Not for the faint of Art -

Ok, so I'm going to digress from my grammatical tyrades for a while. (I promise I'll refute the points in my previous entry Jen :)

Meanwhile - I want to go onnnn and onnnn about the BEST birthday present EVER!!!!

My birthday isn't until the end of September, but Steve decided to give me my present early. YAY! I *heart* presents!!

So yesterday my MIL came over to watch the baby and my husband took me to PF Changs dowtown. (YUM!!!) We had a nice long lunch. (It's so nice not to have to snarf down food because you know, at any moment, the baby is going to shriek and people are going to give you dirty looks) We walked around the mall for a while and then went to South Bend Chocolate Company for a few chocolates and we watched people drive around and around the circle on their Harleys. After that came the BIGGEST suprise!

Steve arranged a private meeting with a local artist named Jacobina Trump. She is in the Stutz building downtown. After walking around the building about 300 times and almost dying of heat exhaustion, we found an open door. :) Jacobina is Dutch like me. (Gooooo cheese!) As soon as we walked into her studio I was in SHOCK. Her art was amazing. I mean - breathtaking!!!

Now, I have long been a propponent of art for arts sake. If you want to drop a blob of red paint onto a big white canvas and call it art-that's cool by me. I really believe art is relative. In this post-existential society it's merely a reflection of the worldviews so present right now. But latley I've been getting a lot picker about art. I've always HATED people who were like "that's not art" or "I could do that." But now they don't seem so ignorant. I'm still not against red blobs on canvas or (Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art) IMOCA's "chair art" or "tape art." Yes, they had an artist who displayed her tape as "art." But - I guess I just respect artists who have to go through a process to produce their art.

So anywho - we walk in and I don't even know where to begin looking. She's painted two murals on the walls that make it look like there are arches leading to another room. They're so real that I wanted to touch them to make double sure they weren't. However, I didn't consider poking my grimy hands on her walls to be in good taste. She had pictures of seascapes, trees, the seasons, portraits... and - I got to pick some out!!!!! We must have been there close to 2 hours. She was THE nicest lady and certainly the nicest artist I've ever met. Most think you're not good enough to lick the dirt off their shoes - she, on the other hand, took us through the whole process. She showed us her sketches and her notes and then showed us the corrosponding painting. I can't believe that people can bring such beauty to life. I can't even draw stick people right!

So - after two amazing hours, our feet were burning and we arrived at two paintings that we both loved. We decided to come home and measure the spots we were thinking of and to sleep on it. BUT I will give you a little clue - :) go to http://www.jacobinatrump.com/ and there will be 3 pictures rotating on the front page. We are looking at at least one of them. :) Tell me which one you like best!!

We left downtown, and headed to Conner Prarie for the Symphony. It was Mardi Gras themed so everyone was handing out beads and the song list was all jazz. It was really great and, I must admit, a nice change of fare for SotPrarie. We were there with Ball State Alums - so there was lots of food and fun! We even got out without too much of a hassle!!

All in all it was a wonderful WONDERFUL early birthday gift. It makes being almost 27 a little easier to deal with.