Durham, NC

I went to a beautiful wedding this past weekend in Durham, NC. While I was there I encountered some inspiring art also.
One interesting place was the Scrap Exchange. I think if I lived there I would hardly buy paint again. I would just make art from what was available. I bought a packet of materials to make a collage. Sometimes I do my best work when there are some limitations. Just being creative and making what I can from what is available.
Also visited a non-profit organization that provides a foundry for the community and artists. They poured the bronze bull in the town's square. Loved the gates around the fire area.
Visited a ceramics studio and gallery. http://www.claymakers.com/ I had never seen ceramic tiles used as canvases and glazes used as paint in this way. Also looked like some collaged digital transfers on some of the vessels that were interesting.
LabourLove Gallery, Art co-op gallery at Golden Belt, was a great place also. One artist there had done something that I have been thinking about. She had cut out images from felt or cloth and had them sewn to the upholstery of chairs and a sofa. The images were inspired by her paintings. We went to the wedding reception at the Golden Belt and I didn't even know until right now that it had a whole floor of artists' studios. The Golden Belt was once a factory that made bags for raw cotton. I am so excited about this because this is only an hour away from where my parents live in rural Virginia.
Last but not least, saw a Picasso exhibit at the Nasher Museum of Art on the Duke campus. The exhibit was Picasso and the Allure of Language. I didn't even know Picasso wrote poetry which he did. The exhibit drew many different types of connections between his art and the use of language. One that I can use when I teach art to preschoolers this week is the influence of shapes of letters in some of his Cubist style paintings. One thing that inspired me, was Picasso taking one line drawing of a face and exhausting that image by drawing it as many different ways that he could without changing it proportionally. Like embellishing it differently or drawing it with different line qualities.