Museums

140313 Groningen

| Marsha.

140313_MarshaValk

Last week I took the train to Groningen to see Birgit and to visit the Groninger Museum.

We spent hours and hours and hours chatting and exploring the museum, drinking at a terrace and browsing a couple of shops without even noticing how much time had actually passed. This day went by way to fast!

I didn’t take a lot of photos in the museum, but I truly enjoyed the Jaime Hayon exhibition. Especially the combo of the finished art and then seeing the rough sketches and ideas in his art journals!

I also loved the Marilyn Manson presentation. In first instance you see beautiful watercolour and mixed media pieces. The colours alone are stunning! And then when you take a closer look, the subjects are just what you would expect: bizarre and discomforting.

Only downside was that the glass reflections (from both the museum lights and the windows) on the art were annoying. And I would have loved to see more of his art… this presentation was tiny!

Anyway: this was another fun and inspiring day! Thank you Birgit!!!

Inspired by: Rijksmuseum

| Marsha.

inspired1

A little over a year ago Riikka and I were What’s App-ing each other about Paris*, watching films and seeking inspiration… It led us to doing a challenge and because the process and outcome turned out so inspiring and fun, this first challenge continued into a series of challenges we call Inspired by.

I can’t believe it’s already been a year! And I can’t even begin to tell you what Inspired by means to me… Just have a look at all the projects I would never have created without it:

InspiredBy

And that’s not all… I saw films I wouldn’t have seen if I wasn’t challenged, I connected dots that only I could connect, I worked on stuff out of my comfort zone, I dealt with personal turmoil in the process, I was reminded of stuff I had forgotten about, I used supplies I had forgotten about, I also experimented with new supplies… I learned more about Finland and Finnish culture… For heaven’s sake: it even led me to sew something from a pattern!!!

* I just happen to read this in the first Inspired by-post. I had totally forgotten about that! The weirdest, funny thing is that Paris seems to be a reoccurring theme for me in this series… Seriously: Riikka and I already know next month’s subject and I’m 99,9% sure Paris plays a role there too! Sooooo… maybe the Universe is trying to tell me something?!! I don’t know…

What I do know, is that the perfect opportunity to celebrate our one year Inspired by-anniversary revealed itself when Riikka came over from Helsinki to attend Nathalie’s and Birgit’s Art Fusion. We got to spent a day in Amsterdam prior to the event and we paid a visit to the Rijksmuseum together with Elina and Minna.

Foto's-met-ster67

(Photos by Riikka)

For this month’s Inspired by we agreed that we would each choose one ‘favourite’ work of art from the Rijksmuseum that day and let that inspire us to create ‘something’.

I chose this mesmerizing 18th century pastel on vellum (!) portrait by Jean-Étienne Liotard:

2013-06

It really stood out to me and I love just about everything about it… The softness and the lightness, the colours, the materials, the motives, the Turkish attire, the look of the fabric, the braided hair… the folded bit in the top part of the art piece… Do you see those teeny tiny Chinese figures on the vase of pink carnations?!

It was wonderful to find out that Riikka had photographed it as well! Fortunately for you, you don’t have to settle for our crappy phone pictures: You can get a far better idea of the true beauty of this portrait at the Rijksmuseum website and if you want, you can also see some additional works of art that caught my eye during this visit to the museum here.

And here’s what I came up with:

130710-MV-InspiredByRijksmuseum

I had a strong urge to start all over again once the page was almost finished (and I might have actually done it if I had remembered that I was staring at an image of PASTEL ON VELLUM the whole time!!!). But instead I figured I could always do another take on it some other time, just like I did last time!

Now… I desperately want to see which museum piece my partner in crime has chosen for this Inspired by and more importantly what she’s created with that work of art in mind!

Click here to see it for yourself: Riikka’s Inspired by: Rijksmuseum

Another day, another museum

| Marsha.

As if one museum wasn’t enough in one week, we visited another one on Sunday. Actually, the plan was to have fun in Haarlem. But… it was more rainy and grey and cold than we had expected and that… made us grumpy.

So we just had lunch, did some window shopping, visited the Teylers Museum, drank cappuccino and headed home again.

The Teylers Museum has a fascinating collection and the building is beautiful, but the overcast outside didn’t exactly make the inside of the museum shine. And there were just to many people around and… Did I mention we were grumpy?

I loved the floors though. And looking at this painting Harold impressed me by uttering facts about the time Willem of Orange spent in Antwerp… Facts he had picked up on last Friday… at the MAS!

Last week in pictures

| Marsha.

Inspired by Els, who is engaged in the Photo-A-Day-project, I thought it would be fun to share some of the things I’ve done Monday to Friday.

On Monday I worked. Sorry… no pictures. And then on Tuesday I worked from home on an article that called for a few ‘Dutch’ shots (which I took with my DSLR: Hello… long time no see!).

On Wednesday I ran some errands, bought the new Flow Magazine and tried out a recipe for vegetable stock from this blogwriter that I’ve been following for a while now. The blog is all about healthy eating and I learn a lot from reading it. I volunteered to try out recipes from Heleen‘s new book and in return she sent me two of them. The recipe testing also meant we had to visit IKEA in order to buy a pan that was big enough for the second recipe…

Thursday was a particularly good day. The weather was really nice and Springlike. I took the train to Utrecht for a little bit of shopping. I grabbed some Starbucks before I boarded the train home again. I didn’t bother to tell the girl behind the counter how my name is spelled… It was a very pleasant surprise to see she got it right! While on the train I received a What’s App message from Harold with a picture of his fresh new haircut. Once at home, I pulled the new issue of Scrap365 out of my mailbox!

The last photo refers to my new iPhone addiction: Draw Something… We’ve been having a lot of fun with that all week!

On Friday we went to Antwerp. It was a little foggy at first, but the sun came through in the afternoon and we spent a lovely afternoon with Klari at the Museum aan de Stroom (MAS):

I took a lot of Instagram photos that day… MAS is a great museum and there were textures and shapes and colors everywhere!

Museumbezoek

| Marsha.

Harold en ik zijn er vandaag zowaar in geslaagd een museum te bezoeken… Twee zelfs, want we zijn naar het Rietveld-Schröderhuis geweest met als bonus het Centraal Museum in Utrecht. Naar het Rietveld-Schröderhuis wilde ik al langer, maar het was er nog steeds niet van gekomen. Het huis was nog fascinerender dan ik van te voren had bedacht. Ik ben blij dat ik het nu heb gezien!

In het Centraal Museum konden we onze weg niet zo vinden, maar al heen en terug lopend door de zalen hebben we er toch wel mooie dingen gezien. Voor ons was het hoogtepunt de tentoonstelling Standpunten. De combinatie van collectiestukken en de toevoegingen van hedendaagse kunstenaars vonden we erg leuk.

dsc_0550dsc_0555