... but there was a lot of glare because of the interesting lighting in the gallery. It looked like this, with a long line of little paintings/drawings all the way around the room. 

The gallery director noticed us speaking English, and was very excited to tell us all about the Picasso collection (in Russian) as well as give us a tour of the gallery's permanent collection

Did you know Picasso was also a ceramicist? 

(R): This is why I love art. Because a guy named Picasso can make a rough slab like this and a collector will later pay hundreds of dollars for it. (Incidentally, the most expensive piece in the collection was a small vase with a woman on it that was worth either $600,000 or $1,000,000 - I can't remember which of those was the dollar amount. The director told us the price in some other currency.)

(L): This was my very favorite piece. It's a little bowl about five inches in diameter and four inches deep. The outside is flat black and there's this wonderful cricket relief inside. If I owned this bowl I would eat breakfast out of it every morning then return it to a place of honor as the centerpiece of my kitchen. In fact, I would probably design my kitchen around this bowl. It's that great.

Here we are, chatting it up with the director. Notice the lighting. Unorthodox, but a great space!

I was inspired, and returned home to make my own art. I call them, "Sad Window Lad" and "Woebegone Window Woman". Megan and I were slightly traumatized when my once-happy window people started crying from over-condensation. But, we figured, it's art. Just go with it.