Astral Nomads

One man, one woman, one rabbit......traveling with the stars.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

We lied and went downtown. Again.

We started the day planning to take in a little art at the San Antonio Museum of Art and wound up eating downtown and seeing some more of the sights. The traffic is so light and the parking is so easy that we just couldn't help ourselves. So here's some pictures of the art we saw and our downtown adventures.


The museum itself is housed in a historic building that used to be a 
Lone Star beer brewery. The collections are heavy on antiquities and
pretty light on European and American painting. Also, they have an
extraordinary amount of Asian art.

If you need wares housed, this is where you go.

The collection is pretty light on painting in general and
very light on European Masters. This picture, titled 'Love
Dance, made Astral Wendy very happy.

This jaguar glowed from inside and would make a 
pretty cool night-light. Unless you're really afraid of big cats.

This looks like a ransom note but it's
actually a quote from Theodore Dreiser.

Ganesh, remover of obstacles.

Carvings from India can get pretty wild.

My favorite was this sand painting mandala done by Tibetan Buddhist
monks. They usually spend a few days making these and then either
brush then away with a broom or let the wind scatter the sand. It's
a lesson in impermanence.

They should have this guy in the dictionary
to picture the definition of WTF.

The musum has four floors and there are some nice
views from the upper floors.

There's a whole gallery dedicated to Oceanic Art.

This artist said he was influenced by String Theory.

There was a really impressive display of Egyptian artifacts...


...as well as Roman and Greek.

And a large collection of ancient Chinese art.

This was from series about food from a contemporary Mexican artist.


I have no idea what this was all about but it
did have a button which caused a Tesla coil
to shoot bolts of electricity out the head and
feet of this antique statue in an Art Deco frame
decorated with the electric window controls
of a 1967 Lincoln. Where's that WTF dog head?

This is not your mother's embroidery. It had some long wacky
title concerning a man with a sunflower hand making love to a
woman whose head is made out of water. I could figure that out.
Not sure what to make of the voyeur in the chair, though,

St. Theresa of Avila

Jasper Johns, anyone?

Seems like spring is coming to Texas.

We grabbed lunch at the Guadalajara Grill. It had
a very busy ceiling.

I had the Mayan Enchiladas. Very good.


Astral Wendy had Cochinita Pipil, which was a citrus marinated pork 
with the standard Mexican trimmings.

After lunch, we decided to stroll through Hemisfair Park and, I guess inevitably, rode to the top of the Tower of the Americas. It's 750 feet tall and, of course, the views were astounding.

But first, Astral Wendy got mauled by a bear.

La puerta esta abierta.

Yeah, it's big...

...and the views are very vertiginous.

Here's an Olmec head.

The park walkway was lined with historic buildings
that did not seem to be serving any purpose.



Kind of glad, after all, that we saw a bit more of the city today. Tomorrow, we're heading west to Fort Stockton to get prepared to go camping (finally!) down at Big Bend National Park. The weather looks likes it's going to be fine, so it will be nice to kick back for a while. This will probably be our last post until we're out of Big Bend and back to Fort Stockton. After that, we plan to do a short stop in El Paso and then head into New Mexico to do some more camping.

6 comments:

  1. Hey! You made me snork a little coffee with the WTF dog head! It might not be in "the book", but that image will now be my definition of that three letter expression. I mentally added a Scooby Doo sound effect too.

    I'm enjoying your blog! ~ Darrelle Anne

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  2. Love the photos from the museum, the sand mandala is so gorgeous.

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  3. Looks like a cool, quirky museum. Great photos as always. I also had a much needed laugh over the dog head. Thanks!

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  4. That sand painting blew my mind.

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  5. @Debra: Indeed. Really glad we went.

    @LGS: Snorking is good and laughter is better.

    @Tree: Yes. The Mandala is one of only four n the world that they have allowed to remain 'un-blown-away'. They got special permission from the Dalai Lama.

    @Megan: Leave to the ancients!

    @Colin:Yeah, really cool. Hard to tell from the picture but it was almost 5 feet in diameter and the surface was almost 3D (raised portions).

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