Suburbia

I went to the Museum of Art today. Alone. Julia Cameron calls these kinds of outings Artist Dates. I call this one Being StoodUp. It's okay. He forgot and was doing something with his family. Actually, I'm glad he didn't become because then I was free to wander the museum at my own pace. Museums are harder to enjoy in groups.

This is one piece I saw today. Lesbia Weeping Over a Sparrow by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. I read that title and thought, "Who the heck is Lesbia? and why does she have a dead sparrow?"

So I came home and I Googled it.

This painting is inspired by the poem "Lesbia's Sparrow" by Gaius Valerius Catullus.

All you Loves and Cupids cry
and all you men of feeling
my girl’s sparrow is dead,
my girl’s beloved sparrow.
She loved him more than herself.
He was sweeter than honey, and he
knew her, as she knows her mother.
He never flew out of her lap,
but, hopping about here and there,
just chirped to his lady, alone.
Now he is flying the dark
no one ever returns from.
Evil to you, evil Shades
of Orcus, destroyers of beauty.
You have stolen the beautiful sparrow from me.
Oh sad day! Oh poor little sparrow!
Because of you my sweet girl’s eyes
are red with weeping, and swollen

Catullus was a Roman poet who lived between 84 BC and 54 BC. He was in love with a woman named Clodia Metelli, who is "Lesbia" in his literature. Look up those people on Wikipedia. Because I don't want to spend much more time on it. I want to focus on the Suburbia exibit by Bill Owens.

My favorite visual art is photography. I decided that today. The whole exhibit is full of photographs from the 70's in the suburbs. But more than the pictures I think I loved the quotes from the subjects. The quote with this one said something along the lines of "Our house is built with the living room in
the back, so in the evenings we sit out front
of the garage and watch the traffic go by."


Photographs of people mowing the lawn or painting door frames or cleaning the bathroom came with paragraphs of them saying, "This is my greatest asset so I am taking care of it."

"I put it off until I can't stand it any longer. Cleaning the bathroom is the worst."

"The best part of having a home is having a yard to care for." "We've been married for two months and all of our belongings are in this room."

I LOVE the retro outfits and the glasses pinched at the end. For some reason it reminds me of peacock feathers. Tupperware parties. Couches that I swear are replicas of the ones at my grandmother's house. Wooden panels for walls. I love these glimpses at history.

You can get a slide show of some of Bill Owen's work here. Click on the Gallery and you can even read the great quotes. Of course, this doesn't cover all of Owen's work so you should really go to the BYU Museum of Art.

Meanwhile, I am going to contemplate how great life is in the suburbs and take a moment to appreciate having neighbors and being blessed with a garden and a lawn even if those blessings come with an expectation of labor.