Weekly Photo Challenge: Abstract

In the Spring the St. Louis Art Museum hosts one of my favorite exhibits, Art in Bloom. The challenge for some local floral artists is to create a work based on a piece from the museum that is assigned to them.

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This was one of my favorites from this year.  It was this detail that caught my eye:

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The ribbon, an almost exact detail from the painting, I think made the arrangement go from abstract to concrete.

This exhibit is usually crowded, for that reason I take my point and shoot camera. I usually set my ISO to 800, turn the flash off, and then let the camera make the rest of the decisions.  This low maintenance approach leaves me with nice photos and more time to focus on the art I am looking at.  I was lucky this year to have time to see the exhibit twice, once in the morning on its first full day and once near the end of the weekend in the evening.  It was interesting to me how much the arrangements had changed over the few days.

What do you think, do you like this take on the painting? Do you have a favorite yearly art exhibit?  Do you think that the time of day changes how you interact with the art you are looking at? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Ancient

This week’s travel theme at Where’s My Backpack? is ancient. I was at the St. Louis Art Museum this past week for a special exhibit where I saw this painting and a floral interpretation of it:

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The painting is Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion by John Martin, painted in 1812.  The floral arrangement is by Ivy Baebler of the Federated Garden Clubs of MO.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of this exhibit before I went.  It turns out, I really liked it.  Of course, because the flowers fade quickly, it is an exhibit that lasts only a few days and is very crowded.  The difficulty in shooting something like this starts with those crowds.  I was also kind of surprised at the number of people who were touching the flowers.  I guess to me it just seemed like the floral arrangements were created works of art and touching them would potentially mess up the composition.  That aside, it was hard for my point and shoot to capture all the detail of both the floral work and the painting.  I tried though, just to give the feel of the exhibit.

Have you ever been to an exhibit like this? I’ll admit I hadn’t.

Cheers!