The olive trees in the garden outside the museum are over 100-years old in a plaza designed by Oakland-based artist and designer Walter Hood. Their gnarled trunks make a wonderful contrast to the geometric lines of the museum building.
We were thrilled to get to experience Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room - The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away at the Broad.
Yayoi Kusama is exploring infinite space in her Infinity Mirrored Room. The piece is in a room clad with mirrors and water on the floor with dozens of flickering lights.
In front of part of Takashi Murakami’s 82 foot long painting, In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, is DOB in the Strange Forest (Blue DOB). The artist uses mushrooms in his artwork in part because of the atom bombs that were dropped on Japan.
Here's a closer look at part of In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow. We were surprised how much we liked Murakami's vivid artwork.
Robert Therrien’s Under the Table piece stands 10 feet tall. Pete felt compelled to walk underneath it, like a small child who can fit under a table.
Urs Fischer’s irreverent take on a light post that looks like it’s melting. It made us smile as we noticed that the lights work!
And here's the exterior of the museum as it was getting dark. The building was designed by the architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Across the street is the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). It was free that evening, so we checked it out. Shore by Pierre Huyghe consists of the museum wall that has been sanded down, with the paint dust remaining on the floor as a “beach”, complete with turtle shell toward the end. Shore echoes a 21st century understanding of the ecological inter-connectedness of all life forms and the effects of human activity on climate and biodiversity.
Liz Larner’s 2 as 3 and Some, Too seems to wiggle itself loose of a rigid 2D geometry and bounce itself into a 3D sculpture. The pastel hues add a delicateness to the steel rods that form the interlocking cubes.
Pepsi-Cola Sign by Claes Oldenburg was created in 1961 when he opened The Store in NYC. For two months he made art in the back of the storefront and sold it in the front, as a way to short-circuit the studio and art gallery model. Artworks like Pepsi-Cola Sign were made of muslin soaked in plaster over a wire frame and painted.
We ate at Andy Ricker's new Pok Pok restaurant in LA, and noticed the striking "no guns" sign from Thailand in the entrance.
We had eaten at Pok Pok in Portland, Oregon, and while the food was tasty in LA, it was significantly less spicy here. We asked for chilies.
From LA we went to San Diego to visit Kristina's family. This is our brother-in-law Steve. He makes the most awesome home fries!
Kristina's sister Debby and Steve have recently added four chickens to their family. The black-and-white girls are Plymouth Rock hens named Abigail and Dolly. The reddish ones are named Martha and Jackie.
Our niece Chelsea especially likes the chickens. She is holding Martha, and her Mom Debby is behind her. Martha is the friendliest chicken who likes to follow Debby around like a dog.
Steve and Debbie built the chicken shed using mostly scrap materials that came from a friend's no-longer-used skateboard ramp.
We always enjoy hanging out with the Goyettes in their comfortable home in Leucadia. While we were visiting we completed two puzzles and started this third one. Our niece Megan is an excellent puzzler!
We were happy to get to visit our friends Jeff (left) and Paul. They have recently moved to San Diego and are enjoying getting to know the area. We took a walk near Balboa Park and took this photo in a canyon.
We also visited Kristina's folks, Patty and Bill. We went for a hike at Torrey Pines State Park.
It was just a typical, gorgeous San Diego January day.
Pete's enjoying the view of the Pacific.
Bill's one lucky guy.
After hiking around Torrey Pines, we celebrated Kristina's birthday (late) with a delicious meal at The Fishery.
We started with oysters.
And finished with chocolate cake!
Another day we enjoyed a meal out with a tasty chicken liver pâté served with house-made pickles and fig conserve.
We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) in their downtown location. Pete is in front of the cool barn door, and behind him is Ernesto Neto's piece entitled Mother body emotional densities, for alive temple time baby son.
Neto created his piece using fabric and filled the sculptural sacks with fragrant spices such as ginger, cloves, and turmeric, making the room a wonderful olfactory and visual experience.
Robert Irwin's Light and Space from 2007 is in the adjacent gallery. Irwin used fluorescent light tubes to create this interesting space.
MCASD is near the Santa Fe railroad station.
We went inside and liked the look of the restored tiles.
Patty and Bill are pretty adventurous eaters, so we took them out for northern Thai food and sampled lots of tasty dishes.
From San Diego we drove to the Bay Area. Pete's Mom had made beigli, a wonderful Hungarian pastry.
We thought the walnut beigli was the best she'd ever made, although the poppyseed beigli was also outstanding. We ate lots of both!
We didn't take a lot of photos while we were visiting Pete's family and seeing a few friends, but we do have a few to share, such as this panorama of Lake Merritt in Oakland taken as we walked around the lake.
Our dear friends Paul and Julie treated us to a delightful meal at Camino. Here's a photo of the crowded interior of the restaurant.
We were impressed to see that Camino is in the vanguard of restaurants that are including service in the price of the dishes, so that they can pay their workers higher wages.
One of the highlight dishes of the meal was pozole, a Mexican stew made of hominy and meat, and garnished with chitlins, cabbage and salsa - yum! Pete and Julie had made pozole together about two years ago at our ski house in Tahoe, when Julie brought a pig's head and all the fixin's, so we had fun remembering it.
We heard about their recent adventures in Vietnam, including dressing in Sumo wrestler suits. Check out this hilarious video Julie wrestling. We wish you a very happy birthday, Julie Queen!
We also caught up with our friends Ken and Jennifer. Here's an awesome photo from their wedding in Rome last year.
We spent an evening with Ken and Jen in Oakland's "The Hive", an enclave of interesting shops including Drake's Dealership where we met for drinks and Calavera restaurant where we shared this beautiful red snapper.
Our friends Pat and Sarah got married last year while we were in Spain. Their wedding party invitation started, "After 34 years of living in sin ..." Hooray for the newlyweds!
We were happy to spend an evening with them, enjoying Pat's cooking. Pat and Sarah are Do-It-Yourselfers in a big way, so we weren't surprised when they put us to work prepping citrus fruit for drying.
The fruit had to be dried overnight. Shown here are the racks of citrus in their drying machine.
Our favorite fruit was the mandarin kumquat. It's amazing how small of a quantity is left after the fruit is prepped and dried, but the flavors are intensely delicious.
We left the Bay Area and drove to Idaho to start our ski road trip. We saw the Craters of the Moon National Monument, a volcanic area with lava fields. It was especially interesting to see the contrast between the black basalt and the white snow.
We are having a good time being on our road trip. The sky box on top of our Subaru is an easy way for us to carry our ski equipment.
The first skiing we did was at Sun Valley, Idaho. We went to the local Nordic center and went cross country skating.
In the beginner's area they had these silly animals, and Kristina was willing to pose next to the bunny.
The next day we went to the downhill resort. The facilities in Sun Valley are pretty plush.
And the snow was wonderful!
Pete was willing to pose for a photo while kissing the grizzly bear bronze statue.
As we drove from Sun Valley the snowy scenery of southern Idaho was stunning. It was a brisk -9 degrees centigrade.
Next we went to Jackson, Wyoming for skiing at Jackson Hole downhill resort. It was significantly warmer when we got there.
This panorama looks like Kristina is in a beam of sunlight. The views were incredible!
Jackson Hole celebrates its cowboy heritage through its logo, appearing here at the base of the Sublette chair.
It's the 50th anniversary of Jackson Hole and they have this special version of their logo.
It was cold on the last day of downhill skiing, and while we enjoyed the live music, we also felt for the musicians whose hands looked really cold.
While in Jackson Hole we also got to cross country ski in Grand Teton National Park. The highest peak in the Tetons is visible in this photo.
They groom a 20 Km trail in Grand Teton, making it an awesome place to cross country skate.
There's so much snow that the sign looks short.
We skied out past the Jenny Lake turnout, 21 kilometer total round trip.
As we drove out of Grand Teton National Park, we saw a pair of red foxes. We were able to capture a photo of one of them.
Across the road from the National Elk Refuge is this wonderful sculpture of migrating elk.
Moose are common in this area and there's clearly an affinity for them, as evidenced by the number of moose sculptures we saw.
In the town of Jackson we couldn't resist posing next to a stuffed moose. The moose is such a charming-looking animal.
We left Jackson and stopped for a quick skate on the Game Creek Trail.
We were able to see one moose, but it was hard to get a good photo of it through the trees. Instead we're including a photo of Mya the dog, who we met at the trail head. We liked her red snow booties.
The third ski destination on our road trip was Aspen Snowmass, Colorado. Kristina's cousin and our dear friend Cynthia travelled with her sons Julian and Emilio to meet us in Snowmass for four days of playing in the snow.
The five of us have skied together for the past three seasons, and we had a blast in Snowmass!
The aspen trees were gorgeous.
When we weren't skiing, we were hanging out in the condo. Emilio is posing with this fun pillow.
The condo had a puzzle of the Aspen Snowmass area.
Here's the final puzzle. It's missing 13 pieces but it was still fun to put it together.
We liked this painting of a bison in the condo.
We rented a condo that was right next to the ski area. Each morning we would walk out to the slopes and put on our skis. Emilio's nickname is Rascal, and this picture captures his rascally nature.
We skied down to the gondola and ride it up the mountain.
From there, we had dozens of choices of fantastic ski runs. Most of the chairlifts have maps of the ski runs and foot rests too.
Kristina and Julian are in front of Elk Camp lodge. Julian is twelve and still likes to hug. How nice!
It was cool to see this picnic table out in the middle of a ski run. Pete arrived first and encouraged all of us to sit and enjoy the view, even if we didn't have a picnic lunch to eat.
Kristina and Cynthia generally opted to skip the tree skiing that Pete and the boys wanted to do, so they had time to take a selfie.
Pete is able to ski and videotape at the same time, so we made a movie of Kristina, Cynthia, Julian and Emilio skiing.
One day the weather wasn't that nice, so we opted to cross country skate while Cynthia and the boys tried snowshoeing.
There are 40 kilometer of groomed trails here that are free. Pete is skating across one of the picturesque bridges in the golf course.
Pete is pretending to draw his poles next to the gunslinger yard art.
We enjoyed the color of the Colorado scenery as we skated.
We caught up with Cynthia, Julian and Emilio while the boys were having a snowball fight. Emilio looks older than ten with his sunglasses on!
Julian is on the Oakland Undercurrents swim team, and he's in great shape. He had fun sledding.
We are so glad that Cynthia, Julian and Emilio spent their ski week vacation with us in Snowmass!
