I'm 'live. Sorta.

Yes, yes it does. Or it cures, which is also quite possible. Both sensations are very similar.

I guess it was a summer cold, because I've been knocked on my arse for the past week. God, it's been miserable! Worse yet, around about Wednesday I was going stir-crazy from being cooped up indoors (when you're so wiped out you can hardly blow your nose, going walk about is not an option), so I asked for today off so I could just get outside already when I wasn't napping. I decided to do the multiple birds, one rock thing, so I set the following schedule: wake up at around usual time, eat a leisurely breakfast, go the the state museum to see the travelling exhibit about knitting arts, head up to our art museum, wander the grounds, take a nap, skip music lessons and then go to the symphony (ironically, I was miserably ill this past February and had to miss a show that I'd bought tickets for; I called, sounding all pitiful, and the nice ticket person had mercy on me and let me trade my ticket for tonight's show instead--which, as a non-season ticket holder, I should not have been allowed to do. I so totally <3 our orchestra people!) It went just about that way, too, which is a first. When I got to the state museum, I was pleased to note that I could take pictures, so long as I didn't use the flash. Fine by me. So I caught the gentleman above at the door (he greeted all visitors to the gallery), and then found this intriguing piece around a corner:
It's an unravelled rug. That seemed to be a theme, actually--unravelled lace, unravelled cloth, etc. Deconstruction. I'm sure it means something, but I just found it pretty.

This is a dress knit out of shredded one dollar bills (something like $800 worth), and the notes from the artist indicate he found it amusing that he could take that money, destroy it, use the remains for a completely different object and the value of the item now becomes something like 200% greater than before. Le sigh. Too bad I can't find something like that to do!

I rather liked this dress. It's like a cross between Spiderwoman and a hateful bondage gown. It looked as if it might either itch, or maybe cause rash, but perhaps that's part of the discipline process.

Outside the museum building, set into the walls, are...tiles, celebrating each county in our state. Some of them are quite clever: they're set high up on the wall, and when viewed from a distance, they make no sense. Get up close to the wall, however, and stare straight up, and suddenly, they make sense! For instance:
Say what? Looks like something unfortunate happened to a caterpillar. But from below:

Can you tell? Would it help if I noted that it celebrates our state beaches? It's a sand dune with scrubby twigs and grass growing out of it. Ha! How clever! And this wasn't the only one you had to be in a special place to appreciate. It was fun, trying to find the proper angle on each one.

This is a close up of a glass panel that was about a waterfall riddled county. I really just liked the way the glass rippled and swayed.

This was another inset I liked. I liked the ones that weren't just concrete formed and pressed, I liked the ones with color and glass and moving parts. This county has natural gas deposits. I like how they actually depicted that with blue gas. Granted, I had no clue at first what it was about. I go by the labels.

After circling the building at least one and a half times (to find them all; some were actually a bit farther away in the landscaping as opposed to on the building proper), I moved on to the art museum. I took a breather by having tea with my sister as she ate lunch, and then she offered to get me into the fashion exhibit (she's a member and can get up to six people into the pay exhibits for free.) Unfortunately, there are NO pictures in the art museum--mostly because some of the pieces belong to the museum, some are only on loan, no photos are allowed of the ones that don't belong, and there's no notes as to which are what are where. Ah, well. I'm going to have to buy the book, because some of the shapes I saw were...fascinating, and there was a shawl there--a pretty bog-standard spider pattern, but with beads at the center of each spider and a beautiful fringe. I'm inspired to both knit a shawl and maybe a corset (they figured pretty large into it, too.)

Anyway, after getting my feet back under me vis-a-vis how the galleries were set up (we just had a massive remodel), I trudged back into the gardens. There were many, many pretty pictures, but this is my favorite: *
He's a sundial. Cheerful little saying around the bottom about sunny days and being merry while ye may, which vaguely depressed me. But it's still nice sculpture.

Can you see what he's got on the string? What functions as the dial part of the sundial?
Where's little Miss Muffett when you need her?

*I know it's not really necessary, because we're all grown ups and stuff, but here's the disclaimer: I only got to take pictures of the grounds because I'm just using them for illustration, not profit. Don't steal them and use them for profit--they might start charging us to get into the museum (we have one of the largest free art museums in the world) and that would make all the poor college students in my town really pissy. And some of them are physics students, and you really, really don't want to piss a physics student off. Really.