Tessa's birthday was so two months ago and I still have written nothing about it. So I have finally decided to put all else aside and get to the business of blogging about it. Tessa decided that for her birthday she wanted to go to the Worcester Art Museum in (get this) Worcester Mass. It is a museum started by a very wealthy family back in the day and of course they thought it would be a great idea to gather a bunch of artsy stuff and put it in a building that they paid for to show the community that they were something special. Isn't that how most art museums start? This one is pretty cool. They have three levels to cover different time periods, downstairs was the ancient to medieval time period. They had Romain mosaics that were very interesting, there were pictures of the mosaics being taken from Italy (I can't remember what part or Italy), as well as the story behind the removal and transport of the mosaics. They also had the explanation of the story being told with the mosaics, which was good because I sure didn't know the stories. There were Roman statues, busts and coins. There were Greek urns, metal plates and clay dishes. Jars and offering plates for the Greek gods. They had a room from an old monastery chapel called the "Chapter House" complete with stained glass windows. Tessa really liked the window and the fact that the only furniture in the room were long wooden benches that the monks would sit on and discuss the financial business of the town and church. There were many wood carvings of Christ and His apostles. The people in the 1500's were very fond of the Crucifixion and enjoyed portraying it in all of its horror. One of the coolest things we saw was a carving of the Jesse tree that was done in the mid 1500's. It shows the lineage of Christ and has many intricate details and carvings of each person. I guess that is what you did before Polaroid. There was also ancient oriental art, glass, jade, porcelain and china as well as many statues of Hindu gods and Buddhas galore. They have several Japanese rice paper prints that are amazing. They carve a scene into wood (the negative), paint it with ink and press it onto the rice paper. They do this over and over to layer the colors, think silk screening. It was amazing. Apparently the very wealthy would have some of the panels of their rice paper walls done with these rice paper prints. Early wallpaper anyone.
The next floor up got a little boring for very little girls it was a lot of paintings of people, some of them looked very scary and angry, more crucifixion art and dead animals. I think the live ones moved to much. There was a full suit of armor that was pretty cool. On the third floor we discovered that we are not fans of modern art, if you can call it art. My personal opinion is, if I can do it, it should not hang in a museum. No kidding one of the pieces had tape on the floor around it telling people not to sit on it because it was art. It looked like a bale of hay done in paper decoupage. Yep, I could do that. Another one was three orange ovals on white canvas. Yep, I could do that. Water bottles hung from wire in the shape of a tree. They weren't even new water bottles. At my house that is called trash. But my all time favorite was the one titled black canvas. Yes you guessed it, it was a white canvas painted black. It wasn't even painted well because you could still see some white peeking out of the black. Give me the old stuff, that's all I have to say on that.
After walking the museum for a couple of hours we headed to the cafe and had an amazing lunch. Some where I have a picture of the sandwiches we ate and if I can find them I will post them. Of course no trip to the art museum would be complete without a trip to the gift shop where everyone found a trinket to remember the day by and then we headed back out into Worcester traffic and made our way back home for cake and ice cream. What kind of cake did Tessa want this year? Asparagus. That's my Tessa.
Next birthday trip will be planned by Kiah. I think New York will be at the top of the list and Dylan's candy bar will be a must see.
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