BYU vs UNLV: a video essay

Hope fades...

...and makes a comeback.

It's all over!
That was way fun, but it was a real nail-biter. Only one home game left...let's not make it quite so close, eh guys?

pipe dreams

On Sunday Kristin and I went to an organ recital in Salt Lake at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. She's in a beginning organ class so we went with some other people in the class and her teacher, who's an adorable Ukranian grad student.
It was interesting to contrast a newer American cathedral with all the ones I went to in Europe. It was beautiful, but very different--smaller interior, less stone and more wood, less ornamentation, brighter colors, less stained glass and much shorter overall. The art was a lot different--there were several borderline creepy/disturbing depictions of Christ and the crucifixion. It was also weird to see scriptures on the wall in English. Kristin's teacher pointed out that they seemed to be about as "anti-Mormon" as you can get from a Catholic perspective.
From the outside, though, it could totally be European if it was bigger. Looks kind of dungeon-ish in this shot. (And it even had gargoyles, my favorite!)
The organist, Delbert Disselhorst, was amazing. He played everything from Handel and Bach to pieces published this year. One of them had a violin part also and I loved it.
A small taste of the music. This was his little encore/postlude so I didn't feel guilty about recording, but the actual stuff was way cooler.

Six Lakes

I went camping last weekend with my friend Hope and the Outdoor Adventure Club. Time to bust out the REI gear!
Think we had enough wood?
Putting up the tent in the dark was an adventure.
We made tinfoil dinners (yum) and then roasted anything we could get our hands on...hot dogs, apples, bananas, chocolate...
And we did a little exploding. Wait for it... (don't worry, we were totally safe)
The next day we did a little exploring and tried to find the "six lakes" which were really ponds. The weather was perfect.
One of the cows near the campsite who decided to start mooing at 3am like its life depended on it.
Some of the guys went fishing in one of these puddles. It was catch-and-release so they didn't keep anything except...
this ginormous crawdad. Yuck.

Our excitement for the day was Hope getting a bee sting. She wasn't sure if she was going to have an anaphylactic reaction or not so we just waited it out and ate roasted marshmallows. She ended up being fine, but I'm glad I had my EpiPen.
It was a fun little getaway. I'm excited for the next one!

mini-reunion

Last week a few of us from freshman year got together and caught up. Jacqueline and Stephy I was already caught up with, but it was really great to see the others! One is going on a mission soon. This picture is our strugglin' attempt to document...after the others had left. :) Stephy, Emma (who wasn't actually in our ward but hung out with us) and me. Good times.

Ode to the MOA

Okay, the mystery post is back. I added some stuff (got a little carried away) and then forgot to publish. So here it is.
Since I want to blog and have no better material, here's a reflection on some of the museum's past and current exhibitions. It's not the Louvre, but after all, it is one of the top university art museums in the nation. It's too bad I'm not more of an art person. My appreciation for some of this stuff has gone up, and for some of it...well...
Of course, my all-time favorite is

Paths to Impressionism: French and American Landscape Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum
I think this was the first Monet ever in Utah. What a milestone!
Pissarro, Lacroix Island at Rouen
John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet painting by the edge of a wood













The Intimate Eye: Drawings by Burton Silverman

Not that exciting. Although this girl kind of reminds me of Molly.


















Architecture of Absence: photographs by Candida Höfer
I think these are kind of cool. She likes libraries and palaces.




























Print study room favorites
Renoir!!! I love his piano stuff, especially this one:

Angel with Child, Giovanni Vitalba
















Cliché and Collusion: Video works by Grant Stevens
This one is supposed to be about how the media affects us. Some of the screens had actual video, some were words with music and some were words with audio narration--except the narration didn't exactly match. They had names like "Learn your ADDs" and "Think right now."
That's the artist. This setup had its own room and was called Turtle Twilight or some such thing. Didn't get the point but it was very relaxing to sit in there in the dark and listen to the pseudo-music and watch the color float across the screen when there was no one else in the gallery. There was another separate room that had words going across three of the walls like a screensaver, a disco ball in the middle of the ceiling, and some old love song playing.









Splendor and Spectacle: Images of Dance from Court Ballet to Broadway
This was kind of fun because it was up during my beginning ballet class.



















Minerva Teichert: Pageants in Paint
I'd never been a huge Minerva fan but she definitely grew on me during this show, one of the best exhibits I've seen at the MOA.
Queen Esther
Love Story
Miracle of the Gulls
First Vision


















American Dreams: selections from the museum's permanent collection that will be on display for eternity
Some samples:
Riding the Girder, Mahonri M. Young
Abraham Lincoln—the President, Avard Fairbanks. I'm a fan!
Fallen Monarchs, William Bliss Baker
Premier Chagrin, Daniel Ridgway Knight
SEFA, Frank Riggs. This one is supposed to be a bird-like figure representing America's fascination with flight.
Crossing the Mississippi on the Ice, C. C. A. Christensen
Grain Fields, Edwin Evans (inspired by Monet!)
Smokey Face, N. C. Wyeth
In the Sun, Julian Alden Weir
Round Dance, Maynard Dixon. Gotta love Maynard. We sure have our share of him.
This is my favorite. Not really, but it's better than the next one...
Quite possibly my least favorite piece of "art" ever. So hideous. It's called "Seer." It's supposed to be all about Utah and was built specifically for this spot. I think everyone who works in the MOA has a secret or not-so-secret desire to destroy it. And the inspiration for the shape supposedly came from...
the Winged Victory of Samothrace, which I have also seen. It's way cooler.

















Turning Point: the demise of modernism and the rebirth of meaning in American art
This is probably my favorite from that exhibit. And the only one I'm posting. I like blue and yellow, but this is the rebirth of meaning in American art? Come on.














Just Enough is More: the Graphic Design of Milton Glaser
He designed this. Around this time half of campus went through a phase in which they wore our "I love BYU" shirts all the time.
A little weird, but at least these bright colors are recognizable objects. I can't do abstract, as you've probably noticed.




















Windows on a Hidden World: Japanese Woodblock Prints
This just opened a few weeks ago. I always enjoy watching the woodshop guys build and paint a new exhibit. Sometimes more than looking at it. :)
I have to admit, the fine detail in these is pretty amazing considering the tools they had to work with. And I like snow.
But do I really want to look at this? Slightly frightening.



















Dismantling Geneva Steel: photographs by Chris Dunker
I don't even know what to say about these. They're cool in a way, I guess. He's a good photographer but I'm not really interested in looking at photos of a steel mill being torn down. I really like the way they set it up, though--the walls are all black so the photos really stand out, almost like they're lit up.





















Beholding Salvation: Images of Christ
Nativity, Brian Kershisnik


Adoration of the Shepherds, Eustache Le Sueur
Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda, Carl Bloch. This is definitely my all-time favorite MOA work. Its home was Copenhagen from 1883, when it was painted, to 2001, when it came to BYU. It's one of the few paintings from Beholding Salvation that's still on display, and was actually talked about on campus. Very cool.